Reston, Virginia: About 40 Pics:

[Cirrus]

Originally Posted by ardecila

There's this massive imbalance where people live in Maryland and drive to Tysons or Chantilly or Reston to work

You're right that the region is divided, but you've got the geography wrong. Montgomery County, MD is comparable to Northern Virginia. Bethesda, Rockville, Silver Spring and Gaithersburg are all major job centers, comparable to or bigger than any in Northern Virginia with the singular exception of Tysons Corner. The real imbalance isn't along the Potomac, but along North/South Capitol Streets. Everything west of the Capitol is wealthy and has lots of jobs, while most of the areas east of Capitol are less wealthy and more purely residential.

The Techway you mention (which has absolutely no chance in hell of being built, thank goodness) wouldn't solve the problem you cite. It would connect the job centers of Reston and Dulles (Chantilly is not a big job center) with the job centers of Gaithersburg and Rockville, but it wouldn't do squat to solve the big east/west divide of jobs and housing.

Originally Posted by ardecila

a better use of the money would be a road connecting I-270 at Gaithersburg with the Fairfax County Parkway in Herndon, including a new bridge over the Potomac. If this is created as a through highway with few exits, the effects of sprawl can be slowed.

The problem wouldn't be the sprawl it would create directly along the roadway. The problem would be the sprawl it would induce 40 minutes farther out.

The big problem with suburban employment centers is that regardless of where people work, they will often be willing to live an average of 40 minutes away. If the Techway were built it would induce a massive wave of sprawl in places like Howard County, MD and Charlestown, WV because suddenly a lot more jobs would be accessible from those places.

Originally Posted by ardecila

Maryland's been leaning in this direction for years anyway.

Sorry, that is just completely wrong. *Virginia* has occasionally studied the idea, but it will never ever gain any political support in Maryland. First of all, the part of Maryland that road would have to cut through has been designated a rural reserve for a half century, and it is currently against the law to fund major infrastructure improvements outside of designated growth areas. Secondly, the part of MD that road would go through is much more wealthy than the part of VA it would go through, so even if the much more liberal population of MD could be convinced a new highway were necessary, the local opposition would be virtually impossible to bypass. Thirdly, as Smirkman noted MD has absolutely no interest in making it easier for VA to get jobs at MD's expense. Finally, between the ICC, the Purple Line, the Corridor Cities Transitway, MARC improvements, and the Baltimore Red Line, MD's budget for major capital investments is seriously overextended; even if they wanted to (which they don't), and even if the lengthy planning process were done (it hasn't started and isn't on the books to), it would be literally decades before MD could afford to build the thing.

[ardecila]

No, I meant that Maryland has been leaning in the direction of Urban Growth Boundaries for years. This would provide an effective legal mechanism for controlling sprawl, in Howard County or wherever. (It might be a harder sell in NoVA or WV, though...)

And regardless of which direction people are going (MD-VA or vice versa), it still seems like there is a big problem crossing the river that would best be served by a new bridge. The only feasible location for this, thanks to the short-sightedness of early planners and environmentalists, is 12 miles out from the Beltway. Any closer in, and massive takings would be required, in wealthy areas, for even a 4-lane surface road.

What would be your suggestion for a high-capacity solution to remedy this problem? The Sierra Club suggests a complete Purple Line circle as an alternative to new highways, but I remain unconvinced that circumferential rail lines will ever connect people to the jobs that currently exist. As concentrated as DC's suburbia is, it's still rather dispersed. DC's version of land planning would encourage new nodes to spring up around the rail line, and new housing, creating ridership, but it would not answer the existing congestion.

Also: what's the status of the rebuild of the 11th Street Bridge? This will finally provide a through route in DC that should partially address the transportation problem you mentioned. I'm getting tired of making illegal U-turns on Pennsylvania Avenue.

At any rate, I feel this is severely off-topic for a Reston photo thread. Too bad DC doesn't have a transportation thread (although the Silver Line thread lasted awhile). If you want to use your mod powers to move this conversation into the Silver Line thread, that might be more apropos.

[Cirrus]

Start a DC transportation issues thread if you want. I'll move the relevant posts.

Anyway, you want to know how we'd remedy the problem. Frankly, getting people between Gaithersburg and Reston isn't a problem that needs to be fixed (I say this as someone who grew up in Gaithersburg), because it's ridiculous to think the state should be responsible for making ridiculous commutes unnaturally easy. Instead of trying to make that commute easier, we should be spending what money we have on projects that support the land use model we want. That is to say, we shouldn't be trying to make it easier for people to drive between two ridiculous locations, we should instead be making it easier for people not to have to make that drive in the first place.

