Suburban Virginia's Silver Line Metrorail after 10 years

There's a piece in GGW, "How the Silver Line has shaped transit-oriented development in Northern Virginia," about the impact of the Silver Line on transit oriented development in Fairfax and Loudoun Counties.

The author points out development has occurred in Tysons and Reston, but less so in other areas.  

That shouldn't be surprising.  The Silver Line is very much a polycentric extension of the system, and the stations are very spread out.  

Blots of development along the line are unlikely because residents don't want to live in pods, and the distance to the core is so significant--for example the Loudoun Gateway station is about 30 miles from DC.

Plus, the supra block nature of suburban development--massive sites, massive buildings--makes the walkability element of a benefit from transit development somewhat remote.

Herndon station.

It reminds me of my 2011 piece, making the point that developers wanted that transit line in order to keep their properties relevant in the 21st century development and land use paradigm ("Short term vs. long term thinking: transit, the Washington Examiner, Fairfax/Loudoun Counties vs. DC").

And that like with DC proper, it would take 20-40 years to fully reap the impact, which Bisnow didn't take into consideration ("Much Was Planned, But Little Is Built As Final Piece Of Metro's Silver Line Approaches Its Debut" Bisnow).  

Related posts over the years include:

-- "Silver line reshaping commercial office market in Fairfax County," 2015
-- "Tysons (Corner) 10 Years after the plan to make it more walkable: the necessity of implementation mechanisms," 2020
-- "Brief follow up to intra-district transit proposal for Tysons: Toyama City Compact City initiative (Japan)," 2020
-- "A thought about an intra-district transit network for Tysons," 2020

And ideally some lessons:

-- "Metro sees the opportunity to continue the Silver Line into DC (the former separated blue line proposal)," 2011
-- "Tysons, White Flint and the continued "maturation" of the suburbs," 2013
-- "Ultimately, WMATA blue line riders have been dissed by the State of Virginia, not WMATA...," 2013
-- "Transit, stations, and placemaking: stations as entrypoints into neighborhoods," 2013
-- "Silver Line delays: maybe the real lesson is that contracting out construction to the private sector doesn't always work so well," 2014
-- "The Silver Line WMATA story that WJLA-TV missed," 2014
-- "Using the Silver Line as the priming event, what would a transit network improvement program look like for NoVA?," 2017
-- "To and from origin stations can be difficult: More on the Silver Line and intra-neighborhood transit (tertiary network)," 2022
-- "Transit oriented development station typology revisited," 2024

One where I was wrong, opining that not tunneling the Silver Line in the Tysons area was a big mistake.  

Now, I don't think it matters, given the scale of the super blocks there, above-ground transit isn't the issue.  

The size of the blocks and distance between stations is the issue.  That's the reason for the proposal of an above-ground tram..

-- "Blinking on urban design means you limit your chance for success," 2006

2023 Year-End Boxscore Charts, Billboard Magazine

Yesterday, my SmartNews feed was on fire, with so many great articles.  There were a series of articles by smaller communities, about how the quality of their city as an events-sports destination was high, despite the size of the community or whether or not they actually had a sports team, for example Fort Worth doesn't ("Here’s why Fort Worth’s Dickies Arena was named Billboard’s No. 1 venue in the world." Fort Worth Star-Telegram).

2023 Year-End Boxscore Charts, Billboard Magazine

• Top 40 Tours 
• Top 30 Boxscores 
• Top 10 Stadiums 
• Top 25 Venues (cap 15,001 or more) 
• Top 10 Venues (cap 10,001 to 15,000) 
• Top 10 Venues (cap 5,001 to 10,000) 
• Top 10 Venues (cap 5,000 or less) 
• Top 10 Promoters Top Tours by Genre;

For years, I'd argued with Alex B. about the importance of CapitalOne Arena on the development of Downtown's East End.  I argued it would have happened anyway.  Alex B. said "no, the Arena has had significant impact."

The reality is that he was right ("More sports: sports-anchored entertainment districts and LA Live." 2018).  I was too parochial.  

Look at all the people going to a San Francisco Giants baseball game, and taking transit.  Mike Kepka, San Francisco Chronicle, 2002.

While I may have been right that the East End would have redeveloped, as the rest of Downtown was built out, the real issue is velocity of change, and the arena moved things faster, at least by 10 years, and helped to rebrand and reposition the City of Washington as an exciting place worth considering for work, commerce, and residential choice.

Fans line up outside the arena before the opening night game between the Washington Capitals and the Boston Bruins at Capital One Arena on October 12, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Scott Taetsch/Getty Images). 

Note that this was written before it was announced that the Washington Wizards and Capitals would be moving to Alexandria, Virginia.  I haven't done a follow up but at least for now, that doesn't seem to be happening ("Top Virginia Senate negotiator vows to keep Alexandria arena out of the budget," AP).

-- "Capital One Arena, Wizards and Capitals may move to Alexandria | Why not the RFK campus?," 2024

The thing is to improve cities in the post industrial entertainment city paradigm, you have to do everything you can to attract patrons, and urk, even casinos ("As Bally's troubles mount, City Hall has to make sure casino is a winning bet," Chicago Sun-Times).

-- "Crain's Chicago Business: Crain's Forum on Rebranding Chicago," 2024

- "The unintended consequences of converting office buildings to housing: the need for public safety; schools; amenities," 2022

-- "What is the competitive advantage for the post-covid city? Doubling down on place values," 2022

-- "From more space to socially distance to a systematic program for pedestrian districts (Park City (Utah) Main Street Car Free on Sundays)," 2020

-- "Planning programming by daypart, month, season: and Boston Winter Garden, DC's Holiday Market, etc.," 2016

-- "Daypart and age-group planning in mixed use (commercial) districts," 2009

-- "Town-City branding or "We are all destination managers now"," 2005
-- "Now I know why Boulder's Pearl Street Mall is the exception that proves the rule about the failures of pedestrian malls," 2005

Capital One Arena, Wizards and Capitals may move to Alexandria | Why not the RFK campus?

The day after I wrote that maybe the next trend in stadium and arena development is building ancillary development as a real estate play ("Suburban stadium/arena interest a function of new, younger generations of ownership or a better real estate play?"), and that often means suburban locations where adjacent land is more easily acquired and controlled by the team, it was announced that Monumental Sports is negotiating with Virginia for a Potomac Yards location ("Lawmakers vote in favor of plan to bring Capitals, Wizards to Virginia," Washington Post).

