Adam Pagnucco wrote,

Image courtesy of Greg Sanders.

Harry's passion was the Purple Line. He wore purple constantly and probably bled the color. But Harry actually served a higher cause: good government through civic engagement. He really believed that organized citizens could make our elected leadership better than what they were and produce superior outcomes. Harry showed up at all kinds of events and never criticized people who did not.

He loved young people and wanted them to be involved in shaping their world—a better world. He succeeded because Maryland's smart growth movement is full of young people and they are going to create the kind of society Harry spent twenty years fighting for. Few other people in this county, elected or not, will ever be able to make such a claim. And Harry did it all with a warm smile, a gravelly laugh and a standing invitation to join and help. Lots of people did just that.

Most activists fight against things that are bad. Harry Sanders spent decades fighting for something that is good. There's a big difference.

Image courtesy of Greg Sanders.

[Harry's wife] Barbara explained to me that, over thirty years ago, she and Harry had fought to bring the Green Line right into the center of the University of Maryland, despite fears from the administration and the city alike that it would "bring undesirables" into their community. While they lost that fight, they've never given up on improving transit all across suburban Maryland. ...

Much of the praise Harry Sanders has received ... has been about his work as a civic activist, but I think of him as so much more for that. In twenty-five years of pushing for what we now know as the Purple Line, Harry and his friends have done much more than civic activism. They aren't about protecting the status quo. They aren't about accepting things as they are. Their work reflects an optimism about the future — the possibility that we can make things better through our combined efforts — that people half their age have already lost.

I'm deeply saddened that Harry will never get to walk from his house to the future 16th Street Station and catch the Purple Line. It's imperative that we get it built now. Not just for all the people who will benefit from it, but for someone without whom it could have never even happened.

Detroit and Miami both have circular people movers designed to transport people around their central business districts. Detroit's is mono-directional; Miami's is made up of three "loops". Also included is an overlay showing the downtown Washington Metro stops to-scale over Tysons.

The experience of this region over the last thirty years shows that transit can reshape our urban areas. But more important than the form of the transit are the policies shaping land use. The District, Arlington, and Montgomery County enacted policies to encourage transit-supportive densities and uses. As a result, urban villages dot many of their station areas. On the other hand, all the transit in the world wouldn't help a jurisdiction with no desire to rethink the areas around Metro stops.

Personal Rapid Transit is as yet an unproven technology. I have concerns about the ability for a system like the one proposed by ULTra to adequately and cheaply serve the people of Tysons.

PRT in Tysons is not the right fit because it will not be the right kind of transformative catalyst. It will not create the pedestrian density that is a vital part of a vibrant urban area. The sidewalks around Rosslyn, Ballston, Bethesda, and Farragut Square are all crowded, especially with commuters during rush hours. The ULTra PRT system called for by Steve would rob the areas around the Tysons stations of that vibrancy.

Workers would not need to walk to the office. Instead, a futuristic pod would drop them off right in their building's lobby. While this might be convenient, it would seem to obviate the need to change Tysons. Sidewalks and shops would be robbed of their users, and the area would remain disjointed, even though it would be connected by a transit system fit for La Ville Radieuse. My concerns also extend to the viability of the mode. After all, if one extends PRT to its logical conclusion, one approaches the medium known as the "car". The PRT concept basically entails a guideway running along every street, no waiting, no unwanted intermediate stops, no unwanted travel companions, and door-to-door service.

That formula hasn't created the livable spaces we are seeking today. And it also presents the question of congestion. If Tysons' road network is already overwhelmed with personal vehicles, how would a system of individual personal pod-vehicles making the same trips be immune?

Besides, Tysonians would never stand for the miles of elevated guideways. The fight to bury the Silver Line is an excellent example of how Tysons' civic leaders would react to this PRT proposal. Instead of a linear line or perhaps a circular loop, the ULTra concept would weave a web of elevated tracks with stations on almost every block. I doubt the system could be built without serious objections about aesthetics.

Another logistical hurdle seems to exist for a Tysons PRT. While PRT might be a great concept for a place with many diffuse origins and destinations, the reality is that Tysons won't work that way. Instead, there will be four main origins located at the Metro stations and diffuse destinations. Passengers will arrive in waves every 3 to 6 minutes as each Metro train stops.

