Del. Vivian Watts, D-Annandale, a former state secretary of transportation under Virginia Gov. Gerald Baliles, is a liberal Democrat. Del. Bob Marshall, R-Leesburg, is a conservative Republican. Implacable foes on most issues, they agree on this: in light of the Federal Transit Administration s strong reluctance to fund Dulles Rail, Virginia should at least consider bus rapid transit (BRT) as a lower-cost alternative. At a Feb. 3 press conference with Sen. Ken Cuccinelli, R-Centreville, Marshall who, unlike Cuccinelli, has been a proponent of Dulles Rail – referred to Gov. Tim Kaine s last-minute attempts to keep the Metrorail project on life support as pushing air through a corpse. Marshall thinks the commonwealth should move on and take a look at BRT. So does Watts, one of two Fairfax County Democrats who voted to raise the state gas tax by 5.5 cents/gallon to pay for transportation, a proposal easily shot down by the House Finance Committee 16-2. Of course, there would be a lot more money for transportation if the state doesn t waste billions on Dulles Rail, which would do almost nothing to address the mobility needs of Watts own mid-county constituents. So she sponsored a House resolution to spend $10,000 to study BRT, with Sen. Charles Colgan, D-Manassas, sponsoring a nearly identical one in the state Senate. Colgan s constituents in Prince William County also need congestion relief, but they won t get it from a heavy rail line designed for wealthy Tysons Corner landowners. But who needs a $10,000, year-long study to conclude that BRT is better? TransNOVA, a grassroots group, wants to see a number of east/west, north/south BRT routes crisscrossing Northern Virginia from Leesburg to Tysons Corner to Fredericksburg utilizing proposed HOT lanes on I-95 and the Capital Beltway. BRT could also be used on Route 1 in Fairfax County to ease the pain of the coming BRAC relocation. The fact is, BRT could go practically everywhere that Dulles Rail would not, and for about a tenth of the cost. This is a no-brainer. The second phase of Boston s Silver Line BRT, which opened in 2005, includes direct service to Logan Airport and the Boston waterfront in GPS-equipped, 60-foot CNG buses that arrive every five minutes. Smart kiosks at all stations provide real-time arrival information. Instead of another study, why doesn t the General Assembly just send Watts and Colgan up to Boston for the weekend? Bill Vincent, a former DOT lawyer in the Clinton administration, has been pushing BRT for years because its flexibility and affordability are clearly superior to heavy rail, but he s been largely ignored by the state bureaucrats and county supervisors who are more interested in density packing Tysons Corner than providing convenient mass transit to as many commuters as possible at an affordable price. However, with Dulles Rail in its death throes and a bipartisan group of legislators in Richmond now casting about for an alternative, it might just be BRT s time and it comes just in the nick of time.
