The following press release was just published by the City of Alexandria.
The “DASHing Words in Motion” poetry contest brings recognition to writers, promotes an appreciation of poetry as an art form, and provides inspiration to individuals using the Alexandria Transit Company’s DASH Buses and Trolleys. The contest encourages quality writing by participants 16 years of age or older, who live, work or study in the City of Alexandria. Contest winners will have their poems on exhibit on DASH buses and trolleys throughout the City, as well as displayed on websites, social media platforms, brochures and flyers.
The online submission deadline for the DASHing Words in Motion is Friday, January 27, 2023. To submit poetry click here.
For additional information about the literary program, visit the Office of the Arts website: alexandriava.gov/Arts or email [email protected].
For reasonable disability accommodation, contact [email protected] or 703.746.5565, Virginia Relay 711.
The competition caps off a pretty good year for DASH, though there’s some discussion about whether the fare-free system will be sustainable.
A plan to overhaul the way Alexandria handles transportation funding from developers was sent back for further review by the Planning Commission.
Members of the Planning Commission said earlier this week that there are too many lingering questions about the impacts on local residents of the proposed changes, though the changes are headed in the right direction.
The change could lead to end of city-wide shuttle programs, leaving a gap in services that the local bus network may not be able to fill.
Currently, developers manage funding for transportation projects to offset increased traffic from their projects. That funding, part of a transportation management plan (TMP), can be used to encourage employees and residents to use public transportation, walk, take a bike or rideshare over driving to work alone.
But a number of the 106 TMPs in effect in Alexandria lack proper oversight to ensure funds are being put to good use, while developers face low penalties — a $50 fine — for not following these plans, according to a city report.
The city proposes to lump funding from those TMPs into a single, city-managed pot to be allocated to city transportation projects.
Commissioners and public speakers said there are a few areas where the change could pull the rug out from beneath a few vital current systems.
The plan is “not ready for primetime,” Morgan Babcock, manager and TMP coordinator for the Carlyle Council, told the Planning Commission during public comments.
Babcock said her TMP provides a workday shuttle and supports community events like Bike to Work Day as well as management of a tunnel connecting Carlyle to the King Street Metro station. The city would have to assume responsibility for and management of all these initiatives, Babcock noted.
Commissioners were particularly concerned about the future of shuttle services, which staff said are part of eight TMPs.
“We would potentially be remiss if we pull the rug out from shuttles,” said Planning Commission Chair Nathan Macek. “I’m not sure DASH or Metrobus would be an adequate substitute for shuttles.”
Staff said one part of the plan would involve shifting shuttle operations over to DASH. Macek noted that DASH buses generally do not fill the same needs as the shuttles in TMPs.
In Cameron Station, for instance, a shuttle circulates around the community and gives better access to local homes than a bus traveling along major streets would, Macek said.
Planning Commission member Mindy Lyle proposed deferring the changes until staff could conduct more outreach to current TMP programs and review the impact on shuttles. That motion carried unanimously.
(Updated 11:30 a.m.) As Alexandria sizes up Duke Street for dedicated bus lanes, a regional grant aimed at reducing congestion and improving air quality could be a vital piece of funding the transit line’s operation.
The bus lanes, part of a bus rapid transit (BRT) refit, is part of the Duke Street in Motion project, which aims to boost transit accessibility along Duke Street.
Nothing is set in stone, but a few of the several options being considered for sections of Duke Street include blocking off sections of the roadway for dedicated bus lanes.
“The City anticipates enhanced transit operations on Duke Street beginning around FY27,” Yon Lambert, the director of the Department of Transportation and Environmental Services (T&ES), said in a memo to City Council. “The City began an engagement process in early 2021 followed by the Duke Street in Motion initiative in 2022. Transit improvements are being coordinated with other City projects along the corridor, including the intersection of Duke Street at West Taylor Run Parkway.”
At a meeting scheduled for Tuesday, Dec. 13, the City Council is set to review requests for $4.5 million in Northern Virginia Transportation Authority (NVTA) grants from the FY 2029 Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program and Regional Surface Transportation Program.
The request includes a $750,000 ask for the Alexandria Mobility Plan, but the lion’s share of the grant request is $3.75 million to the Duke Street Transitway.