Flickr photo by Ken Lund.  After the acquisition of MCI by Verizon, the latter picked up the naming rights for the arena.

The arena and revitalization of the East End.  Even though I argued for years that the move by the teams to DC from the suburbs weren't the reason that the Downtown East End began revitalization, eventually I conceded that the move was a vote of confidence in urban living and commerce, and it helped reposition DC's image vis a vis the suburbs, just before residential choice trends began revaluing center cities after many decades of denigration ("Pollin: With Opening of MCI Center, 'I've Got Everything I've Ever Done in My Life on the Line'," Post, 1997, "Without Verizon Center, does Chinatown still thrive?," Washington Business Journal, 2016).

From the WBJ:

“I think that Chinatown will be fine even if the Verizon Center is moved,” said Ed McMahon, a senior resident fellow with the Urban Land Institute. “Why? Because downtown D.C. has come back to life. Because Chinatown has many other attractions and activity centers: the Museum of American Art, the National Building Museum, the new Georgetown University Extension and Graduate Center, dozens of restaurants, etc. Because Chinatown has a Metro stop and virtually all of the neighborhoods around Metro stops are thriving with or without a Verizon Center.”

Decline of Downtown post-covid changes the economic calculus. But these days with the decline of Downtown post covid, and WFH, plus the continued movement of federal agencies out of DC, DC is much less resilient economically than it was, and the loss of the Arena and its teams could be profound.  

In fact, I've been meaning to write a mea culpa piece about the FBI HQ moving to the suburbs, which when DC was thriving, would have been an acceptable "loss" because the redevelopment opportunities would have been better than keeping them, even if it posed agglomeration diseconomies on the FBI and Metrorail.

It doesn't help that DC planning isn't particularly forward on thinking about how to continually boost Downtown, e.g, 

-- "DC, Transformational Projects Action Planning, and the Baltimore-Washington Maglev project," 2021
-- "Boeing to move "headquarters" to Northern Virginia," 2022
-- "Could bringing premier regionally headquartered business enterprises to the Pennsylvania Avenue Corridor be key to its renewal and revitalization?," 2014
-- "Businesses moving back to the center: not a universal trend," 2015

Sports as a real estate play.  It's definitely a real estate play.  Today Post columnist Barry Svrluga has a good piece, "There are reasons for Capitals and Wizards to move. They’re all sad," about how this would harm DC.

Separately I'd been meaning to write about how Monumental Sports has asked DC for $600 million to rehabilitate the now 26 year old Capital One Arena, and apparently the Bowser Administration hasn't been fully helpful ("Monumental asking D.C. for $600M for Capital One Arena, sources say," Post. "Is Revamping Capital One Arena Worth $600 Million To D.C.?," DCist).

Maximizing community benefit from sports teams, because in most cases they'll get subsidized even in the face of opposition.  While my position is that teams and billionaires shouldn't be subsidized, that isn't the way things work, so I've come to focus my writings on how communities can maximize the benefits they receive from these deals.

-- "Framework of characteristics that support successful community development in association with the development of professional sports facilities," 2021
-- "Revisiting "Framework of characteristics that support successful community development in association with the development of professional sports facilities" and the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team + Phoenix Coyotes hockey," 2022 

DC loses out on income tax from sports.  DC is at a disadvantage too, because unlike other jurisdictions, Congress forbids it from taxing non-residents.  That means it can't tax day of game earnings of both home and away players ("Taxation Is the Name of the Game for Professional Athletes," Bloomberg Tax).  This is worth $20 million per year off football based on a study for the Buffalo Bills, it could be more for other sports because of more events.

Offer the RFK campus as the real estate play for Monumental (although it's not downtown it's still DC). In 2018, I wrote a piece about the attempt to extend the RFK campus lease, but at the behest of the "Washington" NFL team, which has been based in Suburban Prince George's County for a couple decades.

-- "Yes, modify and extend the RFK Campus lease; No, don't do it for the Washington Redskins football team"

The RFK campus is on the right.  Benning Road, the extension of H Street is in the upper portion of image.

It mentioned how the RFK campus planning effort by Events DC did mention an arena, but the point never got much play.

Since 2003, when I was on the board of H Street Main Street, and advocating that the group create a housing growth strategy in its retail trade area, I suggested that the RFK parking lots, especially along Benning Road, should be converted to housing and mixed use development.  (Other areas too.)

In turn that would help to spur development of the Pepco power plant site, which stopped producing electricity in 2012, and Benning Road further east, and Minnesota Avenue.

If anything DC should offer this site to Monumental, recognizing that there are serious roadblocks in the way with renegotiating the lease with NPS and Congress, and the cost of extinguishing the easement currently limiting the site's use to recreation.

The fact is that centering development around an arena would be a much better play, because there would be so many more events -- the Capitals and Wizards to start, probably the Georgetown Hoyas still, maybe an arena football team again, and some games by the Mystics and DC Go Go (both which play at an underpowered facility in Congress Heights, but could add events in the summer when NBA and NHL seasons are over).

In return, as part of the deal Monumental should give the Capital One Arena building to DC.

But speaking of lack of political vision, "Mendelson aims to block DC from purchasing RFK stadium site," Washington Business Journal. 

Jump starting a new revitalization plan for East of the River.  Plus it could also lead to a new revitalization plan for East of the River, which I've written about over the years.

-- "Wanted: A comprehensive plan for the "Anacostia River East" corridor," 2012
-- "Waterfronts/rivers/canals as districts needing special and ongoing "zoning" and environmental review," 2022
-- "The Anacostia River and considering the bridges as a unit and as a premier element of public art and civic architecture," 2014
-- "DC has a big "Garden Festival" opportunity in the Anacostia River"," 2014
-- "A world class water/environmental education center at Poplar Point as another opportunity for Anacostia River programming (+ move the Anacostia Community Museum next door)," 2014
-- "Saving the South Capitol Bridge as an exclusive pedestrian and and bicycle bridge," 2014

-- "Social urbanism and equity planning as a way to address crime, violence, and persistent poverty: (not in) DC," 2021

-- "Ordinary versus Extraordinary Planning around the rebuilding of the United Medical Center in Southeast Washington DC: Part Two: Creating a graduate health and biotechnology research initiative on the St. Elizabeths campus," 2018

Controversially, because the Park Service has more golf courses than demand, the Langston Golf Course could be redeveloped.  Although the course is particularly important to local African[-American history and likely such a move would be opposed, and would also require approval of Congress and the Executive Branch, separate from the RFK situation, which is equally complicated.

