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We
returned from the Northern Rocky Mountain Urban
Support Region to find that Gov. Timothy M.
Kaine has thrown in the towel on mobility and
access. Kaine seems set on condemning
Virginians to a future of immobility, economic
stagnation, social conflict and ecological
dysfunction.
We
had held out hope for a brighter future as
recently as two weeks ago. Kaine’s recent
actions quashed the optimism expressed on the
Bacon’s Rebellion Blog (“Learning
from the EU,” Aug. 2, 2006) that perhaps
“Tim was listening three years ago.” (See End
Note One.)
The
First Shoe
Kaine dropped the first
shoe when he decided to withdraw his support for
a tunnel under Tysons Corner to carry METRO Rail
to Dulles. This decision represents a
tragic failure to understand the reality of
“Rail To Dulles.” METRO to Dulles is not a
transportation-facility issue. The core
importance of Rail to Dulles is using a new
mobility option to reduce the total demand for
vehicle transport. That goal is achieved
by catalyzing functional human settlement
patterns in the form of Balanced Communities in
Greater Tysons Corner and in Greater Reston.
As we documented in “Rail-to-Dulles
Realities” (Jan. 4, 2004), “Rail
to Dulles is a land-use (settlement pattern)
issue, not a transportation infrastructure
issue.”
The more obvious
problems with an elevated track through Tysons
Corner are well covered in WaPo and in Bacon’s
Rebellion. (See “This Thing ... You can See
from Pittsburgh,” Sept. 8, 2006.) Just hope the fundamental flaw in
this decision can be seen not just from
Pittsburgh but also from Boise, more on that
later.
The overarching problem with
Kaine’s Tysons Tunnel decision is that it
demonstrates a failure by Kaine and his advisors
to understand the importance of balancing
transport system capacity with the trip-generation demand of alternative settlement
patterns. It illuminates a glaring void in
grasping the importance of evolving Balanced
Communities throughout the Commonwealth.
Silver
Linings
There are several
potential silver linings in this cloud, although
the way in the decision was announced gives no
indication that the decision was anything more than
Business As Usual.
One potential
benefit is that everyone can now stop wasting
time trying to revitalize/transform Tysons
Corner. There is far more land already
developed than there is a foreseeable need for in
the Virginia portion of the National Capital
Subregion, even if Tysons Corner becomes one of
Joel Garreau’s Edge City Ghost Towns.
The elevated track scheme will end the dream of
a walkable Greater Tysons Corner with a balance
of Jobs/Housing/ Services/Recreation/Amenity for the foreseeable future, and perhaps
forever. We say “forever” because the
window is closing on proliferation of scattered,
autonomobility-dominated settlement patterns as
noted in our last column “The Whale On the
Beach,” Aug. 28, 2006.)
If Tysons Corner
faded away and the current
functions were replaced in other locations, the
result might be much better and much more
efficient. (See “Five Critical Realities
That Shape the Future,” Dec. 15, 2003.)
Everyone who owns land
that they want to redevelop outside of Greater
Tysons Corner in the Virginia portion of the
National Capital New Urban Region will breathe a
sigh of relief. “Revitalizing” Tysons
Corner to a place for 500,000 people to live,
work and play would have adsorbed the market for
Class A Office/Employment and for non-single
family detached housing for the next 20
years.
A much better bet now
is to
encourage Reston land owners and the Dulles
Airports Authority to build over the Dulles Toll
Road (DAAR) right-of-way to create the northern part of
Virginia’s urbane Core in Reston, not Tysons
Corner. The current Reston Town Center can
evolve into a functional Alpha Village Center, as
can an expanded Lake Anne Village Center.
Given a new governance structure, Greater Reston
could evolve into a “Great, Good Place,”
a truly Balanced Alpha Community as originally
envisioned – albeit for 200,000 citizens
rather than a population of 75,000 as planned by
Bob Simon. The introduction of a subregion-serving
shared vehicle system makes that change in scale
a possibility and a necessity and demonstrates
the power of transport facilities to shape
settlement pattern.
