Photo courtesy of Smithsonian Air and Space Museum
Add this to the list of places the Silver Line will make it easier to get to: The National Air and Space Museum’s second location in Chantilly, Va.
In a release, the Smithsonian says that the new Fairfax Connector bus service will provide direct transportation between the Silver Line’s Wiehle-Reston East Station and the Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. The Air and Space Museum’s main location on the National Mall is just a couple blocks from the L’Enfant Plaza station, which will join the Silver Line’s route, making the commute between the two locations fairly swift. The bus service connecting riders from the Wiehle-Reston East Station and the Udvar-Hazy Center will run every 20 minutes, seven days a week.
The Fairfax Connector bus service also includes routes from the Wiehle-Reston East Station to Dulles Airport and other locations throughout Virginia.
“Bridging the 28-mile distance between our two buildings will help us serve more people,” Gen. J.R. “Jack” Dailey, director of the museum said in a release. “Those who depend on public transportation, including many tourists, will now be able to experience the full breadth and scope of our collection, spanning more than a century of flight. We are grateful to Fairfax County for helping to make this service possible.”
Apart from housing priceless aviation and space artifacts—like Space Shuttle Discovery and a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird—the Udvar-Hazy center also contains one of the only proper IMAX theaters in the region that actually shows feature films from Hollywood. All the other “IMAX experience” screens in the D.C.-area theaters (Georgetown AMC, Mazza Gallery AMC, etc.) are lies.