Although Guardian articles show how minimal the use is of a typical golf course in a good day, fewer than 150 patrons ("Building houses on Britain’s vast, exclusive golf courses makes sense for everyone – even golfers," "London golf courses could provide homes for 300,000 people, study says").

Creating a separated Silver Line could serve the H Street corridor, the RFK campus/Benning Road, and other points in the city.  It could also spur transit expansion for DC, specifically my recommendations for a separated silver line Metrorail and improvements and extensions of the DC streetcar line.

-- "If DC had visionary elected officials and planners it could use the new WMATA "BOS" study to push through the development of a separated Silver Line in DC (and Northern Virginia)," 2019

(I know this is not what WMATA is recommending, see "Blue Loop? Metro eyes possible future stops in Georgetown, National Harbor," WTOP-AM).

From the entry, based on ideas expressed in the Meissner-Layman conceptual Metrorail Expansion map just for the DC portion:

4. In the vicinity of RFK Stadium, (and presuming the truncation of the Blue Line, see below) I would route the Separated Silver Line onto the Blue Line alignment from RFK Stadium to Largo Town Center.  That would put the new Oklahoma Avenue Station on the Silver Line. [Edit:  Note that the current WMATA proposal would change the routing anyway, just not on an H Street alignment.]

5. At RFK, (presuming the truncation of the Blue Line) the Orange Line alignment would remain the same from Vienna to New Carrollton. But by crossing the Silver Line at this point, this would be a transfer point between the two lines, just as it is currently.

The Oklahoma Avenue station, at the western edge of the RFK site, was the only station in the original plan that ended up not being built, in face of neighborhood opposition fearing the station would be the equivalent of a "park and ride."

Rather than the aerial alignment from RFK Station to Minnesota Avenue for the Orange Line, it would be replaced by a tunnelized alignment. 

The cost would be justified economically by the ability to enable superior redevelopment of the RFK Stadium site.

6. Not indicated on the Meissner-Layman map, an infill Orange Line station could be built at the old Pepco generating site, providing additional service for the RFK area on the northeast.  This would be a 10th station for DC deriving from a "Separated Silver Line"."

7. The proposed separate intra-city Silver Line leg along Bladensburg Road from H Street to New York Avenue and Fort Lincoln could be extended further into Prince George's County if Maryland is interested.

This would provide Metrorail service to the New York Avenue corridor, if somewhat circuitous, and could also connect to a new infill New York Avenue station on the MARC passenger rail system ("One big idea: Getting MARC and Metrorail to integrate fares, stations, and marketing systems, using London Overground as an example," 2015). 

Giants fans leave the MUNI headed for the park. The San Francisco Giants play the Anaheim Angels in Games 5 of the World Series at Pac Bell Park in San Francisco, Ca. October 24, 2002. Mike Kepka/San Francisco Chronicle

Streetcar expansion too.  The streetcar currently reaches not quite to the edge of the RFK campus.  

It should be extended on the east to the Benning Road station, and as a further inducement to development a loop serving the exterior of a redeveloped RFK campus could be created, not unlike the original configuration of the Portland Streetcar linking the Pearl District (old railyard that was redeveloped to Downtown and the Portland State University campus (or the way that the Cincinnati, Kansas City, and Oklahoma City, and Tempe streetcars work in their communities)..

It should also be extended on the west at least as far as Georgetown-Rosslyn.

Proposed Gatineau light rail loop to Ottawa to serve museums and the Byward Public Market is another model for intra-district transportation.

Arguably this would be duplicative, if a separated Silver Line is created, but the Silver Line couldn't provide intra-district transportation within the RFK campus ("Brief follow up to intra-district transit proposal for Tysons: Toyama City Compact City initiative (Japan)," 2020) and has already been proven to stoke economic development in significant ways, even if the service isn't particularly robust ("DC and streetcars #4: from the standpoint of stoking real estate development, the line is incredibly successful and it isn't even in service yet, and now that development is extending eastward past 15th Street," 2015, 

Conclusion.  Not happy about subsidizing the billionaires, but this could still be a good deal for DC, as the benefits from the ancillary development, the ability to refocus to East of the River revitalization, the ability to push the separated Silver Line concept, at least in DC, and the ability to have the werewithal to extend the streetcar both east and west, would be profound.

Sometimes subsidy makes sense, as I have argued with the Sacramento Kings (which touched off my new approach to discussing sports team subsidies) and the Amazon HQ2, given the pre-covid massive economic return experienced by Seattle.

Note that the Events DC "planning" for the RFK campus didn't include the DC planning office, as it was set up as a kind of bag job by Council separate from normal planning.  Events DC didn't really do a plan, more a vision.  And they were constrained by not wanting to anger NPS, so they had to focus on recreation only.

A new planning effort would be required, and it should be led by the Office of Planning. Even though they're not so great either.

One more point.  With regard to the concept of the real estate play and suburban locations having more land, it's not always true, like with the RFK campus in DC, or Oakland's waterfront although rejected by the A's, how the Golden State Warriors move to the Mission Bay district of SF jump started development there, and similarly the placement of the Washington Nationals stadium in Southeast DC's Navy Yard development--definitely has stoked the area, but for food and drink, not retail.

So it depends.  A lot of "old" center cities still have the space.  Even if sports-related redevelopment initiatives remain controversial.

Plus the constant redevelopment of Las Vegas means tearing down stuff to build stadiums and arenas is not a big deal either.

Suburban stadium/arena interest a function of new, younger generations of ownership or a better real estate play?

With a couple of exceptions -- Atlanta Braves to suburban Cobb County, the San Francisco 49ers to Santa Clara, 42 miles from the SF City Hall, and the Buffalo Bills staying in the suburbs outside of Buffalo -- most stadium/arena rebuilding efforts tend to be focused on urban locations, if not necessarily the center city per se, at least in Los Angeles where an NFL stadium and a forthcoming NBA arena are in urban places, but outside of LA proper.

-- "Framework of characteristics that support successful community development in association with the development of professional sports facilities," 2021

The Oakland A's are moving to a more central Las Vegas location, the Tampa Bay Rays to another location in center city St. Petersburg, the Philadelphia 76ers want to move to the heart of Downtown Philadelphia, the Kansas City Royals want to move Downtown from their more suburban location, the Golden State Warriors moved to San Francisco, etc.

