The Falls Church Insider All About the City of Falls Church, Virginia, For & By The Folks Who Live & Work There

Two recent issues floating around the City over the past few months have led me to an idea about implementing a transit solution that would actually be beneficial to the City.  I’ll explain my idea here.

Recently there has been discussions going on in Arlington about reconfiguring the East Falls Church Metro station.  There are many aspects to the plan but the one that stuck out to me was the idea of creating an entrance to the station that is close to North Washington.  Currently, if someone wanted to walk from inside the City on North Washington to the Metro entrance they would have to walk up North Washington a bit, turn right and walk along the W&OD path all the way down toward N Sycamore, cut back off of the W&OD down to 19th Road N, go down some long stairs to cut around the Kiss and Ride part of the Metro parking lot until they reached the entrance.

This walk is feasible (I’ve done it many times) but doesn’t necessarily qualify that part of the City as Metro accessible.  However, if there were an entrance to the Metro near North Washington you would suddenly put a decent chunk of commercial land in the City within an easy walk to the Metro.  That could be a huge boost to existing and potential new development on that side of town.

The other topic we’ve kicked around is how to make GEORGE (the bus) useful.  The current routes mimic existing Metrobus routes (more or less) and clearly serve people commuting from the City to places outside of the City.  Starting next month the schedule will be reduced further to effectively make the bus useful only for commuting (no mid-day, night, or weekend service).  Having an easy way to commute out of the City for work certainly benefits the City - but it doesn’t do much for economic development within the City.

The City is currently served (sort of) by two Metro stops.  West Falls Church is on the side of town where mixed-use buildings are not being developed.  East Falls Church is on the right side of town but due to the entrance location any bus service has to either go out of it’s way or cut through residential streets before getting to any of the commercial parts of the City.

And this is where we get to my great idea!  If the East Falls Church Metro had an entrance on or near North Washington we could run a bus (trolly, streetcar, moving sidewalk, gondola, hay ride, whatever) along North Washington from one side of town to the other (potentially cutting over to South Maple Avenue at Broad Street).  All the bus would do is go back and forth.  One route - a straight line - about 1.5 miles long.  Run 2-4 small buses at the same time so the wait is never more than about 5 minutes.  Have the buses running any time Metrorail is running.  Nothing fancy, just back and forth.

Done right, this kind of short bus route could effectively extend the “Metro accessible” zone into the heart of our current development efforts (North Gate, City Center, Pearson Square) and would open up several other areas for development.  It wouldn’t do a lot for commuters leaving the City (they can hop on an existing Metrobus) but I think it would have a huge impact in two other areas.

First of all, it would make the State Theatre and quite a few restaurants (as well as the City Center) easily accessible from the Metro.  People not wanting to drive into the City for a night of entertainment could easily take Metro.  This would help with parking, the environment, getting tipsy drivers off the roads, and it would increase business at these establishments.  If the bus extends all the way to Pearson Square it would give a big boost to the new Arts space.

Second of all, it would make locating a non-retail business in the area much more appealing.  Small to mid-sized businesses would love to have a location where employees and clients could get there via Metro.  Again, this would help parking and environmental issues as well as mitigate traffic problems.  We currently see office buildings flourish along the Orange Line because easy access to Metro is in high demand.

I’ve created a Google Map to illustrate this idea - click into it to check out what I’m talking about.

This weekend in the annual Tinner Hill Blues Festival in Falls Church.  When people ask what I love so much about living & working in Falls Church, this is one of my go-to examples.  Andy and I did our part to support the event by selecting the Tinner Hill web site as one of Viget’s pro-bono projects.  The team had a blast working on it, and hopefully the site has helped promote the event and the foundation itself.

I won’t repeat the history of Tinner Hill (which is fascinating) or the other great coverage about the festival this weekend.  I’ll just encourage you to come out and enjoy the community.

UPDATE: I just uploaded a batch of photos that I took during the first couple hours at the festival on Saturday afternoon.

When I told Matt Smith that I wanted to get involved in the community, he gave me a few ideas — including joining the cable access board — and said something to the effect of “if you really want to get involved, you need to look into the CBC.”  I won’t try to explain what the Citizens for a Better City is here.  AC did a good write up (post one, and post two) on the Falls Church Times.  Mike has his recent post here, asking CBC to lead.  The CBC even has a web site.

