Roads
The sprawl lobby girds for another assault
Several times over the last 30 years, the Washington region has rejected a plan that would have gobbled decades of transportation funds to make our area much more sprawling and far less walkable, bikeable and transit-accessible.
NVTA's proposed freeways.
That plan was the Outer Beltway, an idea to grow the Washington region by using Houston as its model.
While it's appealing at first blush to those not aware of induced demand (or who find it more convenient to ignore), an Outer Beltway would have one simple effect: it would turn a ring of farmland into suburban subdivisions which our region doesn't need, while not actually solving any of the actual traffic problems.
Whether you live in the outer suburbs or the inner core, existing residents should be very concerned about this vision.
It'll just create more traffic. The mobility problems outside the beltway are primarily about getting to and from the core, plus the local trips tied up by inadequate local street connections. Yes, traffic is bad for many people, and that's something planners need to address instead of dismissing.
However, more beltways will only accommodate a small fraction of the trips involved. Most people will still drive toward or away from the job centers at or inside the beltway, in DC, Bethesda, Silver Spring, Tysons Corner, Arlington, and Alexandria. An Outer Beltway or three doesn't help with that at all.
It could lead to more jobs being located far outside the beltway, but that brings its own problems. Any spot on a theoretical second beltway is much farther from any given resident than a spot on the first or in the core. Mathematically, if we double the radius of the region, we're quadrupling the area. The average person suddenly lives twice as far from their job and has to drive twice as far even to a grocery store.
People in Rockville, or Olney, Reston, Vienna, or Springfield have the most to lose with sprawl because all the residents of the farms that turn into housing will be trying to drive through their communities. Either the states and counties widen the freeways, which adds pollution, wrecks communities along the route and ties up all the money for projects that don't benefit existing residents, or they don't, and traffic gets worse.
It's not what people want. Many people do want single family homes. But many people who live in single family homes, especially empty nesters, want to downsize to walkable communities where they can go to the grocery store, see a play, and maybe take a community education class to gain some knowledge without having to drive an hour in various directions to each one. Young singles, couples and families want to be able to get to their jobs, entertainment and recreation on foot, by bike, or using transit.
Unfortunately, neither group can find what they want. It's just too expensive, because there isn't enough of it. It's hard to build it because people oppose infill due to fears over traffic. But if we spent the money that could go to outer beltways on rail and bus transit and maybe some roundabouts and fixes for bottlenecks in the built-up areas of the region, we could accommodate new growth. Empty nesters can move to the townhouses and condos, and the new families that want big yards and don't mind long commutes can use those houses which are too big for their current owners.
It'll destroy our natural resources. The land in question includes local farms, which not only supply farmers' markets and CSAs, but play host for fruit picking and hayrides. It includes historic Civil War battlefields, which are important parts of our history. It includes the Potomac which supplies our drinking water, trees which clean our air, parks in which we hike, and forests which give deer a habitat so they aren't feeding in our gardens.
The Outer Beltway was a bad idea 22 years ago, and 6 years ago, and it's still a bad idea. But you've started hearing a lot more about it lately, and will continue in months and years to come, because there are people with a lot of money who want to dedicate our transportation money for their goal. They have been paying a lot of think tanks, academic centers, PR firms and lobbyists to push the idea, and so far, the DC press corps and many local leaders are falling for it.
 | David Alpert is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Greater Greater Washington. He has had a lifelong interest in great cities and great communities. He worked as a Product Manager for Google for six years and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He loves the area which is, in many ways, greater than those others, and wants to see it become even greater.   |
Comments
- Understanding can help cyclists, drivers better share the road
- Anti-transit ideology endangers Silver Line
- Give up your seat on the bus or train to those in need
- Last of K Street's great mansions is threatened
- McDonnell's roadblocks threaten Silver Line's phase 2
- Metro tests secure parking with new "bike and ride"
- Support a growing city and join Pro-DC
Accorging to the map #19 - impoving existing corridor, should be done.
