Will and development and transit and transit oriented development and compact development and sprawl and...

Yesterday's Post has a somewhat critical piece about WMATA and its land development policies and practices adjacent to Metro stations. See "Metro Fails To Nurture Development, Report Finds."

(Click here for the actual report: Report of the Joint Development Task Force to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.)

I think this is a complicated situation.

1. The WMATA system is mostly a transit system that owns some land. There isn't an internal commitment to dealing with this. Even though in other countries, such as Hong Kong, aggressive land development generates up to 50% of the transit system's revenue.

2. There isn't a solid regional understanding about the links between compact development, mixed use development, density, and successful transit--even within DC proper, which is the most compactly developed community within the region.

3. Because WMATA is a public agency there are public participation processes and most area residents advocate against density around their stations. Sometimes this is a good thing, because the proposals aren't very good--meaning they should be denser. But a lot of the time, this means that piddling proposals go through. (This is different with the Fort Totten Station.) In any case, getting projects through takes a long long time. And the article compares office-oriented districts around stations to non-office oriented districts around stations, which isn't a like comparison.

Remember how Congressmen Davis (Virginia) and Wynn (Maryland) put riders on funding for WMATA that restricted specific development projects for areas within their districts? WMATA has to deal with this kind of stuff all the time, and it has to keep Congressmen happy, because they are important stakeholders in the process.

Years ago, residents fought off a not very dense project by the Tenleytown Station. Years ago, Brookland residents fought off a not very dense rowhouse project by Brookland Station. (WRT the latter, as a result a more dense development will end up happening.) Takoma Park residents too continue to advocate against development around the station.

One of the problems is that the regional transit system in Washington promotes sprawl. (See Belmont's Cities in Full.) And the reality is that transit oriented development is the historic urban form in DC and the inner ring suburbs--transit oriented development typifies areas within center cities built before 1920--but that people forgot this fact.

4. DC's report, Trans-Formation: Recreating Transit-Oriented Neighborhood Centers in Washington, DC, is an excellent discussion of why compact development linked to transit is a good thing. But we don't need to call it TOD--it's merely good planning practice to strengthen and extend the urban-transit-friendly development form within DC.

5. WMATA's 2005 report on development around subway stations (Development Related Ridership Survey) finds that in the Central Business District, 75% of office trips (commuters) and 56% of residential trips are taken on transit (mostly subway but also bus). Inside the Beltway, the figures are 30% for office trips and 49% for residential trips (I would like to look at the data within the city, and within the area that I call the monocentric subway core within DC). Outside the Beltway, 11% of office commutes are by transit, and 32% of non-work trips by residents.

The point is clear that development by subway stations doesn't increase automobile traffic all that much--which is the major complaint and concern by residents in advance of such development.

6. Any type of development project involving government-owned land takes a long long long time. And any evaluation report of such processes at virtually any jurisdiction in this region would come up with similar findings, not that I am trying to let WMATA off the hook.

See "Forty Years of Growth, Except Where It Was Expected," from the New York Times.

Also see this blog entry which proposed a denser multiunit residential building adjacent to the Takoma Metro Station, rather than rowhouses. Further this testimony proposes providing no parking.

7. Note that the Neighborhood Business District Strategy for Seattle creates zones around light rail stations where there are no minimum parking requirements.