The whole reason suburbs are dispersed is because we have a transportation system that supports dispersal of land use. The only way to remedy the problem of congestion caused by dispersed land use is to make it possible for land use to get more compact. Building a Techway would do absolutely nothing to further any of the goals we want to further.

[fleonzo]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

Start a DC transportation issues thread if you want. I'll move the relevant posts.

Anyway, you want to know how we'd remedy the problem. Frankly, getting people between Gaithersburg and Reston isn't a problem that needs to be fixed (I say this as someone who grew up in Gaithersburg), because it's ridiculous to think the state should be responsible for making ridiculous commutes unnaturally easy. Instead of trying to make that commute easier, we should be spending what money we have on projects that support the land use model we want. That is to say, we shouldn't be trying to make it easier for people to drive between two ridiculous locations, we should instead be making it easier for people not to have to make that drive in the first place.

The whole reason suburbs are dispersed is because we have a transportation system that supports dispersal of land use. The only way to remedy the problem of congestion caused by dispersed land use is to make it possible for land use to get more compact. Building a Techway would do absolutely nothing to further any of the goals we want to further.

I would agree with you that building inward (i.e. making DC, Silver Spring, Rockville, Bethesda, Tyson's, Reston, etc... denser) would prevent the region from becoming like Houston, Dallas, and other sprawled areas but the reality is that most people still do (and will continue to for the forseeable future)- drive. When I lived in the DC region and I too use to think that going from Rockville to Tyson was far but now it really isn't. This has become the norm in a lot of places in the U.S. Even here, where I live now, in the NYC Metro Region (btw- my mother and sis live in Gaithersburg, MD) it too is really sprawled excpet that you also have a very dense core. Going from lower Manhattan and crossing the GW Bridge is the same distance as going from Rockville to Tysons. I travel alot to other cities and regions in the U.S. and this latest recession won't stop metro regions from sprawling. The minute the real estate market shows signs of life people will go back to their old ways- sadly!

[Cirrus]

Well, the reason most people drive so much is that we've spent the last 60 years building communities that are focused almost solely around driving. Suburbia isn't a market phenomenon that happened accidentally; it was planned and heavily subsidized from the get-go. It's not like Americans are inherently different from Europeans or Asians; most people of any culture just live wherever it's easiest to live. In America we've set up a system that makes suburbia the easiest place to live, so most people do so.

The thing is, since we built that system we can also build a different one. We can't change things over night, but if we have a plan and stick to it, then decade-by-decade things will look more and more like that plan. The decade-by-decade approach is how suburbia took over, and it is likewise how we will fix it. It just takes patience.

[fleonzo]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

Well, the reason most people drive so much is that we've spent the last 60 years building communities that are focused almost solely around driving. Suburbia isn't a market phenomenon that happened accidentally; it was planned and heavily subsidized from the get-go. It's not like Americans are inherently different from Europeans or Asians; most people of any culture just live wherever it's easiest to live. In America we've set up a system that makes suburbia the easiest place to live, so most people do so.

The thing is, since we built that system we can also build a different one. We can't change things over night, but if we have a plan and stick to it, then decade-by-decade things will look more and more like that plan. The decade-by-decade approach is how suburbia took over, and it is likewise how we will fix it. It just takes patience.

I hear your point and believe me I would agree with most of what you're saying its just that there's alot of people both here in the U.S. and now in many parts of the world including Europe where they don't see suburbia as a bad thing. In fact many still see the cities and anything resembling them (i.e. denser areas...like- to some degree places like Reston, Silver Srping, Rockville, etc...) as the wrong way to go. Hence the purpose of this thread exposes the NIMBYs trying to compare Reston turining into Manhattan ( sorry I had to hold my laughs back )! The only thing that would force people to dramaticlly change their behavior (both short and long term as you state) and want to move into denser areas would be out of some unexpected need- i.e. jobs, weather, high oil prices, etc...IMO

[Cirrus]

You're right there will always be some people who prefer the suburban lifestyle (or any lifestyle), but

a) People who want suburbia already have that option, while many many people who would happily live elsewhere don't have the choice

and

b) It is ridiculous to think that the government should be responsible for accommodating everyone who wants to make a poor choice by spending billions of dollars on unnecessary infrastructure. If you want to live in suburbia, hey, be my guest, but it's not up to the government to pay for the infrastructure to make that possible for you.

