The Northern Virginia Transportation Commission (NVTC) is considering various ideas to keep cars from blocking Arlington’s designated bus lanes.
Nearly a decade after the county and Alexandria inaugurated the region’s first dedicated bus-only travel lanes, ticketing motorists who get in the way remains decidedly low-tech.
Absent a police officer seeing and citing scofflaws blocking bus-only routes, passengers on the buses may find themselves stuck.
“One of the tricky parts about bus lanes is they don’t work if they’re not enforced,” said Vikram Sinha, a senior program manager for the NVTC.
In a presentation to NVTC’s board of directors, Sinha floated an idea: let cameras on the buses record scofflaws, eliminating the need for a police officer to witness the infraction.
Virginia currently bans this practice, although Metrobus cameras to catch drivers improperly using bus lanes are already the norm in D.C.
Could the commonwealth’s prohibition be lifted? It was one of the concepts delivered at the July 17 NVTC meeting, all aimed at giving transit buses more priority in getting through roads that are back to capacity in a post-pandemic world.
In D.C., drivers face $100 fines for being caught on camera blocking any of the city’s 12.7 miles of dedicated bus lanes. A staff member checks all video before citations go out.
Cameras mounted on transit buses would be similar to what is the case on school buses.
In that initiative, bus cameras activate when flashing red lights are on, telling drivers to stop. The initiative has been in place in Arlington for just over a decade.
More recent has been the growing proliferation of speed cameras around school zones.
In each case, people caught committing an infraction receive a citation in the mail.
Ticketing people blocking bus-only lanes would require enabling legislation from Richmond. Whether there would be any interest in the concept likely would depend on the outcome of races for governor and House of Delegates this fall.
Arlington and Alexandria debuted a 4.5-mile, seven-station route — the Crystal City-Potomac Yard Transitway — as the region’s first dedicated bus-lane bus route in 2016.
It connects the Crystal City and Braddock Road Metro stations, and since has been expanded. But through the years, it has been plagued with drivers of cars and trucks getting in the way.
Sinha’s presentation suggested a multi-pronged approach to moving buses more quickly. Another tool for doing so involves giving buses traffic-signal priority over the broader driving public.
Through sensors on the buses, green traffic lights could be extended to allow bus traffic to move through more expeditiously.
That’s similar to what already can be found in some parts of the region, where emergency vehicles like fire trucks use embedded communication tools to take precedence at intersections.
One location where that technology has a visible impact is Seven Corners. Fire trucks and ambulances from Fairfax County Fire & Rescue Station 28 just to the south can halt all traffic on Leesburg Pike, Wilson Blvd and ancillary roads during service calls.
“What we are looking to do is to utilize some of the same technology to benefit the bus,” Sinha said. “Some of this is already in place.”
A third proposal is to create more “queue jumps.” These are pull-offs on roadways restricted to bus traffic, allowing buses to go around lines of traffic at key intersections, then merge back into the roadway ahead of that traffic after passing the intersection.
Sinha’s presentation was for informational purposes. NVTC board members did not have any questions.
