Road contruction won't eliminate traffic congestion in Northern Virginia, according to the Piedmont Environmental Council.

The Big Picture Spending money on road improvements is only part of the solution to Northern Virginia's conjested traffic and urban sprawl.

By Robert Burke
A 12-lane-wide Beltway. A new Woodrow Wilson Bridge. Metrorail from West Falls Church to Dulles International Airport.

By any measure, the current proposals for fixing Northern Virginia’s traffic mess are ambitious and expensive. But according to the Transportation Coordinating Council, the region’s top transportation planning group, the $16 billion the state plans to spend in Northern Virginia isn’t enough. Another $11 billion is needed over the next 20 years — but even that amount won’t end the congestion.

Even though $16 billion is more money than is available for new transportation projects statewide for the next 10 years, business groups have begun lobbying for even more highway improvements, projects they say are essential to the region’s economic health. They’re also pushing for even bigger plans — two new bridges across the Potomac River into Maryland and new bypasses through countryside to the west and east of Washington, D.C.

No one is disputing the need to relieve Northern Virginia’s traffic congestion. But the high cost of all these plans is creating an opening in the debate for environmentalists, community activists and those in the business community who want to change the sprawling development patterns that have defined Northern Virginia for decades.

"The predominant thinking on how to solve traffic congestion is a demonstrated failure. We cannot build enough lane miles to accommodate all the vehicle trips we’ve created by our pattern of land use," says Chris Miller, president of the Piedmont Environmental Council, a conservation group based in Fauquier County and one of the member organizations in the Coalition for Smarter Growth. "But the answers are not out of our reach. Some Virginia businesses already have invested in the solutions right here in Northern Virginia, and they are the leaders we should look to."

One of the businessmen taking the lead on the issue of smart growth is John B. Adams Jr., CEO of Spotsylvania County’s Bowman Distilleries and chairman of the Virginia Manufacturers Association. Last year, he formed the New Dominion Business Council to give business leaders outside the development industry a way to express their dissatisfaction with sprawl.

"We’re not against growth, but for ordered growth and some sense of what Virginia is going to look like 30 to 50 years from now," Adams says. "We’re all concerned about this beautiful state. Once it’s asphalt, it’s pretty well asphalt."

Over the past year, the Coalition for Smarter Growth has focused its efforts on identifying opportunities for cooperation with the business community. Discussions have taken place with the Prince William Chamber of Commerce, the Reston Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Washington Board of Trade and other business leaders.

"Our message is an economic message," Miller says. "We are simply trying to find a more effective, more efficient and more environmentally safe way to grow in the 21st century. To do that, this region needs smart-growth policies and practices that seek to create communities and connections between those communities in the most efficient ways possible."

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A critical first step in the right direction is to make better use of the region’s mass transit systems, says Miller and others. Fairfax County, for example, could make its Metrorail stations more attractive places to build commercial, retail and residential projects by allowing transit-supported development there. The same is true at stations along the two lines of the Virginia Railway Express, which extends to Manassas and Fredericksburg through Fairfax, Prince William and Stafford counties.

The construction of major office, retail and residential centers near public transit would mean fewer vehicle trips and less clogged highways. "And it wouldn’t take 10 years for that to happen, which is the minimum time required for any of these proposed highway projects," Miller says. "You can rezone land and build buildings a lot faster than you can plan, finance and build transportation improvements."

The state and local governments also could encourage the recycling of older areas in the inner suburbs. Arlington County did it with the redevelopment of Wilson Boulevard along the Ballston to Rosslyn corridor. Once an aging, low-density retail area, the boulevard is now the county’s main commercial corridor with a pedestrian-friendly mix of office, retail and residential space.

Supporters of new road construction in outer suburbs like Loudoun and Prince William counties say new highways will be needed there because that’s where the majority of new jobs will be in the future. But urban region designer Ed Risse says that is a myth. Recent data from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments predicts that in 2025, the outer suburbs still will have only a minor share of the metro area’s jobs. "The [vast majority of the region’s] jobs are not moving out to Loudoun. They’re essentially going to be where they are now."

