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Virginia
Editorial Describes Benefits of Remaking Tysons Corner into a Pedestrian-Friendly Downtown
''Critical to 'smart growth' thinking is the notion that a multitude of activities should be done in close proximity, thereby reversing the trend of more miles driven in single-occupancy automobiles,'' writes Falls Church News-Press weekly Editor-in-Chief Nicholas F. Benton, thankful to smart growth advocates for working overtime on public issues in the prospective transformation of the twin-mall Tysons Corner area into a mixed-use, high-density, pedestrian-friendly, ''old-fashioned downtown,'' with lots of green space, cultural amenities, and residential and office high-rises.
Although the envisioned extension of the D.C. Metro rail throughout Tysons Corner has long focused on tunnel versus elevated-track costs and merits, ''it doesn't really matter'' if the rail goes under or above ground.
Smart growth advocates have shown that an elevated rail doesn't have to doom the congested Route 7 (Leesburg Pike) corridor to ''ugly concrete'' and threaten community integration.
''If done right,'' the editor observes, ''woven into the fabric of buildings, roads and open space, its stations can become vital centers of activity and beneath its path a unifying open space can thrive.''
In Falls Church, some three miles southeast of Tysons Corner, as in other adjacent communities, the paramount issue is traffic congestion, especially along Route 7.
Since most of the congestion ''is one way or the other'' related to Tysons Corner, Falls Church residents ''have a lot at stake in the effort to re-design Tysons away from the need for the auto.''
Aside from easing gas price burdens, foreign oil consumption, and air pollution, a transit-oriented Tysons Corners remake would allow reclamation of surface parking lots, ''these ugly, hot, impervious and uncreative eyesores that seem so necessary in our current cultural transportation paradigm.''
With reduced car use and parking demand, and more demand for ''a lot of options within a tighter distance,'' the editor concludes, ''trading higher density (taller buildings) to pay for the undergrounding of parking, thereby opening surface parking space for parks and a variety of public uses, is an ideal solution.'' -- Falls Church News-Press 6/28/2007
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