Articles

Auto Busters

Arlington County's population is growing but traffic congestion isn't. What makes the difference? Five Metro stations, smart land use and control over local streets and roads.

by Robert L. Burke

If there's any question in your mind about the benefits of turning responsibility for secondary roads over to local governments, consider the case of Arlington County.

The 26-square-mile locality is one of the most densely populated corners of Virginia, and it's getting denser all the time. Population has increased about seven percent since 2000 to more than 200,000 people -- about 7,700 inhabitants per square mile. In recent years, the county has averaged about two million square feet of new development a year, and it currently has about 4,000 housing units under construction.

If Arlington were like almost every other growing county in Virginia, traffic congestion would be getting worse. But get this: Traffic volume on some of Arlington's arterial streets actually dropped between 1996 and 2006, according to county data. Lee Highway in Rosslyn, for example, saw a 14 percent decline in traffic. Wilson Boulevard at Clarendon is down nearly 16 percent. Overall, traffic volume growth on arterial and local streets has flattened out during the decade, averaging less than half a percent on many streets.

Passage of The Comprehensive Transportation Funding and Reform Act of 2007 makes Arlington’s experience of more than academic interest. The new legislation creates a mechanism for urbanizing counties to assume responsibility for building and maintaining their own local roads -- much like Arlington and Henrico Counties have done since 1932, when the Virginia Department of Transportation assumed control over most of the state's streets and roads. Unlike VDOT, Arlington and Henrico have control over local land use, which means they can shape how development takes place and the level of traffic it generates. 

Henrico County officials clearly prefer their autonomy, but it is unclear whether the alignment of transportation and land use planning there has resulted in markedly better traffic conditions. (See "Doing It Their Way," March 21, 2007). There is no such ambiguity about Arlington, however. The numbers speak clearly. The question is, can other jurisdictions learn from Arlington's example?

Yes, says Chris Zimmerman, a 10-year veteran of the county’s Board of Supervisors. “I fundamentally believe that you don’t have control of your community if you don’t have control of your roads,” he says. “I don’t see VDOT ever being good at doing land-use planning. It’s really for the locals to do the job of integrating land use and transportation.”

Dennis Leach, the county’s director of transportation, says independence from VDOT’s oversight “gives us more flexibility for how we treat [local] roads. And in our community, emphasis on sidewalk pedestrian accessibility is very important. So we end up spending a lot of local money on on-street parking, sidewalks, curb and gutter [improvements],” he says. “Rarely do we expand the capacity of our streets.”

Dennis Morrison, VDOT’s district administrator for Northern Virginia, agrees that letting an urban county manage its own roads is better. Says he: “When they start doing land-use decisions and they’re responsible for maintaining their local road system, they put some skin in the game."

Of course, Arlington enjoys one huge advantage over nearly every other Virginia county: It is served by the Washington Metro, which takes a significant traffic load off local roads. But unlike neighboring Fairfax County, Arlington took full advantage of the opportunity.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Arlington leaders pushed to have the proposed Metrorail line moved from the median of I-66 to underneath the Wilson Boulevard corridor, and began the process of planning for the development that would follow. The county established development boundaries around the station areas to protect existing neighborhoods and those boundaries haven’t changed much, says Leach, the transportation director. “So where we are now is really refining and elaborating on the strategies that were laid out over 30 years ago.”

The county deserves credit for creating a vision of how it would grow and then sticking with it, Leach says. “That kind of re-planning around transit wasn’t being done in a lot of suburban jurisdictions [40 years ago]. You’ve got to be in it for the long haul, and you’ve got to be willing to ... adapt.”

To offset that unique advantage, Arlington has its share of unique challenges. Tens of thousands of federal workers living in outer localities drive through the county on the way to jobs in Washington, D.C., and in Arlington itself. The county is home to an estimated 200,300 jobs -- 22,000 of them in the Pentagon. The rush hour crush puts a tremendous strain on county Interstates and arterials. As a highly urbanized county, Arlington finds it prohibitively expensive to acquire the right of way to widen roads and expand road capacity.

By necessity, Arlington leads the state in implementing non-automotive transportation strategies. The county has expanded its Arlington Transit bus service, for example, which carried 926,600 passengers last year -- up from just 105,000 passengers a decade ago. It has partnered with Flexcar and Zipcar, car-sharing services, by putting prime parking spaces at their disposal. Over each of the past three years Arlington has built on average more than 20 sidewalk and intersection projects aimed at improving pedestrian access, and since 2000 it has installed more than 21 miles of new bike lanes.

There are limits, however, to Arlington's freedom of action. VDOT is responsible for 172 lane miles of highway, including key corridors such as Interstate 66, Lee Highway and Columbia Pike. VDOT also reviews Arlington road projects that affect the primary roads. Leach says VDOT’s involvement, even on smaller projects, can add a year or more. “At the local level we don’t think they require many rounds of review. But at VDOT, all projects are kind of treated the same. You still end up with 14 separate reviewers reviewing your plans before you get your permits. And that’s often when you’re spending your own money.”

Morrison at VDOT concedes that “Arlington is a well-planned, excellently managed community,” but defends VDOT's oversight role. When it comes to designing a road it’s hard to make room for buses, bikes, pedestrians and cars at the same time. “If you narrow a lane to 10 feet, that might work well for cars, but if you start throwing buses and trucks in, and if it [is] a roadway that also goes to Fairfax… then the state has an obligation” to make sure the road is safe, he says.

One could also argue that Arlington is privileged by virtue of the sweet deal it cut with the state 75 years ago. The county receives nearly $14 million this year for county road maintenance. Morrison, the VDOT administrator, says that’s about three times what VDOT would be given to do comparable work. Zimmerman, the county supervisor, agrees it is “a pretty good deal… It’s part of the reason why there’s been a reluctance to mess around with it,” he says.

Much of the debate over devolution boils down to money. Under the transportation legislation passed this year, counties taking on responsibility for local roads won't get the same deal that Arlington and Henrico did decades ago.  “I don’t know that you can make a modern-day comparison,” says Mike Edwards, deputy director for legislative affairs for the Virginia Association of Counties. Getting control of the management of local roads is appealing to many county leaders, he says, but the start-up costs and the state’s stingy funding is a discouragement.

On the other hand, Zimmerman thinks the regional transportation package that came out of the General Assembly “has the potential to be groundbreaking.” If officials in nine Northern Virginia counties and cities approve the new fees and taxes, the package could raise $324 million a year, plus another $100 million if localities approve a few other fees. Zimmerman is current chairman of the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, which would have the power to impose taxes and authorize $3 billion in bonds over 10 years for transportation projects.

If that money becomes a reality, Zimmerman sees a way to merge local funding for transportation with local land use decisions. “The idealist in me thinks there’s got to be a way to make this work,” he says.

-- April 16, 2007