Traffic's not so bad in Nova (Arlington, Reston: homes, neighborhoods, construction)

[VRE332]

Originally Posted by michgc

I'll finish that sentence for you.

Traffic's not so bad in NOVA...

on a Sunday morning at 7 AM. :-)

That's right!!! I love when people are at Church or sleeping on Sunday morning because that's the best time to go shopping

[VRE332]

Originally Posted by ScranBarre

So what plans, exactly, are in place to accommodate the hundreds of thousands MORE people expected to continue moving to NoVA in the coming years? Is traffic just going to go from being congested to UBER-congested?! I bet the NIMBYs who held up the Metrorail expansion back in the 1990s are kicking themselves today!

Those NIMBYs sold their houses and left town during the housing boom.

[GreenGene]

Originally Posted by VRE332

That's right!!! I love when people are at Church or sleeping on Sunday morning because that's the best time to go shopping

And I love Monday through Friday, when people are at their jobs.

Traffic is not so bad at all in NOVA ... when you're retired!

OTOH, I commuted on I-95 every day to DC and back for 27 years (years before the HOV lanes were extended south beyond Springfield, years before VRE, years before Metro was extended out to Springfield), so I figure I paid my dues.

[bangorme]

Originally Posted by ScranBarre

So what plans, exactly, are in place to accommodate the hundreds of thousands MORE people expected to continue moving to NoVA in the coming years? Is traffic just going to go from being congested to UBER-congested?! I bet the NIMBYs who held up the Metrorail expansion back in the 1990s are kicking themselves today!

That's funny. You must not be old enough to remember the Carter years. The lesson not learned: You can only print money for so long until it becomes worthless. Were I work, we just laid of 2/3 of our contractors. I wouldn't expect many people moving here for at least 4-8 years.

[DiderotsGhost]

There was actually a minor traffic back-up yesterday (technically this morning) at 2:30 AM on I-66 in Fairfax. That has to be one of the worst roads in America. I normally avoid it at all costs any time from 5 AM - 9 PM. But it's almost amusing that traffic can be slightly bad at 2:30 AM. Still, slight congestion seems like a breeze compared to rush hour, so I can't complain about that.

[DiderotsGhost]

Originally Posted by bangorme

That's funny. You must not be old enough to remember the Carter years. The lesson not learned: You can only print money for so long until it becomes worthless. Were I work, we just laid of 2/3 of our contractors. I wouldn't expect many people moving here for at least 4-8 years.

Right, which is why the massive, sprawling, but completely inadequate road network that is heavily subsidized by various governments should probably be complemented by heavier public transit. But instead, Obama chose to bail out the highway system.

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by JakilaTheHun

Right, which is why the massive, sprawling, but completely inadequate road network that is heavily subsidized by various governments should probably be complemented by heavier public transit. But instead, Obama chose to bail out the highway system.

Well I'm grateful Obama freed up funding to finally get the Silver Line Metrorail under construction. I'll be one less person crowding the Route 7 Conga Line Eastbound if and when I can just walk from my home near Downtown Reston to a Metro station and hop a train (as I SHOULD be able to NOW considering Reston has to be one of the largest suburbs in America to still NOT have mass transit access to its host city, but I digress). Why can't the NIMBYs just shut up already? I saw them on the news last night as well in Arlington kvetching because the new "HOT" lanes being built would ruin the character of their "historic" (cough...1950s is NOT "historic") neighborhood.

I have the NIMBYs here in Fairfax County to thank for holding up the Silver Line. The squabbling over whether to build above-grade or below-grade through Tysons WAS justified, as that entire area itself is poised for massive growth in the coming decades (Google "Transforming Tysons"). However, all of the white yuppies worried about the "city element" trashing their neighborhoods if and when mass transit service came out their way draw nothing but my IRE! Stamford, CT has mass transit rail access to NYC. Is that a ghetto? No. Ballston has mass transit rail access to DC. Is that a ghetto? No. Buckhead has mass transit access to Downtown Atlanta. Is that a ghetto? No. I could go on and on and on. The simple truth is that too many snoots didn't want the "elements of diversity" coming into their neighborhoods, hence why they fought to keep mass transit out. Now the 60,000+ people here in Reston, along with the hundreds of thousands north and west of us in Herndon, Ashburn, Cascades, Lansdowne, Chantilly, Sterling, Great Falls, Leesburg, etc., etc. must sit and suffer in incessant gridlock just because of their short-sightedness. It's not something that makes me happy in the least bit.

This area needs to learn the phrase "long-range planning" and it needs to learn it SOON! The population growth forecasts aren't pretty folks. If you think traffic is bad NOW, then just wait for the years to come.

[dkf747]

Originally Posted by ScranBarre

Well I'm grateful Obama freed up funding to finally get the Silver Line Metrorail under construction.

I'm pretty sure that the Silver Line was approved and funding planned before Obama took office.

This area needs to learn the phrase "long-range planning" and it needs to learn it SOON! The population growth forecasts aren't pretty folks. If you think traffic is bad NOW, then just wait for the years to come.

You're new to the DC area so we understand when you post this stuff without knowing what you talk about. There have been long range plans and planning for over 40 years. Some group or other fights every single effort to do anything, whether it be mass transit, or road building. There actually have been some great long range plans that had to be dropped after years and years in the courts. They know how to do long range planning just fine.

