Alexandria-Arlington Link Poised to Get Funding

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UNLESS THERE ARE DELAYS or track work on the Blue and Yellow lines, travel between the Braddock Road station in Alexandria and the Pentagon City or Crystal City areas of Arlington County is usually pretty speedy. But if you're relying on public transit to get to points in between, like the Potomac Yard shopping center off Route 1, it's not so easy.

Although there had once been plans to construct a new Metrorail station at the big-box shopping complex, the idea hasn't been revisited in years. But one effort to create better transit access along the Route 1 corridor between Alexandria and Arlington is on a short list for government attention.

On Monday, the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority released a list of transit projects that would be funded through a set of proposed taxes and fees that would raise about $300 million for projects that otherwise wouldn't be funded by the state Department of Transportation, The Post's Eric M. Weiss reports. The NVTA is scheduled to meet July 12 to vote on whether to implement the proposal.

Like other projects on the list, a bus rapid transit link through Crystal City and Potomac Yard has been on the drawing board for quite some time and is essentially ready to go — except for the funding. But that is likely to change in the near future.

Under the NVTA plan, Alexandria would get nearly $8.5 million for its portion of the link, while Arlington County would get $3 million. The bus link — part of which would run on its own dedicated busway — would roughly follow Route 1 in Alexandria, turn into the Potomac Yard complex, cross Four Mile Run and run through various streets in Crystal City east of Route 1 before turning west to the Pentagon City station via 12th Street South. On-street parking and loading zones would be eliminated or reconfigured.

» "Crystal City/Potomac Yard Transit Improvements" [Official Site]
» "Panel Lists Work to Be Funded by New Taxes, Fees" [WaPo]
» "Map: Crystal City/Potomac Yard Transit Improvements" [Official Site]

Rendering of the bus link courtesy CC/PYTIP