Another
possibility is for Fairfax Center to evolve to
be the urbane Core of the northern part of
Virginia. The options are endless...
If there is a need to save more money on the
METRO to Dulles project, we suggest one more
change – run the METRO “Silver Line” in
toll road median and reduce the
number of Tysons Corner stations to one or two
at the maximum. Every future Dulles air
traveler using the system to and from the Core
of the National Capital Subregion will be
grateful. Not running METRO on stilts
through Greater Tysons generates another
potential silver lining. It might energize
the Tysons Corner land owners to take the
provision of mobility and access into their own
hands instead of looking for a handout from the
public in line with observations by Jim Bacon
over the years.
The DAAR
alignment would create an opportunity to build a new mobility system that tied together
the Core of the Greater McLean Village and a
revitalized Core for the Greater Vienna Village,
with three or four new Village Cores in the
1,500 acre Less-Than-Greater Tysons Corner.
The new shared vehicle system could have stops
to interchange with the METRO Rail to Dulles and
with the METRO Orange Line at Virginia Center (aka,
the Vienna/Fairfax/GMU METRO station. (See End Note
Two.)
Other mobility
alternatives are spelled out in
“Rail-to-Dulles Realities,”
Jan. 4, 2004, in “It Is Time To Fundamentally
Rethink METRO,” Oct. 18, 2004, and
in “The Problem with
'Mass' Transit,”
May 15, 2005. The shape of the
Commonwealth’s mobility future is outlined in
“Regional Rigor
Mortis,” June 6, 2005.
They all involve provision of fundamentally
different and functional human settlement
patterns made up of Balanced Communities.
In summary, Kaine has closed a door on Tysons
Corner but opened two or more other doors.
The problem is that the Tysons Tunnel decision
was not based on an intelligent long-term
strategy. It was based on short term
expediency and the failure to understand the
role of transport infrastructure in evolving a
functional, sustainable future.
The
Second Shoe
The second shoe that
Kaine dropped in the last few days shows another
aspect of the failure to understand the role of
transportation facilities in providing mobility
and access for large urban agglomerations.
A new VDOT Commissioner appears to be a
pro forma
state highway department executive with some
unpleasant experiences during his three years in
Idaho. I have found no indication that he
understands the
relationship between transport infrastructure
and settlement patterns.
I
would not know Dave Ekern if I ran into him on
the sidewalk in Wallace, where, by the way, I
have never been. (See End Note
Three.)
Most of what we know about Ekern is what those
who hired and those who interviewed him have
said on the record plus what we can find through
Google and Ask searches. (What did we do before Google?)
None
of what we have seen bodes well. Do we
need someone who persuaded “state leaders to
spend more on roads?” Is this 1980? Does the Commonwealth need a leader who thinks
innovation is selling bonds instead of raising
taxes? Are toll roads an innovation today
or was that 1806?
How many times must it
be said, more money is not the answer.
More money is not even part of the answer
without Fundamental Change in human settlement
patterns. More money for more roads makes
congestion worse, not better.
More money and more roads applying the same
criteria used in the past makes congestion,
immobility and lack of access worse, not better.
(See “Regional Rigor Mortis,”
June 5, 2004.)
There are almost no
transportation facility solutions to mobility
and access problems in large New Urban Regions.
As luck would have it, the only places in the
Commonwealth with are mobility and access
problems are in the New Urban Regions – the
bigger the region, the worse the problem – and
where there is now over-reliance on the wrong
mobility system (e.g. trucks rather than rail in
the Shenandoah/West-of-the-Blue Ridge
Corridor).
Google and Ask searches
suggest that Ekern, who previously worked in
Minnesota, is an AASHTO (American Association of
State Highway and Transportation Officials)/TRB (Transportation Research Board) denizen.