So, last fall I went to the annual CBC dinner.  I was eventually asked to join the CBC Advisory Board, a new and loosely formed group that is supposed to get together every few months to talk about the future of the City and CBC’s role.  Last night was my second such meeting.

There are interesting decisions to be made about the future of the CBC.  Mike’s rant about leadership isn’t far off — what do we want the CBC to be?  Is it relevant anymore?  Do newer residents in Falls Church know or care about the CBC?  What would happen if the CBC went away?

From my (so far limited) perspective, I believe that the CBC can be more relevant than ever.  Between the debates about mixed-use development and the challenges we’ll face with the growth of our schools (to name a couple of massively-city-altering topics) there are important issues on the horizon that need to be addressed.  People care about these issues and don’t know how to influence them. There needs to be a well-organized, energetic group dedicated to encouraging our most capable citizens to get involved in the community.

A core question seems to be: are there citizens out there who are willing — dare I say really want — to be involved in a group like the CBC, but aren’t aware of it?  Is it therefore a communications and outreach challenge?  Or has the makeup of Falls Church changed so much over the past 20 years such that people are too busy, disinterested, and passive to volunteer their time?

I’m cautiously optimistic.  I think that there are a lot of people who live in Falls Church in part because they want to be more involved in the community, and the CBC is in a great position to help them figure out how to do just that.

Yesterday, over lunch, we had a special EDA meeting to discuss the GEORGE bus situation.  Normally the EDA meets just once per month but we didn’t get to talk about GEORGE in our March meeting and with our April meeting pushed back by a week to accommodate Spring Break we wouldn’t have had time to get any feedback to the City Council before they have to make final budget decisions.

In addition to most of the EDA members, there were a couple of folks from the Falls Church Times in attendance as well as the City’s EDO staff, City Manager Wyatt Shields, and Wendy Block Sanford from the City’s planning staff who has the most knowledge about GEORGE.  Wendy gave us the presentation that she gave the City Council during their work session last Thursday.

I think the EDA will come out with “official” recommendations to the City Council in the next couple of days, so I won’t jump the gun on those.

One interesting aspect of this issue is that the GEORGE service is fairly unsupervised by the City.  Prior to digging into the service as a result of the budget planning, which is what Wendy has been working on, the City basically leaves things up to WMATA.  It sounds like WMATA sends the City a bill for managing the service but some aspects aren’t understood well by the City.  For example, the City seems to realize about 50% of the full fare based on ridership numbers.  For example, with 70,000 trips when the fare is set at $0.50 the City sees only about $18k of the potential $35k.  We know that several factors impact that number.  Some developers have been given bus passes in exchange for investments supporting GEORGE.  There are days in the summer when the bus is free due to extreme weather conditions.  There’s also the issue of transfers to and from Metrobus and Metrorail (and reasearch shows that 99% of GEORGE riders do transfer in one direction or the other).  The problem is that we don’t really understand how that works and it sounds like WMATA doesn’t provide any kind of a statement explaining it.

For example, we talked about one of the recommendations - which was increasing the fare from $0.50 to $1.00 or more.  However, it wasn’t clear if we would see only $0.50 from a $1.00 fare or if we would see something closer to $0.75.  Ultimately though, with the ridership numbers we see on GEORGE, another option would be to just make the bus free.

There were a few other aspects of the bus service that the City staff is still trying to sort out.  I’m sure it’s a daunting job to ramp up on all the details quickly to help the City Council make critical budget decisions.  Wendy seems to be doing a great job at it - but I get the sense that WMATA isn’t the easiest organization to deal with.  I also get the sense that GEORGE is a very small fish in the WMATA pond so that probably makes things even more difficult.

Overall, I thought the meeting was productive and interesting.  I know I’ve learned a lot about public transportation.  I encourage folks to come out and see one of these meetings in person.  I find it encouraging to see volunteers (EDA members, concerned citizens, etc.) working with paid City staff to try and find solutions to real problems that we’re facing.