ULTra's design does not seem to be prepared for waves of passengers arriving all at once. Cars can only carry up to 4 people each and have only one door per side. The makers claim each berth in a station can handle 400 departing persons in an hour, or about 6.5 per minute. That means it would take 14 berths just to handle the capacity of a Metro escalator, which can discharge 90 people per minute.

If we're going to clutter the Tysons landscape with elevated guideways, we could get a bigger bang for our buck with an automated circulator like Miami's or Detroit's. These systems use larger vehicles and stations, but they have a higher capacity. Like heavy and light rail, they can be coupled into trains. They have multiple doors and plenty of seats and standing room. Vancouver's completely automated subway system, SkyTrain, just transported 577,000 passengers per day on average during the Olympics, well over its usual average of 334,000. And like PRT, automated guideway trains can run at high frequencies with low labor costs.

Unlike PRT, automated guideway systems have shown they work with high volumes. The world's busiest automated line carries 175,000 a day on a 1.1 mile route with 6 stations in the Atlanta Airport. Even if guideways for a heavier duty automated circulator cost more, building less of them (compared to PRT) could present a cost savings.

I still think that a cheaper, at-grade system of dedicated busways or streetcar lines could serve the area just as well with a much cheaper pricetag.

The reality of the situation is that Fairfax County has little money to spend on any secondary transit system in Tysons, and even if a last mile system was ready to open when the Silver Line opens, there would still be a long way to go. And Tysons will be a challenge to serve regardless of which mode is used for its last mile system.

Regardless of our method, all our transit investment will be in vain if Fairfax leaders don't stay committed to transforming Tysons. But that doesn't mean Tysons can skip the last mile system. Indeed, with the vast distances separating Tysons' spaces, a supplemental "last mile" system is absolutely essential. And it is also essential that we get it right, otherwise a revitalized, transformed Tysons will still find mobility obstacles hampering its growth for many years.

The big advantages of PRT are that waiting times are very short and all travel is direct. There's no need to stop for other passengers to get on and off, no transfers, and one-seat rides to all destinations. If PRT works as advertised, then one could travel from a Metro station to their destination a mile or so away in 3-4 minutes rather than the 12-15 it might take with a circulator. It would also function much better for moving around within Tysons, which is currently laborious by any mode.

For comparison, Fairfax estimates the circulators would cost $9 million to purchase and about $5.8 million per year to operate. That would be $67 million for ten years, $125 million for 20, without accounting for replacement buses.

Cost estimates for PRT range from $7-15 million per mile, with Tysons on the higher end due to its already developed land. Because of the reduced weight and footprint of PRT systems, they cost significantly less per mile than other rail systems such as streetcars or light rail. The green loop shown in the PRT proposal cited above is about 4 miles of guideway, so approximately $60 million. All three loops look to be about 14 miles of guideway, or a total of $210 million. A company representative I spoke with believes revenues from fares can cover operating costs.

A potential source of investment is from developers. West Company owns about 10% of all the land in Tysons, but it's mostly out of walking distance from the Metro stops. If that property were made much more easily accessible, the property value would significantly increase. Perhaps they would be willing to help fund the costs. Hotels might pay for track sections and stations that directly serve their properties.

Of course, developers could fund any mode, not just PRT. However, I don't believe land owners would invest much in circulator buses compared to some sort of permanent infrastructure.

Is it risky to get out in front with a new technology like this? Of course. But streetcars are essentially 19th-century technology; PRT is 21st century technology. The technology has advanced enough that an entire city in the UAE, Masdar, is being built with PRT as its primary form of transportation.

Heathrow Airport in London will have the first operational, albeit modest sized, system in the next few weeks. Making PRT work in Tysons would not only solve the last-mile problem, it would expand the value of the Silver Line to the entirety of Tysons, and the system itself would make Tysons a destination in its own right, attracting additional visitors and investors alike.

On the budget, Gunn recommended ending the trend toward rising MetroAccess costs and toward growing subsidies for bus relative to rail. Michael analyzed these trends in the past. "He looked at our financial structure and said it was basically unsustainable," said Peter Benjamin in a video released by WMATA.