The $4.5 million request is in line with around how much the city has been granted over the last five years. To date, a report said the city has already received a total of $87 million in NVTA funding for design, right-of-way, construction and buses for the Duke Street Transitway project.
The grant proposal could be critical to supporting the Duke Street Transitway as the city heads into a lean budget season. Transitway programs can be expensive — a lack of funding killed dedicated bus lanes in a planned West End Transitway.
A presentation planned for the City Council says the grant would fund operations for transit service for the first 3-5 years of the BRT’s life.
An upcoming zoning change could both cut through some development red tape and make funding for transportation projects more accessible after years of noncompliance from developers.
The city is looking at reshaping Transportation Management Plans (TMP), one of the core pieces of any new development that’s remained basically unchanged since 1987. The goal of a TMP is to ensure new development promotes public transportation, walking, biking or rideshares rather than driving to work alone.
“TMPs often outline specific transportation requirements a development must carry out, such as offering an incentive program or shuttle bus to Metrorail,” a report on the proposed change said. “Developments fund their individual TMPs through an annual contribution into an account they manage and oversee.”
Most times, these plans involve dedicating funding transportation projects aimed at boosting public transit and other types of transportation. It’s a deal not unlike the way the city trades bonus density for affordable housing. There are currently 106 active TMPs around the city.
In the past, that funding has been divided up by individual projects and managed by individual developers with mixed results. The report noted that compliance is low because penalties are nominal. Development from before 2014 — which accounts for about 63 of the 106 total TMPs — only receive a $50 fine for not following their TMP.
“Administration of TMPs typically falls on property management, who often lack tools, expertise, and time to implement and oversee an effective TMP,” the report said. “Too many TMPs are doing different things with varying degrees of success, and many are not compliant with the requirements spending and reporting.”
To make matters worse, the report said the success of each TMP is difficult to measure and funding often sits unused in accounts.
“It is difficult to measure the success of TMPs since the surveys used to evaluate travel behaviors are administered by each TMP, and the data is unreliable due to low response rates,” the report said. “TMPs often accrue funds faster than they can be spent. It is administratively time-consuming for staff to coordinate with over 100 different TMP Coordinators that are frequently changing and have different levels of expertise.”
The new change would bring nearly all of the funding from TMPs into a single pot for coordinated use on city transportation projects.
“[The policy change requires] all but the largest developments to pay into a GO Alex Fund, which is managed by the City, rather than managing individual funds themselves,” the report said. “Developments over a certain size can still manage their own program with City oversight, but without paying into a City fund. The GO Alex Fund will be used to make transportation investments Citywide.”
The report said the city-managed fund would advance strategies in the Alexandria Multimodal Plan and other city transportation goals.
“The benefit of this change is that the single fund achieves economies of scale that individual TMP funds cannot,” the report said. “There are currently 106 separate funds, each of which have different programs to administer with different levels of available funding. By combining funding into one City-managed fund, the funding can be used more effectively.”
The new policy would also provide incentives for paying the obligation upfront, building transportation improvements on site, and locating development in an enhanced transit area — a place accessible to Metro or one of the city’s new high-intensity bus routes.
The change is scheduled for review at Planning Commission meeting the Tuesday, Dec. 6.
Alexandria is planning for a transit-oriented overhaul of Duke Street, and city staff connected to the project told an advisory group earlier this month that rumors about eminent domain being used for the project are inaccurate.
Yon Lambert, the director of the Department of Transportation and Environmental Services (T&ES), told the Duke Street in Motion Advisory Group that public concerns about eminent domain being invoked to acquire right of way for the Duke Street changes is at least premature if not unfounded.
Concerns about the city using eminent domain to acquire land along Duke Street became so prevalent members of the City Council asked staff about it at meetings this month. Lambert said right-of-way acquisition does not always involve eminent domain.
“There’s been some discussion and disinformation about what right of way is and use of it,” Lambert said. “The city regularly acquires the right of way when it is building capital projects like sewers or fire facilities… The right-of-way process is a normal component of all of our capital projects. There’s nothing unusual in us having a right-of-way element on a project.
Lambert said with the plans still in the early stages, it’s not clear that the city will have make any right-of-way acquisition.
“What I specifically want to address, with this project in particular: any right-of-way that we think we will have to acquire, and it’s not clear that we will have to acquire right-of-way… if we think we have to acquire any right-of-way, we see that as being a voluntary negotiation with adjacent property owners,” Lambert said. “We do not see any intent in this stage of the project to use eminent domain.”
