Lesson from Asia #1

One of the five competitive advantages that I list for DC is a strong transit system that allows for time and cost efficient mobility that is not car dependent. This column from last week's Financial Times about Seoul, "Congestion defeats my Seoul ambition," communicates the importance of this.

Unfortunately the article is not online for free, but he makes the point that (1) why when creating a new airport, why didn't they focus on building a "showcase, high-speed rail service into the city" and (2) "while the roads in Seoul seem to be in reasonable shape and there appear to be enough motorways, the city is choked by the sheer volume of vehicles on the road."

He goes on, comparing the city to Los Angeles:

...the more the similarities became startling: multi-centered, a shocking transport infrastructure, wealthy people occupying sprawling mansions in the hills, hubs for entertainment, and surrounded by muscular IT businesses.

Meetings aside, I never managed to venture outside the car and before I knew it I was being deposited at Incheon for my flight... Something tells me I'm going to love Seoul when it manages to give me a clear run at seeing its best sights or I budget in an extra day or two to compensate for the less than ideal infrastructure.

In DC, Arlington, and to some extent Montgomery County, the transit infrastructure of the subway provides a competitive advantage. Alexandria does pretty well because of its grid design and subway connections as well. This infrastructure must continue to be expanded in order to maintain and extend these benefits. And other counties (Fairfax, Prince George's) need to start doing their own planning, beyond what is done by the respective state departments of transportation, in order to not become like Seoul.

Also, today I walked down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Potomac Avenue metro station to not quite Capitol South. The distance is about 1.25 miles. The distance in Arlington from the Courthouse Metro on Wilson Blvd. to Ballston Metro on Fairfax Drive is 1.72 miles.

Very different. As a preservationist I would hardly recommend that Pennsylvania Avenue SE had been redeveloped along the lines of the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, but it's interesting to think about some of the same kinds of issues, about the incorporation of denser housing, where appropriate, along the corridor, in a manner that complements and utilizes the extant transit infrastructure.

I didn't take photos but there is the building where the Harris-Teeter will be on the ground floor, across the street from Potomac Ave. (Jenkins Row), and a not quite 30 unit building on the space of an old gas station at 10th and Pennsylvania Ave. SE (Butterfield House), two blocks from the Eastern Market Metro. Not quite Arlington kind of densities, but still an important addition. The first building is five stories, stick built (not concrete so it is much cheaper to build). The last time I saw data on this, I seem to recall that concrete construction is at least 2.5 times the cost of stick built (wood, metal, brick).

Index Keywords: mobility; urban-revitalization