The Shape of the Future

E M Risse

Too Little, Too Late

Governor Warner's proposal to link transportation and land use planning might have made a difference -- 30 years ago. Now, far more radical measures are called for.

On 6 December, Gov. Mark R. Warner announced that he intends to improve transport/land-use relationships as part of his reformation of the Virginia Department of Transportation. At the community, subregional, regional and intraregional scales, the failure to plan transportation and land use in concert has resulted in growing traffic congestion and will lead to eventual physical and economic gridlock. For this reason, it is great news that among the items Warner lists in his VDOT reform effort (and one that The Washington Post conveniently overlooked in its coverage) is to plan transportation and land-use together. 

However, there are at least three problems with Warner’s promise on coordinating land use and transportation:

• It is 30 years too late because citizens, enterprises and agencies have already painted the Commonwealth into a corner from which it will be very difficult to escape.

• There are no comprehensive regional land-use plans and no generally-accepted criteria with which to judge when a balance exists between land-use trip generation and transport-system capacity.

• The specific method to coordinate transportation and land use the Warner listed in his press release will compound the existing problems.

30 Years too Late

For a pledge to tie land-use and transportation planning together in Virginia, especially in the northern part of the Commonwealth, 1972 would have been about the right year.

First, in 1972, Virginia was still as a leader among states in the field of regional planning. Today it is never even mentioned in the same breath as Oregon, Vermont, Hawaii or even Maryland. Back then, Virginia was in the first rank with coastal zone management and open space preservation, and regional planning district commissions played a meaningful role in spacial issues including transportation.

Second, 1972 was just over 10 years after the Plan for the Year 2000 (“Wedges and Corridors”) was released. This plan had the backing of the Kennedy Administration and was the first plan since 1791 that attempted to balance land use with transportation in the National Capital Subregion. This document established a rational basis for comprehensive subregional and regional sketch plans. The subregional plans that were based on the Wedges and Corridors Plan, especially those for the northern part of Virginia developed in the mid-60s, exhibited an intelligent balance between the area designated for urban land uses and area reserved for nonurban land uses.

Third, construction of METRO was underway in 1972. The National Capital Subregion could have a heavy rail transit system as the armature of its transportation system if only land use was intelligently planned in METRO station areas.

Fourth and most important, the area already devoted to urban land uses in 1972 was about as much land as would be needed to serve a 2050 population of 6,000,000 for the National Capital Subregion and 10,000,000 for the Washington-

Baltimore New Urban Region. All that was lacking was a quantification and locational articulation of land-use demands. With this information, realistic community-scale plans with a functional transportation system could have been a reality.  These plans could have guided the rebuilding of the urban area into sustainable human settlement patterns.

The Commonwealth Has Been Painted into a Corner

Over the past 46 years, engineers, municipal planners, winner-take-all development projects and least-common-denominator land use plans have painted citizens of Virginia (and the rest of the United States) into a corner. What happened throughout the Commonwealth happened with the greatest negative impact in the northern part of Virginia. What happened in Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William Counties and in the other municipal jurisdictions within 70 miles of the core of the National Capital Subregion is as bad as anywhere in the United States. That is why the Subregion has one of the nation’s most dysfunctional transport systems measured in terms of hours of delay, length of trips and wasted resources.

There are no easy alternatives to address today’s traffic congestion problem. The current congestion is projected to grow exponentially unless there is a fundamental change. All the conventional ‘solutions’ are expensive and/or ineffective. Because the Commonwealth has been opting for short-term, non-comprehensive fixes for so long, there are in fact no solutions except to implement fundamental change. For this reason, the state and municipal governments are paralyzed. Politicians, transportation professionals and governance  practitioners in general are frozen in the headlights, and a crash is eminent. 

(For background and exploration of this issue, see Physics of Gridlock and two other PowerPoint presentations that explain why traffic is bad now and going to become worse. These presentations by S/PI will be available soon on the Bacon's Rebellion web site.)

