The last mile in Tysons Corner, part 1: The problem

Plans for a transformed Tysons Corner rely not only on four Metro stations but a network of circulator buses to provide service from the new stations to locations throughout Tysons. Unfortunately, circulator buses may not provide the level of service needed to entice many people out of their cars.

Even with the new Metro stations, Tysons will remain a spread-out, edge city with long distances between buildings, large parking lots and uncomfortable walking infrastructure, at least in the short term. It will be at least a generation before Tysons transforms enough to fully take advantage of Metro.

In the meantime, people will need to get from the Metro stations to their destinations that may not be within walking distance or may be difficult to walk to. Hence the proposal to run circulator buses. However, as the Post article also notes, there is no money for the buses.

Without some sort of supplemental transportation, a significant part of the value of building the Silver Line will be lost. Currently there are thousands of reverse commuters from DC, Arlington and Alexandria who work in Tysons. Unless their offices are right near the new stations, many of them will continue to drive. After all, there’s no HOV requirement in the reverse direction, most parking is free, and it will be so much more convenient to go right to your workplace.

The buses themselves will be significantly suboptimal. They will need to deal with the same traffic as the cars. Passengers will have to wait for them at both ends. Stops that are later on the route will require sitting through a half-dozen earlier stops.

For a lot of situations, it might take fifteen minutes to get from the Metro station to a building only a mile away. That’s as long as it would take to drive all the way from the Potomac River to the building. You could jog there faster.

Some sort of supplemental transportation is needed, but unless they can be separated and given priority, buses will be barely adequate. Most likely the buses would have to be provided for free, since charging for such abysmal service will just drive more people into their cars.

According to the Examiner, the current Tysons lunch shuttle is carrying fewer than one person per trip at a cost of over $1 million per year. When Arlington ran its lunch shuttle, it also experienced abysmally low ridership, even though there is a higher percentage of workers without cars in the Ballston/Clarendon area. Why? because it takes so long to get anywhere.

The Tysons Land-Use Task Force recommends eventually building a grade-separated system:

The vision of a transformed Tysons calls for transit services linking the four future Metrorail stations with the rest of the Urban Center. As described above, these services may begin as shuttle buses serving Metro stations and evolve over time. A second phase may be buses operating in mixed traffic. A third phase may be buses operating on exclusive rights-of-way, followed by a fixed guideway system operating on exclusive rights-of-way.

In 20 or 40 years, if all goes well, Tysons will be transformed into a real city, walkable offices next to stations, and busways to other locations. But in the short run we face this “last mile” problem. What can Tysons do to reduce the likelihood that people will continue to drive, making the transformation harder, since all those drivers will continue to want lots of wide roads?

Matt Johnson and I have some ideas. We’ll present and discuss them in upcoming parts.