Richmond Highway Express

Richmond Highway Express, nicknamed "REX" is a bus route operated by the WMATA (the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority) in partnership with Fairfax County, the City of Alexandria, the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Federal Government. The REX is a limited stop express bus that serves the Richmond Highway corridor. Before the REX, riders from Fort Belvoir had many stops to make along Richmond Highway enroute to Huntington Metrorail Station and to the King Street Metrorail Station. REX buses operate every 15 minutes in both directions on Richmond Highway during weekday rush hours. During non-rush hours and on Satuday the REX comes through every 30 minutes. Then on Sunday the bus only operates every 60 minutes. Buses operate between 5:30 AM and 10:00 PM Monday through Saturday, and 5:30 AM to 9:30 PM on Sunday. The REX uses special technology which allows REX buses to sustain green lights in order to move more quickly up and down Rt. 1. The REX bus has low-floor buses for quicker boarding and SmartCard for quicker paying. In addition the REX has only a limited number of stops:
  • King Street Metro (Alexandria)
  • Dulaney Street/PTO (Alexandria)
  • Eisenhower Avenue (Alexandria)
  • Kings Highway
  • Beacon Center
  • Lockheed Boulevard
  • Arlington Drive
  • Belford Drive South
  • Ladson Lane
  • South County Center
  • Frye Road
  • Lukens Lane
  • Sacramento Drive/Cooper Road
  • Old Mill Road/Mt. Vernon Memorial Highway
  • Dewitt Hospital (Fort Belvoir)
  • Langfitt Loop (Fort Belvoir)
  • 16th Street & Belvoir Road (Fort Belvoir)
  • Jackson Loop (North) & Gunston Road (Fort Belvoir)
REX passengers may transfer at any Richmond Highway stop to Fairfax Connector routes, and may transfer at Huntington and King Street Metro stations to rail service as well as other local bus service such as Alexandria’s DASH.REX bus at King St. Metro To stand-out from other Metrobuses and other area bus lines, REX buses are purple-blue with a golden yellow logo featuring the image of a running lion. The lion references the three lions emblazoned on the Fairfax County seal, which references the family crest of Lord Fairfax. Bus stop signs use the same color scheme, and stand out among the other bus stops along Route 1.    

Properties in Alexandria

For more information or to set up an appointment call Nesbitt Realty at (703)765-0300.

From Location to Commute, Will This Affect Real Estate?

For those searching for homes in Northern Virginia, the location is always the main and important factor. However, there are a lot of specifications that would decide on a location. Those would be the exact neighborhoods, views, noise, schools, accessibility to shopping centers/ entertainment/ convenient stores/ healthcare and more. But there is one factor that will remain to be the most important specification and that would be Commute. Washington DC does have the most gridlock highways in the country and as regional planners suggest improvements to handle the current situation, people and employment still rains hard. Although from the perspective of Real Estate it is a blessing but in terms of commute it is already a complicated and challenging situation that would grow into a more challenging one. According to local news radio WTOP, the Washington DC region is primed to grow by more than 2 million people over the next 25 years, however the same report did highlight that the region needs to build more accessible roads to handle the influx. While as observed by the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance, once we get beyond our current major roads projects to deal with the current concerns, there are “no improvements in the pipeline after this”. Based on the current situation we have, the concern of location in Real Estate may as well be commute. A worker’s commute being frustrating and lengthy can and will have a large impact on his or her lifestyle and even personality. Bearing this in mind, the consideration to trade other location features to commute features will definitely arise. Such commuting features may be:
  • Accessibility to current or possible job centers that may include military bases.
  • Convenient highway access
  • Accessibility to mass transportation like Metrorail
  • Proximity to airports – Dulles or Reagan National in Northern Virginia or BWI
  • Consideration of toll vs. non-toll highways
  • Carpool hours on certain highways that can affect commute
  • Accessibility to secondary roads and upcoming road improvements
  • Awareness of where “ bottlenecks” can be found
Would such considerations make a large change of location specifications to commute specifications in terms of Real Estate?

Walk Score includes public transportation!

Walk Score helps people find walkable places to live. Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc. Walk Score attempts to numerically measure how easy it is to live a car-lite lifestyle---not how pretty the area is for walking. If you're looking for a walkable area, check out what Condo-Alexandria.com can do:
  1. Search by Walk Score. Now this is cool. You can decide what your minimum walkable criteria is when you search for properties.
  2. Sort by Walk Score. If you can search by Walk Score, you should be able to sort by Walk Score too. Just click in the "sort by" box at the top of the results and choose "Walk Score, Highest First" to order the search results from highest to lowest Walk Score.
  3. View the Walk Score in both the search results and property details. Every time you search for property you'll find out just how walkable the area is!
  4. View the Walk Score tile. When you click on the "Walk Score" link at the top-right of the property details area, you’ll see the Walk Score tile that shows all of the amenities that are factored into the score.
We hope you'll enjoy using Walk Score as much as we enjoyed building it into our system. We're really excited to say that we’re one of the first providers of this type of functionality. We spent quite some time on the UI for this feature in order to make everyone happy. And in case you haven't heard, Walk Score just improved its usefulness. Previous versions of Walk Score did not include public transportation. That is to say, a property next door to a metro station had no higher Walk Score than a property far from public transportation. Well, that's all changed now! Our latest enhancement adds mass transit to the Walk Score calculations. See for yourself now.