Fairfax County leaders say they will ensure that a massive development of towers and townhouses planned next to the Vienna Metro station does not choke the area's verdant neighborhoods with cars.
County supervisors, who will vote on the project in the fall, say they could force Pulte Homes to scale back its vision of 2,250 homes, offices and stores if the developer cannot convince them it would coax enough people from their cars and toward trains, buses, car pools or sidewalks.
But the reality of MetroWest, the laboratory for how Washington's largest suburb is rethinking its future, is more complicated. Even as Fairfax embraces density next to Metro over sprawl, officials acknowledge that they cannot entirely predict or even influence the behavior of thousands of people who might live in the cluster of 13 towers off Interstate 66.
Fairfax, like other local governments, is used to pressing developers for new sewer lines, parks, road improvements or land for schools as payback for the traffic, children, police calls and other growth new homes bring.
But until now, the county has not required a developer to guarantee how condo owners or office workers will behave when they leave their houses in the morning. It's a test for a planning process with high hopes to steer new roofs from the county's fringes inward toward neighborhoods with transit to reduce driving.
It would be at least 10 years before MetroWest, with its narrow streets and coffee shops at the train's doorstep, is fully built. Only then will anyone know whether shoehorning up to 6,000 people onto 56 acres turns one of the most developed corners of Fairfax into a rush-hour parking lot or an enviable mini-city of walkers and transit riders.
"There's nothing like it out there," George E. Lovelace, a Vienna Town Council member, said last week after hearing a consultant's vision of how Pulte could reduce vehicle trips the project would generate. Lovelace is one in a highly galvanized community of neighbors watching the planning process.
With Pulte, the county is raising the ante as it struggles with where to put a population that's expected to reach 1.5 million in 20 years.
"It's a very important decision for us that will shape our future," said Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D), who represented the Vienna area for eight years. "Most people feel the county squandered an opportunity to develop at the Metro. If we turn our back on transit-oriented development, it will have enormous implications."
A key piece of the puzzle will emerge this week, when transportation planners release their assessment of whether, as a report from consultant UrbanTrans says, Pulte can reduce enough of the forecasted car trips at MetroWest. The report lays out a menu of carrots and sticks, from expensive parking spaces to subsidies to ride Metro.
The county's goal is to shave by 47 percent the 1,356 rush-hour trips the project would generate if it were a traditional subdivision. For offices, the goal is 25 percent.
"We're confident we can get there," said Jon Lindgren, Pulte's manager for land acquisition. "If we try a set of ideas and some work and some don't, we'll try something new."