That's why I find what's happening in Salt Lake City so interesting as it is counter to these trends.  

(The Larry H. Miller Company) The Salt Lake Bees broke ground on a new stadium in South Jordan's Daybreak neighborhood on Thursday, Oct. 19, 2023. The Triple-A team has released the first renderings of the Bees' new home.

First, earlier this year it was announced that the minor league baseball team Bees will be moving to Daybreak in Draper, 21 miles from Salt Lake City ("Salt Lake Bees break ground on new 2025 Downtown Daybreak ballpark," Ballpark Digest).

A residential community in Daybreak.

But that's because the team owner is a major real estate developer, with big holdings in Draper, and they figure a minor league team can activate the area, even though it never did in the Ballpark neighborhood of SLC 

So the empty land around the stadium as shown in the rendering is a feature, not a bug ("Take a look at the first designs for the Salt Lake Bees’ new Daybreak stadium," Salt Lake Tribune).

Second, Ryan Smith, the new owner of the NBA Jazz, a reasonably young 46 years old guy wealthy from Internet application firm Qualtrics, is talking not only about trying to get a hockey team even though the SLC market is pretty small ("Jazz Owner Ryan Smith Talks NHL, Future Of Utah Sports," KSL), but moving out to the suburbs as well, following the Bees, maybe to Draper as well ("Would Fans Support Jazz Move Out Of Downtown?," KSL, "Salt Lake City is ‘working hard’ to keep the Utah Jazz downtown, city leaders say. What happens next?," Salt Lake Tribune).  

Smith also bought the Real Salt Lake soccer team which is headquartered in suburban Sandy.

Part of the attraction is being closer to Utah County, which is fast growing, 800,000 residents to Salt Lake County's 1.2 million.  But it's also the location of the state's "Silicon Slopes," the home to companies owned by people like Smith.

Suburban mentality?  I wonder if in part this is a function of next generation team owners and executives who weren't party to the lessons that teams learned after moving to the suburbs, that the locations weren't that great, leading them to return to the city.

But also that cities are better places to win subsidies ("The Baseball Stadium That “Forever Changed” Professional Sports," The Ringer).

Real estate play.  But it's also about the opportunity for complementary real estate development.  This isn't new, but the problem with urban locations is the inability to monetize proximate real estate, because it's already owned by other parties.

The Guardian has a good article about this, "‘The stadium is secondary’: how US sports teams became real-estate speculators."  Maybe it's better for team owners to make more money from ancillary real estate that they control, than it is to generate day of game ticket revenues.  From the article:

... More than ever, sports franchises are a real-estate play as owners seek to stimulate revenues amid escalating costs in a period of high inflation. 

Mixed-use developments where people can live, work, shop, dine, drink and play have become ubiquitous as teams seek to squeeze as much profit as possible from their land. The old paradigm was to build a new stadium with high-end facilities inside to cater to the corporate set, boosting matchday income and attracting showpiece events such as Super Bowls, World Cup games and blockbuster concerts by stars like Swift. 

Now teams also want to dictate how dollars are spent each day in the streets around their venues, a trend turning billionaire sports owners into influential city planners.

... Kroenke financed his plans privately, but pledging to revitalize a neighborhood with projects that typically include public green spaces makes giving financial incentives such as tax breaks or covering infrastructure improvements more palatable to municipal leaders and voters who might be wary of handing subsidies worth potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to billionaires.

A problem with this is that the beneficiaries of such "investment" are increasingly just a few players, the team owners. 

Sprawl washing/sprawlwashing

The term "greenwashing" is used to refer to organizations that announce sustainability initiatives as a way to detract from their generally poor practices.

I have been critical about the announcement of the "Utah City" development in the Vineyard community of Utah County, Utah, which will be new urbanist, mixed use, aims to leverage a commuter railroad station, etc. ("Utah City breaks ground, a very ambitious TOD: A new transit-oriented development in Utah is planned with the density and amenities of a big city downtown," Congress for the New Urbanism).

It's 700 acres.  A tad over one square mile.

Utah County has over 2,000 square miles of land--I don't know how much is undevelopable because it's mountains.  Salt Lake County 800.  Davis County 634.  Again for Davis and Salt Lake Counties, a goodly amount of land is tied up in mountain ranges

Still, that's almost 3,500 square miles, that is developed as classic sprawl ("Study: Utah has second-fastest urban sprawl," Salt Lake Tribune, 2014).

Weekend travelers join the traffic on I-15 near Point of the Mountain near Draper 

Thursday, Aug. 30, 2018. Photo: Steve Griffin, Deseret News

So a development or two here and there, using nonsprawl principles, doesn't make any difference.  Although people criticizing my stance say it's an important step forward.

Meanwhile, Utah faces incredible drought (the Governor calls for praying for rain, "Utah governor asks citizens to pray for rain to end drought," AP), isn't expanding the Trax light rail system, does plan to widen I-15, continually fails to address air quality issues, is in danger of losing the Great Salt Lake ("‘Last nail in the coffin’: Utah’s Great Salt Lake on verge of collapse," Guardian), is a state dedicated to resource extraction especially of fossil fuels, etc.

Death of Til Hazel, King of Northern Virginia's Suburban Growth Machine

When I first got involved in these issues more than 20 years ago, of course suburban sprawl was a big issue--I lived in it from 1973 to 1978 and a couple of summers afterwards.  In the DC area, one of the key examples was sprawl in places like Fairfax County, and of course I was derisive of the quality of land use planning.  (Below: Tysons "Corner" Virginia.  In the last 15 years, "Corner" was dropped from business district branding.)

Imagine my surprise a few years later to come across a Fairfax County planning department report, The Vanishing Land: Proposals for Open Space Preservation, c. 1962, about the problems of sprawl, land use development, hopscotching of land plots furthering sprawl outwards, and recommendations for change.

From page 20, Increase of Land Consumption for Suburban Development 

"The rapid urbanization and population increase in Fairfax County, as in urban counties all over the country, are causing logical concern over the growing lack of efficient use of land necessary of efficient servicing of these lands. The mass exodus of middle and upper income families from the metropolitan center to "cheap, open, rural land, in the country," has resulted in hundreds of large-lot subdivisions which have skipped over previously serviced areas and are demanding equal services and schools further and further out." 

Page 7, the Introduction starts out with the question "Is it Too Late To Save Open Space?" 

"Fairfax County is nearing a crisis in the supply of remaining open land due to the fantastically swift, uncoordinated development in the County's urban fringe over the past two decades. This urbanization is leapfrogging its way across the entire County, replacing the cherished rural atmosphere. 