Lambert said eminent domain is still a tool in the city’s toolbox for making improvements that are necessary to the public interest, but with this project, the city “wants to make sure right of way set aside for this project is voluntary.”
In the same vein of corrections about misconceptions surrounding the Duke Street projects, Lambert said the Transitway proposal won’t necessarily have a one-size-fits-all application along the corridor. There are multiple options, from transit separated from traffic to buses mixed in with traffic, with multiple segments along the corridor.
“I think it’s natural and reasonable to think about it as doing something from end to end,” Lambert said. “Multiple [City] Councils have told us and the staff… that Council wants to see ensuring transit on Duke Street. But part of the reason it’s broken out into segments… [we] want to make sure it’s clear that there may be different solutions for different segments.”
Lambert said while some segments may see substantial improvements, others may only see more incremental improvements.
The advisory group is scheduled to meet again on Thursday, Dec. 15.
City staff said changes to the DASH bus network over the last year have been a monumental success, but one with a high cost only likely to increase over time.
Over the last two years, Alexandria’s DASH bus system has gone through a series of dramatic changes, from a complete overhaul of the route system to changes to strollers and how the buses are boarded. But at a City Council retreat last week, city staff made it very clear the current balance of costs and revenue spells trouble in the near term.
“On the capital side, with what we have set aside for bus replacement, the cost of maintaining a state of good repair and electrifying [the bus fleet], we’re struggling to find the funds to do all that work,” said Yon Lambert, director of the Department of Transportation and Environmental Services (T&ES).
Lambert said it’s important to keep that swelling cost in mind as the city heads into budget season this spring.
“On the DASH side, we’re doing some fantastic things in transit, but the challenge for us is that operating what I would consider a best-in-class transit system is challenging and expensive,” Lambert said. “Operating costs are expensive and we need to make sure we head into this with eyes wide open.”
Lambert said that, at the current rate, in just a few years the DASH subsidy will increase from the current $23.6 million to $45 million annually.
City Council member John Chapman said the discussion raised red flags about the bus system’s future and broached the question of whether or not fare-free will remain a permanent state for the bus system.
“To me: saying transit investments need to be placed on a sustainable path and not presenting what that pathway is is a big red flag to me,” Chapman said. “To say ‘hey, we don’t have this money and we don’t think it’s going to happen,’ so how do we look at cutting back or finding other opportunities to put us on a sustainable path?”
Chapman said those discussions about putting DASH onto a more sustainable path are going to have to happen sooner rather than later.
“I want to be helpful, but I want to hear solutions for right now rather than further in the future because we are going to have budgetary decisions to make in the spring,” Chapman said. “If we’re going to do fare-free: how do we make that sustainable or is that a program we do for a few years and then find a way to not do that?”
Staff said DASH was collecting around $4 million in fares before the fare-free program was put into effect — not an insignificant amount, but still not enough to accommodate for the DASH expenditures.
“When we get to budget season, I want to have those hard conversations instead of saying ‘we’re going to have a 14% increase on transit [costs]’ and then keep moving,” Chapman said. “We need to be able to go back to taxpaying residents and businesses and say ‘we understand this is going to affect your standard of living coming out of a pandemic and into a possible recession, and we are still doing the best with our funding that we can.'”
Lambert said figures from DASH and Metro recovery showed buses recovered ridership more quickly from the pandemic than Metro did, saying the numbers emphasized that buses are the real “people movers” in Alexandria and did much of the heavy lifting for public transit during the pandemic.
Mayor Justin Wilson said there may be room to expand DASH operations while still making more efficient use of city funding by folding some aspects of the city school bus network into DASH. Wilson said the city could reach a place where DASH buses replace middle and high school bus services for Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS).
“This is an opportunity,” Wilson said. “Anything we can do to use capacity we’ve already invested in more efficiently is a good thing. The opportunity for partnership with ACPS is one of those opportunities, particularly at the middle school and high school levels.”
Wilson said the future of public transportation could involve replacing school buses for high school and middle school students with DASH bus lines.
“I want to be explicit: it’s not just ‘hey we can supplement what they’re doing,’ it’s potentially figuring out a way we get rid of ACPS transportation for middle and high and come up with a scenario where DASH route network can do that,” Wilson said.
