The completion of Silver Line Phase 1 provided Fairfax County, and their county bus system Fairfax Connector, an opportunity to realign many routes that had not changed in years to better connect passengers to the Silver Line. By removing many east-west paths that were redundant with the Silver Line, Fairfax Connector was able to increase frequency in many locations, add new routes to communities close to Silver Line, but too far to walk, and add new buses to the fleet.
One of those improved lesser served regions was to be the McLean-Vienna-Tysons area, which would see the largest changes from the introduction of the Silver Line. New routes such as the 721, which connects most of McLean to the Silver Line, or the Tysons Circulators, which serve areas of Tysons, were envisioned to be popular time savers.
But there are huge problems with this concept.
We have noted that the routes themselves for the Tysons Circulators are turning riders away. Despite weaving through one of the most densely populated regions of Tysons, it has completely failed to produce any significant ridership. The reality is, due to the meandering one-way loop path created arbitrarily by the County, it is faster to walk or bike to metro.
Compounding the problem of time-lost routes is the lack of information on when the next bus is coming. Heavy rush hour traffic in Tysons results in buses having a difficult time holding pre-planned schedules that are listed online or on bus shelters. Some bus routes have created massive timecheck holds, sitting at timechecks for over 10 minutes at times, in order to provide the appearance of regular scheduling. This can be a painful loss of time to many, often making it useless to take transit in the first place.
Enter mobile apps like NextBus, a real-time bus location system that allows riders to see exactly where their bus is so they know when to head out from work or leave the house to catch it. By giving more information on when the bus is coming, riders can take greater control of their commute and reduce their door to door time.
This is not novel.
Not only does the entire WMATA bus system work on this system, but Fairfax City buses and several other jurisdictions within the commonwealth which are smaller and less used than Fairfax Connector also work on the NextBus app.
In fact, one particular case of the Fairfax Connector system is visible with the 721 bus. Much of the route for the 721 bus is redundant to the WMATA 23-bus. The 721 actually has better service, coming 4 times more per hour than the WMATA 23 through McLean and the silver line station. It has a more direct path, and goes through more populated areas. So the 721 is probably a popular route right?
Wrong. While the 23 bus is routinely 50-70% full during rush hour and frequently used in non-rush hour, the 721 is typically empty, even during rush hour. The only difference that would favor the 23 bus is the use of NextBus. I personally always use the 23 bus instead of the 721 because it allows me to know exactly when to leave the office to catch the bus at the near by bus stop.
I attempted to use the 721 for a week and found it late by greater than 5 minutes compared to the online schedule every day. The lack of information on the position of the bus, the 10 minute delay at the Silverline station simply to attempt to keep a schedule by arbitrarily increasing the routes overall lap time, have completely turned me off the Fairfax Connector route, and I am not the only one.
The fear would be that the low ridership would be blamed on unwillingness to use transit or alternative transportation in connection to the Silverline, leading to a removal or reduction of service, and ultimately a death spiral in transit availability. But all indications point to a strong transit community. The former 425/427 which was a direct connection to West Fall Church from the North Tysons area was a popular, if limited, system.
Simply removing the pointless serpentine route of the 423, which currently meanders through some of the most vacated regions of Tysons would recreate much of the benefits of the 425/427 and lead to better ridership. Combining this with a NextBus service that can tell people when to wait at the bus stop, something that is crucial in the transit decision making on cold winter day, would help add new riders that previously avoided transit due to the unknown waits that could be experienced.
These are eventually changes that will happen in Tysons, but why do we need to wait? There are thousands of residents living here now, all of which pay a special transportation tax to have better transit services than other regions. So let’s have it. Get the most out of the Silverline and bus system and make these needed changes today, not 25 years from now.