[ChristineVA]

Originally Posted by ScranBarre

I have the NIMBYs here in Fairfax County to thank for holding up the Silver Line. The squabbling over whether to build above-grade or below-grade through Tysons WAS justified, as that entire area itself is poised for massive growth in the coming decades (Google "Transforming Tysons"). However, all of the white yuppies worried about the "city element" trashing their neighborhoods if and when mass transit service came out their way draw nothing but my IRE! Stamford, CT has mass transit rail access to NYC. Is that a ghetto? No. Ballston has mass transit rail access to DC. Is that a ghetto? No. Buckhead has mass transit access to Downtown Atlanta. Is that a ghetto? No. I could go on and on and on. The simple truth is that too many snoots didn't want the "elements of diversity" coming into their neighborhoods, hence why they fought to keep mass transit out. Now the 60,000+ people here in Reston, along with the hundreds of thousands north and west of us in Herndon, Ashburn, Cascades, Lansdowne, Chantilly, Sterling, Great Falls, Leesburg, etc., etc. must sit and suffer in incessant gridlock just because of their short-sightedness. It's not something that makes me happy in the least bit.

This area needs to learn the phrase "long-range planning" and it needs to learn it SOON! The population growth forecasts aren't pretty folks. If you think traffic is bad NOW, then just wait for the years to come.

It's not just for the reasons you stated above.

If you were around 30-40 years ago, you would know that the Metro subway system was never intended to be turned into a "train" system that services the outer suburbs. For many years, Tyson's/Reston/Springfield, etc were just that. Way outside the attention of "the city". Then you get into the fights of why does Tyson's "get" the Metro or Reston for that matter, when Woodbridge could have used the Metro long ago (and is the same distance out as Reston), or Southern Maryland and Charles County that have NO HOV and don't have room to make a lane, and so on and so on.

So it then comes down to affluency again and who has more money. So Tyson's gets it. But the original intent of Metro was to be a subway system for the CITY.

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by dkf747

I'm pretty sure that the Silver Line was approved and funding planned before Obama took office.



You're new to the DC area so we understand when you post this stuff without knowing what you talk about. There have been long range plans and planning for over 40 years. Some group or other fights every single effort to do anything, whether it be mass transit, or road building. There actually have been some great long range plans that had to be dropped after years and years in the courts. They know how to do long range planning just fine.

I can GUARANTEE I have a better idea of PROPER long-range urban planning than some of the suburbia-loving folks on this sub-forum who boo and hiss whenever someone points out, correctly, that most of our current issues with traffic congestion and "you can't get there from here" complaints are a direct result of the sprawl. If there ARE long-range plans in effect, then why have they obviously been so blatantly disavowed? Take a drive out to Loudoun County and more specifically South Riding, Broadlands, Loudoun Valley Estates, Brambleton, Ashburn, etc. at some point. Is THAT the result of proper long-range urban planning---sprawling low-density cookie-cutter homes located far away from conveniences? NoVA needs to start thinking UP instead of "out." If you want to preserve the natural pastoral beauty we all enjoy out beyond Leesburg, then we need to act NOW! I took a drive out to Harper's Ferry today (expect a photo tour on the WV forum later, but that's for a different topic), and on the way out I was shaking my head in disgust to see McMansions sprouting in former agricultural lands as far out as Hamilton and Purcellville. Do you really want all of NW Loudoun County to look like Ashburn someday?

Supposedly Reston has had a plan in effect since the 1960s, but one look at our own community today indicates that it has been repeatedly ignored (hence why I'm going to a meeting at Lake Anne Elementary on Tuesday night to air my concerns as we hastily draft up a NEW plan). What I want to know is whose bright idea it was to build the low-density big-box-laden Spectrum Center adjacent to Reston Town Center, which may just be one of the densest parts of Fairfax County outside of Tyson's? I say this as I now learn that the Spectrum Center will likely be razed in the next several years to make way for a denser project when that denser project should have been located here in the first place! For that matter, who approved all of those low-density car dealers along Route 7 in Tyson's, as they are all inevitably going to be razed to make way for mixed-use development in the coming years? I just can't understand this unabashed resource-squandering. Instead of sitting down and drawing up STRICT long-range plans beforehand, all of these projects are being approved by Fairfax County only to be torn down not long after they've been built. Why?

I'm well aware of NIMBYism. Perhaps if some of the likely upper-middle-class Caucasians who were fighting against the Silver Line for "importing the city element" would realize that property values near to Metro stations generally SKYROCKET then they'd be singing a different tune. I'd personally be willing to pay a PREMIUM for a home/apartment near a Metro station, as would many others. Ideally the Silver Line needs to be extended all the way out to Leesburg, and then non-Metrorail-oriented light rail service should link the Leesburg Metro station to Purcellville, Winchester, Charles Town, and Front Royal via different spurs. Europe embraces mass transit. NoVAns fear it. Why? That's the future, folks. If we have hundreds of thousands MORE people coming into NoVA in the coming decades, then we can either grimace as hour-long commutes turn into 90-minute commutes or we can stop with the suburban mentality of "city = icky" and start to EMBRACE mass transit, mixed-use developments, and smart growth.