I also have to admit I would love another Potomic river corssing north of the beltway, but I am smart enough to know it would only make things worse.
by Matt R on Jun 9, 2011 10:48 am
by Ron on Jun 9, 2011 10:57 am
Growth happens, and it's not going to stop around here. Part of that is some things get pushed out from the center, others get absorbed and/or adapt. And sometimes the elegant connections that everyone wants to see do not always arrive on Day One.
by Lou on Jun 9, 2011 11:02 am
That said, I notice that NVTA's map of beltways is (not surprisingly) Northern Virginia-heavy. Were they to get built, it would shift more job growth and investment away from the eastern side of the region. Commutes would be far, far worse for people living in Prince George's and the area's east-west divide would become even worse, widening the income gap.
by dan reed! on Jun 9, 2011 11:06 am
by Canaan on Jun 9, 2011 11:21 am
Also, no Yellow Line to Belvoir? Even the most stalwart road supporter should be in favor of that, if only because of the tremendous amount of traffic that it'd take off of 95/395.
I'm also a bit surprised not to see the the Metrorail line to Shirlington/Bailey's Crossroads on that list, given that it's another place where rail transit would take lots of traffic away from existing roads. (Yeah, if it gets built, it'll probably be a streetcar/LRT, but since the rest of the map thumbs its nose at economic realities, why not do it here too?)
by andrew on Jun 9, 2011 11:22 am
by MW on Jun 9, 2011 11:34 am
I hope they're saving up for all that...
by Cavan on Jun 9, 2011 11:49 am
I mean, what GGW is advocating is essentially not advocating walkable communities unless you count 'elevator riding' as walking. Imagine a metro area with not one but 2, 3, 4, or more beltways (and spokes) and with all these highways connecting livable/walkable communities like what we have in Dupont, Georgetown, Old Town Alexandria, Kensington, you name it. Imagine not one big Manhatten-like center to the region where what makes Dupont Dupont has to be obliterated to make way for tall buildings crammed with people bumping into each other as they fight for space for cars and bikes and stroller and hoola hoops ... but instead a nicely sprawled out series of 'towns' and livable and walkable communities spread out over this vast bowl of a metro area we live in ... and where the highways function well because the spread is so even and varied that no one really has to drive long distances from one community to another .. unless they want to. Imagine the New England model which has allowed so many millions of people to live quality lifestyles. Imagine it happening here ... vs. the NYC model which GGW seems to advocate in its place.
And btw ... despite how nice it is to have our farmers market and the like, the reality is that most of our food comes from all over the world ... and I don't just mean the fish from asia or lobsters from Maine, but also the tomatoes from Argentina or Israel and onions from Mexico. For a group proclaiming itself advocates of efficiency, the smartgrowthers seem awfully blind to the real efficiencies inherent in letting farming occur where and when needed on its own terms ... e.g. letting tomatoes come from Argentiana in the winter (where its their summer).
by Lance on Jun 9, 2011 11:49 am
by rogerwilco on Jun 9, 2011 11:55 am
by Scott McP on Jun 9, 2011 12:03 pm
@Lance - "nicely sprawled" ?? and I don't want a tomato if it tastes like water.
by dc denizen on Jun 9, 2011 12:12 pm
by Jon C on Jun 9, 2011 12:12 pm
Also if you look at the article they just want to maintain the right of ways for many of these roads. I have no issue with that and its sound planning.
by Matt R on Jun 9, 2011 12:14 pm
Exactly right. If you build highways, the resulting development will orient itself to the highway, since everyone will travel there by car.
If you build transit and design it around pedestrians, the resulting development will be walkable, since everyone will walk from the transit station to the development.
There's some opportunity for mixing and matching - obviously you want to accommodate cars in a walkable area, too - but if the core of that regional transport network is the highway, Lance is going to be very disappointed when a bunch of mini-Duponts fail to appear.
Cars are decentralized and spatially inefficient. They take up lots of space. The development that is built around the car is consequently decentralized, not dense enough to support walkable areas, and designed to favor cars and be hostile to pedestrians.
There's only one way to really alleviate road congestion - performance pricing.
by Alex B. on Jun 9, 2011 12:20 pm
It *could* work for intercity and high-speed rail, although high-speed lines need to be very straight and have virtually no incline. Building the highway to the same parameters could be impractical and expensive compared to constructing them separately.
It's also worth noting that almost every interstate built in an urban area has included some kind of transit/rail/BRT component in its planning stages. Those transit components always seems to get nixed and not built at the very last minute.
(See also: "BRT Creep." Once you start slicing and trimming away from a transit project, you continue until ending up with a product that is so unsatisfactory that it doesn't get built. This almost (and maybe should have) happened with the decision to build the silver line aboveground.)
by andrew on Jun 9, 2011 12:52 pm
What you end up with it people at the same time protesting more roads and more transit, with the end results of an overworked but barely expanded transportation system.
