Case Study: Washington, D.C.
Wngton, D.C. presents a much different case than Chattanooga. The presence of the federal government as a major employer guarantees that the city will not face the same sort of profound economic crisis as did Chattanooga. Nor does it face the same air pollution problem. The problems faced by Washington are instead rapid, often uncontrolled growth, and the resulting chronic traffic congestion. Indeed, the now familiar idea of the sprawling, auto-oriented edge city was developed with reference to suburban development in the D.C. area in the 1980's.
Washington's present traffic congestion, not to mention the region's carbon emissions, would undoubtedly be much worse if Metrorail's approximately 300,000 riders, or the 250,000 weekday commuters using Metrobus, had no choice but to drive to their destinations. (See Table below) With 103 miles of track, Washington is home to the largest rail transit network built in the United States since the Second World War.
GREENHOUSE GAS REDUCTION BENEFITS OF WASHINGTON, D.C. TRANSIT PROGRAMS:
Effective Regional Planning in the D.C. area promotes density of development along rail lines, making non-auto mobility an option.
High Residential Density in proximity of Metro stations increases transit ridership.
Workplace Incentives, such as pre-tax paycheck deductions for transit cards, increase Metro ridership.
From its inception in the 1960's, the Metrorail system was designed to extend outward from the city core along projected corridors of development, to concentrate growth in proximity to transit. Since then, stations have opened at intervals of two to three years. As Michael Bernick and Robert Cervero point out in their study: "More high-value commercial property has already been developed at more stations, with greater impact on the surrounding area, in metropolitan Washington than anywhere else in the nation during the postwar era."
The Washington area is indeed more hospitable than many to transit oriented development. A forty-year commitment to long-range transit planning on the part of most local governments (notably in Arlington and Montgomery Counties), successive periods of sustained economic growth, and generous financing from the District of Columbia, have contributed to a transit-friendly environment.
Of course, the growth of the last three decades has also resulted in significant unplanned sprawl with no Metro service, the epitome of which is the edge city of Tyson's Corner. Despite this, the realization of Washington's original transit goals has been substantial, with higher urban densities than would have been the case otherwise. Arlington County, Virginia is, in fact, one of the most densely populated jurisdictions in the United States, at 7,326 persons per square mile, more dense than Seattle or Pittsburgh.
| CO2 Savings From Transit Use Washington, D.C. 2000 |
|
| DC Metro Passenger Miles | 1,645,802,645 |
| CO2 Emissions From Transit (Tons) | 281,238 |
| Equivalent CO2 Emissions from Personal Vehicles (Tons) | 678,219 |
| CO2 Savings from Transit (Tons) | 396,981 |
The Arlington County Department of Public Works estimates that the presence of Metro stations attracted nearly 3 billion dollars of real estate development between 1973 and 1990, and that the annual system-wide commercial activity attributable to Metro area development comes to half a billion dollars annually.
Arlington County's high density helps make the Orange Line—the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor running under Wilson Avenue—one of the most heavily used lines in the Metrorail system, accounting for 30% of Metrorail's ridership. Of Arlington's 11 stations, five have total daily entries and exits greater than 20,000. From a total of 9,892 in 1995, the Ballston station's daily ridership more than doubled, to an average weekday passenger volume of 20,634 by 1999.
During the decade of the 1990's the Ballston station area underwent intensive development, with a combined total of 2,297,147 square feet of office and retail space, and 2,475 housing units, going up on 1,314,847 square feet of site area. Urban densities such as these are most likely the reason why over half (64.5 percent) of Ballston's riders access the station by foot. Station area density, however, does not always correspond with pedestrian friendly design, a shortcoming appreciated by visitors to several Arlington stations, Rosslyn and Ballston among them. In acknowledgement of station area gaps in pedestrian networks, the Arlington County Department of Public Works, the Arlington County Board, and other departments have recently commissioned a study on the possibility of a network of pathways and pedestrian friendly improvements throughout the Orange Line corridor.
In nearby Montgomery County, Maryland, substantial measures have already been taken to improve pedestrian, bicycle, and transit accessibility of station areas. The Silver Spring station, on the Metro Red Line, benefited from a strong real estate market in the 1980's, and zoning favorable to high density development. Ridership in the county overall is up sixteen percent from 1995 to 2000, but it is not clear that the design of the 1980's era development is optimal for encouraging transit usage at the station. As one assessment put it, Silver Spring "suffers from…lack of street life, and poor urban design."
A 1998 plan brings the prospects of Silver Spring more closely in line with TOD principles, de-emphasizing the large, regional retail complexes of the 1980's, with a focus instead on making the station a "community oriented downtown with housing, local serving shops, and community facilities arranged along pedestrian-friendly streets." This turnaround results, in part, from closer involvement with the Silver Spring community in the planning process. "The developers spent a lot of time talking to the community, figuring out after the [1980's] failed attempts, what the community really wanted," reported a local planner. "To a very large extent [people] wanted to see the mix of the local things being addressed." This includes plans for a plaza area to host concerts in the summer and an ice rink in the winter.
Metro's presence has contributed substantially to the development of regional centers at Bethesda, Ballston, and Rosslyn, a trio of transit stops considered by many in the planning profession to be among the most successful in the nation. Though the high level of density at these stations has not gone without criticism, there is no question that dense development has greatly facilitated high transit use, and that real estate close to transit stops has been at a premium.
Washington's experience shows that transit oriented development is a feasible land use option, one from which transit authorities, developers, and residential and commercial tenants can all take mutual advantage. The quality of life associated with many of Arlington County's Metro stops has much to do with the benefits to pedestrian street life of higher densities, itself a function of land use based more on accessibility of transit than of automobiles. Since major urban areas are the largest sources of vehicle-related greenhouse gas emissions, Arlington County's ability to grow without corresponding levels of traffic congestion stands as a prototype for future strategies of VMT reduction across the country.
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