Image from Wikipedia.

Due to the loss of $6.5 million per year in toll road funding, Fairfax County is proposing cuts on many Dulles corridor buses, including eliminating four routes to save $1 million per year. One of those is the 553, a route that my family has depended on in various ways for over a decade.

My family’s commute is complex. I live at East Falls Church and commute to the Navy Yard. My wife commutes to Smithsonian. I leave early, so I can head home early. My wife takes the later arrival, so she can wait for her mom to come and take care of the kids. Mom rides the 553 to Metro to our house.

Two days a week, so she can take care of her own home, she comes to pick up the kids, then drives them to her house in our car. Those nights, I ride the Metro and the bus out to Reston, driving the kids home in our car.

Until last year, my father-in-law commuted daily using the 553 until they eliminated his trip. He then started driving to a park and ride.

Mom could drive to a park and ride, but the lots fill quickly, even today. It’s expected that the elimination of four local bus routes will cause the park and ride lots to fill up earlier.

She could drive to our house, but the road is congested. Few people are interested in carpooling only to the near side of Arlington, and I-66 is HOV only in the peak direction. She’d have to take local roads, which are already overloaded.

We could try to drive the kids out and meet her half-way, twice a day. Don’t know how long that would take.

The biggest shame would be if eliminating a bus route made having Mom take care of the kids unfeasible. Mom is a great caregiver, and there’s nothing like having family take care of your kids instead of someone you don’t know as well. For the kids, they get to know their Mommom really well, and have a very close relationship with her and their Pawpaw.

Like for Metro, the options look pretty limited. The transfer of the Dulles toll road and revenues to MWAA, the airports authority that operates Dulles and National airports, in exchange for capital funding for Metrorail, eliminated much of the funding for bus service in the corridor. These service cuts mean that Fairfax predicts a 12% cut in ridership in FY2010, and a 7% cut in FY2011.

This bus service is extremely valuable to me and my family. Driving in the corridor is often slower than taking the bus. Adding another car to the roads can only make traffic worse. This bus is worth at least $5 per trip to us. Fairfax has proposed a fare increase to $1.50 per trip. If that’s not enough to save bus routes from being cut, I would prefer a larger increase to save the routes.

The money from the toll road was supposed to support bus service until rail service opened; it’s not clear why MWAA was able to cut off the funding so abruptly before the rail was complete to Wiehle Avenue. Hopefully once rail service opens, Fairfax can restore local bus feeder service to their new rail station in Reston. But two years of little to no bus service may have people pick up the driving habit instead.