Gunn had a few bullet points about top management:

• "Recruit a permanent general manager with a strong operating and technical background; the quality of the next general manager will significantly affect the ability to hire competent senior managers."
• "Recruit experienced senior managers with engineering experience to fill many currently open positions. "

While we need top managers who have the specific expertise to fix the problems at Metro, David is skeptical of the wisdom of hiring lots of engineers and technical guys as GM and top managers, and says that as an engineering/technical guy.

Metro's problems go beyond the technical. In particular, Metro will eventually get its safety problems under control and put this nasty episode behind it. At that point, it will a General Manager who can deal with the other problems at Metro: the command and control structure that prevents information from being shared, and the institutional secrecy that prevents the organization from leveling with the public as Gunn recommended. It'll need someone with a strong customer service orientation as well.

The Board needs to look beyond the immediate crisis when selecting its GM. If it can find someone with great technical ability and great customer service ability, terrific. But if not, it seems more likely to try to get an amazing manager and a first-rate number two to handle safety, someone the GM can trust and give free rein, than the other way around.

Regarding people at other levels of the organization, Gunn recommended WMATA stop using hiring freezes to control the budget. Transit professionals tell me that hiring freezes are very harmful for quality people; many of the superstars in an organization, especially more junior ones, decide to leave because a hiring freeze removes all opportunities for them to move into higher-level jobs. This is also the kind of situation a GM could best address if he has experience managing a large organization and keeping it dynamic and innovative.

WMATA also suffers from low morale and high rates of absenteeism, with an absentee rate over 7.5% almost twice the industry average. The Post revealed this part of Gunn's report not included in WMATA's release.

Finally, Gunn echoed part of Pierce Homer's suggestion, "To provide continuity, the Board chairman should serve a multi-year term." Without the details of what Gunn said we can't know why he thought that would really help; it might not make much difference, though it also couldn't hurt.

Eight people testified about the importance of City funding for transit needs both on DASH and WMATA. Stewart Schwartz testified on behalf of the Transit First Coalition and talked about the importance of transit oriented development to the City's regional competitiveness.

The most poignant testimony came from an elderly woman who lives in the City's Northeast neighborhood and is transit depend ant. She uses a DASH bus route (AT 4), which is slated to lose off-peak and weekend service even after a 25¢ fare increase taking effect in July. This is the only bus that directly serves her building. The speaker called this bus her "chariot" and her connection to the world. Restoring this route would cost about $61,000.

Vice Mayor Kerry Donley said that the City would likely advertise a maximum tax rate that could accommodate additional subsidy for WMATA. The vote is on Saturday. The Vice Mayor also expressed his concern that Metro would not be able to overcome the challenges it faces unless the Commonwealth creates a dedicated funding source to meet Metro's operating needs.

The Vice Mayor had proposed and the City had included in its legislative package this year a bill increasing the gas tax from 2.1 to 4.2 percent within Northern Virginia with revenues being dedicated to funding for WMATA. The bill (HB 269) was carried by Delegate David Englin and failed in the House of Delegates.

Mayor Euille added that he is President of the Virginia Transit Association. The association's board members met recently with the Commonwealth's Secretary of Transportation about the need for dedicated funding for transit operations.

You can watch excerpts here. The Mayor and Vice Mayor's comments regarding transit begin at about 1 hour and 47 minutes into the hearing.

Finally, there's some good news for the WMATA budget. According to WMATA's Matt Brown at this morning's Board meeting, rail ridership for January is up year over year, having finally turned the corner after declines. Expenses are also running a bit below projections, meaning that the budget outlook will likely improve a bit, though tempered by Metro's big losses during the February snowstorm.

This is great news, but doesn't fundamentally change the budget situation. As it stands, even with a large fare increase and painful service cuts, WMATA still needs $40 million from jurisdictions to close the budget, or $74 million to avoid service cuts. If the budget hole shrinks by a couple million, that might mean jurisdictions would need to come up with only $70 million to maintain service, but they still have to pitch in.

Tell your elected officials not to let us get into the "death spiral" and to protect transit.

Councilmember Brown is missing a big opportunity to have influence over important policy and get exposure for himself. On the other hand, Councilmembers do have many responsibilities. If he doesn't feel it's a worthwhile use of his time, he should step down and the Council should appoint someone who does.

