The Next Washington

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Intelligent land use makes transportation investments more effective, but it is no substitute for such investments. Overlooked in the sprawl debate is transportation's fundamental role in empowering more compact land use.

The Washington region's 1966 planning guide, which was developed to ensure better land use and mobility and to avoid today's gridlock, stated, "The urban region can be looked at as a group of land use cells defined by the transportation network." To better focus housing and jobs and preserve open space, planners proposed a regional radial highway and rail network connected by a suburb-to-suburb system of circumferential parkways and Potomac River bridges.

The radial roads and rail portion is largely complete. Planned circumferential parkways and river crossings are not, and with the exception of the Capital Beltway, they have been largely deleted from plans. Absent such suburb-to-suburb connections, population and jobs have accelerated outward along radial routes, from Fairfax to Loudoun, Prince William and points south and west, and Montgomery to Frederick and points north and west.

In the next 25 years, our region is projected to add nearly 2 million people and 1.3 million jobs. Daily trips will increase by 5 million to nearly 20 million. Daily miles of travel on our roads are predicted to increase by 40 million per day to 155 million.

New homes, schools, offices, stores and public safety facilities are being planned and will be constructed to accommodate this growth. So too must new roads, bridges and transit. Mixed-use development and focus around transit stations and major transportation facilities are important. But if the region is serious about managing growth, particularly in the outer suburbs, it needs to get serious about providing a network of regional bypasses, circumferential parkways and Potomac River bridges, including the Techway, around which to focus and connect it.

-- Robert O. Chase

McLean

The writer is president of the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance.

info@nvta.org