Planners for a new, urbanized Tysons Corner face mounting urgency in finding money for a circulator transportation system needed to ferry Metro riders around the expansive area.
With construction under way for a Metrorail extension that will place four stations in Fairfax County’s “downtown,” the window to design, fund and install the smaller but equally integral transit routes is shrinking.
The circulator, which probably will involve a network of buses or shuttles, is key to an ambitious plan to remodel Tysons Corner. The area is now a sprawling mass of traffic, office buildings, strip malls and parking lots. Planners hope to turn it into a vibrant, metropolitan hub, partly by allowing vastly increased building densities around the Metrorail stops.
But without the circulator, commuters will have no easy means to get around Tysons from the stations, which are slated to open in 2013.
Clark Tyler, chairman of the Tysons Land Use Task Force, which forged the new Tysons blueprint, has sought help with the area’s congressional delegation to fund the project in an upcoming federal transportation authorization bill.
“Given the crushing burden of that timetable, that’s not a whole lot of time to get a system in place so that when Metro arrives, the doors open and people aren’t left standing in the middle of a parking lot,” he said. “That can’t happen, whatever it takes to get this thing done, that’s what we ought to be concentrating on.”
While landowners are expected to pay for the system’s operation, no money has been set aside for its creation.
Not finding a funding source for the circulator would be an embarrassing snag for a project that has involved years of arduous debate and cost Fairfax County taxpayers millions of dollars to plan. Fairfax County staff is reviewing the task force’s recommendations after they were tentatively approved by the Board of Supervisors last year.
The approval came under former Board Chairman Gerry Connolly, a Democrat who now represents Virginia’s 11th District in Congress. Connolly and Northern Virginia’s other two U.S. representatives are still considering whether to seek federal monies to pay for the Tysons circulator, said Connolly spokesman George Burke.
“We’re coordinating with the other members of Congress who represent much of Tysons Corner to determine the best way to move forward on this,” Burke said.