If the present rate of consumption of open land occurs for two more decades (160-200 acres per 1,000 new residents), the entire County will have been eaten up in urban sprawl, and all of the desirable tracts of open land will have vanished." 

The publication is well designed, with great images, fold-out maps, die-cut effects, a mail-in "Business Reply Card" postage-paid four question survey, etc.

Of course, those recommendations for change were never enacted, because of the power of land use interests.  And we know what happened with the land.

New Metrorail station for Tysons.  VDOT photo by Trever Wrayton.

Painting by Bradley Stevens.

One of those powerful interests was John "Til" Hazel, a lawyer and developer key to the growth and sprawl of Fairfax County and elsewhere in Suburban Virginia.  The Washington Post reports on his death ("John ‘Til’ Hazel Jr., lawyer and developer who transformed Virginia suburbs, dies at 91").

From the Washington City Paper article "The Economics of Stephen Fuller":

“Basically, the political world is controlled by the anti-growth people,” said Hazel at the press conference. “We can’t let the ‘antis’ control the world.”

From the Washingtonian article "Secrets of Success: Five Washington Business Leaders Who Went After Opportunities to Work Their Way to the Top":

Hazel's law firm had been hired to acquire the land to build the Washington Beltway. He became an expert on zoning, acquisition, and eminent domain. Later Hazel steered Ted Lerner through the legal maze so the developer could build Tysons Corner Center and the Tysons II shopping, office, and hotel complex. 

In 1961 Hazel left the law firm. He soon became a county judge and, in his spare time, practiced zoning law. Hazel realized that Northern Virginia was changing, and he wanted to be a player, not an observer. 

"A blind man could see the potential," Hazel says. "Fairfax was the frontier. It was open to ideas." But 

Hazel saw possibilities that others couldn't and–more important–was able to turn them into bricks and mortar. In 1972 he linked up with Milton V. Peterson and began developing communities like Burke Centre and Franklin Farm. By 1989 it was estimated that one of every six Fairfax residents lived on land that Hazel/Peterson developed. The company also built Fair Lakes, a 35-building office complex.

(These quotes remind me of the now defunct Regardie's Magazine, which focused on local industry, especially real estate, and the Washington Business Journal, which is devoted to real estate development coverage as well.  Bisnow a web platform on the real estate industry, grew out of WBJ in a way, as one of their writers left to create it.)

-- Capital Beltway history website

The Growth Machine thesis argues that land use intensification is the primary goal of political and economic elites, because real estate development is the primary local industry and the source of tax revenue supporting local government.

While the thesis focuses on center cities, it's fully applicable to the suburbs, as land development is the number one industry in the U.S.  And post-war growth was essential to the US in terms of economic development, GDP growth, population expansion and accommodation, etc.  

There is some academic writing that addresses these issues in terms of Fairfax County:

-- "The Growth Machine Stops? Urban Politics and the Making and Remaking of an Edge City," Urban Affairs Review (2012).
-- The Fight for Fairfax: A Struggle for a Great American County, by Russ Banham
-- "Visions of the Future as Spaces of Engagement: The Political Economy of Transit-Oriented Redevelopment in Tysons Corner, VA," Cities in the 21st Century, v. 2 (2010)
-- "Happy to Grow: Development and Planning in Fairfax County, Virginia," Harvard University

And the Post certainly covered it, such as "TIL HAZEL, KING OF THE NEW FRONTIER," which led to the publication of the book Edge City, by former Post writer Joel Garreau ("An Overview of the Edge City Theory," Thoughtco).

Sprawl is All: Money Magazine Best Places to Live annual list

Every year Money Magazine publishes a list of communities under 500,000 population that it deems the "Best places to live," based on the following factors:

• Cost of Living 
• Economic opportunity 
• Diversity 
• Education 
• Fun (aka amenities) 
• Health & safety 
• Housing market 
• Income & personal finances 
• Quality of life

Interesting that these factors don't seem to include automobile dependence, transit access, walkable communities, etc. ("Extending the "Signature Streets" concept to "Signature Streets and Spaces"," "50 Reasons Why Everyone Should Want More Walkable Streets: from the Arup report, Cities Alive – Towards a walking world," "Further updates to the Sustainable Mobility Platform Framework").

The 2021 Best Places to Live list strongly leans to sprawl and automobile dependence, even if many of the communities on the list, like Franklin, Tennessee (#3), are more traditional towns with a Main Street like core.  

And Boise, a larger city with a nice core, is #10--it's the rare example of a state capital that is actually nice.

Rushton Meadows subdivision, South Jordan, Utah.  Photo: Rick Egan, Salt Lake Tribune, from "Some homeowners are at the mercy of unmonitored and predatory management companies."

"Ashburn" Virginia is listed as #5.  Is that a community or just a sprawl of subdivisions?  Same with Syracuse, Utah (#6), South Jordan, Utah (#27)  or Mission Viejo, California (#48).  

These places are textbook examples of the sprawl land use and transportation planning paradigm.  (Even though Mission Viejo is gross, it is Southern California!)

For me, I'd be much more interested in the neighborhoods identified in the lists that were once published by This Old House Magazine.  Sadly, they stopped publishing this feature in 2014.

And looking at amenities in terms of some of the elements identified in "8 Components of Housing Value" and "Revisiting factors influencing housing purchase."

Change takes for(&*())ever: Repatterning suburban development and Gwinnett County, Georgia

ABC photo by Byron Small.

I'm on a list where someone sent this article, "Planning firm with transit expertise selected to lead Gwinnett Place revitalization" from the Atlanta Business Chronicle, about the redevelopment planning for a decrepit mall, and I didn't think it was particularly interesting, although I guess it's new and special in Gwinnett County.  From the article:

The years-long dream of transforming the former Gwinnett Place Mall into a modern retail center and transit hub is one step closer to reality. The Gwinnett Place Community Improvement District (CID) selected planning firm Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc. (VHB) to lead the revitalization strategy and craft a master plan for the site, which has seen decades of decline. 

The redevelopment of Gwinnett Place reflects a trend of mall owners across the country reinvesting in or reimagining their retail spaces. It also comes as Gwinnett braces for massive population growth. The county is projected to reach 1.5 million residents by 2040, surpassing Fulton County. 