I would like to see solutions brought to light on how to break this paralysis. I don't know how to do this. Perhaps the problem is that people always protest against something, in stead of constructively advocating for something.
by Jasper on Jun 9, 2011 12:52 pm
What I am doing is pointing out that GGW's 'solution' throws the baby out with the bath water. It sees growth coming and it's solution is to (1) prevent it where possible by stopping 'induced demand' and (2) dealing with that natural growth that does happen by 'infilling' the already built up environment.
Since growth is far better than decay ... and as we all know doing neither is rarely an option, wouldn't GGW's goals be better served advocating for better controlled growth? I.e., Why fight the roadways that are needed for that growth when you can instead fight to ensure that what gets built around those roadways is a livable walkable community (for those that want that) AND subdivisions (for those that don't). For example, DC Denizen above makes the excellent suggestion that leaving medians for future transportation projects including bike lanes and lightrail is something worth advocationg for. ... Something which in my opinion would help steer growth toward providing more livable and walkable communities as it advances.
The inefficiencies of not making use of all our available naturual land resources in this metro bowl as GGW is advocating is too glaring a problem with the dogma of Smartgrowth to be ignored. Human lives can't be an afterthought in our land use planning. We shouldn't even be considering shutting down growth or relegating it all to a few already dense places. If we're serious about land use planning, we'll work instead to plan and control that growth so that a lot more people get to enjoy the same lifestyle that only a few get to enjoy today.
by Lance on Jun 9, 2011 12:57 pm
Vancouver regularly comes in at the top of North American quality-of-life ratings despite having all of the things Lance hates. Tall buildings and overhead wires are in abundance. (Interestingly, the overhead wires are for BRT, not streetcars.)
by Phil on Jun 9, 2011 1:00 pm
by Captol Hiller on Jun 9, 2011 1:01 pm
Your argument would hold water if compact, walkable development was the norm but it hasn't been that way for fifty years. Add a strawman that says that the editorial position of GGW advocates the razing of Dupont Circle to put in skyscrapers.
Also "sprawl" in the urban development sense has a specific meaning (single-use, auto-dependent). The plan for these beltways however don't subscribe to what you envision either. They don't connect already established communities. They endeavor to create new ones which in and of itself is ok but the plan proffered by the NVTA doesn't really pass environmental (and host of other things) muster.
by Canaan on Jun 9, 2011 1:01 pm
but instead a nicely sprawled out series of 'towns' and livable and walkable communities spread out over this vast bowl of a metro area we live in ... and where the highways function well because the spread is so even and varied that no one really has to drive long distances from one community to another .. unless they want to. Imagine the New England model which has allowed so many millions of people to live quality lifestyles.
This won't happen. The reason Dupont is the way it is, and New England towns are the way they are, is that they were developed without automobiles. People got around by walking, horse, other slow methods, so the areas they lived in developed that way.
You don't have to have huge high-rises or "Manhattan" in order to have density. The census tract north of Dupont Circle has a density of 35,000 people per square mile. For some reason people think there either needs to be quaint towns or 50 story buildings. There is a ton of in-between that we think looks great AND houses a ton of people.
by MLD on Jun 9, 2011 1:02 pm
We do need better N-S routes in Northern Virginia.
Also on my wish list:
1. Rt 1 redevelopment. Huge potential there.
2. Transit between Bethesda and Tysons
3. Congestion pricing on 66 inside the beltway, rather than HOV.
by charlie on Jun 9, 2011 1:05 pm
by Phil on Jun 9, 2011 1:08 pm
If you spread the jobs out all over the place, then the number of jobs in your radius of access (regardless of where you live) is very limited.
So let's start with the premise that we want to put jobs in a central place (or argue about that first) and then ask the next two relevant questions: where should people live who want to access the jobs and how will they access them? There are many answers to this question but it seems like a hub-and-spoke model makes much more sense than concentric circles once, if you agree that jobs should be in a cluster.
