Posts about New Carrollton

Even if Metro is successful in attracting transit-oriented development to the site, the area is likely still going to fall short of becoming an urban center like Silver Spring or Ballston, mainly because the station is in the wrong place.

Like most Metro stations in Prince George's County, New Carrollton is located off the beaten path. Here, the station is sandwiched between 2 freeways and a high-speed rail line, and has few connections to surrounding neighborhoods. No through surface streets get very close to the station, which means there's little incentive for retail to locate there, despite ample freeway access.

This is in stark contrast to Silver Spring. The Metro station there has many similarities to New Carrollton. Both stations opened in 1978. Silver Spring is one of the largest bus hubs in the region and is also home to MARC commuter trains. And until just a few years ago, the area suffered from some of the same negative perceptions that New Carrollton faces today.

Yet Silver Spring has become a vibrant neighborhood where people live, work, and play. It's held up as a national example of how to build a transit-friendly urban center in the suburbs.

What can account for the difference?

I think the primary difference is that when the Metro station was sited in Silver Spring in the late 1970s, Silver Spring was already a place. It already had a walkable street grid, neighborhood-serving retail, and was a nascent office node. But more importantly, it was already a hub. Two of the primary roadways serving the county—Georgia Avenue and Colesville Road—intersect just 2 blocks from the station.

Left, half-mile radius from New Carrollton. Right, half-mile radius from Silver Spring.

In 1978, as today, Silver Spring was a place people lived in, worked in, shopped in, played in, and passed through.

Prior to the opening of the Metro station at New Carrollton in 1978, the site was vacant. It was not at a crossroads and not a neighborhood center; it was just a stand of trees next to the train tracks. If there was ever a hope of building a cohesive street grid around what would become the station site, it had been dashed years before with the construction of the Capital Beltway and Route 50.

The single-family neighborhoods in the general vicinity of the station are all separated from it by 4-lane expressways or suburban arterials. It is not possible for many people to walk to the station or to any of the TOD that might one day appear.

In Silver Spring, on the other hand, the station and the vibrant downtown are both easily accessible to pedestrians coming from most of the surrounding neighborhoods.

The Northeast Corridor essentially divides the station's transit shed into two halves. There is no direct roadway connection between the east and west sides of the station. Pedestrians can pass through the station's tunnel, but to get a car from the east to west entrances requires a drive of over 2 miles.

North of the station, much of the half-mile transit shed is taken up by the massive New Carrollton rail yard. This takes up a good deal of space, and further divides the two halves of the station area.

This limited circulation for both cars and pedestrians presents a severe barrier to creating a place at New Carrollton. It's far more severe than the division caused by the Metropolitan Branch in Silver Spring, where the roads are also scaled more for an urban setting than a dragway.

Whereas there are no road crossings of the Northeast Corridor/Orange Line within the half-mile radius of New Carrollton, there are 3 within Silver Spring's half-mile radius: Spring Street, Colesville Road, and Georgia Avenue.

That doesn't mean that Metro and Maryland will fail at building TOD in the area, though. The infrastructure in the neighborhood can be made more pedestrian friendly. A better street grid can be created. Apartments, offices, and shops can be constructed.

But even if every acre of the site is built up with high-quality, well-designed TOD, New Carrollton probably won't become the region's next Silver Spring. The station's site is simply too isolated and divided for that.

Right now, the only reason to visit the site is to park (or drop someone off) at the Metro station or one of the isolated, auto-oriented office buildings. More TOD will generate more trips, but I doubt it will reach the critical mass necessary to truly transform New Carrollton.

Despite these flaws, though, New Carrollton remains one of the best candidates for TOD in Prince George's due to its role as a hub. But that's only because almost all the other stations in the county are sited just as poorly.

The siting of other Metro stations in Prince George's often means half of the walkshed is
on the wrong side of a freeway. From left to right, Cheverly, Landover, and Suitland.

There needs to a Capital Bikeshare station here, on the north shore of the Tidal Basin. Many people even rode bikeshare over here and stopped to take pictures, but they can't drop off the bikes to walk around for a while and let others ride them back to downtown or the Metro.

After walking all the way here and around the Mall, I would also have loved to have had a bikeshare station to get back home via the 15th Street bike lane or back to the Metro. Unfortunately, all stations are quite a walk from here.

It's not like a bikeshare station would ruin the view. Along this parking lot, there are numerous trailers, fences, tents and much more.

Yet there are still no bikeshare stations on the Mall, thanks to the National Park Service and its strange concessionaire rules

Meanwhile, Cheryl Cort sent along this photo of commuters walking to and from the New Carrollton Metro station.

She writes: "Too bad much of the area is designed only for cars." Yeah.

Therefore, WMATA needs to be deeply involved, and a good plan can be much better for riders than a bad one. Traditionally, though, WMATA simply signs up with a developer who actually designs the project, subject to comments and approval by WMATA and the local land use process.

The developer ends up discounting their bid to reflect the uncertainty about what WMATA and local jurisdictions will allow, or what constraints the site will have.

At New Carrollton, instead, WMATA wants to pioneer a "pre-development planning" phase. Instead of the developer working out a bid, getting approved, then starting to plan, WMATA will select a developer and undertake this planning process to inform the final negotiations.

The developer would pay for a community charrette and collaborative process where WMATA's planners are involved throughout. MDOT is also providing $350,000 of consultant resources for the planning in addition to the developer's. Both WMATA and the developer will then have a better idea of exactly what they can build, what it will cost, and what it's worth, to better inform the final price for the land. The developer will get their planning expenditure credited back when they actually pay for the land.

This might all sound like a lot of inside baseball to riders, but planning is a very important important component of a TOD plan. Once something is built, that's it for a long, long time. This process should ultimately create better development around Metro stations for riders of all modes, and the Board ought to approve trying out the idea for New Carrollton at its meeting tomorrow.