HIGH DENSITY RESIDENTIAL NEIGHBORHOODS AT THE CROSSRAILS OF METRO'S CIRCLE LINE
by Stan Allan and Harry Weese Associates,
Today the area within a fifty-mile radius of Washington contains a population of more than seven million. Between 1960 and 1990 Washington lost about 200,000 residents and many businesses to its outlying suburbs. This exodus continues to even the far rural reaches of the city, driven in response to dynamic and rapidly evolving social and economic factors. It mirrors the apparently inevitable nationwide decentralization of society around our cities. While seeking safety, privacy, better schools, less noise and congestion and the absence of crime, the numbers of people involved have produced the very environmental problems from which they fled. The suburban home and the automobile. one--two--or three to a family, have replaced the former inter-connectedness of city pedestrian life. with the human disconnections of no sidewalks, substituted by plenty of increasingly congested streets and highways for multiple family automobiles to do the connecting.
The long range consequences of the sprawling fabric of single family subdivisions, intermixed with burgeoning edge cities are now increasingly apparent. The cost of the new infrastructure of utilities highways and roads schools and public service organizations far outstrips revenue from taxes, leaving little for maintenance and improvements ---now an old story. This dilemma has become symptomatic of similar situations nationwide. The pattern continues under the careful guidance of local land-use zoning policies and highway construction funding. Developers and builders have a seemingly uncontrolled runaway domination of the marketplace strengthening their attempts to produce the virtual reality of the American Dream for every homeowner. Perhaps an American Dream but accompanied by the sobering revelation of a transportation nightmare.
STUNTED SOPHISTICATION OF BALANCED TRANSPORTATION
Throughout metropolitan Washington this sprawling suburban growth was accompanied by construction of a network of interstate highways, the Capital Beltway, new roads and bridges, keeping pace with the surge of automobile and truck traffic which is now seriously overloading the network. Now due to current fiscal constraints planners can only recommend the addition of a limited number of HOV lanes, some highway widening and general improvements to the fast deteriorating streets and bridges throughout the region. A crippling response to escalating traffic.
In the mid 1960's Washington planned and started to build a rail system which opened for revenue operations in 1976 and has been growing ever since, to and beyond the Beltway. This hub-and-spoke system met the forecast work trips and other use needs foreseen by the planners, who however did not visualize the future demands for circumferential travel. Today looking ahead to the decades of the next century it is clearly apparent that the growth of circumferential work trip demands may well equal or surpass the hub- and- spoke work trips.
In the overall regional panorama we can foretell the spiraling growth in the number of automobile trips over the existing highway and roadway network. It will remain essentially the same size, creating alarming complexities of congestion, pollution and inconvenience. Add to this the real effects of the cutting back of Federal funding for rapid transit, thwarting the ability to build new lines obviously needed to anticipate and accommodate emerging patterns of travel demands.
At the same time, the number of three car garages being built at single family homes continues unabated. Trucks moving goods and providing services increase in size, weight and numbers to further add air pollution, clog traffic and wear out roadways. Everyone wants the public sector to provide and maintain the needs of an ever growing infrastructure without raising taxes.
METROPOLITAN WASHINGTON AND ITS CAPITAL BELTWAY
The Capital Beltway was built almost thirty-five years ago, primarily to divert intercity/inter-region travelers and truckers around the city. The planners at that time had absolutely no idea the effect the Beltway would have on opening up local cross- county traffic. spurring the explosion of low density residential growth flanking both sides of its length. The Beltway became THE PATH OF CHOICE because of its obvious usefulness. Except that today everyone using it knows the frustration of near gridlock conditions at peak hours. It becomes overloaded with the double burden of this originally unexpected local traffic, plus the volume of intercity/inter- region cars and trucks bypassing the city. The Wilson Bridge crossing stands out as one of the Beltways' worst bottlenecks, symptomatic of its general malaise.
The demand, or shall we say the desire, for travel upon the Capital Beltway will continue to increase, for there is no other circumferential path available. Planners forecast a seventy per cent increase in Beltway traffic in the next twenty years. And beyond that, who knows? A situation of emergency proportions. It is obvious that strategic planning activities under way now must find a bold and decisive remedy, commensurate with the scale of the problem. The deteriorating condition of the Wilson Bridge has energized planning and highway officials who recognize the urgent need to select a solution for its replacement within a nine year time frame. That same energy and concentration must be applied to the remaining sixty-one miles of the Beltway.