Without speaking too soon on the conclusions we came to (obviously we’re still sorting out the finer details of our recommendations), I think most of us felt like the current bus service is very inefficient and almost impossible to justify but the idea of a local bus service seems like a good one - we just have to figure out how to have it make sense.

My plan was to have two more posts in this series on GEORGE.  This post was going to be a fun one kicking around various grand ideas for a modern solution.  But I’m starting to burn myself out on the GEORGE issue and the City Council is moving through the process quickly (they had a budget working session Thursday night where they discussed the GEORGE issue).  So, I decided I’ll just cut to the chase and let you know what conclusions I’ve come to after all this thinking.

Okay, I’ll quickly mention some ideas that won’t work (at least not now).  The original idea for GEORGE was to be cutting edge and use electric buses - how cool is that?!  Turns out the City lost a good chunk of money (actually, more like some regional and federal money) on this idea as the two vendors they tried couldn’t produce reliable buses.  While electric buses would be cool - they’re still just buses driving around on streets based on a schedule.

What about a streetcar solution (either an actual one or a tolly-like bus)?  It would be less formal than a bus but could be cute and might even be more useful for residents getting around town.  Light rail and unground subways probably wouldn’t work out for us.

It’s too early for a flexible schedule system - where people request rides/routes via the internet and a system of vehicles are intelligently routed in real time to accommodate riders.  The technology is probably close to being there but the people who would use the system aren’t ready for something like this.  I’m sure someday (20 years?) we’ll see solutions like that - especially in a small place like Falls Church.

While we’re kicking around unrealistic ideas - what about a modified guided bus solution where the buses could drive around town picking people up and then travel on existing rails (like Metrorail) to other destinations.  I know, that’s crazy.

Okay, okay, back to reality.  What do I really think we need to do?

1. Switch to shuttle buses.  For example, the DASH bus in Grand Rapids.
2. Change the routes so they don’t duplicate Metrobus.
3. Implement night and weekend service that provides access to entertainment and dining locations.
4. Come up with a drop dead simple routing model (like the color coded lines that Metrorail uses) that makes it easy for residents to know where the bus goes and allows restaurants to easily explain how to use it (e.g. “Get off the Metro at East Falls Church and take the Red GEORGE bus to stop 6″).
5. Change the name (sorry, I know some people like it but nobody knows what service the bus provides.  If you get off at the East Falls Church metro and see a GEORGE bus what do you think it does?  Maybe takes to you George Mason University?  What if the bus was called something boring like the Falls Church Shuttle - you might know what area is serves).

Until these plans (specifically the move to shuttle buses) can be implemented we need to keep the existing GEORGE running.  If we can save money in the short term by cooperating with Arlington’s ART system then that’s a good idea.  Even dropping the mid-day service to save money until we can make the jump to shuttle buses is probably okay.

If we shut down GEORGE now it will be next to impossible to bring a new shuttle bus service online anytime soon.  Also, while 70,000 trips per year isn’t a lot if we just shut GEORGE down we’ll lose those loyal users.

We’re told that if the GEORGE bus is “defunded” (which I assume means “shut down”) the City can save about $450,000 each year.  I think I read somewhere that the annual operating costs of the bus is along the lines of $580,000 - so I’m not sure where the discrepancy is.  We’d obviously lose the meager $35,000 or so in fares but would we also lose some state or federal funding?  Or would there still be costs associated with the bus service even after it has been shut down?  On a related note, I think the City owns 4 buses - could those be sold?

As I mentioned last time, I’m going to try and think out loud about the costs associated with the GEORGE bus service.  I don’t actually know how it works so this isn’t going to be a careful analysis of specific details.

So, what does it cost to run the bus?  Obviously there is the bus driver who must be paid.  I assume that running only one bus during the middle of the day reduces the driver cost to the City - although I suppose it’s possible that the City pays for two full-time bus drivers whether they’re driving or not.

The buses run on fuel and that obviously has a cost associated with it.  Certainly the reduction to one bus in the middle of the day must reduce fuel costs - one bus uses less fuel than two.

No doubt the buses require maintenance.  In the report on the history of GEORGE I think there was mention of an operating fee for the buses - based on the number of hours they run.  So the maintenance costs probably go by the hour and aren’t actually related to specific repairs.