The multi-billion dollar overruns of the Big Dig in Boston is the national poster child of urban core transport restructuring expense. Virginia has its own poster child with the I-95/I-395/I-495 Springfield Mixing Bowl. Consider the cost of all the mixing bowls it would require to rebuild the Capital Beltway and its interchanges. Even 30 and 40 miles from the core in places like Gainesville and Warrenton (where they have already tried four bypass surgeries) there is no room for major highway projects, even if funds were available. Some of the expensive responses to congestion and lack of mobility will create even more problems. All of the real solutions are counterintuitive -- that is counter to conventional wisdom. 

During the past 30 years, there has been no pretense of tying the planning of land use and transportation together. Take the example of Fairfax County. When it comes to land use, Fairfax County is the 1,000,000-person gorilla of the northern part of Virginia. Most of the land in the Commonwealth within 20 miles of the National Capital Subregion’s core is in Fairfax County. 

Here is what a gorilla with land-use controls but no responsibility for balancing transportation can do to a Subregion. In the period from 1973 to 1975, Fairfax County revised its comprehensive plan.  According to the County’s own transportation planners at the time, the land uses in the new 1975 Fairfax County Comprehensive Plan generated four times more trips than could be served by the transportation system shown on the plan. This is a prima facie case of failure to achieve a balance of transport and land use. This is without even worrying about who would pay for the roads on the plan. What was not clear until recently is that no matter what roadways were on the plan or how much money was available, mobility cannot be provided for dysfunctional human settlement patterns.

In the late 80s, Fairfax County changed its plan again because the result -– exactly what was planned in 1973-1975 -– was not working. By then, low-density urban land uses were scattered across the County, and METRO station platforms were insulated by administrative convenience spaces, parking lots, parking garages and highway rights-of-way from the destinations METRO riders wanted to access. In addition, new urban land uses were being sucked into the land-use black holes created by overplanning and overzoning in Loudoun and Prince William Counties.

It all started over 60 years ago when the idea of an “interregional” expressway system began to morph into an intraregional urban commuter system.  Beware of initiatives launched in the name of ‘national security.’ 

The real losers are the citizens who relied on conventional wisdom in traffic engineering and real estate investment. They must now pay for the results –- scattered urban land uses, dysfunctional human settlement patterns, expensive and degraded services and a fatally flawed transportation system.  Most citizens will have no way to get to where they believe they need to go.  

There Are No Plans Against Which One Can Test Land-use Projects or Transportation Facility Proposals

The crowning irony is that there are not yet any regional or subregional sketch plans that balance jobs, housing, services, recreation and amenity at the community scale. In addition, there are no criteria that can be used to judge alternative transportation facilities plans.  

Warner's Solution is to have VDOT Help Create Better, County, City and Town "Comprehensive Plans"

Space does not permit an exploration of the tragically flawed municipal planning system, but just getting help on the transportation element will not solve any known problem. (See The Role of Municipal Planning in Creating Dysfunctional Human Settlement Patterns.)

Where to From Here?

Kill the Private Vehicle Mobility Myth!

If Governor Warner wants to address transportation congestion and put VDOT on a sound footing, the first step is to drive a stake through the heart of the two-part Private Vehicle Mobility Myth. This myth sustains private vehicle pseudo economics and least-common-denominator public policy. This myth can be stated as follows:

Individuals can work wherever they can find a job, live wherever they can afford a house, seek services and recreation wherever they wish and then it is possible to build a roadway system so they can drive in a private vehicle wherever they want, whenever they want to go there and arrive in a timely manner. 

 

An enterprise can locate its business wherever it wants, and hire employees who can live wherever they can afford a house, and it is the enterprise’s right to have the public fund a roadway system so its employees can drive to work and its vehicles delivering goods and services can travel wherever they want, whenever they want to go there and arrive in a competitive time frame.

When plainly stated, the Private Vehicle Mobility Myth is clearly just that, a myth.

Governor Warner could, if he were serious about congestion, set up process to dispatch the Private Vehicle Mobility Myth.

Next he could initiate a program to create regional sketch plans for every region and subregion in the Commonwealth.

The Governor then could require that all state transportation funds be spent on projects that support the creation of balanced, Alpha Communities that have plans based on real, regional and subregional sketch plans.

Now that would tie transportation and land-use together. Anything short of these bold actions is window dressing.

-- December 23, 2002