Traditionally in cities around the world, when this saturation level occurs, an alternative form of transportation has been introduced. The addition of more lanes or of double-decking ----as done in some similar situations in Tokyo, Osaka, Brussels and Singapore for instance----however expedient, would in this case be opposed because of the unfortunate physical intrusion upon the residential environment flanking large portions of the Beltway. Other modes then come into play for suitability. the best being subway rail lines to provide high capacity service. London Transport, Paris Metro and particularly the Moscow Metro, all have heavily traveled circumferential subway lines.
In 1967 the governing bodies from the District, Maryland and Virginia wrote an historic and far sighted agreement. forming a Compact to plan. design, finance, build and operate a 101 mile, eighty-six station Metro System. This long range planning decision was based upon the shared vision of making a hundred-year investment in a rail System to balance the transportation needs of metropolitan Washington. With seventy-nine stations now in revenue operation. the System will be completed by the end of this century.
Besides providing passenger service, Metro became the generator of powerful social forces at and around its Metro stations. The Metro lines have become the predominate regional transportation armature shaping and defining the areas of significant economic growth in the region. Advertisers always say, when they can. " near a Metro station."
Today the prevailing and anticipated forces of circumstance regarding the Capital Beltway present convincing evidence upon which to base a decision. The present leaders of the same regional governing bodies of the District, Virginia and Maryland must agree to build a circumferential line as the next major addition to the Metro System.
Of collateral importance is the long envisioned Metro line from West Falls Church Station to Dulles Airport. the linking of Georgetown by a surface line to the Foggy Bottom Station, the extension from the Addison Road Station to Largo, and many other desirable outreach goals of the radial lines. The Wilson Bridge study under way must include, or at least not preclude. a contiguous Metro segment.
The far sighted agreement by The RFP Corporation to finance and build the Potomac Yard Station and a substantial mixed-use residential / commercial community, to be built in stages, is an historic first for Metro. A beacon showing the way, as a proto example, for the financing and construction of future radial line stations and the CrossRail stations on the Circle Line. Bravo!
These important additions and developments to the present Metro System strengthen the rationale for the circumferential Circle Line. Functioning together they give synergistic inter- active access and ever increasing multiple destination opportunities to patrons throughout the whole region.
THE PURPLE CIRCLE LINE -----------LINKED WITH DENSE RESIDENTIAL ZONING
The Purple Circle Line. constructed generally below the alignment of the Capital Beltway, will have platform to platform transfer capability where it intersects each of the nine existing radial METRO Stations. It will provide the next natural segment of METRO System growth ---serving the metropolitan region with interlinking flexibility for travelers desiring hub-and-spoke and/or circumferential---suburb to suburb origins and destinations.
These new station sites present the opportunity to plan and build residential enclaves offering an option to people who do not want, or cannot afford, to live in single family dwellings and to those who do not own an automobile. A particularly attractive opportunity for singles and the elderly. With eight to ten thousand people living at each of these CrossRail neighborhoods there will be a sizeable availability of rental or condominium living accommodations all around the Circle Line.
These residential neighborhoods will develop their own site-specific characteristics native to each Station. The human scale of treetop residential dwellings will fuse with shopping facilities, places for business and entertainment. Parking garages for commuters from outlying areas will serve to store cars so drivers can transfer to the rail lines. The interception here of automobiles otherwise destined for the CBD in the District will reduce downtown congestion, pollution and parking capacity. Available rental cars, feeder bus lines and taxies will give one the choice of flexible mobility beyond the five to ten minute walking destinations from the stations.
STATE-OF-THE-ART ARCHITECTURAL AND ENGINEERING DESIGN
On the new Circle Line. the environment in the Stations, the high capacity new trains and system wide equipment will be designed to be comparable with the latest refinements of the existing Metro System. The results must present both the image and the reality of a thoroughly acceptable addition to the System and to the surrounding built environment.
The fundamental design element at each of the CrossRail stations will to be to provide easy platform to platform transfer accessibility and orientation ---- characteristic today, for instance. at the Metro Center, L'Enfant and Fort Totten transfer stations. The convenience and comfort of the passengers are of prime importance---designing for ladies and gentlemen throughout the System.
HIGH EMPLOYMENT TO DESIGN AND BUILD THE CIRCLE LINE
The planning, design, financing and construction of the entire Circle Line should take less than a generation to accomplish and put into revenue operation. The process will provide several thousand jobs each year during the design/construction time frame. The flow of funding required will rise to a manageable level of $500 to $600 million during the peak years of construction, coming from unique coalitions of public/private investment sources, one of which could be similar to the Potomac Yards example cited above.