Thus we should not be spending money on counterproductive roads like the aforementioned Techway.

[fleonzo]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

You're right there will always be some people who prefer the suburban lifestyle (or any lifestyle), but

a) People who want suburbia already have that option, while many many people who would happily live elsewhere don't have the choice

and

b) It is ridiculous to think that the government should be responsible for accommodating everyone who wants to make a poor choice by spending billions of dollars on unnecessary infrastructure. If you want to live in suburbia, hey, be my guest, but it's not up to the government to pay for the infrastructure to make that possible for you.

Thus we should not be spending money on counterproductive roads like the aforementioned Techway.

Isn't it ironic that one of the biggest factors (GM and Chrysler) that caused this trend in the last century...went bankrupt this week! Do you know of the story of how the big car makers conspired to put passenger rail companies out of business? How they lobbied the gov't to spend "infrastructure" money on highways and suburbs instead of mass transit?

[Cirrus]

Yup. GM was convicted in federal court, but by then the damage was already done.

Of course, that was just one aspect of the system of laws, subsidies and manipulation of the market that resulted in our current way of life.

[novawolverine]

I really do think that long term wise, we are going to be getting denser and more urban and while we'll still have some bad habits, I don't see us losing the cars anytime soon, overall, our growth pattern and line of thinking will be a lot better. Some of the most delusional people I knew during the past decade or so that didn't see anything wrong and didn't think things would ever get bad are starting to come to their senses. It really starts with the leaders, though. The policies that we have had somewhat guided people to do certain things and live a certain way. We need more a more reasonable policy w/ respect to transportation and land use.

[llamaorama]

Also maybe there is a difference between contiguous suburban development and random unplanned exurbs. The former I think is a necessity as cities grow out, the latter has sucky consequences.

I don't really know a lot about DC but I guess then I agree with what people are saying. Don't build a new beltway and certainly Northern Virginia will reach a limit on how much it can grow, and then growth will go to other parts of the region until things are fairly balanced out.

[202_Cyclist]

Earlier this week, the Reston Planning & Zoning Committee approved plans to build a 15-story residential development across the street from the Town Center. It will have 375 residential units. I was unable to find any renderings of the building but here is a map from the Fairfax County Planning & Zoning Commission showing where the development will be http://ldsnet.fairfaxcounty.gov/ldsn...wf/4274216.PDF

[202_Cyclist]

Wiehle Avenue development approved

By Kali Schumitz
Fairfax County Times
THURSDAY, JUNE 4 2009

http://www.fairfaxtimes.com/news/200...ment-approved/

Fairfax County is moving forward with a private development at the future Wiehle Avenue Metrorail station.
Apartments, shops and offices could all be included in the 980,000-square-foot complex, which would be built above a 2,300-space underground parking garage at what is now the Reston East Park and Ride lot.

Reston-based developer Comstock Partners, which is entering into a public-private partnership with the county, will build the garage, bus bays and park and ride facilities, as well as the private portion of the development.

The county is financing the estimated $90 million cost of the parking garage, money it expects to recoup through parking fees and the ground lease to Comstock.

Supervisor Cathy Hudgins (D-Hunter Mill) said she expects the project will be a “complement to the community of Reston” and an economic driver.

“I think it's reflective of what the community's desires are,” Hudgins said of the project.

This approval is just the first step in the process, which will require amending Reston's covenants on that commercial property to allow a residential component, and rezoning the property once a final development plan is proposed.

[202_Cyclist]

There is a rendering of this development on page 172 of the this document: http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/dpsm/do...Agreements.pdf

[sbarn]

[QUOTE=LA21st;3079433]I would agree. DC might be a different city if it was more centered than it is now. Suburbanites go to Chicago in droves because it is the CENTER. I didnt really see that in DC. Sure some do, but Millenninum Park/Mag Mile/State St/River North are packed on the WEEKENDS and WEEKEND nights. Thats just downtown. The only city I can think of that does that a weekly basis of that level is NYC (although NYC exceeds everything).QUOTE]

San Francisco is the third U.S. city that experiences such phenomena. Quite a few people from suburban Bay Area head to SF for on weekends for entertainment, etc. However, I now live in NYC, and agree that it exceeds everything - the sheer number of people is incredible.