Dulles Rail, a transit-oriented “smart growth” project, is supposed to transform car-centric Tysons Corner into an upscale pedestrian mecca. So why is Fairfax County scrambling to find parking spots for Metro riders before Phase I opens? Even county residents who support the Metrorail extension despite its still-spiraling costs are starting to wonder whether the grand plans for a “walkable” Tysons — initially promised at no extra cost to taxpayers countywide — were just a ruse to distract them from the fact that county officials ignored their own growth guidelines and approved aggressively higher densities without the foggiest idea of how to pay for $2 billion in infrastructure upgrades such development would require. Phase I is under construction and Fairfax officials haven’t even figured out how to get commuters to and from Tysons’ four new rail stations. There’s no funding for a new street grid in the notoriously unwalkable Tysons, where crossing the street should be classified as an extreme sport. And the ballyhooed bike paths, hiking trails and internal connector bus system are still nothing but pipe dreams. Hence the current scramble to identify hundreds of supposedly “temporary” parking spaces for transit riders on nearby commercial lots so the grand opening of Dulles Rail Phase I won’t be a complete bust.
While residents of nearby communities have trouble exiting their own neighborhoods because of the heavy Tysons Corner traffic, county planners are considering nine rezoning applications — including one for a 6-million-square-foot high-rise that will add 400 apartments and replace a parking lot at the corner of Leesburg Pike and Spring Hill Road. “I thought they were taking the traffic out,” Claudia Diamond, president of the Westwood Village Townhome Association, complained to the Fairfax Times in July. “This is bringing traffic in.” Exactly. Increasing density in traffic-choked Tysons Corner without any independent analysis of its potential effect on either taxpayers or commuters, is spectacularly irresponsible. Yet county staff routinely dismiss legitimate challenges to their rosy, but fictitious scenario of a redesigned, pedestrian-friendly Tysons Corner by claiming that any issues raised by concerned citizens are “under study.”
Study this: If Dulles Rail will increase mass transit ridership and decrease driving, why is Fairfax County looking for Metro parking spaces? And why hasn’t the Fairfax County Planning Commission at least done a cost/benefit analysis of transit-oriented development in Tysons before trying to stick taxpayers with the $2 billion tab?
