This Monday , the Falls Church City Council received a detailed briefing on the status of the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission’s Envision Route 7 project and offered feedback on potential bus priority treatments evaluated for West Broad and N. Washington Streets. The project is evaluating enhanced transit service and bus priority treatments along the Route 7 corridor in F.C.s west end from the Spring Hill Road in Tyson’s Corner through the City of Falls Church with a connection to the East Falls Church Metrorail station and continuing to the Mark Center in Alexandria. 

The proposed improvements would provide more frequent and reliable bus service along the Route 7 corridor, and bus priority treatments may include dedicated lanes, transit signal priority and other measures intended to reduce delays and improve transit times. Metrobus F20 currently provides service along Route 7 between Tysons, Falls Church and Alexandria. Metrobus F50  serves S. and N. Washington Street connecting George Mason University and Vienna with downtown Falls Church, East Falls Church and Ballston. A proposed F2X limited stop service is slated to be introduced during key hours in December to add near term transit improvements supporting the longer-term Envision Route 7 bus priority vision.

The Envision Route 7 project has been under evaluation for over a decade. It identified Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) as the preferred alternative for further study. Subsequent phases evaluated alignment options, developed conceptual engineering and cost estimates and identified design constraints. Two alternatives, full and partial business access (BAT) lanes are being considered to maximize transit benefit through two intersections that now experience major traffic time delays at the intersections of Shreve/Haycock Road and Broad Street, and at Washington and Broad Street.   

The debate that developed this week concerned whether or not the data is showing that car centric data may conflict with people centric data, as Council member Justine Underhill pointed out. It may be that driver changes have already had an impact on times it takes to move through an intersection, as both she and Mayor Letty Hardi pointed out, and that data from vehicle traffic numbers alone may not be the most reliable when it comes to what it will take to actually move people from one point to another.

Studies show that while one alternative would provide the greatest transit benefit, with approximately 105 seconds of estimated travel time savings, they would result in increased traffic delay, with four intersections projected to operate at a failing level of service, also reducing the general purpose roadway capacity along approximately 3.1 miles of the corridor.

We concur with Underhill and Hardi on the preferred approach to the growing traffic burdens on the City that do not necessarily coincide with what car numbers alone may show.