That seat doesn't have to go to a Councilmember at all. They could appoint a staff member, or a private citizen, the way Anthony Giancola is the alternate member for the administration but isn't actually in the administration. (DC has several great RAC members, for example, several of whom would make good Board members.)

There's also been talk for some time that Neil Albert wants to transition off the Board. He was appointed as the principal member from the executive branch when he was Deputy Mayor, but now he is City Administrator and has many responsibilities.

I've talked with Mr. Albert and he is extremely well versed in the issues facing Metro, and makes a good Board member. However, DC also needs members with the time to actually devote to the Board, and the City Administrator has a lot to manage.

One obvious possibility is Gabe Klein, head of DDOT. Klein's predecessor, Emeka Moneme, was the Board member before he left DDOT to work for WMATA (until the management shakeup). However, Jim Graham, the other voting member from DC, also oversees Klein's agency, potentially creating a problematic dynamic where sometimes Graham is probing decisions of the agency while at the same time they have to vote side by side on WMATA issues.

Another candidate to consider would be Harriet Tregoning, head of the Office of Planning. Tregoning has considerable transportation experience. She chaired the Scenario Study Task Force at TPB which created the bus priority TIGER grant proposal which was recently funded. That job required herding an often-fractious set of local jurisdictions to collaborate in an unprecedented way to create a transportation plan and apply as a single group for funding.

I've also seen Tregoning's handling of NCPC meetings, where she sits on that board. At the meeting in July 2008, for example, she did an excellent job diplomatically representing DC's interests on technical zoning matters (scroll to the bottom). Her demonstrated ability to work with regional and federal partners would make her an excellent representative to represent DC and protect DC's needs while also promoting regional cooperation and a regional view of transportation.

Parents and students from Bruce Monroe. Image by Kent Boese.

They were angry, they were frustrated, and they were vocal. They made it clear that an interim use of the site is unacceptable. They want a school, and they want it by 2011.

A cacophony of chanting broke out time and again, frequently being "Build our school." Early attempts to start talking about the interim use of the site were disrupted by frustrated attendees that wanted to see the school move forward. While eventually Ward 1 Community Planner Tarek Bolden was able to make his presentation, it was an uneasy peace that allowed him to move forward.

While it is easy to understand where the representatives of the school are coming from, it was frustrating to hear the District representatives questioned on why a school hasn't started to be built when charter schools are moving forward and a new CVS is being constructed — projects that are not funded by the city the way public schools are.

King Street

The King Street Metro station lies at the western edge of the Old Town Alexandria's legacy street grid. There has been a lot of new construction there. It is at the western edge of Old Town because it shares the same legacy right-of-way as the CSX/Amtrak tracks. There hasn't been as much new construction closer into the core of Old Town because of strong historical preservation mechanisms (a good idea, in this instance).

Old Town Alexandria didn't suffer the same magnitude of decline as Silver Spring and downtown Rockville did during the second half of the 20th century. It was still a desirable place with a good social reputation. During the bubble years, it was hard to disentangle how much of the rapid appreciation of properties in Old Town were due to its desirability as a vibrant, safe, walkable urban place or Metro proximity.

King Street is a different case from the other two examples I'll look at because it wasn't built in a place that desperately needed a new infusion of vibrancy. There is little opportunity for TOD in walking distance to the west of the King Street Metro Station due to a lack of strip malls and difficult existing infrastructure. Perhaps the greatest potential for King Street Metro as a catalyst for dramatic TOD is as an end of a VA-7 rail line, as described by Steve Offutt.

Silver Spring

Silver Spring is a legacy streetcar suburb whose early 20th century urban form is largely intact. It was the end of the Georgia Avenue Streetcar that was dismantled in early 1961.

The right-of-way that the Red Line shares between Silver Spring and Union Station predates Silver Spring. Silver Spring did not have a station on the Metropolitan Branch when it was growing up.

The old Georgia Avenue streetcar had stations near Eastern Avenue and at its terminus at Colesville Road. Consequently, Silver Spring had two separate development centers in its infancy, one on each side of the railroad. Over time, they grew together as a coherent whole, despite the railroad acting as a barrier.