AASHTO and TRB are wholly owned subsidiaries of
federal and state transportation (mainly
highway) bureaucracies and the Autonomobility
Lobbies. Ekern has exhibited interest in a
range of traditional highway issues but
demonstrated no specific understanding of
settlement patterns and their impact on mobility
and access.
The best hope the
Commonwealth has for a good outcome is that
during Mr. Ekern’s years in Idaho, and in the
years before, that he did a lot of traveling.
It is 170 miles from the border of Idaho to
nearest settlement patterns (Puget Sound New
Urban Region) that bear any resemblance to the
challenges faced in the Commonwealth.
The biggest metropolitan area in Idaho is half
the size of Fairfax County. The entire
state has about 1.4 million people. That
is far less than in the Virginia Portion of the
National Capital Subregion and far less than the
population of the Hampton Roads New Urban
Region.
The 1.4 million people in
Idaho are spread across 53-plus million acres
about twice the size of Virginia.
Why is scale and density important? The
difficulty of providing mobility and access to
urban settlement patterns increases with the
square of the urban agglomeration’s
population. The bigger, the harder.
When mobility and access have been neglected for 40 years and
the New Urban Regions are prosperous, as is the
case in Virginia for the time being, the
problems demand innovative solutions.
There are mobility and access problems in Idaho
but they bear little resemblance to those in the
Commonwealth. The mobility and access
issues in Idaho (and my home territory of
Montana) are fundamentally different than those
in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
It would
seem that someone who would be well qualified
for a highway job in Idaho in 2003 would not be
well qualified for a transportation job in
Virginia in 2006. (See End Note
Four.)
Granted, it would be hard to find well qualified
candidates for the job that needs to be done at
VDOT -- especially when those who
hired Ekern describe talents that are largely
irrelevant to Virginia’s pressing needs. What
is needed is a person who understands human settlement patterns, not
“a recognized leader in transportation
operations, management, context sensitive
design and innovative programs delivery.”
Mr. Ekern is cited for his potential to foster
smarter integration of transportation and land
use planning. “Integration” is not the
issue. The issue is Balance. A
balance must evolve between transport system
capacity and the travel demand generated by the
settlement pattern.
The
issue is not “land use planning,” the issue
is settlement patterns and the facilities needed
to create a balance between demand and capacity.
Most of that capacity will not be provided by
highways because more highways, especially where
they are easy and cheap to build, just
make congestion worse. It is a matter of
physics not policy or politics. Large
urban agglomerations cannot be served
efficiently with autonomobiles and trucks, and
it is impossible to serve them at all without
major strides toward creation of Balanced
Communities within sustainable New Urban
Regions.
Virginia needs a VDOT
leader with the fortitude to state plainly that
some settlement patterns cannot be provided with
the level of mobility and access that meets
citizen expectations, and that all new transport
facilities must be used to help evolve
settlement patterns that can be provided with
mobility and access.
(See “The
Shape of Richmond’s Future,” Feb. 16, 2003,
and “Balanced Communities,”
Aug. 12 2005.
We
don't know if anyone is well suited but Ekern
definitely is not,
based on what those who hired him describe as
his strong suits. His appointment
(nomination) also raises the question of who
will be appointed to the Commonwealth
Transportation Board which Ekern will chair.
Does Tim Kaine have more shoes to drop?
--
September 11, 2006
End
Notes
1.
Actually “three years ago” was four
years and four days ago when S/PI was invited to
give Kaine and others a briefing at Arlie House
on the transportation / settlement pattern
reality.
2.
It is hard for some to give up on that Virginia
Center place name.
3.
Wallace, Idaho, is a place no one in the
Northern Rocky Mountain Urban Support Region
ever admits having visited.
4.
Do not come with that weak “Rail and
Public Transportation handles the non-highway
issues” argument. VDOT is the 500-pound gorilla and
VDOT dominates mobility and access funding and
decision making.
--
August 28, 2006
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