Revisiting New Carrollton and the opportunity of transit oriented development: New train hall to be built at transit hub

 I've written so much about how Prince George's County, Maryland has been handed so many opportunities to reposition the county around transit oriented development, yet they've failed to take advantage of the opportunities time and time again.

The new train hall at New Carrollton aims to bind together the development of offices, housing and shops. (Gensler/Urban Atlantic).

Today's Post reports, "New Carrollton train hall will unite transit lines, bike lanes, retail," about a new train hall to be constructed at New Carrollton, the county's primary inner ring transit hub, with Metrorail, MARC, and Amtrak service now, and a Purple Line light rail connection whenever it manages to open.

(Note that Alex B./City Block has a good post on how to do a transit hub at New Carrollton, "Missing a chance to create a great transit hub – New Carrollton." I hope they read it.)

I wrote about New Carrollton in depth in 2014, where I suggested that Prince George's County create a center there, moving their government center to a Metrorail-connected location, and beginning the process of redeveloping the conurbation as a more walkable-connected-transit centric place.  Transit oriented development, TOD, although I didn't think of it in that way exactly.

-- "Go big or go home: Prince George's County needs to think big and consider better revitalization examples for New Carrollton" 

and repeated it, with little augmentation in 2017, in the Purple Line series:

-- "Part 4 |   Making over New Carrollton as a transit-centric urban center and Prince George's County's "New Downtown""

how Prince George's continues to be misguided in trying to make Largo its Downtown:

-- "Downtown is not a word without meaning: renaming the Largo Town Center to Downtown Largo is without meaning," 2021

that it shouldn't have taken them 40 years to come up with a TOD plan for the Blue Line:

-- "Prince George's County's newly announced transit oriented development program for the Blue Line," 2022

and that they should have made transit connections central to the National Harbor development:

-- "Backwardness of transportation and land use planning: National Harbor, Prince George's County, Maryland | Why isn't high capacity transit access required from the outset?," 2022

There are lots of links to relevant past blog entries within those posts.

(On an e-list there's been a discussion of suburban TOD and someone mentioned this journal article, "Seven American TODs: Good practices for urban design in Transit-Oriented Development projects," Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2008.)

The discussion in the first piece outlines how New Carrollton could be a TOD exemplar, using the examples elsewhere in the DMV of Tysons and Reston in Fairfax County, Virginia, and White Flint in Montgomery County.  But no, they keep doubling down on Largo, which is a pretty disconnected place.

Maybe this can be a transformational move, but with the competing centers of Largo and the failure to take a TOD/edge city transformation approach to New Carrollton, I am not hopeful.

Two more things.

1.  Start planning to extend the Purple Line to Alexandria NOW!  The original Purple Line series was only focused on the plans for constructing the line from Bethesda to New Carrollton, not on its expansion, or other opportunities.

In a follow up piece, "Revisiting the Purple Line (series) and a more complete program of complementary improvements to the transit network," in 2019, I made the point in the section on "meta network improvements" that there should commence immediately:

Expansion planning for the Purple Line on the south.  I didn't include beginning expansion planning for the Purple Line, at the very least southwest from New Carrollton to connect to the Blue/Silver Lines at Largo Town Center, the Green Line at Suitland, and even the Yellow/Blue Lines across the Potomac River in Alexandria.

 

 Flickr link.

This would provide a robust transit connection to National Harbor, and provide many more opportunities for transit connection and access and improvements in east-west movement on the south side of the Washington Metropolitan area.  

It would make New Carrollton a much more significant business and residential district.

And it is a part of #12 in the action points list in the 2014 piece.

2.  Improve the Public Schools.  In my talks with planners and developers, they tend to say, given the chance to build in PGC or elsewhere in the region, they prefer elsewhere, because the public school system lags, and people prefer other locations.

Besides College Park failing to take advantage of the University of Maryland as an anchor ("More Prince George's County: College Park's militant refusal to become a college town makes it impossible for the city(and maybe the County) to become a great place," 2015) this is probably why a lot of highly educated people choose not to live in PGC.

The Dallas Transformation Schools initiative is one worth considering as a model for rebooting the PGCPS, which has had oversight and management problems for a couple decades ("This school board can’t stop fighting. A Maryland bill aims to fix it," Washington Post).

-- "Dallas parents flocking to schools that pull students from both rich and poor parts of town," Hechinger Report

They could start with making the schools in the New Carrollton area a "Transformation Schools District," as a way to attract residents and new housing.

Conclusion.  A train hall isn't enough to transform New Carrollton, although I should have included it as a suggestion on the list of actions in the original piece.  

Although #12 is:

Strengthen New Carrollton's "edge city" position by strengthening its place in the metropolitan transit system by developing a separate transit vision plan, including extending the Purple Line light rail from New Carrollton to Alexandria, Virginia, which is part of the original Purple Line proposal (as pictured below), and the creation of MARC (the state's passenger rail system) railroad passenger service from Annapolis to New Carrollton (and on to Washington).

Unless it's seen as part of a much bigger, transformational program.