Start of 2011 Crystal City Bikeshare tour.
At the end of June in 2011 FABB joined the Fairfax County Department of Transportation (FCDOT) and Alta Bikeshare in hosting a tour of the Capital Bikeshare system for Fairfax County officials, staff, and a few others. The tour started at a bikeshare station adjacent to the Crystal City Metro and then visited a few other nearby stations before ending at the Pentagon City station. At the time, there were 14 stations in Crystal City stretching from the Pentagon City Metro in the north to Four Mill Run in the south. FABB was a strong advocate for bikeshare, promoting its great potential in the more dense, mixed use parts of Fairfax such as Reston/Herndon, Vienna, Tysons, Springfield, and inside the beltway.
Bikeshare would not arrive in Fairfax County for another five years when stations were opened in Reston and Tysons in 2016. By 2018, however, the potential was increasingly evident as people took more than 23,000 Capital Bikeshare trips in the county that year. The newest bikeshare stations opened recently at the Dunn Loring Metro and in the Mosaic District and many more are on the way.
According to a WTOP report, Fairfax County has completed a study of bikeshare potential for an area along Route 123 from Tysons through Vienna, the City of Fairfax, and the George Mason University area. In the Vienna area, The county’s study recommends bikeshare from the Dunn Loring and Vienna Metro, along Gallows Road, Nottoway Park and Circle Towers. In the Town of Vienna, stations could go at the community center, Town Green, Maple Avenue Shopping Center, Navy Federal Credit Union and the redeveloped 444 Maple Avenue West.
Newest Bikeshare Station in Dunn Loring/ Merrifield.
The county is planning for at least four stations in the Vienna area, including at the Vienna Metro’s south entrance, to open next spring. At the same time, 10 more stations are to be added to the Reston area, including potentially along Baron Cameron Avenue, North Shore Drive, South Lakes Drive, Glade Drive and at the Reston Community Center Hunters Woods. By next summer, 17 stations will open in the Providence District along Route 7 between Tysons and Falls Church, along U.S. Route 29 between Falls Church and Merrifield, along Gallows Road between Merrifield and Tysons, and in the area near Westgate Elementary School near Tysons.
The future looks bright for bikeshare, but there is still much work to be done. Please join FABB in our work to improve and expand bicycle facilities to make the service easier to use and more attractive to more potential users.