I’m sure there are other costs like insurance, signs, brochures that describe the schedules and fares.  I read somewhere that the cost of collecting the $0.50 fare might be more than $0.50 - so maybe that’s another cost.

Understanding how the costs work is critical to the last post I’ll make in this series, where I will throw out some suggestions for improving GEORGE.  For example, what is the added cost of running two buses all day instead of reducing to one bus in the middle of the day?  What about the cost of running evenings or weekends?  If collecting the fare is actually more expensive than the fare (seems hard to imagine) then why not make the bus free?  Which costs scale with ridership and which are fixed (i.e. is there any chance of reducing the cost burden or would 200,000 riders just drive the cost of providing the service up)?

Could we save money by selling the buses we have and buying smaller buses?  Could we get someone other than WMATA to maintain the buses for a lower cost?

For fun, in my next post I’ll kick around some outside the box ideas for an improved system - some of which might be practical and others that wouldn’t.

[UPDATE] I should have done my research before posting this!  The Power Point presentation from the City Manager’s budget presentation on Monday actually has answers to most of my questions.  It looks like the City pays WMATA a “platform hour cost” that covers drivers, maintenance, fuel, tires, and insurance.  The FY2004 cost was $64 but the FY2008 cost is $80 and the FY2009 cost is $102!  For some reason the FY2010 cost is $99.  I didn’t see the presentation so I don’t know if the City Manager explained how or why the cost fluctuates (a 27% jump followed by a 3% drop seems odd to me).

This seems to imply that running two buses during the day instead of one would add 6 platform hours per day - or 1,560 hours per year - which would be $124,800 at the $80 rate and $159,120 at the $102 rate.  I’m not sure if that’s exactly right since the current schedule would be 5,200 platform hours per year which should come to $416,000 at the $80 rate but the City Manager reported the gross costs to be $613,953.  Even at the $102 rate it would come to only $530,400.  Maybe there are non-service platform hours that have to be paid for?

The other odd thing from the City Manager’s report was that we generated only $18,000 in revenue on ridership of 70,911 - which is about $0.25 per trip.  The fare is $0.50 per trip.  I think on hot days when the air quality is bad people can ride the bus for free - but that doesn’t seem to explain why we would be bringing in only half the standard fare for the year.

In my future posts I’ll touch on the GEORGE options that the City Manager proposed (he offered 7 options).

As I mentioned in my last post, the current GEORGE configuration seems geared toward taking residents to the Metrorail stations to commute out of the City.  What other purposes could GEORGE serve?

The bus could allow non-residents to commute to their jobs in the City via Metrorail.  The City has been working for years to increase tax revenue from businesses so the majority of the burden isn’t just on the residents.  With that in mind, making it easier for people to get into the City via public transportation could help make Falls Church a more appealing location for businesses to locate.

People could use GEORGE to get into the City to shop, eat, entertain, or otherwise spend their money.  Another way to reduce the tax burden on the residents is to increase the revenue from sales taxes we collect from people who come to the City to shop.  Without evening and weekend service the bus won’t be able to get much traction in this area.  I could imagine folks out in Fairfax County hoping on Metrorail to get into Falls Church for dinner, drinks, and a show at the State Theater - bus service could facilitate that.

City residents could use GEORGE to get around the City.  I’ve talked to several folks who value Falls Church as a walkable city and a well implemented local bus service could really extend the range of that.  On a regular basis I walk from my house on Little Falls to my office on South Maple (next to Pearson Square) - it would be cool if I could easily hop on a bus to head up to Pie-Tanza for lunch every once in a while.  When the City Center is done it would be great if folks on the other side of town could easily get down there via bus.

All of these uses help keep cars off the streets - which reduces traffic, wear and tear on the roads, reduces pollution, and mitigates parking issues.  I recently read a letter from Environmental Services Council - Climate Change, Energy Efficiency Task Group which points out the 70,000 rides provided by GEORGE potentially saves the use of over 5,000 gallons of gas and the associated CO2 production.  Of course that is somewhat offset by the fuel use and CO2 production by the buses, but increasing usage of the bus would increase the savings without increasing the impact of the bus.

