The tranportation network in Northern Virginia

[hilldweller]

I should probably preface this post by saying I don’t know too much about Northern Virginia and its development history other than the fact that it’s a rapidly-growing area with a lot of job growth as a result of its proximity to our nation’s capital. I have also read that the traffic is pretty awful, with a number of trouble spots on the commute in and out of D.C. As far as the Metro, I don't know how far it extends into the VA suburbs and what the ridership is. So bear with me for an armchair planner's evaluation of the region based on nothing more than a review of google maps.

First impression: the roadway system in Northern Virginia is pretty inadequate for a region of its size. For whatever reason there appears to be relatively few collector roads, confining traffic to limited-access arterials which are spread out relatively far from each other. The north-south connections seem especially poor; I don’t know if this is the result of a primary emphasis on getting suburban VA commuters in and out of DC, but it just seems like north-south circulation is overly challenging west of Arlington. A lot of the local roads seem unnecessarily circuitous and in many instances don’t provide access between residential subdivisions. Nearly all the commercial development is off the arterials as opposed to more neighborhood-oriented retail shopping centers. Even in sprawling suburban areas like Charlotte or Tampa Bay there is at least a hierarchy of roads and a semblance of neighborhood shopping areas. Northern VA just seems like a damn mess of disconnected subdivisions without really much apparent thought as to the connectivity of the overall network.

http://goo.gl/maps/LFHZo

Does anybody have any thoughts from living in or visiting NoVA? Is it just a case of too much growth, too fast? How much blame do the planners deserve? Am I off-base with my observations?

[The One]

First of all you need to realize just HOW fast that area was growing from 1990 until 2005.....Loudoun County and Douglas County Colorado traded places as the fastest growing counties in the USA the majority of that time I think. If you look at the numbers of the four primary county areas, you can see the pressure from exurban areas on the transportation infrastructure near DC. If anything, Arlington County and Fairfax County should have seen it coming. Loudoun has nearly quadrupled and Prince William has doubled in size since 1990.

Population growth on the Maryland side hasn't been nearly as great to the east and south, close in the north though.

The Metro/MARC/VRE has helped a lot from what I can tell.
http://www.thinkoutsidethecar.org/

http://mta.maryland.gov/marc-train

http://www.vre.org/


I had the opportunity to experience DC commutes from Loudoun County between 1988 and 1992 for extended periods of time and have seen the changes between 1977 and 2007 just from frequent visits to relatives.

Exurban Counties of Washington DC:
Loudoun County:
1990 86,129 50.0%
2000 169,599 96.9%
2010 312,311 84.1%
Est. 2012 336,898 7.9%

Prince William County:
1990 215,686 49.1%
2000 280,813 30.2%
2010 402,002 43.2%
Est. 2012 430,289 7.0%


First Tier Counties of DC:
Fairfax County:
1990 818,584 37.1%
2000 969,749 18.5%
2010 1,081,726 11.5%
Est. 2012 1,118,602 3.4%

Arlington County:
1990 170,936 12.0%
2000 189,453 10.8%
2010 208,900 10.3%
Est. 2012 221,045 5.8%

[DetroitPlanner]

Another thing to consider is that Eastern Development patterns are very patchwork, making it near impossible to stitch together long arterial or collector roadways. To make matters worse N VA also has some very pretty topography (hills and streams) which make transportation networks difficult and expensive to construct.

As mentioned earlier, there has a lot of development here in a short period of time. The area you posted is near one of the largest edge cities in the country, Tyson's Corner. TC by itself drew a lot of development not to mention other development in the DC region. If I am not mistaken public transport in this area is at best a second thought. Not exactly an area full of TODs.

[WSU MUP Student]

I travel to the area a couple times a year because my best friend works in DC and lives in Bethesda and I have always been bewildered at the lack of arterial roads, especially on the NOVA side. I agree with Detroit Planner that the topography in Northern Virginia probably plays a pretty big part in limiting infrastructure construction. The area is surprisingly hilly, much more so than what you get a sense of from Google Maps.

Although my friend generally uses public transportation, he nixed the idea of moving to Arlington when his lease was up a couple of years ago though because the traffic on that side is exponentially worse than the MD side.