Articles

Traffic Buster

Pulte Home's challenge: Slash the number of auto trips generated by the proposed MetroWest project in Fairfax County. Success there will show how the right kind of growth can make traffic congestion better, not worse.

By Bob Burke

For most of the 19 years since Metrorail laid tracks down the middle of Interstate 66 in Fairfax County, critics have mocked this sprawling suburban giant as an example of what not to do when it comes to developing around transit.

A favorite target was the Vienna Metro station – the westernmost stop on the rail system’s Orange Line. Instead of using the rail station to get commuters out of their cars, Fairfax surrounded the station with parking lots, creating a magnet for more commuting traffic. Almost no one lived close enough to walk to the station, so nearly everybody had to drive, and the surrounding streets suffered.

Which is ironic, because protecting the neighborhoods near the station was a main reason Fairfax leaders gave for keeping development away. Today, though, with its population above one million and expected to keep climbing, Fairfax is changing course. On 56 acres right next to the Vienna Metro station, a developer is proposing a 2,250-unit high-density development that would put townhouses, condos, offices and retail within walking distance of the rail station.

Michigan-based Pulte Homes is the developer of the project, called MetroWest. If the county approves the project, in 10 years as many as 6,000 people could be living, working and shopping there.

It’s a huge investment for Pulte, which in 2002 paid $500,000 apiece for 69 single-family homes next to the station just to assemble the property. And it’s a big step for the county. Fairfax is already moving toward higher density, transit-oriented development at its other Orange line stations, and if the proposed extension of Metrorail to Dulles International Airport is completed it would bring eight more stations to the county, including four in the crowded Tysons Corner area. 

So the MetroWest project is a template of sorts for what will happen along the rest of the Metrorail line, where the county could concentrate thousands of new jobs and new residents instead of spreading them out in lower-density developments. “To some degree things have kind of gone wrong around the Vienna Metro,” says Fairfax Supervisor Linda Q. Smith, whose district includes the Pulte project site. “I think in some ways it does set a precedent. We are looking at Metro stations in the future, and what are we going to be doing around them?”

Perhaps the biggest question about the project is one nobody can definitively answer: Won’t a project this big make local traffic even worse?

“It’s pretty clear to those of us living around here that [the project] would just make the area dysfunctional,” says Will Elliott, a local resident who has organized an opposition group called Fairfax Citizens for Responsible Growth.

But supporters of the project say its mixed-use, transit-oriented design is going to have less impact than a traditional development would -- even though it will absorb more people and commercial development. The county is insisting that Pulte show it can reduce the number of residential rush-hour trips by 47 percent and office-generated trips by 25 percent compared to development at traditional densities.

A study completed this summer for the county by Washington-based UrbanTrans Consultants agreed that the trip reduction goals can be met. But it described them as “aggressive targets” and said that all elements of the project – from the incentives and disincentives to the range of commuting options such as transit, ridesharing, biking or walking  - would have to be in place before that would happen. Pulte leaders say they can meet those goals, through a variety of carrot-and-stick strategies.

Possible techniques outlined in the UrbanTrans study include:

• Limit condo purchasers to one parking space and charging for a second space.

• Give vanpools free preferential parking at desirable locations; provide vanpool subsidies for residents.

• Make sure the right retail mix emerges – including a small grocery store, child care, banks and ATMs, dry cleaning, cafes and restaurants, that are readily accessible on foot.

• Improve walking and biking pathways between Metro and the surrounding neighborhoods, and providing bike racks in convenient spots next to the condos and apartment buildings and the retail areas.

• Create free retail space for a bike shop where bikes can be purchased or repaired, and make ‘loaner’ bikes available to residents.

• Market the project and its transit-oriented lifestyle to current Metro riders; and encourage employers there to offer transit benefits to their employees.

• Create ‘SchoolPool’ program to help families with children attending the same school share transportation; encourage students at nearby Oakton High School to carpool, walk or bike.

• Work with shared-car providers such as FlexCar and ZipCar to provide discounted memberships. 

This is new territory in many ways – asking a developer to make people change their travel habits raises lots of questions. Is it reasonable to ask a developer to engage in behavior modification? What happens if the developer doesn't succeed?

“Clearly the full reduction doesn’t come into play until all the components of the project are up and running,” says Jon Lindgren, Pulte’s manager of land acquisitions. But in the seven to 10 years he estimates it will take to complete the project “there are going to be interim targets that we need to hit,” he says. And if the company isn't succeeding, it will try new tools. “Those numbers will be hit at the end of the day.”

Critics like Elliott are skeptical. He and others want the county to cap the project at about 1,500 residential units, and consider phasing in the construction to minimize the impact. He and other opponents aren’t against higher density, he says. “Everybody agrees that’s where the higher density should go, but there has to be some limits to it. That’s what we’re striving for.”

But Lindgren says MetroWest won’t be able to attract retailers if it reduces the residential density. “The more people living here, the better,” he says.

Supervisor Smith adds that bringing retail into the mix around the Vienna station – the coffee shops, dry cleaners and grocery stores - is crucial to easing the traffic load. “We haven’t gotten that mix of uses [before],” she says.

Some observers also are skeptical that anyone can make many future MetroWest residents stop driving, or accurately count how many of them do so. Says Becky Cate, chairwoman of the Providence District Council, an umbrella organization for area civic groups: “It depends on all those components coming together. But there’s nothing that says they can’t come back in 10 years and say, ‘Darn, we just couldn’t get that commercial partner. Can we build residential now?’”

Responds Smith: Nobody can predict the future, “but we can get those commitments established as firmly as we can.”

Another opponent of MetroWest’s density is Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, R-11th district, who earlier this year tried to block the sale to Pulte of 3.7 acres of Metro-owned land at the Vienna station. Davis later dropped that effort but is urging the county’s board of supervisors to lower the allowed density.

Lindgren says without the land the project could still proceed but it would push the development about 150 feet farther away from the station. It also would mean the company wouldn’t make $11.1 million in improvements to the Metrorail station, he says. “Our hope is to buy it,” he says. “We think it’s the best thing for the transit-oriented nature of the development.”

The trump card for supporters of the project is the county’s expected growth. Fairfax will add another 200,000 people by 2030, according to Census estimates. Opponents struggle to answer that challenge. “I’ve heard people say, ‘People are coming, where are you going to put them?’” says Cate, the citizen activist. “It’s a tough question. Do we put them all in Fairfax?”

Smith and others say the job and population growth is coming no matter what, and the county needs to make better use of the transit that the region has already built. Along that corridor, at least, the old suburban model is dead. “If we’re going to put development someplace it needs to be where density makes sense,” she says. “We can’t put these kinds of densities out in the boondocks of Fairfax County, because then everybody will still get in a car.”  

Bacon's Rebellion News Service

November 2, 2005