Articles

Tipping Point

Northern Virginia may have reached a tipping point. Transit-oriented projects are becoming a major force in the marketplace, displacing traditional, auto-centric development.

By Peter Galuszka

LORTON--As mothers pushed strollers on sidewalks past rows of new townhouses, bricklayers and sheetrock installers were putting the finishing touches on two three-story buildings near the light rail station here last week. These mixed-use structures will complete the 200-acre Residences at the Lorton Station project begun in the late 1990s by Vienna-based KSI Services.

On the ground floor of the new buildings, small retail shops will offer pizza, dry cleaning and double lattes to local folk on their five-minute walks to and from the Virginia Railway Express. On the two stories above, one- and two-bedroom condominiums will sell in the $500,000 range.

The 1,170-unit KSI Services development epitomizes what may be the most important, if unheralded, development trend in Northern Virginia in the past half century. After decades of scattered, low-density, auto-centric development, builders are shifting toward transit-oriented development (TOD). KSI and a number of other developers see profit in providing the kind of projects that urban planners and environmentalists have been advocating for years: high-density, mixed-use projects within a short walk to efficient public transportation.

Since World War II, developers in Northern Virginia and across the country followed the same model: They pushed to build cookie-cutter housing developments pegged to highways and car transportation. In the communities they built, most activities required a gasoline-powered engine to convey suburbanites from pod to pod of work, shopping, recreation or worship. Auto dependency led to a clogging of the roads, which led to hop-scotch development to areas not yet clogged, which led to people driving even greater distances -- and greater reliance upon the automobile -- than before.

Now that congestion has passed a serious pain threshold and petroleum prices have surpassed $70 per barrel, however, Northern Virginia may have reached a tipping point. Rather than pushing relentlessly outward, growth is backfilling the precincts closer to public transportation.

Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” seems to be helping. The market for urban housing is driven by the demographics of aging baby boomers who are sick of mowing lawns and waiting at stop lights, as well as Twenty Somethings who want a more urban living experience.

“We’re seeing a lot of infill in areas that previously had not been seen as opportunities,” says Paul Desjardin, chief of housing and planning for the Greater Washington Council of Governments.

Shelley Poticha, president of the Oakland, Calf.-based Center for Transit-Oriented Development, says that the trend is national. She predicts that demand for housing with access to mass transportation will double in 20 years in the Washington area, as it will across the nation.

In the Washington region, KSI is leading the trend. With the Lorton Station project winding up, KSI has announced seven new projects that tout proximity to the VRE or the Washington Metro. These include Midtown Alexandra Station, West Village of Shirlington, Harbor Station, Potomac Club and Midtown Reston Town Center. But KSI is not alone. In a project that has attracted intense media scrutiny, Pulte Homes, the Michigan-based housing behemoth, has won approval for a project on 56 acres next to the Vienna Metro Station that could provide housing for 6,000 people, plus retail and office buildings.

Linking housing developments to efficient public transportation is hardly a new idea. Nearly 100 years ago in nearly any city of any size, streetcars, buses or railroads connected people with their jobs. By 1956, the white collar commuter had become such an icon for corporate America that the neighborhood rail station was the obvious background prop for harried businessman Tom Rath played by Gregory Peck in the morality movie, “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.” 

The metropolitan Washington area had its share of street car and rail lines. Regular service used to run from the District to Manassas. In 1920s Maryland, a trolley track threaded its way from Washington to Bethesda and on to Rockville. But the construction of the Interstate 495 Beltway shifted the dynamics entirely in favor of the automobile. Local zoning policies accelerated the demise of transit by virtually prohibiting development of the kind of compact, pedestrian-friendly communities that transit thrived in, while state transportation policy poured money into new road construction. Transit, it seemed, was dead.

About a decade ago, the idea of “Transportation Oriented Development” underwent a revival among urban planners as traffic congestion worsened and the limits of an auto-centric transportation system became increasingly evident. Now enthusiasm for TOD projects is finding favor among developers.

Ten years ago, KSI's business model was geared toward building new, auto-dependent communities on the metropolitan periphery, says Cassie Wallace Cataline, the firm's vice president of marketing. Several factors shifted the company's focus, she says. First, there's a growing scarcity of land within a decent car commute of Washington, D.C., and surrounding jurisdictions. Second, consumer tastes are changing. An increasing share of the population wants to live closer to urban amenities.

Third, the cost of automobile ownership and the commuting lifestyle is getting prohibitive. Washington has earned a well-deserved reputation for traffic gridlock, and the rising price of gasoline -- nearing $3 a gallon -- has pushed up the cost to own and operate an automobile. The American Automobile Association estimates that it costs at least $7,000 to maintain an car in Northern Virginia. 

