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NoVa Congressional Delegation Pushes for Funding for Major GW Parkway Rehab Work

Published January 17, 2019 at 4:15PM

GW Parkway rehabilitation project (via National Park Service)

Federal officials think they have a good shot at winning $126 million in grant funds to make a series of badly needed repairs on a long section of the GW Parkway, and Northern Virginia’s congressional delegation is throwing its weight behind the effort.

The National Park Service, which maintains the road, is currently applying for a hefty U.S. Department of Transportation grant to fund rehabilitation work on a roughly eight-mile-long stretch of the parkway, as it runs between the Spout Run Parkway in Rosslyn and I-495. Now, both of Virginia’s senators and three local members of Congress are lending their support to the funding push, in a bid to finally afford some changes on the aging roadway.

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Spurred on by Amazon, VRE Looks Set to Find Funding for New Crystal City Station

By Alex Koma

Published January 3, 2019 at 5:00PM

Crystal City VRE station (Photo via VRE)

Virginia Railway Express leaders think they’ve just about nailed down funding for a new and improved Crystal City station, a key component of the area’s impending transportation transformation with Amazon on the way.

VRE officials have been eyeing improvements to its existing station, located at 1503 S. Crystal Drive, for years now, considering that its platform isn’t quite long enough for the commuter trains. Right now, anyone hoping to get off at the station needs to walk to one of their train’s first four cars, even though many are 10 cars long.

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Transportation Planners Sketch Out Vision for Region-Wide Bike Trail Network Through 2045

By Alex Koma

Published January 2, 2019 at 2:45PM

Transportation planners are sketching out a vision to build out a fully connected regional bike trail network by 2045, linking a “Bike Beltway” around D.C. to the rest of the suburbs surrounding the capital.

The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments’ Transportation Planning Board voted late last month to endorse a vision for a “National Capital Regional Trail Network,” expanding its long-range plans for cycling infrastructure throughout the region. Though the actual funding and construction of the trails involved remains up to the individual localities, the map represents a potential path forward for the D.C. area’s elected officials to follow in the coming years.

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Demolition of Crystal City’s Elevated Section of S. Clark Street Moves Ahead

By Alex Koma

Published December 28, 2018 at 2:45PM

Demolition work continues on the elevated section of S. Clark Street in Crystal City.

Demolition work on the elevated section of S. Clark Street in Crystal City is slowly moving forward.

Workers kicked off a project to demolish the road and transform the area’s transportation network in earnest this summer, when they tore down S. Clark Street’s overpass over 15th Street. S. Since then, the county says workers have still had to use “10 to 15 dump trucks per day” to remove all the soil that supported that structure.

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County Creates New Dockless Scooter ‘Corrals’ to Encourage More Orderly Storage

By Alex Koma

Published December 21, 2018 at 9:45AM

Dockless electric scooters at a corral in Crystal City.

Arlington has now created seven “scooter corrals” around the county, in a bid to make the storage of the pervasive dockless electric vehicles a bit more orderly.

County workers set up the new storage spaces over the course of the last week, generally using some spray paint to cordon off specific areas for the scooters.

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County Gears Up to Ask for Millions for Lee Highway Changes, Including Dedicated Bus, HOV Lane

By Alex Koma

Published December 13, 2018 at 12:45PM

Arlington is gearing up to ask for millions in I-66 toll revenue to fund a series of changes along Lee Highway, including the creation of a dedicated bus and HOV lane along the road during rush hours.

The County Board is set to sign off this weekend on funding requests for six transportation projects, totaling $6.9 million, four of which focus on reducing traffic along Lee Highway as it runs from Rosslyn to East Falls Church.

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County Readies Update of Cycling Infrastructure Plans, Sketching Out Dozens of Potential Improvements

By Alex Koma

Published December 11, 2018 at 10:45AM

Arlington transportation planners are weighing major revisions to the guiding document for the future of the county’s bike infrastructure, sketching out a wish list of new trails and bike lanes they want to see over the coming years.

County officials have recently begun circulating a draft version of an updated “bicycle element” to Arlington’s “Master Transportation Plan.” The document was last updated a decade ago, and a working group has spent more than a year crafting potential changes for the plan.

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County Officials See Plenty of Room on Roads, Metro Stations Near Amazon’s Future HQ

By Alex Koma

Published December 7, 2018 at 2:45PM

To combat growing concerns about how Amazon’s new influx of workers might put a strain on Arlington’s congested roads and Metro’s troubled rail system, county leaders are increasingly embracing the same argument — so many people have left Crystal City and Pentagon City over the years that the area’s transit network is ready to welcome new residents.

There’s little doubt that the 25,000 workers Amazon plans to eventually bring to the region will have an impact on commute times for drivers, and crowd more people onto local trains and buses. But Arlington officials stress that they already planned to move plenty of people through and to the newly dubbed “National Landing,” only to see thousands of federal and military employees flee the neighborhood years ago.

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Lyft Becomes Third Company to Offer Dockless Scooters in Arlington

By Alex Koma

Published December 3, 2018 at 11:45AM

Lyft's dockless scooters (courtesy of Lyft)

The ridesharing company Lyft is now offering its dockless electric scooters around Arlington, making it the third firm to offer the vehicles in the county.

Lyft announced that its scooters will be available in Arlington starting today (Monday), less than two months after the company brought dockless scooters to D.C. Anyone looking for a scooter rather than a driver simply needs to select the option in the bottom left corner of the Lyft app.

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County Plans ‘Short-Term’ Safety Improvements Along Fairfax Drive, 10th Street N. Corridor

By Alex Koma

Published November 29, 2018 at 4:15PM

County officials are planning some improvements along Fairfax Drive and 10th Street N. as the roads run from Ballston to Clarendon, with a special focus on ways to make the corridor safer for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists alike.

Arlington transportation planners are circulating a survey seeking feedback on how the roads should change, as the county weighs a series of modest improvements over the next few months. In all, the study area stretches from Fairfax Drive’s intersection with N. Glebe Road in Ballston to 10th Street N.’s intersection with N. Barton Street in Lyon Park.

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County Officials Wrestle With Legal Strategies to Keep Young Riders Off Dockless Scooters

By Alex Koma

Published November 29, 2018 at 9:45AM

Arlington will soon see even more dockless electric scooters cropping up on its streets, but officials remain a bit vexed about the best way to keep underage riders off the vehicles.

While county transportation officials say they haven’t seen any major safety issues with the scooters beyond a handful of accidents, they also told the County Board Tuesday that the community response to the pilot program expanding the number of dockless vehicles in Arlington has been far from unanimously positive. In all, county commuter services bureau chief Jim Larsen told the Board that his department has received 550 scooter-related complaints from Oct. 1 through Nov. 19.

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New Commuter Bus Route Set to Provide First Direct Link Between Haymarket, R-B Corridor

By Alex Koma

Published November 21, 2018 at 11:00AM | Updated November 21, 2018 at 11:37AM

A Potomac and Rappahannock Transportation Commission commuter bus (via PRTC)

Commuters to, and through, Arlington from Northern Virginia’s western suburbs will soon have a new bus option.

The Potomac and Rappahannock Transportation Commission, commonly known as PRTC, is starting up a new bus route to connect Haymarket to stops along the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor. Starting Dec. 17, buses will stop at four locations in Haymarket, including a soon-to-be-completed commuter parking lot, and five stops in Arlington.