In addition to the environmental, traffic, and parking benefits of the bus service the City could benefit if the service promoted business growth in the City and encouraged non-resident spending in the City.

Up next, I’ll consider the different costs associated with running the bus service and how those costs might impact which changes to the service are viable.  I should warn you - I don’t really know how the costs work so I’ll mostly be wondering out loud.

Last week George Southern (no relation to GEORGE bus) wrote over at the Falls Church Times that the City of Falls Church GEORGE bus system was potentially on the chopping block.  At last night’s City Council meeting, City Manager Wyatt Shields did in fact recommend ending the GEORGE bus service.  The bus service is expensive - eliminating it will save the City about $450,000 each year.  Last year the service provided about 70,000 passenger trips.  I haven’t seen any reports of what the annual capacity of the system is but it seems to be very underutilized.

Recently, Mike over at Blueweeds posted about GEORGE and linked to a report that discussed the history of the bus service.  It’s a fairly interesting account of the difficulties in getting a public bus system up and running.  It makes me think that if GEORGE is eliminated it might be very difficult to institute a bus system in the future.

There are several aspects of this issue that I’d like to look at.  My plan is to split them up into a series of blog posts.  Specifically, I think it would be interesting to think about what GEORGE currently provides, consider how GEORGE might be used differently, understand the costs related to offering a bus service, consider innovative ideas for alternatives to standard bus service, and maybe even come up with some practical suggestions for improvement.

I’ll get started by looking at what GEORGE currently offers.  Right now the service runs only during weekdays.  It does not run at night or on the weekends.  During the morning and afternoon rush hours there are two buses running.  Each bus runs in a circle around half the City, serving one Metrorail stop.  In between the rush hours there is just one bus running, basically following a route between the two Metrorail stops.

If you look at the routes and schedules it seems pretty clear that the system is configured to take City residents to the Metrorail stations so they can commute out of the City and then bring them back home at the end of the day.  Obivously, other uses are possible but the most efficient use is for commuting out of the City.

This is a very valid use of the bus system.  It increases the appeal of living in the City which, in the long run, increases the value of the houses.  In this budget cycle we’re all learning that raising property values has a big impact on revenue to the City.  It is obviously hard to say if the $450,000 per year investment in GEORGE leads to a $450,000 (or more) increase in City revenue as the result of increased property values - but I’m guessing most people would assume it doesn’t.  The City gets value (or should get value) from the bus system in other ways so this analysis shouldn’t be the only thing considered.  However, it does get me thinking about how to make the bus system more effective.

In my next post I’ll talk about other functions the GEORGE system could be optimized for.

We had our monthly FCC-TV board meeting tonight.  A lot of the discussion was about typical stuff — budget approval to buy lights, recruiting volunteers, and planning for the memorial day parade.  The fun part of the meeting was when Matt Smith presented a new logo and branding concept for the station.  It’s great having a real ad guy on the board.  Matt had fancy full-color print-outs, including mockups of what the logo would look like on t-shirts, coffee mugs, and the station van.

I had seen a sneak peek of the logo at Matt’s shop last week, but it was still exciting to see the board react and approve the plan to move ahead with the re-branding effort.  Next steps will be working on the web site, which has 2 major initiatives:

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It sounds like Virginia is getting closer to enacting at least a partial smoking ban in restaurants.  I don’t smoke and I’m a huge fan of banning smoking in restaurants - mostly because I hate to be around it.  I know there are some complex issues involved but I think ultimately we’re all better off if there is no smoking in restaurants.  A City-only ban would never fly because smoking customers would just move to neighboring areas where smoking is allowed - but a statewide ban should have less of an impact on City businesses.

The proposed ban would allow smoking in walled-off areas that have separate ventilation systems.  I wonder if this is why 4Ps recently installed a wall between their bar and sit-down restaurant area (although I’m not sure that is sufficient to get by this proposed new law - plus the only way into that area would be through the bar section).

From what I can tell, this law hasn’t been passed yet.  If you’re in favor of a smoking ban it probably wouldn’t hurt to contact your state representatives to tell them you support it.