Surveys can be tricky things.
In her previous experience, Edythe Kelleher, a member of the Vienna Town Council, had helped develop a program to run a shuttle bus. “We worked on a program that had gotten federal funding for the Bailey’s Crossroads area,” she said.
The plan had been to run a lunchtime shuttle bus service from the office complex in the Skyline area to nearby restaurants and shopping. Her group sent out about 3,000 surveys and received about 300 back, a fairly good return, she noted.
Roughly 20 percent of respondents said that they would ride at least once a week, she said. The program, she said, had been well publicized and charged a nominal fee of about 50 cents.
A three month trial program was started which was cut off early, because ridership was too low, much lower than the surveys had predicted.
“I’m a little bit skeptical when you see percent of riders who would use this,” Kelleher said after looking at a set of preliminary survey results at a meeting at Mosby Woods Elementary on June 1. [See sidebar]
The current surveys are being conducted by UrbanTrans, a consultant conducting a study of travel patterns of existing residents and workers around the Vienna Metro Station. A group of about 20 people came to hear about the study’s status.
The results of this study will determine the scale of the proposed MetroWest development. As proposed, the development consists of about 2,250 residential units and about 400,000 square feet of retail and office space, just south of the Vienna/Fairfax Metro Station.
As part of the approval of the change to the Fairfax County Comprehensive Plan that opened the door for MetroWest, Pulte Homes, the builder behind MetroWest must show that the residential portion of the development will generate 47 percent fewer car trips during rush hour than would be expected. The office component must generate 25 percent fewer trips.
Luten’s company is performing the study to determine if those target numbers are possible. If UrbanTrans determines that the targets cannot be achieved, then the size of the project must be reduced by enough to make up the difference.
THE STUDY is taking two tracks, UrbanTrans has conducted counts of the car traffic in the neighborhoods around the Metro station and sent out surveys to nearby residents. The surveys can help to determine what strategies can help to get people to take alternate methods of transportation. “What were the attitudes and preferences of people today,” Luten said.
In a meeting in May, Luten said that his company hoped to receive between 1,000 and 1,500 surveys back. They received 490. The people who returned surveys, Luten said, are roughly proportional to the demographics of the area as reflected in data from the 2000 census. As a result, he said the results of the study should still be representative of the population as a whole. “I think we feel pretty good about them,” he said.
In combining study results, traffic counts and measures that have worked in other parts of the country, Luten’s company will analyze possible ways of reducing trips. They will then know if the targeted reduction is possible, and what must be done to achieve those numbers. The study should be complete by mid-June.