According to a recent report by The Brookings Institution in Washington, “The significant increase in recent gas prices has important impacts on affordability. At $3.00 per gallon, double the price of gas just two years ago, the average household will increase its total transportation expenditures by 14 percent, or $1,200 a year.” Those expenses can mount up, especially for families with three or four cars.

That’s where transportation-friendly projects such as Lorton Station come in. VRE charges commuters from Lorton Station $159 a month or $1,908 a year to commute each day to Union Station in downtown Washington. Workers going to the Pentagon or offices in Crystal City pay $130.80 a month, or $1,569.60 a year, in commuting expenses. Either way, mass transit provides a savings of at least $5,000 annually per commuter.

Trains aren’t the only alternative, either. At Lorton, KSI has built in a “slug line” -- a special location where drivers can pick up passengers to share the ride. Cars carrying slugs can use the less congested High Occupancy Vehicle lanes that require three or more passengers during rush hours. (Getting caught alone on a HOV lane can bring fines of more than $120.) At Lorton Station, says Cataline, demand for the HOV cars was 30 percent higher than KSI anticipated.

Other alternatives to the one man-one car syndrome include “Flex Cars,” in which qualified drivers can go online to reserve a car for a little as an hour, or as long as all day. Flex Cars are parked near some KSI projects. KSI also sponsors van services that take residents to work.

There is "a lot of demand" across the country for projects offering homeowners access to transit and other transportation alternatives, says Poticha, with the Center for Transit-Oriented Development. More than 40 metropolitan areas in the United States right now are served by some type of rail or light rail system, and developers are cashing in by building projects near stations. In Denver, voters are funding five new transit lines over 15 years. That investment will lead to 100 new neighborhoods similar to Lorton Station in coming years. Other bright spots, Poticha says, are Los Angeles, which opened a new rail line, Dallas, which has a sophisticated approach to transport-related projects, and Chicago, which has revived its traditional transit lines such as the “L". 

Fannie Mae, the national mortgage-repackaging company, is accelerating the shift through its so-called “Smart Commute” initiative. Eligible single-family home buyers who locate within ¼ mile of public transportation can qualify for cheaper mortgages. By applying part of their transportation savings to their qualifying income, they can even become eligible for larger mortgages. Fannie Mae offers the program in about two dozen metro areas across the country, including Washington, Green Bay, El Paso and Sacramento.

Some believe, however, that Fannie Mae could do more to push development closer to transport hubs. Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, says that Fannie Mae could have developed programs with more rigorous requirements and “not just having a bus stop nearby.” But Fannie Mae ran into trouble because mortgage underwriters balked at handling the more stringent mortgage deals. So, the company opted for the easier path, he says.

Fannie Mae’s idea is a good one, says Poticha, but the company falls short in promoting it. Homeowners often don’t know to look for the program when they shop for mortgages. A Fannie Mae spokeswoman declined to make an official available for comment, saying that no specific individual at Fannie Mae was responsible for the program.

Although transportation-oriented development is getting a lot of buzz, it's too early to tell if the concept is sustainable over long periods of time, says Dan Slone, a land use attorney with McGuire Woods in Richmond. “You have to look over a 100-year period,” he says. 

Based on surveys at Leland Station, a transit- oriented project located near the VRE line in Stafford County, it appears that residents do utilize the transportation alternatives, says Dan Slone, a real estate and environmental lawyer at the McGuire Woods law firm in Richmond. But the real test is to see what happens with the "second wave, the ultimate settlers."

Ensuring that second waves of homeowners use the transit could depend very much on how developers design their projects. Many tripwires can foul up the planning, says Schwartz. For example, when builders put roads in their projects, they must take care not to make the thoroughfares so wide that pedestrian risk injury if they attempt to cross.

At Lorton Station, for example, it takes only a quick walk to cross the main drag. But nearby are roads with four or more lanes that were not built with pedestrians in mind. U.S. 1 is a speedway notorious for auto wrecks with injuries.

Other issues involve how much free parking to place in a project. When it comes to parking, Schwartz argues, less is more. Fewer spots force more people to use public transportation. Prices for parking should be separated from living costs, he contends, so that appropriate “pricing signals” can be sent to homebuyers.

An impediment to market-based pricing for parking is the need to integrate retail stores into the development mix. Local shops make sense in transit-oriented development because they provide goods and services that residents can on foot. But fearing that retailers will fail without the same ratio of parking spots as required in a conventional, auto-centric developments, lending institutions often require developers to add unnecessary free parking.

Despite those concerns, Schwartz acknowledges that the trend towards transit-oriented development is real and welcome. “There’s a lot of pressure to live closer,” he says.

Slone still isn't sure that “we’ve turned the corner.” That won’t be known until many more projects are in place, but “the general belief” is that they will be.

Bacon's Rebellion News Service

April 20, 2006