A Bus Route That Could Work
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.
Good write-up. Questions that come to mind:
1. Is the new entrance to EFC really going to happen? If so, when? If not (or not soon), is this concept still viable just with a longer drive to the existing entrance?
2. Running buses every 5 minutes sounds expensive. How often do the metro trains stop (maybe we should sync up with them)? How many people would actually use this service? What’s the ideal number of buses to support them?
3. Related to #2, what kind of research has been done or could be done to figure out whether people would actually use this kind of thing? It seems to me that good promotion would need to be part of is (e.g., direct mail to all the businesses on the route, posters in EFC metro).
4. What’s the lowest cost way to test the concept? Could start with 2 smaller vehicles, then add more or upgrade to larger ones if it becomes popular? Could we have a 1 year “testing period” without too much financial risk to the City? Could we get help from Metro or federal $ to try it out?
I know our staff (at Tax Analysts Building, right next to Pearson Sq.) would use this often. When we host ~50 person events at the office, it would be used heavily as well (metro accessibility is one of the major limitations in our ability to host them.) I also know residents at Pearson Sq. who would love it. I would have used it a couple times myself in the past few weeks to get to metro.
How to ideas like this go from idol conversation to something real?
Those are good questions. My quick response is - I’m not a transit expert, just an idea guy. I’d love to see someone with real experience with this stuff dig in and try to get good answers to these questions. But here’s my stab at them…
1. I don’t know if the new entrance will happen. It sounds like the idea of redeveloping the area around the Metro station has been kicked around for years. I think if it does get redeveloped then another entrance will almost certainly be part of that. When this might happen, I have no idea.
I don’t think a solution like this is viable without a new entrance. The existing configuration would require a bus to cut up through neighborhood to the south of the station or loop around to the north (through 3-4 lights) and either approach would add a chunk of time that would make the route much less appealing.
For some info about the plans, check out this document: http://www.fallschurchva.gov/Content/Government/BC/PC/2009/E_FC_Planning_Transportation_Study_050409.pdf
2. Google claims the route is 4 minutes (one way, obviously without bus stops) so you might be able to get pretty frequent service with only a few buses. But we know buses are about $80/hour to operate so it would get expensive. Syncing them with the trains is a good idea but I’m not sure how feasible that is (with currently used technology - there certainly exists technology that would allow this to happen but it would involve updating the trains too).
It’s hard to say how many people would use the bus. One option they’re considering with the Metro station redevelopment is to not have any parking spaces (although I can’t imagine how that would work) - if that happens then tons of people would use this bus! But really what I’d be targeting are three kinds of users:
A) Folks commuting into the City to work. Before this would happen much we’d need to have more office space go up along the bus route.
B) Folks coming to visit these businesses (not retail - but non-retail commercial businesses - like the events you mentioned).
C) Folks coming to shop, eat, catch a show, etc.
There’s a bit of chick and egg situation because as the bus gets used it would really drive development of the things that people would use the bus for.
3. I don’t know what research has been done. I’m guessing people have looked at many different ways to extend the reach of subway systems like Metro so I wouldn’t be surprised of people have tried something like this before.
I agree that initially the service will have to be well promoted. However, I think the businesses that would be served by it would quickly and gladly promote this new method of transportation. Ultimately, I think it will be less about promoting it and more about it being easy to use and efficient and getting the development in the area going to support it.
4. Ah, the money part. This is where it gets tricky. First of all, until there’s a new Metro exist I don’t think this idea would fly. Once that’s done you could do a trial run will a couple of standard buses but my vision on this one is BIG.
Forget about buses. Buses are boring. Let’s think high tech. What about ultra-light rail (I might have just made that term up)? What about an elevated solution (or underground - but that would be way too expensive) that would bypass traffic. Maybe an elevated system could be completely automated or one person in an control room could monitor multiple cars? What about a gondola. Seriously. An elevated system could even be integrated with new development along the route - having stops actually adjacent to new buildings.
I’ve been looking at this from a Falls Church centric view but let’s consider sending it into Arlington too. The actually have a similar problem with the existing setup - the Metro’s not that close to any good commercial development sites. So, take this automated, elevated, ultra-light rail and send it 1.5 miles down Lee Highway to the Harris Teeter. This would serve tons of residents as well as open up the Lee Highway corridor for redevelopment.
Let’s get some stimulus money for this. It would certainly be a green project and could serve as a model for how to extend the reach of many Metro stops.
If the transfer from Metrorail to this system was easy, reliable, and not at the mercy of traffic I think it really could extent the effective range of the Metro stop.
Seriously though, I think anything other than simple buses would require some serious state and federal funding (and even simple buses would probably require something like that). I don’t think the City could afford to implement something like this. I suppose there’s a chance that you could get enough developments going along N Washington and get money from the developers to run the bus.
But I really think for this to work it has to be done right. It needs to use modern technology and be more efficient and environmentally friendly than a regular bus. It has to be different.
As for your final question - I’m not sure how to make an idea like this real. The City’s in the process of forming a committee to oversee the existing bus, GEORGE, and I suppose that group could consider an idea like this. Enterprising citizens could put together a grant proposal, like the group recently did going for $25M in federal money to make the City a Green lab.
I’m into your idea until you start talking about gondolas … then all your credibility falls apart.
Simple buses are the only solution. I’m all for unique / green. I’m sure the technology is way better than it was with the original failed green buses the GEORGE was supposed to be built on.
I would think you could test this idea before the EFC metro gets renovated. Sure, it’s a longer bus ride — but if it means you don’t have to walk all that way … If nothing else, I can’t imagine that could possibly happen inside of 3 years since it’s not even a sure thing yet. If you really think it can’t work without that entrance, let’s just mothball this discussion for a couple years …