Bacon's Rebellion

On Sunday, 02 December, Jim Bacon summarized the latest news on “Rail to Dulles” in a post titled “Big Tysons Landowners Fear Billions in Windfall Profits May Be in Peril.” So far there are nearly 60 comments following this post.

As we noted in our comment of 8:44 PM on 03 December “Jim Bacon’s Post is correct “in the current context.” Many of the subsequent comments are heartfelt, earnest and based on the commentors’ understanding of their experience. As is often the case with statements on human settlement pattern / transport – especially those concerning shared-vehicle systems – many are out of alignment with the reality of Greater Tysons Corner’s current context.

Before outlining the Tysons Context, one should be clear on the goal of extending METRO to Tysons Corner and beyond. We suggest that the goal of building a shared-vehicle system to Tysons Corner should be to enhance Mobility and Access. Specifically, the goal should be Mobility and Access that supports the evolution of an Alpha (Balanced) Community in Greater Tysons Corner. An Alpha Community is a place that optimizes citizen happiness, safety and prosperity. In other words maximizes citizen well being.

To achieve functional and affordable Mobility and Access for Greater Tysons Corner there must be Balance. In this context, Balance has three major components:

1. Relative Balance of J / H / S / R / A for the entire Community as defined in GLOSSARY.

2. Balance of the whole Community also requires relative Balance of J / H / S / R / A in each of the projected four station areas proposed to serve the Zentrum of Greater Tysons Corner.

3. The most important aspect of Alpha Community Balance is Balance between the travel demand generated by the settlement pattern throughout Greater Tysons Corner and the capacity of the Mobility systems that serves the Community, including pedestrian travel.

The existence of a shared-vehicle system – and to a lesser extent a supportive, but not dominate private-vehicle system – is what allows there to be “relative” Balance rather than “absolute” Balance in the organic components of Greater Tysons Corner.

Now the Greater Tysons Corner Current Context:

There are millions of factors that make up the Context but there are six major ones that may be considered the controlling elements of Tysons Corner Contextual Reality:

1. Land Owner / Land and Building Developer Objectives

Land Owners and Land and Building Developers (here-in-after “land owners”) make more money from some land uses than from other land uses. Some land uses required to achieve Balance do not generate a profit, at least not immediate profit. Others support the whole Community and do not directly benefit any specific individual, Household or Organization.

Less expensive space for Affordable and Accessible Housing and for Enterprise and Institution incubators is the most commonly noted “below market” needs but functional Openspace is another important one.

Land owners focus on the land uses that make the most money, the fastest. That is what Enterprises are created to accomplish.

Land owners lose money every day if they do nothing with the land in which they have invested.

Land owners have information and / or the ability to gather data and create intelligence on the evolution of functional human settlement patterns. However, information is power and they use their power to enhance their economic leverage, they do not use it to create more functional human settlement patterns. That is also what they are in business to do.

2. Too Much Land

There is vastly more development potential in four METRO station-areas than can be adsorbed by the market in a time frame that would return a profit on investment. In addition, there is a need for the creation of a Critical Mass in each station area to achieve Balance. There cannot be four partial station-areas over a long time period.

For a further discussion of the fact that there is far more land than market, see Backgrounder “It is Time to Fundamentally Rethink METRO and Mobility in the Nation Capital Subregion.” and the Shape of the Future column “Rail to Dulles Realities” 4 January 2004.

Not all land owners / developers can be successful. They know this and so Enterprises jockey for position and try to limit the amount of land that can be developed by other Enterprises. For example they scoff at Air Rights over land that the public owns – unless the particular entity does not own land. See “All Aboard” 16 April 2007.

3. Limited METRO Capacity

The “Silver Line” has very limited capacity as everyone has now admitted.

Even the S/P’s “Turquoise Line” proposal from the 1980s has less than optimum capacity due to flaws in the original METRO system concept. For that reason S/P has, since the late 90s, advocated extending METRO to Greater Tysons Corner and then creating a different shared-vehicle service to Dulles via a new system with a station in Greater Tysons Corner but with technology and alignment that would get travelers from Dulles to Capitol Hill in 5 stops vs the 25 stops now envisioned.

Because of METRO’s limited capacity, the “relative” Balance at each station must be much closer to “absolute” Balance. This makes the first two contextual realities far harder to address.

4. What makes “Mass Transit” Work

The optimum shared-vehicle system from a revenue perspective is one that serves at one end a Gulag where everyone lives (Houses) and at the other a Gulag where everyone works (Jobs). There is a stop in the middle where all the Services / Recreation / Amenity are located. Finally the three stop are too far apart to walk and there is no vehicle alternative. On this hypothetical system, the seats are filled 24 / 7 because everyone has to ride.

Not many would be happy in this settlement pattern configuration.