*see http://www.isc.hbs.edu/econ-clusters.htm
by Falls Church on Jun 9, 2011 1:10 pm
I was of the impression that HSR could handle far higher inclines than regular rail. No need to worry about heavy lumbering freight not making it up the hill.
by NikolasM on Jun 9, 2011 1:14 pm
I'd look instead at where we want to put homes and the services that people need from home. The idea of people driving/walking/biking/railing to a job is one with a limited life span. I read in the Post the other day that we already have more people working at least some days from home each week than we do people having to work all days out of an office. (And given the inclination of the federal government to lag in adapting new employment practices, I'd bet we're behind the curve as a metro region on this.) No ... 15 ... 20 years from now when these plans start to come to fruition, there'll be very few people having to actually go to an office or workshop or whatever. With the exception of service workers like restaurant staff and the like, just about everyone will have the ability and latitude to work from wherever they want to work. I.e., the 'build around work' model is dead.
by Lance on Jun 9, 2011 1:30 pm
DC does have highways in the city center. I-66, I-395, Whitehurst Freeway, Southwesteast Freeway, GW Parkway, NY Ave. All in the city center. And depending on how you define city center, there are also the Clara Barton Parkway, the Rock Creek Parkway, and I/DC-295. Yeah, the C100 did a really good job keeping those highways out of DC.
by Jasper on Jun 9, 2011 1:32 pm
by torahj on Jun 9, 2011 1:40 pm
Ok, there is a problem here. One the one hand, GGW says no more roads. But on the other hand, even a lot of GGW people have a hard time seeing the sense of the Silver line beyond Dulles. Whenever I suggest an extension of the blue line along the FFX parkway, I get laughed away.
If it makes you feel any better, I think the idea of more suburban roads is counter-productive. And I'd like to see the Silver line extended to, say, WVA. ;)
Blue line extension sounds good to me, too. At least that's what I'd do if GGW area was a giant game of Sim City.
Unfortunately, it's not, and the voters will have their say. And while the majority of state (and county) voters are committed to the suburban/exurban lifestyle, my guess is that things will get worse before they get better...if they ever get better.
That's why I think it's a bit naive to say that suburban infrastructure is verging on collapse because of "people at the same time protesting more roads and more transit". We woefully underfund infrastructure in this country, so the choice is usually between roads or transit--and in the suburbs, road folks are going to win that one every time.
by oboe on Jun 9, 2011 1:57 pm
Surprisingly, clustering is not an idea who's time has passed even with modern technologies like telecommuting and videoconferencing:
"Economists explain clustering as a means for small companies to enjoy some of the economies of scale (see article) usually reserved for large ones. An isolated greenfield site in a depressed region where government grants are plentiful may bring a young company immediate benefits. But in the longer term the young company may be better off squeezing itself onto an expensive piece of urban real estate in close proximity to a significant number of its competitors. By sticking together, firms are able to benefit from such things as the neighbourhood’s pool of expertise and skilled workers; its easy access to component suppliers (Toyota’s suppliers generally cluster round the mother company’s factories, wherever they may be); and its information channels (both formal ones like trade magazines and informal ones like everyday gossip in neighbourhood bars).
That clustering is not a phenomenon whose time has passed is demonstrated by California’s Silicon Valley. New IT and internet firms continue to gather there in spite of the high prices of local property and the danger of earthquakes. Ironically, they find that much of the most valuable information that they obtain comes not electronically but from face-to-face meetings.
Michael Porter, a professor at Harvard Business School, has looked recently at this seemingly paradoxical revival of industrial clusters. In theory, he says, location should no longer be a source of competitive advantage in an era of global competition, rapid transport and high-speed telecommunications. The world’s increasingly global businesses should by now be above and beyond geography. Yet clearly they are not."
by Falls Church on Jun 9, 2011 1:58 pm
Now, that being said, I agree with Capital Hiller that the Purple Line should bridge the Potomac from Bethesda to West Falls Church (or wherever the Silver Line connects to the Orange Line).
by James on Jun 9, 2011 1:59 pm
I've based my comprehensive investment strategy (which consists of buying one small DC row-house) on this long-term principle.
by oboe on Jun 9, 2011 2:06 pm
This is an outstanding point. Transportation is not independent of land use patterns: you build highways, you generate sprawl. Dupont doesn't have freeways running through it. Conversely, this is why the CCT is such a hard sell- if you build an area full of office parks/etc., it's hard to retrofit transit.
Also, it's interesting to see how much demand there is for old land-use patterns from the pre-Highway boom era.
by EJ on Jun 9, 2011 2:09 pm
This is exactly what people were saying 15 years ago. Much like the "paperless office," it has yet to happen.
by Phil on Jun 9, 2011 2:10 pm
The whole "don't worry about it, everyone will work from home thing" is as dependable as the prediction of jetpacks and hovercars were in the 60s.
by oboe on Jun 9, 2011 2:12 pm
by tom veil on Jun 9, 2011 2:12 pm
You can't sell the snake-oil of "congestion mitigation" with maintenance. Suburbia relies on the willful suspension of disbelief that which is unsustainable can go on forever. It must be forward-looking. Once you look backwards, the illusion starts to dissipate.
by oboe on Jun 9, 2011 2:15 pm
You've made one of the most sensible, rewalistic, and reasonable comments in this.