In April, the project received $275,000 in grants from the Atlanta Regional Commission’s Livable Centers Initiative. The funding will go toward redeveloping the mall and studying how the county could turn it into a hub for bus rapid transit along Satellite Blvd.

My initial reaction was no big deal, but (1) I suppose any step forward towards repatterning in the suburbs should be celebrated. 

(2) But how does this ever go from one off initiatives at a particular decrepit place to a regularized program across a community or county?  ("Extending the "Signature Streets" concept to "Signature Streets and Spaces"," 2020)

I am a city person, so I don't track suburban stuff as much as I should, except in the DC area and I am beginning to get a handle on the Super Sprawl of the Salt Lake Valley. 

(3) Is there any suburban jurisdiction that has a real ongoing program of repatterning away from sprawl?  

It's almost impossible because  automobile centric land use and transportation planning is the dominant planning and development paradigm.  Little outposts of urbanism don't have much effect on the whole.

(4) I know about the Montgomery County effort in White Flint and they are for intensification but I wouldn't call it a regularized countywide program. Same with Tysons Corner in Fairfax County, Virginia. 

The Fairfax effort is a big deal, but the scale is off and it's not like they are creating walkable communities ("Short term vs. long term thinking: transit, the Washington Examiner, Fairfax/Loudoun Counties vs. DC," "Tysons (Corner) 10 Years after the plan to make it more walkable: the necessity of implementation mechanisms," "Brief follow up to intra-district transit proposal for Tysons: Toyama City Compact City initiative (Japan)").

(3) It's not like this concept of repatterning suburban business development towards walkability and mixed use is new stuff, the relevant "Ten Steps" publications by the Urban Land Institute are 15 to 20 years old. THAT'S OLD. The White Flint and Tysons efforts are approaching 15 years old.

-- Ten Principles for Reinventing America’s Suburban Business Districts, 2002
-- Ten Principles for Reinventing America’s Suburban Strips, 2001
-- Ten Principles for Rethinking the Mall, 2006

2.  Bus rapid transit is not light rail on wheels.  But it's better than regular bus.  And maybe better than a traffic-engorged commute.  Another thing the article says is how great BRT is ("'If we can do BRT, we should': How public transit could transform suburban Atlanta malls"):

Gwinnett County residents, like many other suburban communities, want alternatives to spending long commutes in their cars, said Joe Allen executive director of the Gwinnett Place CID. The future BRT system will include permanent stations and dedicated lanes, he told Atlanta Business Chronicle in August. "It’s really going to be light rail but with rubber tires,” Allen said.

A short BRT line is under development in Atlanta ("MARTA on schedule with Summerhill BRT in Downtown ATL," Saporta Report).

Fancy bus shelters for Atlanta's BRT.

There's no comparison, especially in the US ("BRT: long haul service in the US versus comprising a "transit network" in South America," 2014, "Route 7 BRT proposal communicates the reality that the DC area doesn't adequately conduct transportation planning at the metropolitan-scale," 2016).  Although new BRT buses can be more sleek than old light rail vehicles.

WRT the article: BRT isn't faster than light rail usually, even with dedicated lanes.  It is cheaper.  But ridership is usually significantly less.  And bus service, even BRT, doesn't seem to have a lot of multiplier effect when it comes to land use development and intensification.

But I think it's fine as one element in a complete network of transit services.

Revisiting stories: the death of L. Brooks Patterson, County Executive, Oakland County, Michigan

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Note: I lived in Oakland County roughly from 1971/1972-1978 and the summers of 1979 and 1980.
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L. Brooks Patterson won 7 terms as County Executive in Oakland County, Michigan, which lies north of Detroit.  Before that he was the tough on crime County Prosecutor for 4 terms.

He was strongly pro-County and pretty much anti-Detroit, as I wrote in this piece from 2014, "The rise of Oakland County is built upon Detroit's fall."

From the Crain's Detroit Business article, "What will happen to Brooks' deputies?":

Patterson was first elected county executive in 1992 after serving four terms as Oakland County prosecutor.

His tenure as Oakland County executive was marked with myriad successes, but also controversy. The county's AAA bond rating has been reaffirmed time and time again under his leadership, and the county has a lauded three-year rolling budget. He instituted the Automation Alley high-tech cluster and the Emerging Sectors program for knowledge-based jobs. Medical Main Street and Main Street Oakland also came into being under his watch. He was honored by Governing magazine in 2013. The University of Detroit graduate and U.S. Army veteran was generally viewed as a business community champion.

While his leadership of Oakland County itself has drawn wide praise, his comments about Detroit and other issues have drawn criticism.

His career had been marked by bitter feuds with Detroit and neighboring counties over a host of issues ranging from transit to the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. Some viewed him as an obstacle to more robust regional cooperation.

Like Trump's very parochial bilateral "Make America Great Again" push, Patterson was a block to creating more regional approaches to the area's issues.

In e-talking with Nigel, our correspondent from New Zealand, I looked up the demographic data comparing Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb Counties population from 1960 to today.

Overall, there are only about 120,000 more residents in 2018 compared to 1960--although it must be acknowledged that the metropolitan area has grown beyond these three counties.

The difference is that 1.2 million residents from Detroit have been redistributed and Wayne County's population dropped by 900,000, while Oakland and Macomb Counties roughly doubled in population.

Patterson died not quite two weeks ago, and because in the 2016 election, the County shifted from a Republican dominated electorate to a more progressive and Democratic there is jockeying between Democrats as the Party aims to capture the County Executive position.

It's not clear if there will be a special election, which if one is held will be in the 2020 election cycle, for a two-year partial term, as the normal cycle for the office is in the "off year election" from Presidential elections.

Also see:

-- "Commentary: Patterson leaves enduring legacy, but time for region to move on," Crain's Detroit Business
-- "R.I.P. L. Brooks Patterson, A racist," Detroit Metro Times
-- "McGraw: Friends Say Brooks Patterson 'Loved' Detroit, But His Record Shows Otherwise," Deadline Detroit

A couple weeks ago in a post about segregation, I mentioned that I went to school for a time in the Pontiac School District, while the school system was desegregating and where school buses were bombed in protest. It turns out L. Brooks Patterson represented one of the incendiary anti-busing activists, Irene McCabe...

Tuesday, April 8th: Book Release Party for Dead End: Suburban Sprawl and the Rebirth of American Urbanism by Ben Ross

Action Committee for Transit invites you to a “Book Release Party” for the new book Dead End: Suburban Sprawl and the Rebirth of American Urbanism written by ACT member and former ACT president Ben Ross.

