Crossing the border-Areas of Opportunity

[WES]

A PRTC bus crosses into Fairfax County on a local route to Huntington or Van Dorn or Springfield,  a Fairfax Connector bus heading from Herndon-Monroe Park and Ride enroute to Dulles Town Center, more Howard Transit routes heading towards Greenbelt and The Bus or WMATA having local routes heading into PG from Charles county towards Branch Avenue.  How many areas of opportunity are there to have continuous bus travel from Prince William to Frederick, MD or Baltimore, or Annapolis.  This area is getting more and more populated by the day and yet transit is not reflecting that.  And that is not even in terms of bus, rail (to a point) had opportunities also.  Here is what I think the best opportunities are.

Loudoun County into Fairfax County

Prince William County into Fairfax County

Frederick County into Montgomery County

Howard County into Montgomery County

Howard County into PG County

Anne Arundel County into PG County

Charles County into PG County

Alexandria into PG County

Fairfax County into PG County

Fairfax County into Montgomery County

Even Loudoun into Montgomery County

So many opportunities and since alot of the local governments stop their county run buses AT their border, this would be huge opportunity for WMATA and MTA to run these services.  Not only crossing boarders with more bus routes help reduce traffic (possibly), and to provide more job opportunities to those who don't have transit to get to jobs in outlying areas.  You don't have to build a subway line to do it either, transit centers work as well as a subway station, just coordinate arrival and leaving times.

Just a thought.

[Scrabbleship]

I was thinking this same thing just the other day. The only thing is that such routes always seem to be the easiest routes to cut when times get tough: N11/N13, C18, the 14's, MTA 915, MTA 921, even Ride On 75 service to Urbana.

I'm usually not pessimistic, but what outside of money killed the aforementioned routes? And if crossing the border was such a good thing, why haven't we seen the pressure for the restoration of them or a reasonable facsimile? Or the creation of new routes (I've also had on the brain the concept of a Dulles-Montgomery County express route for one).

At the very minimum, the agencies outside of the SmarTrip compact should make some effort to meet Metro if nobody else wants to do it. Annapolis Transit should get out to New Carrollton, Van Go should be sending a cutaway to Branch Ave to Waldorf, Howard Transit should try to make it down to Silver Spring, TransIT should head down 270 to Shady Grove, etc. etc. What's keeping them either especially in the first two cases where routes from other parties existed and were killed solely over money?
The transit mindset in this area needs a upheaval...badly.

[Perry]

PRTC is going to be running service to Tysons Corner, but there had been jurisdictional issues in the past between PWC and Fairfax, namely because Prince William County is not in the WMATA compact and it's very expensive to do so.  This is why on the Manassas Metro Direct and the Prince William Metro Direct, you only see stops at the Metro Stations in Fairfax and not near Springfield Mall or along 28 in Centreville. 

I had always thought a FFX Connector route should have been extended to the Woodbridge VRE Station or even Potomac Mills, but again, it has to do with the WMATA compact.

[WES]

I have a question.  If Virginia paid for cross county service between Prince William and Fairfax County, could that happen and PWC wouldn't have to join the compact?

[Perry]

I suppose it could, as long as VDOT paid for it.  I think that's what is going to allow PRTC to fund service to Tysons.  We had toyed with the idea of sending a route up to Bethesda, but that was dead before it could get any legs.  That's what happens when you get a bunch of planners sitting around a table....some of our best thoughts happen on the backs of napkins at restaurants. :-)

[WES]

LOL, I was also thinking that if that didn't happen, just build a transit center or two along the Prince William/Fairfax border and have few routes from both that are timed to meet.

[Perry]

The Woodbridge VRE was always a place that I thought the Connector could run a route to and allow transferring to the OmniLink routes (Woodbridge and Route 1 Links).