MODE CHOICE AND THE SHIRLEY HIGHWAY EXPERIMENT

The project was designed to provide commuters with fast and reliable peak-period bus service to the three major employment areas of downtown D.C., Pentagon and the Northern Virginia Crystal City Complex. Elements are: (1) the busway, including exclusive land on Shirley Highway and bus-priority lanes in D.C.; (2) a bus transit operation with new buses, routes and schedules; (3) residential fringe parking facilities for bus riders. The objectives of the report are: (1) to determine and isolate those factors which influence the switch from auto to bus ridership, their relative importance and how they combine to produce the bus market share; (2) to see how the first objective could be satisfied in a fashion that would allow results to be generalized to other areas.