Changes are afoot — let’s speed them up!

Mount Vernon Avenue in Alexandria has been redesigned to make bicycling and walking safe and pleasant.

Check out Scott Polikov’s excellent article in citiwire.net for an encouraging view of the changes afoot in state transportation departments. Last week the Texas became the first state to adopt the The Institute for Transportation Engineers’ and Congress for the New Urbanism’s Manual for Walkable Urban Thoroughfares as an accepted set of guidelines for street design. Polikov, a Fort Worth-based planner, also commends the Virginia Department of Transportation for its policy to encourage interconnected streets.

Last Tuesday, Charlotte,  North Carolina received a National Award for Smart Growth Achievement for its urban street design guidelines, which it adopted five years ago and has already implemented on 20 streets and at 10 intersections.

Are the dominoes falling, as Polikov suggests? Maybe, but they’re heavy dominoes with a bit of glue underneath each one. Adopting the guidelines is just the first step; Texas now  has to figure out how to incorporate them in the Department of Transportation’s various manuals and programs. State DOTs have layers upon layers of staff expertise and established processes that support more conventional auto-oriented practices.

The  Virginia Department of Transportation is changing, but the changes are not as fast as the pace of change in Fairfax communities. Tysons Corner is  poised to get four rail stations by 2013. Fairfax will need to make Routes 7 and 123 into more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly boulevards to take advantage of transit and attract businesses along these streets. But VDOT and the Metro Washington Airports Authority’s plans for 7 and 123 have barebones pedestrian accommodations and discourage at-grade crossings for pedestrians. Nor do they have bike lanes.

Following the example  of Texas and adopting the Walkable Urban Thoroughfare guidelines would be a great step for VDOT. So would a program of trainings in “complete street” design practices for VDOT and FCDOT engineers. VDOT and FCDOT could start by focusing trainings for staff working on projects in Fairfax County designated revitalization areas, such as the Richmond Highway Corridor.

Get involved in downtown redevelopment — December 8

Next Tuesday Fairfax City Councilmembers will be discussing the future of George Mason Square in Old Town. George Mason Square is the parcel between Old Lee Highway and University Drive along North Street. The city now owns all this land and is planning a long-overdue facelift.

The work session will be Monday at 5:30 at City Hall. The City Council is not taking public comments at this point. But if you go to the work session you’ll learn what they are considering and have a better opportunity to shape the final plan.

Can you imagine how nice it would be if this mish-mash of parking lots became a central meeting area with benches, bike racks and attractive stores fronting Old Lee and North?

Transportation money available — where’s Fairfax?

Fairfax is the largest school system in Virginia and maintains one of the largest school bus fleets in the country. But Fairfax has claimed very little available federal money to encourage safer walking and bicyling routes to school. Since 2005 Virginia has received $13 million in federal funds for its Safe Routes to School Program. Fairfax has received less than 1 percent of these funds. As today’s Washington Post reports, leaders are showing interest in encouraging more walking and bicyling to school. An excellent post by FABB puts an even finer edge on this issue. There is money on the table for transportation — Fairfax should be claiming it.

Make some small plans

Silver Spring has used transit to design more walkable communities along busy arterial roads. Photo by Mastery of Maps.

Fifteen billion dollars is a hard number to forget. That’s how much Fairfax planning staff estimates will be needed for transportation improvements to accommodate future growth in Tysons Corner. Civic groups will wring their hands, and planning commissioners will have more heartburn. But the estimate is a 10,000 foot view that focuses on major capital projects including several that are only peripherally related to Tysons Corner. Looking closer to the ground — literally — could yield more efficiencies.

What if Routes 7 and 123, the major arterial roads along which the rail extension will travel, were redesigned as more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly boulevards? How many car trips would pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly design reduce? How much redevelopment right along these roads would more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly design encourage, leading to more people living, working and walking or bicycling along this corridor and leaving their cars in the garage (or not having a car at all)? How much money in avoided capital improvements would such design save?

You could ask the same kinds of questions for the internal grid of streets Fairfax wants to build in Tysons. If they are designed right, with pedestrian-friendly features such as bulb-outs and tight curb radii, residents, shoppers, and workers will be much more likely to walk, people will want to live there, and major capital projects needed to accommodate more cars will not be as necessary. They will also create wealth for residents by saving them the high costs of owning and maintaining a car.

ImagineDC pointed in a recent post to Montgomery County’s success in accommodating growth along its Red Line corridor without having to add new freeways. One of the things that Bethesda and Silver Spring have done well is to reinvent their major roads along the Red Line as more pedestrian-friendly streets. Wisconsin Avenue is a great place to walk. Colesville Road is a good place to walk, and getting better.

