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So If I am to understand this logic how will drawing commuters from past Veinna (Fair Oaks, Centerville) to the Silver line help things. Are you saying all these people will drive to Dulles and Whiele to take the metro? I didnt realize Toll road had that many more commuters than 66.
You have to understand, in transportation engineering the number of trips is a meaningless number used by planners and politicians. The more important element is vehicle minutes. If you have 200,000 people driving for 5 minutes, its equivalent to 33,000 people driving for 30 minutes in both cost and congestion creation.
The reason why its important to draw drivers from Vienna to Wiehle is because a large portion of these people are already coming from places like Herndon, Centreville, Chantilly who could actually get to Wiehle (and eventually Phase II itself) much faster than they used to on 66.
The people who take orange line are not just all from Vienna and the 66 corridor.
Those numbers are straight from VDOT and MWAA themselves.
@ Lehuster On the subject of Tysons residents. You couldn't be more wrong with your sarcasm, by changing the ratio of residences to jobs YOU WILL decrease traffic. The reason why traffic is so bad in Tysons isn't just how many people drive in there, its that they all do it at the exact same time like a river flooding all at once. I am a Tysons Resident, I leave for work at 7:30 (by car right now but in the future I hope to bike once construction is done). When I leave the roads are not bad at all, in fact I have trouble staying below the speed limit.
By creating this dynamic, you dont even have to have people walking or metroing, because they are simplying getting out of the way faster. Additionally, my girlfriend who lives with me is 1/8 of a mile away from her office in the dense core of international drive. There are 7000 residents living in this same situation right now, many of whom also work in that commercial core. She walks with a lot of them every morning, why wouldnt they it literally takes the exact same amount of time to walk there than to drive there. Even when the weather is bad and I drive her to work, me and her share a ride essentially, which is feasible because of the fact that its all of 3 minutes out of my way, again reducing traffic.
You can scoff all you want at the idea that density can reduce traffic but empirical data over a life term of 70 years of development in this country PROVES that this is the case, providing better land use and better transportation options creates LESS traffic.
Hey, I am sure the planned 500% increase in the number of permanent residents of Tyson's Corner (from 20,000 to 100,000 people) will totally reduce congestion. None of them will ever drive their cars anywhere, they will all walk and take the metro everywhere.
Because if Tyson's isn't expanded, I'm sure those 80,000 people would just disappear from the area.
Why would they do that if there is no silver line though? Route 28 has a significant technological presence, I used to live there and was amazed how much that area grew in 4 years when 28 became a limited access highway (unfortunately it only became office parks and no amenities to us residence which is why I moved).
But now that silver line is in Tysons, and they are building all sorts of new tall buildings, I would say the opposite will happen, more companies will be coming to Tysons or at a minimum along the 267 corridor between Tysons/Reston and the area between. Tysons has landed 1 fortune 500 company since the announcement of the Phase I as well as several multi-billion dollar annual revenue companies such as Kapsche TrafficCom announced last week.
I think smaller companies will end up being pushed out towards Reston and 28 due to lease cost increases, but I dont see a vacancy issue in Tysons, or frankly Reston or Herndon either.
If Metro doesn't build adequate parking for the adjoining Metro stations there's no way your going to get a significant amount of people to take the Metro out in the burbs its a pipe dream!
For places like reston, parking garages won't be needed due to the zillion apartments in the area.
For a place like the two Loudoun stations... YES! I don't think those loudoun and moorefield stations will be THAT developed by the time Metro gets this way.
Annnnd thats why there are huge parking garages proposed for every station except the Tysons ones and Dulles. I mean... how many damn parking spaces do you people need? 30,000 isnt enough?
I suggest you see this picture to see how ridiculous our car driven lives have become BeyondDC
@ Lehuster On the subject of Tysons residents. You couldn't be more wrong with your sarcasm, by changing the ratio of residences to jobs YOU WILL decrease traffic. The reason why traffic is so bad in Tysons isn't just how many people drive in there, its that they all do it at the exact same time like a river flooding all at once. I am a Tysons Resident, I leave for work at 7:30 (by car right now but in the future I hope to bike once construction is done). When I leave the roads are not bad at all, in fact I have trouble staying below the speed limit.
That is idiotic. Changing the ratio might help if the absolute number of residents didn't increase. But here we are talking about a fivefold increase in the number of residents. Those new residents will most certainly have jobs, and will most certainly get on the road at the exact same time as everyone else (AM and PM rush). Therefore the same problem will exist as now, except magnified by the huge number of new residents.
It won't even matter if they live in Tyson's Corner. They will still drive to and from work. I lived a mile from work when I lived in Tyson's Corner, and I drove every single day. Better to sit in traffic in an air-conditioned car than sweat in your work clothes as you trudge in the heat.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stpickrell
Because if Tyson's isn't expanded, I'm sure those 80,000 people would just disappear from the area.
Because it's much better for Tyson's Corner traffic to have those 80,000 people distributed all around Fairfax and Arlington counties than it is to have them all concentrated in Tyson's Corner.
That is idiotic. Changing the ratio might help if the absolute number of residents didn't increase. But here we are talking about a fivefold increase in the number of residents. Those new residents will most certainly have jobs, and will most certainly get on the road at the exact same time as everyone else (AM and PM rush). Therefore the same problem will exist as now, except magnified by the huge number of new residents.
It won't even matter if they live in Tyson's Corner. They will still drive to and from work. I lived a mile from work when I lived in Tyson's Corner, and I drove every single day. Better to sit in traffic in an air-conditioned car than sweat in your work clothes as you trudge in the heat.
Because it's much better for Tyson's Corner traffic to have those 80,000 people distributed all around Fairfax and Arlington counties than it is to have them all concentrated in Tyson's Corner.
Lehuster, you are just plain wrong. Study some traffic engineering and then discuss please. By branching people out all over the county but all of them come into Tysons Corner regardless everyday, you are creating a perfect storm. Its the same thing that happens in large river systems that have several branches. Each branch only seems like a small flow but when they hit the main system its a torrent of water. This inefficient distribution also makes providing hubs of other options impossible. You cant build a metro station for 100 residents, you need areas where there are already 10,000-30,000 people within a short range.
You are ignoring the fact that the 80,000 more people aren't just "more people" they are people that currently might be living in Herndon and jamming up the toll road and 66 and 495 on their way to Tysons. And the fact that you drove that 1 mile when you lived in Tysons is fine, 70-80% of people who live in Tysons still might, the point is they will only be on the road for 5 minutes, and will be out of the way before most of the main slug gets in town.
I like how you call a traffic engineer idiotic, when you have absolutely 0 actual backing of your theories. The concepts of traffic and transportation management are as old as Rome, and might I point out that for 5000 years humanity has lived a fairly urban lifestyle. Suburbs are a construct of the past 70 years. Know what else has been? The traffic jam. With the exception of brief moments in NYC history, and some over sprawled urban centers in Asia, the empirical evidence continues to show that people living closer in create less traffic than those spread over a larger area trying to enter the same space.
When you are ready to discuss the concepts of traffic attenuation, which I can actually prove to you in person with water, if you ever want a demonstration, then come back and talk. Otherwise you are just spouting on a subject matter you plain old can't speak on, and spreading false misconceptions to others
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