Silver Line Struggling to Attract Riders (Arlington, Reston: taxes, trains, suburbs)

[Old Guard]

Originally Posted by spencgr

I believe TE's point is that eminent domain isn't used by private developers to ascertain land; which was the allegation in an earlier post.

Ahhhh, got it. That is generally my belief as well though I know withing recent years there was a questionable use on the national news. Not in NOVA though.

I generally do not believe these evil gubement conspiracy theories.

[FC Merrifield]

Unless something changed, the state CAN use eminent domain to take private property for the purpose of selling it to a private developer under SCOTUS's Kelo decision. But that doesn't mean that the state will do this. Such takings are generally very unpopular.

As others noted, it's unlikely to happen in Tysons. As the area develops, it won't make financial sense to use the land for businesses with lower revenue.

[sprklcl]

Other finer details why Silver Line Ridership is suffering:
* Dulles Toll Road by car or express bus from Route 7 to 123 where the line enter and exits the Tysons area 2.5 minutes at highway speed. Silver Line with four stops through Tysons 8 minutes, assuming Metrorail is not having hiccups.
* No matter who your cell phone carrier is, dead zone in part of the tunnel between Greenboro and Tysons Corner Center; otherwise could have a 25 minute uninterrupted call between Wiehle almost to Ballston. You would think as the new line was built, someone would have had the foresight to put cellular antennas in it.
* Wire mesh instead of glass on the sides of the overhead walkways entering the stations. The supposed reason was to increase air flow, but truly to cut construction costs, at the expense of customer comfort and safety. In the winter, liquid frozen precipitation blows into the walkways. The situation is particularly bad on cold windy days at Wiehle with traffic whizzing by at 55+ mph below on the Dulles Toll Road.

[leighland]

Originally Posted by leighland

[FONT="Arial Black"]IMO [/FONT]believe that many of the large stripmall/autosales lots along the Silver will soon been taken via
Eminent Domain so skyscrapers will be built along the line with short skywalkways to each buildings High Density - Short Metro Walks - No Garages

Originally Posted by Old Guard

You failed to address my questions. You make accusations and fail to address the questions.

Geez og

Do you not understand what IMO means? You did not read what I said. Plus do you not understand what porc is? Not on your game, geez...

In any case I still stand by IMO that I could see one arm of local Gov't or another trying to take over the space wasting properties and trying to up the density and metro access.

I'm from SoCal. I am acclimated to overreaching gov't

[leighland]

Originally Posted by tysonsengineer

In Tysons, Koons,cherner,etc (in the case of TJMaxx and DSW those are own by Fed Realty if I remember) so again those land owners would of their own volition choose to demolish their properties and build something different. If anything, the county sets up minimum requirements (more affordable housing, parks, school contributions) for them to be allowed to do that, not the other way around. The tenants of those properties, especially DSW and those at the Leesburg 7 Plaza, have leases for X number of years as tenants (just like renting an apartment). In the case of the ones you mentioned, the property owner specifically is not rezoning because they have on-going leases through 2020 (iirc). What typically will happen is the owner will allow the tenants to complete their leases, and when that occurs they will submit for rezoning (sometimes they submit for the rezoning earlier as this is a 2 to 5 year process).

Two to five years later, after the rezoning is review, then the land owner can then submit actual construction drawings, which take another year to approve. Then after all that time, they could begin redevelopment with actual machinery.

.

Do you think these stripmalls will wait to see how the busy Dulles SL extension business does in/about 2020 then decide keep as is, change/sell the properties in Tysons?

[dkf747]

Originally Posted by sprklcl

Other finer details why Silver Line Ridership is suffering:
* Wire mesh instead of glass on the sides of the overhead walkways entering the stations. The supposed reason was to increase air flow, but truly to cut construction costs, at the expense of customer comfort and safety. In the winter, liquid frozen precipitation blows into the walkways. The situation is particularly bad on cold windy days at Wiehle with traffic whizzing by at 55+ mph below on the Dulles Toll Road.

That was a big negative to me too. I hope they will put glass or something on the new stations going up, but I'm sure they don't plan to do that. That is an example of stupid design.

[tysonsengineer]

Originally Posted by leighland

Do you think these stripmalls will wait to see how the busy Dulles SL extension business does in/about 2020 then decide keep as is, change/sell the properties in Tysons?

No, many have already begun their rezoning process, and others are in early stages in their preparation. The silver line is the catalyst, but Tysons was going to leave its suburban office park past behind regardless. If anything the past two years has seen a faster growth in the redevelopment process with new folks coming in with much more ambitious plans (see the Clemente proposal)

Land development just takes a really long time, I think most layman don't realize because they see the final portions (the actual construction). But rezoning + construction plans + putting down initial infrastructure can be anything from 5 years to 10 years of process that to the casual observer would appear to be leaving a property fallow.

[Ffxdata]

Originally Posted by FC Merrifield

Unless something changed, the state CAN use eminent domain to take private property for the purpose of selling it to a private developer under SCOTUS's Kelo decision. But that doesn't mean that the state will do this. Such takings are generally very unpopular.

As others noted, it's unlikely to happen in Tysons. As the area develops, it won't make financial sense to use the land for businesses with lower revenue.

Something has changed. It was voted on in 2012 and an amendment was added to the Va constitution prohibiting eminent domain for private property development with the exception of blighted and abandoned properties.
https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/...ection1-219.1/

[17thAndK]

The amendment was a song-and-dance PR reaction to the perception of Kelo as some radical diversion from settled law. Anyone reading it will be most impressed with the massive carved out exceptions that cover virtually all condemnations actually contemplated in the state.
c

[ijyeo85]

They should spend more time improving the infrastructure inner city of DC!!!!! Tysons metro is pretttty boring...