This region's historic "Don't build it and they won't come" attitude towards highways has worked really well so far, hasn't it? Just ask anyone stuck in traffic.
I often wonder how many of the advocates of absolutely nothing new but "dense, walkable, transit-oriented communities" REALLY want the necessary 20, 30, or 40-story apartment buildings on THEIR block.
We might as well face it: as long as we insist on severely limiting building heights in the core, we're going to have kearn to live with "sprawl" and the (horrors!) highways that come with it.
by ceefer66 on Jun 9, 2011 3:04 pm
What you call "efficiency" does not take into account externalities like sustainability. Yeah, we could pave every square inch of the East Coast and then all be stuck in traffic jams as we try to get to our jobs 2 hours away each morning - but what is efficient about burning all that fuel sitting in traffic? How about 1) letting the countryside be the countryside and 2) let the city be the city, and focus on making the cities work more "efficiently" by building transit?
Same thing with your food comments - just because our food comes from all over the world TODAY (thanks to cheap fossil fuel), that is far from an efficient outcome for the environment, and NOT something we should be celebrating. The more local farmland we plough under here, the more forest has to be cleared in the 3rd world to feed us here. That's efficient?
More roads means more driving - period. Let's focus on developing the places we have already built and maximizing the number of people who can move in and out of them every day, instead of promoting more sprawl, consuming more fuel, making people's commutes even worse, and destroying the environment.
by Glenn on Jun 9, 2011 3:46 pm
No, it's not because of cheap fossil fuel. It's from the order of magnitude increases in efficiency from containerized shipping and intermodal transport over the last few decades - while real fossil fuel prices have increased. It takes more energy to get something from LA to Denver than from Chile (or Shanghai) to LA.
(Petroleum price increases are transfered to food prices, but that's in production and fertilizer costs more so than transport, and consequently are generally distributed world wide.)
(And third farming that is slash and burn is so because it is very much inefficent, and the pressure comes from local populations engaged in substitence farming on marginal lands just to feed their families. And does not represent the farming practices of either Chile or Argentina, and if current trends continue, Brazil in the very near future)
by Kolohe on Jun 9, 2011 4:14 pm
Because no other American city has sprawl? That's just silly. Actually, the Washington area has been one of the best at limiting it. Our strategies HAVE worked, just not completely. The likes of Houston, with its multiple beltways, sprawls much worse.
by BeyondDC on Jun 9, 2011 4:29 pm
Clustering or agglomeration effects are far more sensitive to distance than you propose, at least in knowledge-based fields.
"Agglomeration economies attenuate with distance. The initial attenuation is rapid, with the effect of own-industry employment in the first mile up to 10 to 1000 times larger than the effect two to five miles away…" (Stuart Rosenthal and William Strange).
With Madison Ave. and the ad industry, the effects of agglomeration "dissipate very quickly with distance and are gone by 750 metres."
See studies linked from .
Agglomeration effects are different with light and heavy industry - there, players see benefits from a large base of potential workers and a collection of supporting enterprises. With knowledge work, it's more about being right next to people in the same field. Grady Clay talks about the idea of vortex points where everyone meets by chance, much like K St. and the PR/lobbyist shops.
by David R. on Jun 9, 2011 4:30 pm
It seems like we are saying the solution is that people shouldn't be willing to commute for more than 5 miles? And that if you want the economic and cultural advantages of living close to DC, you should live inside the beltway.
While that sounds great, that will never work, because there will always be people willing to commute farther for equal or less pay (which, when coupled with the lowered Cost of living, out in the sticks, equates to more real money.
I'm not an economist, or an urban planner, but I think it would interesting to read about the interplay between cost-of-living, economic opportunities (aka job market), and transportation infrastructure.
by Joe M. on Jun 9, 2011 5:04 pm
I disagree that our attempts at limiting sprawl have worked. This area is great, but still has sprawl.
