mhnadel

Not in my experience. I've done the ride between East Falls Church and Wiehle-Reston several (maybe 8?) times now and it has never taken less than 22 minutes and often takes 25. I suspect it has to do with whether or not things are being held up to allow the merging with the Orange Line at EFC.

There is certainly no effort to coordinate schedules within metro or between metro and buses. If anything, I believe that WMATA is determined to ensure that people coming from the west end of the Orange Line have the maximum possible wait at EFC.

BearX220

Speaking only to the Washington Flyer bus "timetable" ... because the bus must navigate a stretch of unpredictable, possibly-gridlocked collector/distributor traffic near the Wiehle depot, before it can battle its way to the toll road, I think the schedule unravels pretty readily and they're playing catch-up much of the day. If your bus took off at :37 it was either 7 or 37 minutes late.

Because of this and Orange/Silver congestion factors, which trace all the way back to the Rosslyn tunnel / chokepoint, I think coordinating Dulles buses and Silver Line trains is virtually impossible.

gnaget

The bus was waiting there in the garage. It was empty and dark and looked like it had been there for a while.

At that time the schedule was every 15 min. I checked my Uber receipt. I definitely took the 15:14 train and it took 16 min.

I don't really see how there could be any delay to get on the toll road. The bus turns right from the lot and gets right onto the ramp. Then it has to cross the lanes to get onto the Access rd; I guess this could be an issue at the wrong time of day.

On the way back from the airport the bus has to make a couple of left turns.

So my trip took 50 minutes from the EFC metro to the LH lounge. I guess that's ok. But I can drive in 30 minutes and with HOT lanes on the Beltway my arrival time is guaranteed. But if I am in a cab or Uber then I doubt that they will use the HOT lanes.

BearX220

Front-page Washington Post article today has MWAA fretting about the decline of Dulles, and mostly blaming Congress for DCA perimeter exemptions that cost IAD traffic:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/...b67_story.html

The news to me in that article is that BWI is the area traffic leader, and that IAD is about to slip into third place, not second, behind DCA.

DCA writer

Even by the standards of newspaper comments, some of the comments on that piece are so stupid they make my eyes bleed.

You want to go where?

The solution seems pretty simple to me - let the market decide. There is a lot of demand at DCA, and limited availability. So, increase the prices charged to the airlines - and I don't mean a little, I mean a lot. They can use that extra money to deal with the additional wear and tear on the terminal and maybe finally replace Terminal C at Dulles.

Longer term, the problem will be solved by the extension of the metro to Dulles, and continued growth along the 267 corridor.

BearX220

That's not "letting the market decide" -- that's rigging / fixing the market to make DCA artificially unattractive and force traffic to IAD. The market is deciding right now in favor of DCA -- that's the whole problem.

And I don't think the public will vote with its feet in favor of IAD until fast, economical transport exists (the Silver Line may or may not be the answer; we'll see what the fare is, and the long-term effects of the Rosslyn chokepoint on journey time), and the mobile lounges are killed off making terminal transit time / aesthetics less ugly, and there is a critical mass of useful domestic nonstops offered by a reliable airline that commits to the facility (e.g. either a radically changed United, or not United).

You want to go where?

Not sure what is artificial about charging more for something of limited supply and high demand. That is what the market is all about. What is artificial is limiting the price. If MWAA was a private corporation, they would be upping the price and investing the money in Dulles so as to make it more attractive - not to take flights away from DCA, but to build a world-class hub to make IAD a premier international gateway to the US, thereby capturing more of the business from places which will never have O&D international flights.

drewguy

Because MWAA isn't in a "free market" - the airlines are. If the airlines charge higher prices at DCA than IAD because the can, that's a market. But you're proposing to have the airport operator charge higher fees to use DCA than to use IAD - using their position as the monopoly owner and regulator to choose which airport has lower prices in order to guide traffic to each.

BearX220

Both airlines and passengers prefer DCA and now MWAA has to try to upend / undermine / sabotage free market choice to make IAD look artificially more attractive. Or less terrible.

You want to go where?

They aren't undermining free market choice by making IAD look more attractive. They are charging more for a popular product (DCA flights) with limited supply. You can't expand DCA's capacity to much more than what it is. There is no way to add significant runway, taxi, or gate space without impacting the environment in a major way, which the local governments will not allow. Why shouldn't they charge more for something that has limited quantity? It is just like charging more for platinum than for coal. When something is scarce, its price goes up.

Ideally, MWAA should auction every landing slot at DCA and IAD. The end result would be that landing slots at DCA would be much more expensive than IAD. That additional expense would be passed on to the individual passengers. The mark-up for DCA would then reach the balance point between a more costly but convenient DCA and a cheaper, but less convenient IAD.

BearX220

We're going to have to agree to disagree on whether pricing in a "free market" is manipulated via regulation.

In fact MWAA has announced a significant $1-billion+ expansion of DCA which will add numerous gates north of Concourse C and superimpose a central security checkpoint to cope with growth. Nothing analogous is in the cards for IAD because there's no demand (er, "market") for it.

You want to go where?

Oh, it absolutely is manipulated via regulation. The only question is whether, if there was a free market, DCA would keep its prices low, when it could raise them. I posit that it would raise them. Whatever the market will bear, and in this case, it seems like a lot.

That won't change the runway situation. In any case, for me, DCA is almost irrelevant. Even though it is a little more convenient for me, it will never serve transoceanic destinations which is where my travel tends to take me. The few times I do fly out of DCA, I get frustrated by the Security queues which still have a jury-rigged feel. That is also perhaps why I don't find Dulles to be such a problem in the first place. The B terminal isn't the hole that the C terminal is.

BearX220

One problem DCA and IAD share: not enough bars. I got to the B concourse one night a few weeks ago with nearly two hours to kill before a BA flight, and thought I'd have dinner and a couple of beers, but I could not elbow my way into the one vest-pocket bar I found on the concourse.

You want to go where?

While I haven't had to suffer that particular problem because of lounge access, I can see by Google what you mean. there are only two for the entire length of Terminal B - Max and Erma's and Vino Volo, both of which are small. There are also two in the attached Terminal A, but this certainly doesn't compare to what you would might find in a better European airport.