The current plans for Tysons’ major roads will make cosmetic pedestrian improvements but are focused on getting more cars through. VDOT wants to put dual left turn lanes on Route 7. There will be no bike lanes. Bicyclists and pedestrians will share the sidewalk. The current designs will encourage speed, more car turning movements, longer blocks — and fewer opportunities to cross the street. Those “improvements” will be expensive in more ways than one.

Smaller, and much cheaper tweaks to Routes 7 and 123 will make them more inviting streets, attract more development, and make that development more profitable. Having an above-ground Metrorail is a challenge. But elevated lines in other cities have not gotten in the way of creating good streets where people want to be.

While Fairfax City fiddles. . .

Another new strip mall at Kamp Washington is setting a poor pattern for the redevelopment of Fairfax Boulevard

Since the Fairfax Boulevard master plan was presented to the City Council two and a half years ago, Fairfax City has approved three major development projects on the west side of the Boulevard near Kamp Washington. All three are variations of a standard suburban strip mall. Parking lots front the buildings. The newest development, pictured at left, will make $2 dry cleaning just a 15-minute walk from my house. But I will never walk there, or to the Starbucks nearby, given the pedestrian-unfriendly design.

Fairfax City’s comprehensive plan is due to be updated this year. The city has not yet published a draft update or announced public meetings. The comprehensive plan is a good opportunity to create more specific, pedestrian-friendly guidelines for the redevelopment of Fairfax Boulevard. It might already be too late to make the west side of the Boulevard pedestrian-friendly. The car-oriented mold set by recent developments will probably be here for the next 20 years. But east of Chain Bridge Road, and on Fairfax Circle, there is still time to plan better.

City Council and Planning Commission members have expressed skepticism about adopting a form-based code for the Boulevard, one of the recommendations of the master plan. Their skepticism is not unwarranted. Form-based codes can become just as cumbersome as orthodox zoning, with myriad details that can get in the way of good development. But this shouldn’t get in the way of adopting simple, clear guidelines for Boulevard redevelopment, including:

• Buildings should be oriented toward the sidewalk and have entrances on the sidewalk
• The ground floors of buildings should be transparent, providing a more pleasant and diverting pedestrian environment
• Sidewalks should be widened to at least 10′

Whole Foods' Arlington store looks good from the sidewalk.

This doesn’t have to be a tome. We just need a stronger framework so we can get better development. And we need it fast, before more development gets in the pipeline. Let’s hope the city gets the comprehensive plan update underway soon — and when they do, make sure to speak out for strong, pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly guidelines for Fairfax Boulevard.

Suburbanizing Old Town

Downtown Fairfax doesn't need more of this

Instead of condominiums, Fairfax City is poised to move forward with a suburban townhouse development in Old Town. Residential development on the lot formerly occupied by the city library has long been part of Fairfax’s plans for a lively downtown with more feet on the street outside lunch hour. Walnut Street Development had received approval to build 80 condominium units, but then backed out as the condo market soured. In April 2009 the city issued a new Request for Proposals for the site. RFP guidelines included a minimum size of 2,500 square feet per residential unit and minimum parking of 2-2.33 spaces per unit.

The winning development proposal did a good job of fitting within the framework of the RFP. “Madison Mews” will put 26 homes and 64 parking spaces on the lot, a major downscaling of the original plan. Instead of connecting pedestrians and bicyclists to downtown Fairfax, the development will dead-end and have only one entry and exit point on the opposite end. It’s designed to make it easy for residents to drive out of downtown and get on I-66. It doesn’t encourage residents to walk or bicycle to Old Town destinations, even though they will be a five-minute walk away.

Several people at the Tuesday meeting expressed dismay with the plan. “If you want to keep downtown sick, this is the way to kill it,” one resident remarked. To survive and thrive, local businesses need more residents who are looking for a more urban environment, one local landowner observed. “The density is grossly inadequate to revitalize downtown.”

Unfortunately, the proposal fits within current zoning. The next step is a site plan. The city could at least incrementally improve the project by requiring the developer to provide pedestrian and bicycle access on the southern edge of the development facing downtown.

Getting across the street

Wide curb radii are barriers to safe walking in Fairfax

Development of the Merrifield Town Center near the Dunn-Loring metro station area is moving along, offering Fairfaxites a needed whiff of walkability and more urban living. Steve Kattula’s excellent Greater Greater Washington post looked at the transportation and urban design elements of the first, completed phase of the Town Center. As Kattula and several respondents pointed out, Route 29 and Gallows Road are major barriers between the area and the nearby transit station.

