By a unanimous vote of only five members of the Falls Church City Council present Monday night, a Bus Stop Master Plan developed by the City staff was adopted that could add 15-25 new covered bus shelters in the City in 2014, putting into use a $200,000 grant from the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, a portion of new transportation funds designated for the City derived from legislation passed earlier this year in Richmond.
According to Vice Mayor David Snyder, who presided over tonight’s meeting in the absence of Mayor Nader Baroukh (out of town due to a death in the family), the bus shelters will enhance the City in numerous ways, providing a humanitarian service for the 1,400 daily users of buses moving through the major corridors of the City during inclement weather, encouraging the use of transit thus resulting in fewer cars on the road, and binding the City together with unifying aesthetics and design of all the shelters, including the prominent use of the City’s “The Little City” logo on all the shelters.
The City’s Interim Transportation Planner Paul Stoddard was praised for his work on the master plan, and he told the Council that state transportation funds combined with some local resources could be used to build 12-15 of the shelters, while 3-5 could be build with contributions from private funds, including as proffers from developers seeking approvals for large scale mixed use projects.