DASH’s financial forecast is one part of a looming challenge for the city — a swelling budget faced with stagnating growth in a potential “pasta bowl recession.” According to Arthur Wicks, budget manager of the Capital Improvement Program:
We’ve embarked on a very ambitious capital program over the last couple of years… the big takeaway is: the expense of having a CIP the size we have is going to exceed what revenue growth can absorb. Our capital programs have become larger and more complex than what we can execute. We’ve come to you during the last few years of retreats and said a big CIP expense increase is coming and we find ways to shave it down and make it bearable. We’ve kind of used up our bag of tricks on that.
Alexandria planning staff say there’s no preferred option for the Duke Street transitway, but the three choices offer varying impacts on drivers.
This month, city staff have conducted meetings in a public engagement process to talk about the project and gather input on the three options before a plan is finalized for City Council to consider. City staff will conduct a final open house to discuss the entire project on Wednesday, October 26, at 5:30 p.m. at Patrick Henry Recreation Center (4653 Taney Avenue).
Residents can also fill out an online feedback form.
The option to have a dedicated center bus lane in the middle of Duke Street would ultimately result in the fastest experience for riders, but the construction would heavily impact traffic an already clogged Duke Street. This option would mean the construction of multiple bus bays.
The second option would convert lanes at the edge of the street into dedicated bus lanes, which would double as turn lanes for vehicles at intersections. The third option would mix buses with regular traffic.
Amy Hillis, a resident of the Duke Gardens neighborhood, says that the city’s presentations are lacking.
“The city says this is an engagement period, and staff is asking citizens to advise on selecting two preferred options,” Hillis said, considering the mixed traffic alternative as a “do-nothing option.”
Hillis added, “Some options will require eminent domain and land acquisition – no notional cost estimate on that. And zero estimate on the cost per bus rider today versus in the future as an end state goal.”
The busy four mile stretch of roadway has been divvied into these sections:
- Segment 1: West End to Jordan Street
- ​​​​​​​Segment 2A: Jordan Street to Wheeler Avenue
- Segment 2B: Wheeler Avenue to Roth Street
- Segment 3: Roth Street to King Street Metro Station
All options include a road widening in segments 2A and 2B.
Construction could start as soon as 2026, but the construction schedule depends on the alternative that is chosen.
“It depends on what the preferred alternative is, that will dictate the design schedule and construction schedule,” Project Manager Will Tolbert said at a community presentation last week. “That’s hard to give you a range, but that’s hard to commit to until we have that confirmed alternative.”
Tolbert continued, “Unless there’s something I haven’t been told, there is no preferred alternative. We’re really truly looking for feedback on this range of alternatives now.”
A new bus rapid transit (BRT) system could connect Alexandria’s Mark Center with Tysons along the second-busiest corridor in Northern Virginia.
BRT systems are a way of potentially redesigning a roadway to favor fast and accessible bus travel, sometimes separating the bus into its own lane as in the Potomac Yard Transitway. The Northern Virginia Transportation Commission (NVTC) has scheduled a community discussion tomorrow to look at the planned Route 7 BRT system.
While the route will extend into Alexandria, the discussion tomorrow will mostly focus on the Falls Church section.
“Route 7 is the second busiest corridor in Northern Virginia, and ridership remained strong during the COVID-19 pandemic due to the essential workers who rely on this service,” the NVTC said in a release. “BRT would upgrade transit quality through the 14-mile corridor, connect major job centers, connect one Metrorail station and one BRT service, serve more than 7,500 transit dependent riders weekly and increase pedestrian access to transit.”
The exact route the BRT will take is still being studied, with a report on the options expected to wrap up in April 2023.
The meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 11, from 6:30-8 p.m. The meeting is scheduled for Meridian High School at 121 Mustang Alley in Falls Church.
Alexandria City Public Schools is entering a tricky budget season.
As student enrollment and expenditure increases outpace revenue, ACPS faces a $12 million deficit in the run up to the fiscal year 2024 budget, according to a budget presentation to the School Board on Thursday, September 22.
“Over the previous decade, student enrollment and expenditures have increased at a far quicker pace than the corresponding revenue has grown,” ACPS said in a staff report. “ACPS Staff analysis shows that this trend will continue into the future, requiring a combination of revenue enhancements and expenditure reductions to balance a projected budget gap.”