The curb radii at Gallows Road and Strawberry Lane are a case in point. The wider the curb radii, the earlier and faster a motor vehicle can make right turns, and the longer a pedestrian has to travel to cross. These curb radii (pictured at left) are extremely wide, and vehicles are turning into and out of the development without stopping or looking for pedestrians. It is no wonder that the only people I saw during my fifteen minutes there were four worried pedestrians planning their mad dash and two men holding up signs for the new gym club.

Wide curb radii are ubiquitous in Fairfax. Even neighborhood streets often have very wide radii, and you even find them in one of the county’s most walkable areas, Reston Town Center. The need to allow trucks and buses to turn safely is often cited to justify wider curb radii. But communities have successfully squared off intersections to make crossing safer, and Fairfax can do it too — and should be doing it, especially in areas near transit.

Even Reston Town Center makes things too easy for drivers, and harder for pedestrians

Get over the Dillon Rule

Fairfax County leaders often invoke Dillon’s Rule when they are painted into a corner. The county’s authority is narrowly defined on matters such as land use and taxation, so the story goes, and Richmond is tying their hands. Now the Washington Post reports that Fairfax County Executive Anthony Griffin and the Board of Supervisors are considering broadening local powers by changing Fairfax’s status from a county to a city. By becoming a city, Fairfax would obtain broader powers to tax itself for things such as transportation improvements — sidestepping the horrendous political gridlock that has bedeviled the Kaine Administration over transportation funding.

I don’t understand the intricacies of Dillon’s Rule and home rule states, but I do know that our neighbor Arlington County has been one of the country’s innovators for smarter growth. If the main issue is getting more taxing authority, especially concerning transportation, I’m closer to the rabid libertarians — deeply suspicious that government will do good things with the extra money. Poorly coordinated transportation and land use decisions, exemplified by the debacle that is Tysons Corner, and not a lack of funding, are at the root of our traffic nightmare.

suburban economies

Why should anyone care about the oxymoronic “bedroom community”?  People living in cities usually work in those cities, and chose to live there because, among other reasons, of their dense history and cultural mix. Cities change; people know that. But as Christopher Leinberger has pointed out, suburbs don’t have the same capacity to absorb change. More people and more development — that is, conventional suburban development — threaten the self-enclosed pods of suburbia. Suburban residents care when there is a threat. But what about positive change?

Fairfax County is not a bedroom anymore, though; it has more jobs than DC. Most of our friends work at nearby George Mason University or in Tysons Corner, with the still robust defense contracting and IT industries. Residents have more of a stake in the county’s future than they did forty years ago, when most of them were commuting to DC.

I came here as the “trailing spouse” — lovely term of the home lending industry — behind my spouse, who was hired to teach English and American Literature at George Mason University. I spent the first three years doing a mishmash of consulting and the past two years working in Maryland, an ironic position for someone who cares about building better communities. And now I work at home — the linguistic source of our term “economy.”  I live in an older — for Fairfax — subdivision of homes cleared from the forest 55 years ago off of Fairfax City’s Main Street. From our basement study I can hear the sounds of our economy in the weedwackers, lawnmowers and trash haulers — while the white collar economy spends its days at Tysons, George Mason, DC and even Montgomery County.

So consider this blog as, on one level, the cry of a suburban outlier looking for a revival of home economics.

Fairfax Boulevard

Photo courtesy Dover Kohl

It’s been more than two years since Fairfax City organized a charrette on 29/50 i.e. Fairfax Boulevard, and I fear the great plan that the city came up with is gathering dust. The plan developed by Dover Kohl was excellent, just the sort of urban streetscape that will help the city capture more business. But Mayor Lederer has backed away from the plan and said it is too compact and dense for Fairfax City.

Maybe so, but the Boulevard needs to reinvent itself through better zoning soon or else the uses coming to replace the increasingly vulnerable auto dealerships and other merchants will be nearly as pedestrian- and bike-unfriendly as what we have now. The most recent new development on the Boulevard is (yet another) Chevy Chase Bank. The building could be worse as far as banks go, but it’s not a step toward a more walkable public corridor either. The mini-shopping center anchored by a Starbucks and Five Guys is standard suburban development fronted by a parking lot. Put parking in back and wall it off from the adjoining neighborhoods.

Old Town Fairfax though is looking better. I would have preferred more apartment units and office units, and a higher building line, but it’s much better than what we had before. And where are the bike racks??? Let’s give credit to the Mayor and Council for getting that through.

Check out the Fairfax Boulevard master plan at http://www.fairfaxva.gov/Boulevard/FBMP.asp