Look at the rents in walkable areas, they are incredible high because people want to live there but are prevented due to development/ height restrictions. By having high rents, we are forcing people both out to the exurbs and out to Houston. The people who live in Dupont are going to have to allow more development next door or bear the cost of funding inefficient infrastructure.
by MW on Jun 9, 2011 5:33 pm
by Stanton Park on Jun 9, 2011 6:25 pm
Their are low rent walkable areas left in the city. A lot of them actually. Dupont circle isn't the only neighboroohd in the city you know.
by Doug on Jun 9, 2011 6:36 pm
"Because no other American city has sprawl? That's just silly."
Not sure what you're getting at with this comment, but I'll take a stab.
"Silly" is the notion that we shouldn't build roads because people might actually have the audacity to want to use them.
" Actually, the Washington area has been one of the best at limiting it."
Really?
Then explain why the metro area extends all the way up to near Baltimore, out to West Virginia, down to Fredricksburg, and to Southern Maryland. I suppose it's just my imagination?
"Our strategies HAVE worked, just not completely."
Question - and I'm not being sarcastic: How much of what's beyond the Beltway have yoyu actually seen?
If what you call "strategies" are building outward, severely restricting the ability to increase capacity in the core, and adopting a "do anything but build a new highway" transportation planning policy for half a century - and the results (the nation's worst traffic congestion and everything that comes with it) as having "worked" - I shudder to think of where we would be if we had "failed".
The notion of not building roads because people might actually use them has by no means eliminated traffic congestion in this region. In fact it's made it worse. Don't believe me? Ask a friend who drives to take you around and show you the traffic.
We have the nation's worst traffic congestion for 3 reasons:
(1) growth (or "sprawl" if you prefer)
(2) the silly notion that building Metro makes highways unnecessary
(3) allowing the proponents of (2) to call the planning shots for far too long.
" The likes of Houston, with its multiple beltways, sprawls much worse."
Houston? Surprised you didn't bring up LA. It's is the prefered car/road-hater's poster-child.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating we become Houston - Heaven forbid. I've lived in Houston (have you?).
But to assert that the DC height-limits and the attendant regional aversion to tall buildings (where else is a 10-story stump called a "tower") have had no effect on sprawl ignores reality. There is only so much room in the core. Everyone can't fit in it. People have to live somewhere. And they need a way to get there.
by ceefer66 on Jun 9, 2011 7:12 pm
huh ... my office is paperless ... I maybe run off 1 or 2 hardcopies a week ... if I want to be able to scribble on a briefing as I do it ... And we have a clean desk policy ... i.e., you sign in in the morning ... you don't have a desk assigned to you. So, you can't leave anything there. Where do you work? I don't think there are too many offices left that aren't paperless ... I'll bet you're a fed employee?
by Lance on Jun 9, 2011 11:23 pm
Wow ... what a shock when I saw the signature on this post. Glad to see we're sometimes on the same side of an issue!
by Lance on Jun 9, 2011 11:31 pm
ah ... you are pointing out the chicken and egg problem. People want to live in Washington precisely because the height restrictions are keeping it a light filled, know-your-neighbor, late 19th century/early 20th century one where the right mix of city and town are obtained. If you do away with the height restriction and build those skyscrappers that the so-called smartgrowth folks are hankering for, you lose the very thing which makes Washington much more attractive to far many more people than even as a great a city as NYC ...
Hence why the real challenge is how to replicate this ideal model throughout our vast metro area. Trying to stop growth as the post seems to me to advocate is truely futile, while trying to manage it instead could be far more effective.
by Lance on Jun 9, 2011 11:38 pm
by Carlos on Jun 10, 2011 8:30 am
And we do want affordable single family row houses. Suburbs are terrible for the environment.
by Redline SOS on Jun 10, 2011 9:17 am
No, I'm not a federal employee. Offices like yours are the exception, not the rule, especially in these parts.
by Phil on Jun 10, 2011 10:10 am
I don't think there are too many offices left that aren't paperless
Had to laugh at this. People definitely use way LESS paper than they used to, but completely paperless is a rarity. Also, offices where people sign in and get random desks every day? Small minority. It works in consulting places where people travel all the time and work on separate projects.
