Commuters will soon get the option to travel directly between Virginia and Maryland’s most populous counties by bus, though the initial journey likely won’t be swift.
Fairfax County will receive $2 million from the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation (DRPT) to provide Fairfax Connector bus service between the Tysons West Park Transit Station (8300 Jones Branch Drive) and the Bethesda Metro station (7450 Wisconsin Avenue) in Montgomery County.
Expected to launch in August, the new express Route 798 will utilize the Capital Beltway (I-495), serving as a stopgap until construction finishes on the 495 NEXT project and a more comprehensive service can take advantage of the extended toll lanes from the Dulles Toll Road to the George Washington Memorial Parkway in McLean.
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors authorized transportation staff to sign a project agreement on Tuesday (July 16) that will enable them to accept the state grant funding, which will support the bus service until the new I-495 Express Lanes open.
The route will provide the first and only direct public transit connection from Tysons to Bethesda, Providence District Supervisor Dalia Palchik noted at Tuesday’s board meeting.
“While it is, at the beginning, a limited service [with] very limited hours during rush hour, this $2 million grant that we’ll receive from DRPT will allow us to hopefully make this a successful service,” Palchik said. “I look forward to expansion of this bus service, especially once the [toll lanes] project and the [American Legion] bridge are finalized.”
DRPT and the Maryland Department of Transportation recommended adding two-way, express bus service from Bethesda to Tysons as part of a transit and transportation demand management (TDM) study finalized in March 2021 to ensure the Beltway widening will also benefit transit.
The study also proposed peak-direction-only service between Tysons and Gaithersburg but identified the Bethesda service as one that “could be advanced into near-term.”
According to a staff summary for the Board of Supervisors, Virginia and Transurban, the private company that will operate the extended I-495 toll lanes, have already agreed to fund Route 798 once the lanes open, which isn’t expected to be until December 2025.
The ultimate route, proposed by the Fairfax County Department of Transportation last year, will provide weekday service between the Tysons and Bethesda Metro stations with stops at Montgomery Mall and the Medical Center Metro station in Bethesda.
In the future, the Connector service could be supplemented by Metrobus, which included a Tysons-Bethesda route in its Visionary Better Bus Network but not the more near-term plan that Metro intends to finalize this fall and implement starting in summer 2025.
Adding bus service on I-495 over the Potomac River will be “big,” giving commuters an alternative to driving and relieving congestion, Board of Supervisors Jeff McKay told FFXnow.
However, he acknowledged that there are still “going to be headaches” until 495 NEXT is completed and, more crucially, the American Legion bridge gets replaced and the toll lanes extended into Maryland.
“I think these new lines will help build ridership…but even when the NEXT project is completed, we know that that’s not the end game,” he said. “The end game is to also get the American Legion Bridge fixed so that you can run the buses literally the entire distance, as opposed to right now, just being able to take advantage of the infrastructure we have on the Virginia side.”
Before Tuesday’s vote, Palchik highlighted the economic development benefits of the new bus service, with many people crossing county and state lines to get from home to work. She recalled having discussions about a need for more connections between Maryland and Virginia when cutting a ribbon in 2020 for the Jones Branch Connector, which extended Scotts Crossing Road from Route 123 to Jones Branch Drive over the Beltway in Tysons.
“I got a chance to talk to the people working on the Jones Branch Connector, and they all told me they wanted more work and they wanted better transportation and connections between where they were living in Maryland and coming to work on this project,” Palchik said. “So, I’m very excited.”
