All the Pieces Fit Together

Last Thursday's Washington Post Arlington/Alexandria Extra section had an article titled "Trying to Head Off Leaner Times: Arlington Focuses on Business Development; Alexandria Works on Boosting Tourism."  The article highlighted Arlington County's (and the Arlington Economic Development Office) success at attracting businesses.  The county will be losing thousands of jobs due to Department of Defense relocations out of the county over the next few years.  One of the significant weapons the county has is excellent transportation choices and infrastructure.  Here's an excerpt from the article that highlights this:

Paul N. Wojcik, chairman of the board of BNA [which is moving into Arlington from DC], said the company at first did not want to relocate, but the convenient bus, Metro and railway connections made the difference.
"A great number of our employees take public transportation to work, so transportation was key to us," Wojcik said. "Crystal City has great transportation. Even [Virginia Railway Express] comes into Crystal City, and that was very attractive to us."

Transportation is a key piece, but it's the ability to understand how all the pieces fit together--and Arlington's ongoing efforts to fit them together--that makes Arlington so attractive: good transit has to connect to good pedestrian facilities; good workplaces need to be near to restaurants and other amenities; good urban design attracts smart developers who make better buildings that integrate with the urban texture which attracts better companies and better workers which creates an environment that improves the urban texture, etc. . ."

"I hadn't been to Crystal City in years," Wojcik said. "They've really turned it around. It's a pretty lively place during the day, and there are about 30 restaurants within three blocks of us. That's appealing."

It is appealing, but it takes paying constant attention to all the pieces.  Just providing space for workers or just providing a metrorail stop is not enough.  But if you can pull it all together, it benefits everyone: the employers, the workers, the urban villages, and our environment.
===========================
Steve Offutt, Arlington

Comments

[Commuter182]

This article helps confirm what I believe are 3 primary and mutually complimentary design principles for relieving traffic congestion:

1. Build / expand roads when possible. Especially pertinent when development is going into new areas (referred to some as "sprawl").
Plan and build expressways while acquiring land right-of-way is still cheap.
Be sure to leave room for future rail or HOV lane expansion, which leads to:

2. Build / expand transit when possible, because the roads built in #1 above WILL clog up. If there was adequate foresight to leave room to build rail, or HOV lanes with Bus Rapid Transit, this will cost less in the long run.

3. Wise and proper zoning of land use. Combining the ideas of "sprawl" and "smart growth", we will have "smart sprawl". We will still expand outwards as DC and the inner suburbs are simply becoming too crowded and land prices too expensive. However, in the future, we should strive build "suburban villages" and new towns rather than traditionally sprawled suburbs.
By clustering office parks, commercial, retail, and residential closer together near expressway exits, they become easier to access. People living nearby can bike or walk to work, shopping, or to the transit station if they happen to work outside of this village. Such a village will also be easier to serve by rail transit or BRT stations in the future as crowding and congestion demands.