In Arlington County, a team of 38 employees is dedicated to encouraging employers and property managers to promote transit, biking and walking. Fairfax County, with about seven times as many residents, has recently appointed a single person to coordinate the county’s Traffic Demand Management policies. So reports Alec MacGillis in the Washington Post today.
Perhaps that helps explain why Arlington, despite its greater densities, experiences less traffic congestion than Fairfax County. In Traffic Demand Management (TDM), property owners use a variety of tools — pricing and availability of parking spaces, flex cars, van pools, coordination with mass transit, streetscape design, a complementary mix of land uses — to reduce automobile traffic. As Arlington has demonstrated, effective TDM programs can ameliorate a lot of congestion.
One reason that TDM works in Arlington and doesn’t in Fairfax, suggests MacGillis is that Arlington invests resources in its TDM program and Fairfax doesn’t. Another reason is that Fairfax has failed to enforce the agreements it has forged with developers in exchange for increased development densities.
As we’ve argued on this blog for a long time, TDM is potentially a very effective strategy for combatting traffic congestion. TDM is basic. Fairfax County needs to get serious about implementing it.
