Tysons' dependence on the automobile, and a place to park it, is dramatic when compared with other areas. With about 120,000 jobs, Tysons features nearly half again as many parking spots in structures, underground and in surface lots. That's more parking, 40 million square feet, than office space, 28 million square feet. Tysons boasts more spaces, 167,000, than downtown Washington, 50,000, which has more than twice as many jobs.More spaces than jobs? Who pays for all of those? And doesn't that number tell you something about the benefit of good transit? Yup.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Tyson's Corner, Cars
An interesting article on Tyson's Corner from the Washington Post which is in the middle of a fight for a Metro extension. I don't know much about the area, but this article makes Mary Peters and Jim Simpson look ridiculous for trying to kill Metro. It doesn't say anything about it in the article, but this quote tells me a lot.
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In other words, that sort of urban design was a form of massive waste that was obscured by cheap oil. Without the cheap oil the scale of that waste is now finally being revealed.
Tysons is designed as typical office park sprawl, its a high tech corridor, on of the big East coast ones. It can take you a 30 to drive a few miles on Route 50 during rush hour and the Capitol Beltway is crawl in that area constantly. They need Metro badly.
Given that Tysons Corner is the home to two enormous shopping malls (one of which was the world's largest when built) it isn't a big surprise that there are more parking spaces than jobs there.
The most striking thing about Tysons Corner when you're on the ground is that's both unusually dense for a suburban area of its type and its also unusually pedestrian unfriendly. If the Metro stations at Tysons ever get built (there are 4 planned) two of them would be in the least pedestrian friendly locations ever for a metro station. It would be interesting to see how metro affects this location which is already pretty densely built but pedestrian hostile vs. other station areas.
I live down the street from Tyson's. Its pretty horrible. The last time I went there (January) I took the bus. It was faster. The bus drops you off right by the mall. Why should I drive , find a parking spot, and then walk to the mall. Its actually LESS walking to take public transit.
I think that the Metro should go to Tyson's have one or two stops past it, but NOT go to Dulles. In a world with $170+ a barrel jet fuel ($200 is coming) and $4.20+ a gallon gasoline, Dulles is not going to last. National and BWI have large populations within 25 miles of them in comparison. Lets spend those billions on improving metro inside the beltway, and building light rail to places that aren't horrid suburban sprawl.
Actually from looking online, the DC's downtown booster org says they only have 175,000 jobs downtown, not twice as many as TC like the article claims.
Look into it a bit further, which is more effecient, dwtwn DC having 3 times as much heater and air conditioned office space as Tysons Corner w/ only 50% more jobs OR a bunch of parking spots that aren't heated and cooled???
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