Dr. Transit's Prescription for Fairfax County Transportation Planning: More Openness, More Creativity

Today's Washington Post also reports on the potential impact of the expansion of Metrorail to Tysons Corner and beyond (to Dulles Airport) in "Rail Deal Could Double Development Near Tysons."

The article says "the plan to build a Metrorail line from West Falls Church through Tysons Corner is advanced as a means of easing Northern Virginia's traffic woes. But the rail project is in many ways a monumental real estate deal that some critics say will further develop an already crowded crossroads. "

"The mere presence of a rail stop can, under Fairfax County's land-use plan, roughly double the amount of building permitted on surrounding parcels. And with that in mind, scores of Tysons Corner landowners agreed last year to tax themselves to help pay for construction of the $1.5 billion rail line out to their properties."

Dr. Transit's general prescription is more transit and compact, denser development around transit stations. You can find an interesting rendering or two of ideas for increasing density at Tysons on the www.dpz.com website. While I shudder at the impact that this will have on the economic vitality of the employment core of Washington DC proper, this plan makes sense.

(And note to Washington Post: the fact is, "Making Developers Rich and Successful" is what local economic development is all about, see "The City as a Growth Machine," by Harvey Molotch -- I promise within the week I will post a review of the book that grew out of this article, Urban Fortunes: A Political Economy of Place, cf. the story of Til Hazel.)

However, to mitigate the potential negative impacts, it is essential that Transportation Demand Management be front and center in this plan, and designed to work in concert with the changes that expanded rail options will bring. Arlington County is the best practice example around.

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The difficulty of getting around in Northern Virginia reminds Dr. Transit of the possibilities and difficulties of love in the Netplex:

A few years ago Dr. Transit was at a presentation about a technical assistance program for nonprofit capacity development. An attractive lady struck up a conversation and things might have developed nicely. Alas, Dr. Transit lives in Washington, and she in Fairfax. After a couple of bad long-distance experiences with ex-partners in Michigan and Texas, Dr. Transit swore off long distance relationships.

Things never developed because it's easier and faster for Dr. Transit to travel to Baltimore on the MARC Commuter Train than it is to get out to Tysons Corner or deeper into Fairfax County, unless he buys a car... and that kind of commitment requires "true love" with "the one."
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Metrorail expansion into Tysons offers the county and Northern Virginia an opportunity to fundamentally re-think and expand its transit vision, to think beyond the heavy rail that is Metrorail and to complement it with expanded and innovative services including a bus system comparable to Ride On, as well as the possibility of streetcars on certain routes comparable to what DC and Arlington County are exploring, and even a Tysons County circulator trolley system more comparable to the McKinney Avenue system in Dallas or the streetcar line in Portland that serves Portland State (it's free to ride), to provide intra-Tysons connectivity.

Do you think these are the kinds of possibilities that will be raised at tomorrow's Transportation Summit in Fairfax County?

Dr. Transit is pro-DC but lately he has been self-medicating a strong dose of regionalism (at least as far as transportation planning is concerned). Hopefully tomorrow's transportation summit will have lots of good transportation planning research documents, such as origin-destination tables for Tysons Corner trips, and a good handle on the levers that can be addressed that will have a substantive impact.

Dr. Transit hasn't finished reading Geography of Urban Transportation but he knows that expanding the transit network has wide-ranging benefits by increasing transit efficiency and access.

Had Metrorail to Tysons and the Fairfax County Transportation Summit happened ten years earlier, who knows what might have developed with Joyce?