The book will be in stores later this month. But you can purchase a copy at the party ($29.95) and Ben will be available to sign your copy! Come join the fun. The book has received great reviews:

When: Tues, April 8 - 7:30 pm
Where: Pyramid Atlantic Art Center
8230 Georgia Ave, Silver Spring 20910

Some nibbles and drinks will be provided.

The rise of Oakland County is built upon Detroit's fall

The other morning the tv was on a channel showing a repeat of a Dateline NBC show on a cable channel.  It featured a crime spree in the Detroit suburbs that started with a car jacking.  The driver of the car was killed and his body was found in a burned out, vacant bungalow on Detroit's east side.

These abandoned houses, some touched by fire, are actually in Highland Park, an incorporated community separate from Detroit, but completely enclosed by it.  Photo: Patricia Beck, Detroit Free Press.   Note that this block looks way better than the area where Matt Landry's body was discovered.

Television footage of the mother of the dead man, Matt Landry, was featured in the story, plaintively calling on the mayor of Detroit "to clean up your city and tear down all those vacant houses."

Understanding her pain, I was still pissed, because she saw no connection between the exodus of 1.2 million Detroit residents out of the city to the suburbs, and how this exodus has produced the city's cycle of abandonment and failure.  Outmigration has been a plague that has been brought down on the city.  People like she and her husband have some responsibility, even if minute, for Detroit's decline.

-- "GOODBYE DETROIT: The Bulldozing And Burning of Detroit," Radiant Writing blog

2.  The connection between Detroit's abandonment and the rise of Suburban Detroit is made even more directly in the story "Drop Dead, Detroit!:  The suburban kingpin who is thriving off the city's decline," featured in the current issue of New Yorker Magazine.   (I too was part of the suburban outmigration, having finally left Detroit by 1972, for Oakland County, with interim stops in Wayne County towns along the way.)

The story is a profile of L. Brooks Patterson, Executive of Oakland County Michigan.  He has been County Executive for 20 years and for 20 years before that he was the elected County Prosecutor.

Media in Detroit have picked up on the story ("New Yorker article quotes L. Brooks Patterson with choice words about Detroit," Detroit Free Press; "'Drop Dead Detroit' remarks," Oakland Press).

The article is chilling in describing how L. Brooks Patterson-Oakland County has been systematic in taking every advantage possible from Detroit's decline--of course, the City of Detroit's leaders have made it easy for him.  Oakland County is still one of the wealthiest counties in the US, and one of the best managed.  Its economy is thriving.

But success is built in large part by Patterson taking every opportunity he can to benefit the county at the expense of Detroit, including opposition to mass transit, which if constructed, would begin to rebalance Detroit's economic opportunities at the metropolitan scale, and opposition to creating a regional water system which would offload some infrastructure costs from the city to the counties.  Rightly, he sees these kinds of steps as better balancing costs amongst the jurisdictions, whereas he would rather that Oakland County continues to benefit at Detroit's expense, in this case by actively disadvantaging Detroit.

To strengthen Oakland County's positioning, he doesn't miss an opportunity to criticize Detroit as crime-ridden and a basket case, with such jokes as:

... when asked what advice he would offer embattled Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano. He said: “Go in the garage, pull the door down, leave the engine running.”

From the article:

... From memory, she cited Patterson's governing philosophy: "If it's good for Detroit and good for Oakland County, I'm for it.; if it's good for Detroit and neutral for Oakland County, I'm for it; if it's good for Detroit and bad for Oakland County, I'm against it."

Tellingly, Patterson leaves "good for Oakland County and bad for Detroit" out of his formulation.  It is possible to see the county's success as largely dependent on the city's decline, as white flight dispersed some of Detroit's strongest resources into suburbia.  McGraw, of Deadline Detroit, said, "Patterson had a platform and he used it to denigrate Detroit and Detroiters, and to give voice to people who moved out of the city and resent what the city has become--even though their departures contributed to it.  Instead of being a leader who says, 'We're gonna work with Detroit,' he's been perceived as an enemy of Detroit, because he's acted like an enemy.  For so many years, he's been a drumbeat: 'Detroit is bad.  Detroiters are out to rip us off.  They want tax breaks, but look how well we're managing our county.'  He did manage the county well.  But it's so much easier to manage growth than it is to manage loss or blight."

Interestingly, it turns out that Patterson grew up in the same Detroit neighborhood, Rosedale Park, that I once lived in,  where our Congresswoman lived a block or two down my street (I think that's why snow was cleared from our sidewalks, but we'll never know now, 45 years later), home to public officials, business leaders, a future Mayor, etc.  It was a solid middle class neighborhood.

3.  The article points out that things are changing a bit for Oakland County, as some businesses like Quicken Loans, attracted by historic building stock and urban opportunity, have relocated to Detroit out from the suburbs.

Woodward Avenue, Detroit, 1942.  Wikipedia image.  The manufacturing prowess of the US auto industry was one of the key elements of the success of the US military effort in World War II.

Still, it will be a long time before Detroit can stabilize, in large part because of the city-suburban divide and the advantages of greater suburban population which also means more legislators in the State House and Senate to represent suburban interests.

A solution would be reorganizing how government is structured in the tri-county area (Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb Counties--Macomb County, located mostly east of Detroit, is where Matt Landry was carjacked).

There should be a hard "metropolitan-scaled" government created (1) to take responsibility for certain infrastructure and civic assets like the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Zoo, and other cultural assets that are used by the entire region, but paid for by the city (recently, a regional tax of a 10-year duration was instituted to support the museum) and (2) to re-integrate transit back into the city and suburbs, (3) if only to staunch and reduce the costs to government of sprawl and exurbanism--the Detroit metropolitan area is the most spread out of any US metro--and (4) to reposition the region for the 21st century economy (not unlike what is happening in Fairfax and Loudoun County with the opening of the Silver Line Metrorail extension there).

And I think about a merger of Detroit and Wayne County, but as the article points out, the real wealth in the region is in Oakland County.  How do you restructure the way the local municipalities and the counties are structured to correct the clear economic and political imbalances that currently exist?

4.  But it won't happen.  While the Michigan State Government could probably force a reorganization of Metro Government in Greater Detroit, comparable to how Toronto and Montreal were reorganized by their provincial governments, it would require legislation and agreement, including agreement by "out-state" legislators, legislators from outside of Southeastern Michigan.

