By Tim Cherry
Staff Writer
Thursday, October 27, 2011

Fort Belvoir garrison commuters can share their driving insights when they participate in the transportation survey which runs until Monday.

The survey will help the garrison improve transit options for personnel and it will also shed light on Belvoir’s rideshare program.

A link to the 26-question survey, which takes less than 10 minutes to complete, can be found on the main page of the Belvoir website at www.belvoir.army.mil.

People are encouraged to participate and help the garrison improve traffic.

Atkins Global developed the questions with support from Belvoir’s Transportation Management Program, the Base Realignment and Closure office and representatives from the local community such as Fairfax County and the Northern Virginia Regional Commission.

The questions focus on topics such as commuting challenges, gate usage and trip duration.

“The survey establishes a baseline of current commuter realities. This information is very important to develop strategies that offer alternatives to the use of automobiles,” said Steven Gleason Atkins Global, survey project manager.

Juanita Green, Garrison Transportation Demand Management coordinator, said the survey will also ask questions about Belvoir’s rideshare program, which hosts commuter fairs and offers an internal shuttle, among other services.

Green said the information from the survey will help the garrison streamline the service.

Atkins developed a similar transportation survey in 2008. The organization used feedback from that questionnaire to develop better questions for the current survey.

The 2008 survey had nearly 85 percent of respondents say they travel to work alone with the remaining using various forms of mass transit.

The garrison would like to see the number of people driving alone reduced by 10 percent in this survey.

Ridesharing has been a consistent theme on the installation since the beginning of BRAC, which has added 3,400 employees to main post.

Green said the BRAC population increase has helped reduce the amount of single occupancy vehicles around the installation. She sees more people riding in van pools and using other forms of mass transit.

“BRAC helped the employees to change their behavior,” Green said. “It was good for DoD.”

Traffic improvement has been a constant theme during the last few months.

The installation has started an internal shuttle and the county has started two direct bus routes to Belvoir facilities: the Eagle Express, Fairfax Connector’s 335 which travels from the Franconia-Springfield Metro Station to post and the Dash Express, which comes from the King Street Metro Station to Belvoir’s Mark Center in Alexandria, Va.

Green also encourages people to visit the rideshare page on Belvoir’s website.

The webpage gives information on mass transit services such as car and van pools. The page also provides links to sites that give up to date information on traffic routes.