The optimum station-area settlement pattern for quality of life of citizens and prosperity of Enterprises and Institutions as well as the residents / workers is one where the citizens have to resort to a vehicle of any sort infrequently to assemble a quality life.

Existence of a shared-vehicle system is what makes this settlement pattern possible and SYSTEM-WIDE Balance of capacity with travel demand is what makes it economically feasible. The private-vehicle system is the cherry on the top of the sundae, not the only way to get from any A to any B.

Given minimum capacity of METRO this is a back breaker for all the simple minded “transit feasibility” tests that US DOT generates.

5. Business as Usual Support for Growth and Consumption

Most Enterprises, many Institutions and some Agencies see any new transport system as “progress” and believe that “growth raises all boats.”

These Organizations jump from supporting one proposal to supporting another. The only criteria is that they do not get taxed to pay for any new Mobility and Access services.

This is what the activities that were reported in the original WaPo story upon which Jim Bacon posted were all about.

6. Political Process

The process by which decisions are now made on new transport services is a process controlled by politicians. The first priority of politicians is getting elected again. The first priority of politicians is not creating functional human settlement patterns or Balancing travel demand with transport system capacity.

To get reelected politicians must make the fewest voters mad as possible since results of any major decision are from two to five election cycles away.

Politicians must rely on land owners / land and building developers and the denizens of Business As Usual for contributions to convince uninformed potential voters that they are doing the right thing.

The conflict is obvious. The land owners / land and building developers want the public to pay for the shared-vehicle system and any other actions needed to achieve Balance so that they can optimize their profits.

Voters want the opposite.

Because of the dysfunctional settlement patterns that have agglomerated – since 1920, especially since 1950 and overwhelmingly since 1990 – the cost of any alternative is very high.

The political process involves uninformed and misinformed citizens as demonstrated by comments following Jim Bacon’s post. Many are well meaning and believe they are acting in their best interest. Others are just trying to confuse those who are not well informed.

In the Tysons Context, a stalemate is fine with many citizens. Some are NIMBYs, some say “I have mine you need get your own somewhere else” and some just cannot see an upside from change. The result is least common denominator settlement patterns.

The studies and meetings go on endlessly. Politicians hire staff trained to not make uninformed citizens mad and they in turn hire consultants with the same objective.

See Backgrounder “The Role of Municipal Planning in Creating Dysfunctional Human Settlement Patterns,” 23 January 2002.

In the current Tysons Context, there are no advocates for intelligent, Fundamental Change. This the Context in which decisions will be made on an extension of METRO.

That is why a functional media – subject of the four part Backgrounder “The Estates Matrix” – is so important.

EMR

Three-fourths of Americans believe that smarter development and more public transportation are better long-term solutions for reducing traffic congestion than building new roads, according to the 2007 Growth and Transportation Survey.

Some highlights from the survey, which was sponsored by the National Association of Realtors and Smart Growth America:

• 90% believe that new communities should be designed so people can walk more and drive less
• 80% favor redeveloping older urban and suburban areas rather than build new housing and commercial development on the edge of existing suburbs.
• 55% approve of charging tolls on more roads if it improves roads and decreases congestion. On the other hand, 84% are opposed to selling roads and highways to private companies who would charge a toll and give a portion of the toll money to the state.

I would like to think the American people really are so strongly in support of the policies I advocate. But I’m guessing the situation is more complex. When people are asked these questions in the abstract, they give the answers the pollsters want. But when people make real-life decisions in concrete situations, the outcome is often very different. Still, I find the answers encouraging.

(Hat tip: Diana Sun)

First the bad news: The percentage of workers in the Washington region riding in carpools or vans declined about five percent between 2000 and 2006 — putting roughly 17,000 more drivers onto already crowded rush-hour roads.

Those numbers come from a just-released “Regional Travel Trends Report” issued by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. (See Table 7 on page 14.)

Now for the good news. A smaller percentage of commuters is driving solo. Commuters are shifting to transit, telecommuting, walking and biking. The number of transit riders surged from 279,000 to 393,000 over that six-year period — an increase of 114,000.

The number of people walking to work metro-wide increased by about 6,300, while the number of bicyclists rose by nearly 3,900. The number of people telecommuting rose by 19,700.

Despite the shifts in transportation mode, the absolute number of solo drivers still increased, and so did congestion. Pessimists will say that the positive numbers for transit, walking and biking are negligible in a metro region with a workforce of nearly 2.8 million. But I see the numbers as a sign that change is possible. The increase in those modes is all the more remarkable considering that the vast majority of population growth occurred in outlying municipalities of the Washington region where cars are the only transportation option. In jurisdictions where transportation alternatives exist, the gains were encouraging indeed.

(Hat tip to Jim Wamsley for this citation. His comment: “Transit ridership statistics obtained from WMATA and local jurisdiction transit systems show the growth in weekday transit ridership in the 2000 to 2006 period increasing at a rate 38% faster than that of weekday VMT. The differential in these two rates of growth rate suggests a measurable modal shift from auto to transit for some daily trips in this time period.”)