And not unlike how the rest of New York State derides New York City, the State of Michigan has spent 40+ years deriding Detroit and the Detroit Metropolitan area, while sucking money from it--for example, one of the reasons that Michigan still has a constellation of great public universities is because they were built on auto industry money.

This is proven by the bankruptcy process foisted on the city by the Governor.

Location, location, location.  Image of abandoned bungalows on Moran Street from Detroit Unreal Estate Agency blog.  Houses like these in my neighborhood in Washington, DC are worth close to $400,000.  In Detroit, similar houses are worthless.

Not that that bankruptcy isn't necessary if only to rightsize financial obligations to the city's current ability to pay--but it wasn't the only choice and it mostly was political, another example of politicians using Detroit as a scapegoat and whipping boy, blaming the city's condition as the result of personal failures of its leaders and residents--not that they haven't contributed--rather than on the structural conditions and processes that produced the desolation that now has come to a head (see "Six decades in Detroit: How abandonment, racial tensions and financial missteps bankrupted the city," Detroit News).

5.  Parenthetically, note that L. Brooks Patterson operates similarly to Gov. Chris Christie.  Oakland County has one of the strongest County-based Main Street commercial district revitalization programs in the US.  In 2005, When the City of Ferndale opposed the widening of the nearby I-75 Freeway as not beneficial to the city (not unlike how Arlington County Virginia opposes HOT Lanes in their county as oppositional to their transportation priorities as set forth in their planning documents), they were dropped from the Main Street program, because the County Executive supported the freeway widening.

But the projects have moved forward.  See "SEMCOG approves $1 billion I-75 widening project for Oakland" from the Oakland Press and "$2.6 billion I-94, I-75 widening projects in Detroit and suburbs move forward" from MLive.

That massive highway widening projects are still being pursued in Greater Detroit (I-94 is also to be widened) demonstrates how automobility--once Detroit's biggest strength, is now its bane.
6.  Note that this process is not atypical, it's how it works in other regions across the country.  Baltimore suffers from almost exactly the same process, but it lucks out in that the County Executives from the suburban jurisdictions mostly aren't as skilled as L. Brooks Patterson, so Baltimore City still manages to compete for residents and jobs, although it still mostly loses out.

DC has been saved from a similar fate by (1) the federal government's presence in the core--a certain percentage of federal government activity is required by law to remain in DC, although suburban and West Virginia legislators do everything they can to move federal agencies to their communities--which helps to fill up Downtown office space with organizations that benefit from being located close to the government; (2) attractive neighborhoods filled with historic building stock; (3) that once subway service was added to the city, made living in these neighborhoods worth it even in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, as the city became less safe and municipal services declined, because it was more "efficient" to get to work than it was living in the suburbs.

But it's still a struggle.

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Note that I do intend to write a piece comparing the response by Pittsburgh, Bilbao, Detroit, and Liverpool to similar circumstances.  Both Pittsburgh and Bilbao lost their steel and chemical industries (Bilbao also suffered from the decline of its role as a port), while Detroit lost its role as a center of production for the auto industry--and the gas crisis in 1973 should have been a wake-up call to the city of a change in material conditions.

Pittsburgh and Bilbao responded with wide ranging revitalization plans--it helped that both cities didn't have to deal with racism and segregation--and Detroit didn't, although it was a place where a number of successful one-shot projects (Renaissance Center, casinos, People Mover, new convention center, new baseball and football stadiums, etc.) that didn't contribute well enough to an overall program for reversing decline.

In that sense, Detroit's elected leaders did fail, and do bear some responsibility for the current failures, because they didn't act to manage the city's decline in a manner that would reduce the negative impact.

Smart Growth vs. Dumb Growth | Urbanism vs. Suburbanism -- politics in Clackamas County, Oregon

In terms of the previous discussion about pro-sprawl forces being engaged in a permanent campaign ("The right's permanent campaign in favor of their pro-sprawl (and anti-Democratic Party) message"), it is no surprise that "conservative" groups (the Oregon Transformation Project is primarily funded by timber industry interests) are donating money to certain Clackamas County political campaigns, and putting out the message that these candidates will support good county values of no development versus the creeping urbanism of Portland.

From "Regional transportation, cooperation at stake in three Clackamas County commission races" in the Portland Oregonian:

A new term has entered the political lexicon of Clackamas County: Portland creep.

Those two words, intended to denote density, crime, congestion and tax-happy bureaucracy, appear on two can't-miss billboards along Interstate 205 near Gladstone. The conservative Oregon Transformation Project's political action committee paid for the billboards to support a slate of candidates who, if elected, would take majority control of Clackamas County government.

The new phrase also sums up what's at stake in this year's race for three seats on the five-member Clackamas County Board of Commissioners: Should the county be a cooperative partner in regional efforts or become more politically independent and fiscally conservative? ...


The county's largely conservative, grass-roots movement already chalked up two significant reversals of county policy over the past year.

In May voters resoundingly approved a referendum that reversed the commissioner-approved $5 annual vehicle registration fee intended to help build a new Sellwood Bridge. In November, voters overwhelmingly supported requiring countywide approval for new urban renewal districts in unincorporated parts of the county, a move that effectively kills urban renewal.


The pro-sprawl forces produced a damn good but misleading--because they aren't for flowers, they are for anti-planning--billboard to communicate their message.  See "John Ludlow and Tootie Smith, Clackamas County commission candidates, receive contributions from Oregon Transformation Project" from the Portland Oregonian.

Everton Bailey Jr./The Oregonian.  A billboard along Interstate 205 near Gladstone urges Clackamas County voters to support Tootie Smith, John Ludlow and Jim Knapp, candidates for the Clackamas County commission. The billboard was paid for by the conservative group Oregon Transformation Project.

The organization has also helped to fund a ballot measure that will require public voting on all rail transit measures in Clackamas County ("Clackmas County won’t fight rail vote: County employees will continue to issue TriMet permits" from the Portland Tribune), which is an attempt to limit metropolitan transit expansion in the Portland region.  That election will be held September 18th.

In the May 15th primary election, one of the three candidates, Jim Ludlow, who ran for Board Chair, did win.

The issues in Clackamas County are somewhat comparable to Loudoun County in Northern Virginia, where expansion of the subway rail system to Dulles Airport and then beyond into Loudoun County is seen by pro-sprawl forces as a key element of what they could term "Urban creep" if the pro-sprawl forces put some money into a good ad agency.  See "Loudoun may have votes to OK Metro line" from the Washington Examiner.