The Metropolitan Branch in Silver Spring

When the suburbanization era hit, Silver Spring declined fairly uniformly. During the 2000's, Silver Spring revitalized very quickly and dramatically. The Ellsworth Avenue development worked as a Bright Shiny Object to bring people to Silver Spring to check it out. The Metro station in Silver Spring was the key as many new shoppers and restaurant-goers took transit to the legacy transit-oriented place.

However, the revitalization has not been as uniform on both sides of the railroad (now shared with the Red Line) as the decline was. Unlike in future Tysons, the Red Line right of way is at grade in Silver Spring, except for the elevated tracks that include the station itself.

While the residences and businesses to the west of the Metro station and along East-West Highway have obtained a higher profile in recent years, the businesses south of the railroad on Georgia Avenue have not. Quite simply, they are on the wrong side of the tracks and also up to a 15 minute walk from the Metro. For visitors from outside of Silver Spring, the walk feels longer than it actually is.

Regardless, the Metro was the unquestionably the key to Silver Spring's dramatic revitalization. The southern part would be best addressed by replacing the infrastructure that it grew up around: a streetcar. Hopefully Montgomery County/Maryland will be able to extend the District's Georgia Avenue streetcar in the future.

While Silver Spring clearly shows that an elevated rail station can used as a catalyst for revitalizing a legacy walkable urban place that didn't grow up around the rail station, it doesn't really answer the question about new development or redevelopment. For examples of elevated rail and new development, we need to look outside of our region since all of our elevated Metro stations are in legacy railroad rights of way.

Queens, NY

When we think of the New York City Subway, we often think of claustrophobic, low-ceilinged stations beneath the streets of Manhattan. However, the Subway is often elevated above a major boulevard in the boroughs. (The boroughs can be thought of as comparable to the neighborhoods that are north of Florida Avenue that were in Washington County before 1871; they were the earliest "suburbs," though not to be confused with the car-dependent post-war suburbs.) The map below is of Queens Boulevard, a major urban boulevard in Queens, NY.

The number 7 line of the New York City Subway operates on this elevated line. Since the Silver Line is planned to run above VA-7 throughout much of Tysons, the arrangement is Queens would have much in common with the future Silver Line.

New York City, outside of Lower Manhattan, grew up around its subway, as we can see from this 1915 New York Times article. That was decades before we started building car-dependent places and calling them "suburbs." However, good traditional, walkable urban planning principles are timeless.

While we have planning tools like zoning and parking minimums to hammer out, the fundamental condition where many people are enthusiastic about paying good money for proximate fixed rail transit access that's connected to their work and play still holds true.

Conclusion

There was much vigorous debate about whether the Silver Line in Tysons Corner should be underground or elevated. In the end, Virginia was absolutely correct to plan for an elevated Silver Line in exchange for FTA funding. While a Tysons Tunnel would be ideal, our experience in Silver Spring and the boroughs of New York City show that vibrant, sustainable, transit-oriented walkable urbanism is very possible with an elevated rail line. I am a firm believer in not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

While it is obvious that an underground Orange Line was excellent for the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor, it wouldn't have been impossible to achieve similar results with an elevated line. The key was timing. When Rosslyn-Ballston was being planned and built, traditional walkable urban development was very much out of fashion and viewed as extremely risky by both banks and developers.

While we can't know for sure, I believe the level of walkable urban vibrance we see today would have taken decades linger with an elevated line, However, the perceptions of the real estate market in the late 20th century would have caused the delay, not the infrastructure itself.

Our attitudes about building traditional, sustainable, walkable urban towns have come a long way since the 1970's and '80s when Rosslyn-Ballston was in its infancy. Walkable urban places no longer have the stigma they once did in the later 20th century. Today, the money is the more important motivator, as would make sense in our regulated capitalist economic system. There are plenty of honest business opportunities that coincide with doing the right thing for both municipal budgets and the environment with TOD related to elevated rails.

It is very possible that our current period of austerity will last a number of years. Even so, we will still need new infrastructure that is appropriate for building and sustaining human-scale walkable urban places. Our environmental and fiscal challenges related to car-dependence will not change because of a sluggish economy.

As we look towards more fixed rail infrastructure, we should be very open to elevated rail. It will be much better than nothing. While a tunnel is clearly ideal, it is not the only solution that addresses our challenges. Sometimes the cost-effectiveness of elevated rails makes it the better choice in aggregate, especially when it's that or nothing.