Yet another special interest group has emerged in the political wrangling over the Rail-to-Dulles heavy rail project: Tysons Tomorrow, a consortium of some 20 landowners “poised to develop a new city of high-rises around the four Metro stops planned for Tysons,” reports Amy Gardner with the Washington Post.

In contrast to the Tysonstunnel.org group, which recently filed to block federal funding of the project unless it ran the rail line underneath Tysons Corner, Tysons Tomorrow’s priority is to get the project built one way or the other — even if it means routing the rail above-ground. The business coalition is seeking to end the pressure from tunnel advocates, Gardner writes, because it fears the push could cause further delays and scuttle the project.

Tysons Tomorrow does not yet have a website (although I would expect to see one any day), and Gardener provides only a few tantalizing details of who is underwriting it. She notes that backers includes huge property owners like Lerner Enterprises and the Macerich Group, owners of two Tysons Corner malls, as well as “mom and pop” owners of scattered, smaller parcels.

Gardner hints at the underlying motivation of this group: Jonathan Cherner, whose family owns the Cherner Automotive Group on Rt. 7, and other Tysons landowners, she writes, “have remained quiet through much of the tunnel vs. aerial debate, in part to avoid calling attention to the handsome profits likely to result if the rail line is built. “

Bingo! Give the woman a prize. Construction of the Metro, whether above ground or below, would create massive profits for the lucky landowners whose property happens to lie along its route. Combined with the increased density that would be permitted around the Metro stations, Tysons landowners collectively stand to make hundreds of millions of dollars — potentially billions of dollars — while paying only a modest fraction of the cost of the rail project. (Property owners would be assessed a tax to cover Fairfax County’s share of the project, but the tax district encompasses a broad swath of territory that spreads the burden to many landowners who would benefit only marginally.)

What someone needs to do is to research (a) who are the property owners around the proposed Metro stations, (b) how much is their property worth now, and (c) how much would that land be worth after increased density and construction of the Metro stations? Would extending Metro to Tysons Corner increase property values by $1 billion? $2 billion? $5 billion?

If property values would increase only $1 billion, it would not be reasonable to ask property owners to foot more than, say, $500 million to $900 million of the bill. But if property values would increase by $5 billion, and property owners would be paying less than one quarter of that amount in taxes, reaping multi-billions in windfall profits, why are we asking the federal government, outlying landowners and commuters along the Dulles Toll Road to pay the balance?

This information is basic, but no one seems to be asking for it. If the Rail to Dulles project creates as much value as its backers say it does — and I think there is a possibility that it does — then it should be possible to finance the project without stiffing the taxpayers of the United States and toll-road commuters who will never use it, and still allow property owners to make a handsome profit. As it stands right now, however, the project is shaping up — if it ever happens — as the biggest undisguised transfer of wealth in Virginia since the tobacco planters were lording it over the slaves.

Campbell County board supervisors appear to be a step ahead of their peers in other municipalities when it comes to confronting the implications of the Comprehensive Transportation Funding and Reform act of 2007. (Either that or the Lynchburg News & Advance is a step ahead in its local government coverage.) Quoth the newspaper:

Paying for maintenance of new roads in rural counties could get tricky in the years ahead. More than that, it could get expensive because the localities would have to maintain some of their new roads, a service now covered by the state.

How about that: Road maintenance is expensive. That lesson is sinking in now that localities can’t undertake any land use decision they want and fob off the road-maintenance consequences to the state any longer.

One of the more important changes in state regulations is a requirement for new subdivisions to have at least two connections to state roads. That would discourage “unconnected residential development,” explains the newspaper. This point requires a bit of elaboration. In the “pod” form of development that is pervasive across Virginia, many subdivisions have only one outlet to state roads. When subdivisions don’t connect with one another, there are fewer alternate routes for people to get places. The result is that all traffic funnels into a finite number of roads, the roads get crowded, and people howl for more state money to build more roads.

Supervisors aren’t happy about the regulation. They’re thinking of writing Secretary of Transportation Pierce Homer. “If the roads that are needed to serve a high-density subdivision are not advantageous to other roads connecting in that area, says Concord District Supervisor Eddie Gunter., “they’re saying it will be up to the county and developers to take care of that.”

And your point is….?

But that’s not all that has Gunter disgruntled. “Road costs and road maintenance are very expensive,” he says. “If the county has to take over maintaining roads, that means we would have to set up a department like a mini-VDOT. There are a lot of counties in the state that could not do this.”

Yes, Mr. Gunter, road maintenance is expensive. Maybe you need to take that into consideration next time Campbell County updates its master plan. But, no, you don’t have to set up your own mini-VDOT. Perhaps Mr. Homer will share with you what he’s learning about “outsourcing” — something that VDOT is doing a lot more of these days.