For FY 2024, the projected budget deficit is $12.05 million. Each year, as expenditures outpace revenues, the estimated budget gap will continue to expand. By FY 2028, the annual funding deficit projection grows to $37.83 million, according to ACPS.
Still, the school system is proposing a 2.64% step increase and 2.5% market rate adjustment for all staff. Healthcare costs are projected to increase 8% and dental care costs will increase 2%.
“We assume that we’ll get the same per-people dollar amount at both the state and city level (as approved the FY 2023 budget),” ACPS Chief Financial Officer Dominic Turner told the School Board.
There are 15,700 students at ACPS at this time, according to interim Superintendent Melanie Kay-Wyatt. That’s about 100 students more than was forecasted in January, and some parents are concerned that elementary school class sizes are getting too big. Last spring, the school system adjusted the caps on elementary school class sizes by an increase of two seats so that kindergarten classes now have 24 students, first and second grades are capped at 26, and grades three to five have 28 students — still below maximum state standards.
Jenica Patterson, the PTA president at Patrick Henry Elementary School, told the School Board that the school is contending with 950 students — about 65 more than what was projected.
“The discrepancy in teacher-to-student ratios among ACPS elementary schools is a major barrier to learning.,” Patterson said. “Teachers are simply managing the large, crowded classrooms instead of dedicating their time to education and learning.”
Kay-Wyatt said that the community has grown over the years, and that ACPS is experiencing a teacher and bus driver shortage.
“It’s very hard right now,” Kay-Wyatt said. “The HR staff is out recruiting, they continue their recruitment efforts. I also want that to be known that we never stop recruiting, and we still have a shortage.”
Next month there will be several budget-related work sessions and meetings:
- Wednesday, October 12: Capital Improvement Program (CIP) Work Session with City Council/ACPS Joint Facilities Planning Session
- Monday, October 17: Joint City Council/School Board Sub Committee
- Tuesday, October 18: Joint CIP Work Session with City Council
One of the many frustrations facing Alexandria commuters during the Metro shutdown has been buses stuck in traffic next to dedicated bus lanes, but WMATA says adding shuttles would overload the existing transitway.
Among the many frustrations, which included long lines for shuttles, commuters were left wondering why their buses traveling up Route 1 were stuck in mixed traffic next to the mostly empty bus lanes.
Happened to me this morning! I vaguely recall last time the explanation was something about training and the signals? But I’d love to know why with as much advance notice as we had for this shutdown and the experience of last time why this is still not possible?
— Moira (@moira_macdougal) September 13, 2022
While Metro and the City of Alexandria worked together on Metro replacement plans, Sherri Ly, media relations manager for WMATA, said that adding shuttles to the Crystal City Potomac Yard Transitway’s dedicated bus lanes would have overloaded and broken that system.
“Metro worked with the City of Alexandria to come up with a traffic management strategy that would not impede on Metroway and other transit services that use the transitway,” Ly said. “The signal timing on the transitway is designed to balance the existing bus routes and traffic on Route 1. Adding shuttle buses to the transitway would quadruple the number of vehicles on the roadway, well beyond the capacity.”
Ly said the additional buses would have added congestion to the transitway, which is also being pushed as an (albeit more local) Metro alternative.
“Adjusting the signal timing to accommodate four times the number of buses would create extensive back-ups on Route 1 and the additional buses would add congestion to the transitway, impacting routes like Metroway which are an important travel alternative for customers during the shutdown,” Ly said. “Additionally, the transitway does not extend the length of the shuttle bus routes which operate to/from Crystal City.”
The Yellow Line shutdown as the Potomac Yard Metro station is brought into the system is expected to last until Oct. 22, though it’s unclear when the station itself will open. A longer shutdown, which will close the connection between the Pentagon and L’Enfant Plaza stations for repairs, is expected to continue until spring 2023.
The City of Alexandria worked with transit organizations to put together alternatives to the Metro for commuters, from buses to boats. Some of those have hit snags, however. The city’s bus network, DASH, lacks the manpower to take over additional bus routes to make up for the loss of Metro service.
The Virginia Railway Express offered a fare-free September for commuters around the region, but the entire system could be paralyzed by a potential freight rail strike. As of Thursday afternoon, however, it seems the strike has likely been averted.
Photo via Google Maps