Development
Residents sound off about East Falls Church redevelopment
Arlington residents voiced familiar opinions for and against parking, traffic calming, and development at last week's meeting on the East Falls Church plan. That plan calls for redeveloping low-density commercial properties and the Metro park and ride lot, as well as improving pedestrian and bicycle connectivity and major streetscapes.
Photo by Will Mitchell.
Most commenters supported the general idea of the plan, but a few residents opposed it entirely. They cited an expectation, possibly a 1970s-era promise, that Arlington's famous transit-oriented development would not come to East Falls Church.
The most frequently stated concern was the loss of parking from the Metro lot. Some residents that live nearby but farther than walking distance talked about how they use the parking lot for recreational travel to DC for sporting events. Other residents expressed a concern that the loss of the park and ride would result in increased spillover parking in local neighborhoods.
On the other hand, many residents were excited about the prospect of growth and density in the area. There were murmurs of approval at the mention of a possible grocery store. Resident Dennis (I didn't catch his last name), a resident of Arlington since 1952, felt most of the changes he's seen in the county have been good, including the development of walkable transit corridors in the north and south of the county.
Dennis turned the table on parking lot supporters, asking what their reaction would be if there were no parking lot or gas station and the task force had proposed building them. "This meeting would be full of people complaining about all the traffic problems it would cause." Some other commenters cited their expectation when moving here that the area would be redeveloped, and said that they were looking forward to the changes.
Some others belittled traffic calming tools like bulb-outs, narrower lanes or similar measures. Max Jensen, who lives near Westover and commutes westward on Washington Boulevard, that in Arlington traffic had been calmed so much that, as he put it, it will be at a dead stop soon. He also asked whether it would make more sense to run feeder shuttles every 5 minutes rather than buses every 15 or 20.
Some residents were concerned about the impact of new residential buildings on already crowded schools. The local elementary school and middle school are already over capacity, and the school board has struggled with changing the neighborhood school boundaries for years.
Overall, there was not strong opposition to building on the commercial sites. There appeared to be a consensus that 6-story buildings near other large buildings and the Metro station were acceptable, with more support if the street fronts on Washington Boulevard and Sycamore were limited to 4 stories.
 | Michael Perkins blogs here and at Infosnack about Metro operations and fares, performance parking, and any other government and economics information he finds on the Web. He lives with his wife and two children in Arlington, Virginia.    |
Comments
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However, I was also curious why the parking space for the station was being cut down so much. Are they used? Why couldn't you build underground garages? Blindly cutting them out may not be a good idea.
Westermoreland has some of the nastiest speed bumps in the area.
by charlie on May 5, 2010 12:23 pm • link • report
If an option would be to eliminate half of the spots so they could put in a parking garage, I'd be in favor of that. As-is I have to drive to WFC to take the metro in to DC when I go there (and I drop my wife off at WFC most days because she can't drive to EFC to get a spot).
by ckstevenson on May 5, 2010 12:41 pm • link • report
Understandably, there are limits to the amount of traffic the local roads could allow...
Also, having some sort of bike station would be amazing, given the location. Even selling cold drinks to people coming in on the W&OD.
by charlie on May 5, 2010 12:47 pm • link • report
Building more and bigger garages at suburban stations is not a "no-brainer," because with the $5 a day parking charge Metro can't actually recuperate the cost of building the garages.
by MLD on May 5, 2010 3:03 pm • link • report
additional parking spaces cost about $30-50,000 each, if you have to build underground or above ground. So to make it worth your while (5% return on investment), you have to make at least $1500 to 2500 a year, plus operating costs, which is typically about half of amortized capital costs, give or take. So you're looking at a parking space that costs about $2000 to $4000 per year. You sell that space about 90% of the weekdays, with the weekends getting little revenue if not free. So that's about 250 transactions per year. So you have to sell the space for around $8 a day to break even. Yes, you get additional revenue for people riding Metrorail, but also you have to provide additonal service to meet those extra customers.
You've also burned about $10M of scarce capital funds building a garage to serve about 450 people.
Instead, build a building that houses 450 people, and not only do you get additional riders and funds for the system, but you get tax revenue from a piece of land that has up until now not been contributing to the county taxes. 450 people live in approximately 450,000 square feet of space, that has a value of about $200 per square foot, so that building's worth about $90M, or about $900,000 per year in county property tax, not to mention sales, income and personal property taxes too.
by Michael Perkins on May 5, 2010 3:10 pm • link • report
by Gavin on May 5, 2010 5:27 pm • link • report
Exactly right.
