December Detour
Workers in Tysons Corner Shop for Ways to Avoid Commuting in Mall Traffic

By Kim Hart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 18, 2006

For 11 months of the year, the K Street office of the Beers & Cutler accounting firm sits largely empty, except for the occasional client meeting or conference call. Employees prefer working at -- and parking free near -- the company's headquarters at Tysons Corner.

But come December, that pattern flips. As the roads around Tysons Corner's huge malls become clogged with the gift-packed SUVs of seasonal shoppers, driving in the bumper-to-bumper District seems like a comparative walk in the park. So the downtown office starts to fill up.

"It really comes in handy during the holidays," said Sam Bergman, Beers & Cutler's manager of marketing and business development, who commutes from Severna Park. "It's a good stopping point for me."

Any given rush hour in this busy corridor of Northern Virginia is a frustrating race against traffic lights and jam-packed intersections. But as Christmas approaches, the chaos enters another dimension. In Tysons Corner, where the nation's fifth-largest retail center collides with the 15th-largest office market, roads become a battleground: workers vs. shoppers.

With some creativity and a little help from sympathetic employers and local traffic-signal operators, nine-to-fivers in the area have strengthened their campaign against the shopping-induced traffic jams.

More than 110,000 people work in Tysons Corner -- about six times the number who live there. Four main roads connect 26 million square feet of office space to about 4 million square feet of retail stores. At the intersection of Chain Bridge Road and International Drive -- a key junction between the area's two shopping malls -- vehicle volume increased by 6 percent during the first week of December, according to the Virginia Department of Transportation. Based on sales at Tysons Corner Center, the number of shoppers increases by 20 percent during December.

Each year, starting two weeks before Thanksgiving, VDOT changes the timing of 45 traffic signals in Tysons Corner to ease congestion during evening rush hours and weekends.

But Nancy Zhang didn't notice an improvement as she sat in her car at the corner of Leesburg Pike and International Drive on a recent evening. After three signal rotations, she had moved only 20 feet. She hadn't even passed the building where she works.

"The sun was out when I left my office, and now it's dark," she told a reporter from her motionless car. She pointed toward the ramp heading to the Capital Beltway. A road sign told her she had another quarter-mile to go. "It will take another 20 minutes to get there, I guarantee it."

Several companies have taken measures to make the season more bearable. Brandywine Realty Trust, for example, hired an off-duty police officer to direct traffic outside its building on International Drive. Besides encouraging the use of its downtown office, Beers & Cutler urges its 270 employees to rearrange their schedules around peak traffic times.

Gail Mikesell, an administrative assistant at the firm, now comes in at 7:30 every morning and leaves at 4:30 p.m. -- just in time to dodge the heaviest traffic.

"I get here in 20 minutes," she said. "Otherwise, it would take me about an hour just to get to the [Dulles] toll road -- only three miles down the street."

At SheaHedges Group, a public relations firm near Tysons Galleria, many employees leave at 4 p.m. to get a jump-start on their drive home.

"The office basically shuts down," said Lisa Throckmorton, senior vice president. "It's the difference between a normal commute and sitting in your car for over an hour." This is the first year the firm has allowed the flexible hours for the entire month of December. "Beyond Thanksgiving, Tysons is insane."

Some people opt to alter their hours regardless of a workplace policy. At ImmixGroup, a Tysons-based firm that helps companies expand their government business, employees frequently slip out earlier than usual, "before the traffic gets incredibly bad," said Tony Franzonello, business development manager.

"If I see someone gone, I just figure they left early for that reason -- I don't ask questions," he said. "I used to live right across the street from the office and it would still take 25 minutes to get here."

Many office workers have devised their own tricks. Melissa Fernandez goes to the gym after work to kill time before tackling the traffic. Employees at Appian Corp., a software company steps away from the mall entrance, have mastered the parking garage exits and back roads of Tysons Corner to scoot around traffic. Holiday shoppers are often easy to spot on the roads.

"Shoppers are confused by the bridges, poorly marked intersections and one-way streets that we commuters learned to navigate through years of experience," said Michael Beckley, a vice president at the company.

Elil Shunmugavel, 28, a lawyer with Wealth and Tax Advisory Services, joins the crowds of office workers who migrate to the area's restaurants for happy hour and dinner to wait out the traffic. She meets fellow sufferers at the Daily Grill, Legal Sea Foods or the Cheesecake Factory across the street from her office.

"Every restaurant is really crowded, and it's all people in work clothes with their ties loosened up," she said. "I go out to dinner a lot more in December than I do any other time of year."

Gordon Biersch in Tysons Corner Center has benefited from the increased traffic. Between 4:30 and 7 p.m., the beer garden fills up with people waiting it out.

"It certainly drives a lot of people in here from the offices," said general manager Joe Cominsky. "People come in, shop, grab a beer and shop some more. It's very predictable this time of year."

Even in their frustration, office workers held captive near the malls are good for business, said Kathy Hannon, property manager at Tysons Corner Center. Nearly half of the weekday traffic comes in the middle of the day -- a large portion of which is made up of lunch-breaking professionals.

Philip Larson, who also works at Appian, has turned lunch-hour shopping into an art. Last week, he got his girlfriend's birthday flowers from Art with Flowers at Tysons Galleria, picked up a card from Hallmark, checked out the new DVD releases at the electronics store and grabbed a medium-seared tuna sandwich from Cafe Deluxe, all during his lunch break.

Sara Schuman keeps a pair of sneakers under her desk. At 5 p.m., as the roads circling the malls begin to clog with hordes of commuters and shoppers, she sprints across six lanes of standstill traffic on Leesburg Pike to Tysons Corner Center, the larger of the two malls, where she strolls through the stores. She often circles the mall three times before traffic has cleared enough to tackle her homebound commute.

"I've pretty much gotten all of my shopping done already," said Schuman, a 23-year-old receptionist from Rockville who repeats the drill twice a week. She admits that she's memorized the inventory of just about every store, "but it beats moving at a glacial pace for two hours out there -- and I get some exercise."

Beckley of Appian found his own silver lining in the seasonal cloud.

"Tysons is becoming the Times Square of Northern Virginia," he said. "It's crowded, it's lively and everyone is here. Sitting in a line of BMWs and Mercedes and Volvos full of holiday gifts is a great time to reflect on how absurdly opulent and cushy our lives have become."