Companies that do move to the outer suburbs can make life more difficult for their workers. Look at MCI WorldCom’s new Loudoun campus and America Online’s new facility in Prince William. These seem like big catches for the counties, Miller says, but those corporate location decisions shifted thousands of employees away from areas served by Metrorail and onto crowded roads.

Glen Besa, director of the Sierra Club’s Virginia chapter, points out that new road construction in the outer suburbs will drain money away from transportation solutions in the inner suburbs. And Northern Virginia always has to compete with other regions for state money. "All this money comes out of the same pot, and it really points out that we’re not going to be able to spend ourselves out of this problem."

Nobody’s suggesting the counties be left without a commercial tax base. Besa and others argue that the same community designs and densities that work in urban areas can work in outer localities as well. Those areas should concentrate their major office, retail and residential development in mixed-use "town centers" that can be served by existing and future mass transit.

Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, says the outer suburbs should be cautious about supporting transportation improvements such as a widened Interstate 66. A project like that may offer temporary relief, but the extra capacity eventually will be eaten up by commuters who buy homes in developments created by home builders capitalizing on cheaper land.

That caution is fine for less-developed areas, but it doesn’t sit well with people in Fairfax, according to Sharon Bulova, a member of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and the Transportation Coordinating Council. She rankles at criticisms of Fairfax communities. "I bought a house in a neighborhood of 1,800 homes, all sprawled out. So for someone to come in and say, ‘That’s all wrong’ — well, that’s not really helpful. We’re here, and we like it. Somehow we need to recognize that we have existing growth patterns that need to be supported by transportation improvements."

But "transportation improvements alone will not solve the problem," says Miller. "In fact, the proposed highway improvements supported by political leaders in Fairfax, such as widening the Beltway, will take far more land and houses than would redevelopment and infill near Metro stations. While the existing pattern of housing is part of the problem, what has exacerbated congestion in Fairfax is the poor location of commercial, retail and community services."

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Changing direction in Northern Virginia will require changing the business of politics, as well. The development industry has a long record of influence at the General Assembly in Richmond. And the industry is making a significant push this year to sway transportation decisions. According to the Virginia Public Access Project’s donor data, the development industry has contributed thousands of dollars to the Northern Virginia legislators who spent the summer openly backing new public expenditures for transportation.

The 1999 re-election campaigns of eight Northern Virginia senators and delegates leading the summer debate were heavily funded by "real estate/construction" donors, according to VPAP donor data. More than a third of the industry’s $360,000 has arrived since early summer. The building industry also poured cash into the New Majority Project PAC that Gov. Jim Gilmore used to win a Republican majority in the House of Delegates. Most of that $343,000 was given after he announced his $2.5 billion transportation proposal in late August.

Though money is a powerful tool in state politics, votes are what count on Election Day. And growth control supporters feel they have public opinion on their side. A September Mason-Dixon poll asked the state’s registered voters whether growth control or transportation improvements should be given a higher priority in addressing traffic problems. Sixty-four percent favored controlling growth; 14 percent wanted more money spent on roads and transit. Voters in Loudoun County, the third-fastest-growing county in America, expressed that sentiment at the polls Nov. 2 in smart-growth Republican Scott K. York’s landslide victory over incumbent Board of Supervisors Chairman Dale Polen Myers. Prince William County Chairman Kathleen Seefeldt also was replaced by a Republican opponent who targeted her growth record. And the issue cost Bob Dix his Fairfax County seat.

But Virginia is still a conservative state, and smart growth proponents have to fend off criticism that they are trampling on the property rights of people to live where they choose. "We’ve been labeled by the road proponents as trying to deny people choices, but in fact it’s quite the opposite," Besa says. "Right now we’re all restricted to using a car because there’s no other way to get around."

Adams says that behind the headlines is a real concern about quality of life. "I think people are really questioning whether this whole thing is worth it," he says. "It’s not always the almighty dollar. What good is the dollar if I don’t have a decent place to live and I’m not happy in my life? What’s it all for?"