There is a question "out there" that needs to be addressed. It is: "Does Metro care how a rider gets to its system? If Metro replaces 450 expensive-to-serve park and riders with 450 less expensive-to-serve patrons, shouldn't Metro prioritize the transit patrons who are less expensive to serve? Or, put another way, cost less to get to transit?
Another issue is that parking lots cause peak demand problems. Everyone races to get there early and so a lot of people fill a big lot quickly...then demand slacks off. This is especially true for big end of the line lots, but affects smaller stations, too. With TOD, you'd have less pronounced peaking and more options about when to access the system.
by jnb on May 5, 2010 5:54 pm • link • report
Then I suggest WMATA start either:
1) learn to build garages for a lower cost or
2) sell the garage rights to a private company who can do that.
by charlie on May 5, 2010 6:07 pm • link • report
But I know how this goes, I use numbers and data, and you state that you doubt the numbers.
by Michael Perkins on May 5, 2010 8:07 pm • link • report
If Metro can't afford to make money off a parking lot and they want to develop the space, at least let the developer build parking into the development and let them charge what they want to recoup the costs. I know the current urban development trend is basically summed up by anti-vehicle attitudes and forcing people to accept transit as the future, and while that would be great if we were more like Europe or New York, it isn't going to work overnight in an area like ours where the vast majority of people still have to drive to transit. Keep taking away parking spaces and I will stop including transit in my trip all together. I'll just drive and park in the city. And if the city officials keep making that harder, well, I don't really need to go there in the first place.
by xtr657 on May 6, 2010 7:53 am • link • report
by Matt Glazewski on May 6, 2010 8:34 am • link • report
There is always some fat in a building contract. The question is whether that is fat a private company can cut out (wages, questionable contracts, etc) or fat that is build in by design (building requirements, safety and health regulations).
http://www.buildingjournal.com/commercial-estimating.html
I am getting estimates of about 20-60 dollars a square foot, at 300 square feet a spot that is 18K for the spot. I can't say how much extra room you need, and I assume these estimates are for a non-underground lot, but that still comes out near the low end of your numbers.
Combine those costs with another project and you might have yourself a viable project.
The point about should WMATA focus on commuters who don't have additional costs (come in by foot) rather than ones you have to spend money for parking, biking spots, or buses is a good one. I tend to agree, just because the orange line is so crowded. But look to the future. You are going to have a whole new revenue stream come online in the SIlver line, where people from Falls Church are going to start commuting to Reston or Tysons by metro. You want to capture them as well, and those trains will be not crowded for a long time,
by charlie on May 6, 2010 9:10 am • link • report
http://www.vtpi.org/parking.xls
Which lets you plug in your assumptions and is based on extensive research by Mr. Todd Litman of VTPI. The research cites assumptions and sources, which I find preferable to the website you linked, which does not cite anything, so I don't know what it's based on. (ps, you need to have bigger spaces than 300 sqft to allow for ramps and access lanes. Try 400 square feet. Also, you don't get to count the first 450 spaces because they were already there, the price is for additional spaces)
Plugging in reasonable assumptions (and somewhat lower ones than previously cited) I get a monthly parking space cost including construction and operations/maintenance of about $10 per workday for an underground garage, or $8 per day for an above-ground structure (which would be unacceptable to the local community).
I think the biggest bang for the buck for getting people to the stations would be to improve local walking, then biking, then transit conditions. The improvements in walking and biking conditions are relatively cheap and require little ongoing operating funding.
It's too bad Metro had to cut the entire pedestrian/bike improvements project out of their capital budget. They won't even have money to repair or replace bike lockers or racks as they get damaged or corrode.
by Michael Perkins on May 6, 2010 9:34 am • link • report
The spreadsheet is interesting. Like any model, there are flaws. Anything coming from BC is anti-car in my book. (joke). More seriously, in the cost estimate I see two factors that don't apply to WMATA here: land acquisition and taxes.
His estimate for "urban underground" parking is $25K a space. I don't see any research in his spreadsheet, but that is actually lower than your initial estimate. As I said, combining that with building residences/offices on top of an underground garage would lower the costs more.
by charlie on May 6, 2010 11:53 am • link • report
Regarding the 450 spaces comment. There are already 450 spaces on the EFC park and ride lot. If you replace them with a 900 space garage, you're only adding 450 spaces because you already had 450. If the garage costs $18,000 per gross parking space, it actually cost you $36,000 per net parking space, because you paid $16.2 million to get an additional 450 spaces.
So to summarize, you get 450 spaces for free because they already exist, but if you build a structure, you have to look at the cost per additional space, because that's what you would really be buying.
by Michael Perkins on May 6, 2010 12:14 pm • link • report
by Alan on May 27, 2010 4:53 pm • link • report
by JP on Aug 4, 2010 2:46 am • link • report
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