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Virginia’s unique experiment in urban mass transit - reserving lanes of the Shirley Highway in Northern Virginia for commuter buses - is set for a major expansion September 14, the State Department of Highways said today.
Commissioner Douglas B. Fugate said the expansion will include the following steps --
(1) Opening an extra mile and a half of the experimental busway, extending it to six miles in length.
(2) The addition of 50 more buses by the AB&W Transit Company during the peak traffic periods, and
(3) Use of the busway lanes by commuter buses outbound in the afternoons as well as inbound in the mornings, the period to which they have been confined thus far.
The Commissioner said that these new developments, as the initial experiment itself, “represent a cooperative, coordinated undertaking between the transit company, the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, the United States Department of Transportation and the Department of Highways.”
The Shirley Highway experiment is designed to determine whether preferential treatment for buses - permitting them to move comparatively fast and unimpeded - will encourage more commuters to ride buses and leave their cars behind, thus reducing normal congestion during peak traffic hours. It was the first time in the nation that lanes of the interstate highway system had been reserved for buses.
“We believe more effective use of urban buses is the most feasible solution to the obvious need for improved mass transportation in most urban areas and, consequently, the most
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