As someone else said, we have heard the argument for the last 15 years that everybody is going to be working from home "soon" and that's gonna solve our congestion problems. It hasn't come to fruition. Those predictions seriously underestimate the value of face-to-face interaction.
by MLD on Jun 10, 2011 10:42 am
Yep. The suburbs are pretty much screwed. Short of a major reconfiguration. That seems unlikely, given that we won't have the political will or the means to do so. We'll keep doing the same thing, getting worse results, and quality of life outside the Beltway will continue to get progressively (and uniformly) worse.
by oboe on Jun 10, 2011 11:27 am
In the future, baristas will serve you your skim latte from a 3D printer.
by oboe on Jun 10, 2011 11:30 am
by goldfish on Jun 10, 2011 12:24 pm
by Ben Blankenship on Jun 10, 2011 12:54 pm
The outer beltway is more comparable to Boston's situation than to Houston. All three cities have a beltway at around 10 miles from the city center. The difference is that in Houston, this is the OUTER beltway, in Boston and here it would be the INNER one. That probably makes a difference in city-center walkability and traffic - the closer-in beltway in Houston is there to enable everyone to drive their cars in and around the center city. DC and Boston don't have a beltway that close.
@goldfish, I don't think they're arguing that the outer beltway would lead to less walkability. They are arguing that it would lead to more sprawl. There's plenty of sprawl around Boston. Traffic also sucks in downtown Boston.
by MLD on Jun 10, 2011 2:12 pm
by David Alpert on Jun 10, 2011 2:21 pm
What makes cities work is mobility. Nobody wants to walk on a dirt road. With a 150% increase in population as noted by Carlos since the last time roads were built in any number here in DC, clearly new means of transport are needed, including new roads.
by goldfish on Jun 10, 2011 3:05 pm
by Caroline Taylor on Jun 10, 2011 7:45 pm
New jobs like tech jobs have mainly gone to Waltham and Framingham and the like rather than the places you listed, and then in office parks not very near transit. You can't really live without everyone driving everywhere in those areas.
If you can afford the expensive housing, you could live within a short walk of, say, Concord or Wellesley centers or one of the others, but it's unlikely you can get to a job without driving from there if it's not downtown near the commuter rail stations.
Boston is very walkable, but it blocked freeways going through the city except for 93, and then they spent an enormous sum to bury that. Urban freeway building was going to destroy many inner neighborhoods like Cambridgeport. And urban renewal destroyed others, like at Government Center, the equivalent of our L'Enfant Plaza.
As for people not walking on dirt roads, that's a red herring. I don't see a lot of dirt roads in suburban Massachusetts. And you can't walk on 495 either. This isn't about paving rural roads so they can be walked on; "walkable" doesn't mean "using a material that accommodates wlaking."
"Walkable" is about having mixed-use places that allow for everyday life that's not dependent on driving to strip mall grocery stores, CVS, cleaners, schools, and long drives on the crowded freeways a considerable distance to work.
On that score, Massachusetts has done very poorly. Northern Virginia hasn't been great either, but Arlington (Va.) has become far more walkable since the 70s, and Bethesda and Silver Spring have turned into great walkable places. I'm not aware of similar examples in Massachusetts. They were trying to build one in Westwood by the Amtrak station and it fell apart. Arlington (Mass.) fought against transit. And so on.
by David Alpert on Jun 10, 2011 10:33 pm
by dallasal10 on Jun 12, 2011 4:19 pm
There are hundreds of thousands of hard-working, tax-paying residents that have had enough of this traffic, with city dwellers directly benefiting by the appreciation of their real estate. Why? because those in the outer areas have had enough traffic and are moving in. It is self serving for city dwellers to oppose road construction in the outer suburbs. An ubanite should approach this issue with caution because of this appearance of selfishness; due consideration should be made of what it is like to live the exurbs. It is similar to DC residents whom are quick to take offense at suburban people telling DC residents how to spend their tax money, make zoning changes, etc.
Moreover, you missed my point -- new roads are not necessarily anti-urban. But a good urban design costs a lot, probably more than what most are willing to pay. The big dig is an example of what it costs for a good design; the unburied silver line is an example of being too cheap (even though it is not a road project) and shows what happens when the bean counters trump urban visionaries.
With more people (150% increase since 1960) there needs to be more transportation, which includes more roads.
by goldfish on Jun 13, 2011 9:49 am
How does the double/quadruple principle relate to travel distance to one's job and grocery store? Help me understand.
-------------------------------------
"Any spot on a theoretical second beltway is much farther from any given resident than a spot on the first or in the core. Mathematically, if we double the radius of the region, we're quadrupling the area. The average person suddenly lives twice as far from their job and has to drive twice as far even to a grocery store."
by Jack on Jul 12, 2011 1:02 pm
Add a Comment