Completing the pedestrian path along Spring Street in Herndon is on my personal want list. This would allow Town of Herndon residents to walk along Spring street and safely reach the existing path that continues under fairfax county parkway to Target and the restaurants on the North side of Sunset Hills. At the last Herdon PBAC meeting I heard that a new joint project between Town of Herndon, VDOT and Fairfax county had been started and has a possible completion date in early 2012. The sidewalk will be an ADA required 5-foot sidewalk to fit within the existing right-of way. I am looking forward to finding out more information as the plans progress. I wonder if there is an opportunity to improve bike access as well.
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Completing the Spring Street path
Sunday, July 10th, 2011Silver line passes another hurdle
Thursday, December 4th, 2008The Dulles Rail Silver Line extenstion passes another hurdle by getting the sign off from the FTA for the federal contribution of 900 million to the $1.63 billion needed to build the first stage of the Metro rail extension out to Dulles Airport.
Metro has also started procurement of 64 new 7000 series metro rail cars that will look significantly different from the existing fleet. The rail cars would have a stainless steel exterior. The exterior brown paint and stripes would be gone. The Fiberglass seats would be replaced with stainless steel ones and carpet would be eliminated. They are also considering interactive linear maps, and automated announcements stating the station names. While I am all for the automated announcements, I remember the 6000’s doing it when they first started rolling out, so why don’t they do it now?
With the silver line looking like it might actually be built Track Twenty Nine has some very interesting diagrams on the capacity issues the Silver line will create at Rosslyn Station.
Metro is considering routing some blue line trans across the bridge to DC rather than going to Rosslyn as they currently do. When you add the silver line in the rosslyn tunnel it doesn’t look like metro will have any other choice than to reduce the blue line service to the station unless they expand or build another tunnel into DC.
Take another look at buses for commuting
Sunday, August 24th, 2008The Washington Post has article on using buses as an alternative to driving.
Buses may lack the hipness of subways or light rail, but they are the best hope for accommodating large numbers of new riders quickly and affordably. To harness the increased demand for mass transit, officials are turning to new ways of delivering and marketing their bus service.
When looking at public transit we need identify the major routes, then use local connections, walking, biking, and local buses to feed into those major routes. Washington has metro area already has the metro which act as major trunks, we should be looking for the gaps and filling them with express buses, bus rapid transit, light rail etc. The Washington area does best when linking buses to the metro, we need to do more with rapid bus links to make interconnected journeys possible.
It sounds likes WMATA’s Catoe gets it and is already working to this goal.
Expanding and improving Washington’s bus service is critical to shift some of the pressure off the rail system, which is packed during rush hour and has little room to add longer or more frequent trains. Catoe has proposed an extensive network of express buses that would use shoulders or bus-only lanes to help meet the region’s immediate transportation needs.