With Parking Reimagined, Tysons, Virginia, Lurches Toward Livability

This article was originally published in Greater Greater Washington. It is shared here with permission.

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The one bike lane amid a sea of parking. (Source: Author.)

In 2017, images spread online of China’s newly opened Caojiawan Station in a rural area near the city of Chongqing. Caojiawan Station was mocked for being placed in an open field; CNN referred to it as “China’s metro station in the middle of nowhere.” After the media noise died down, however, the station spurred a rush of transit-oriented development in the area, and today Caojiawan is the bustling center of a pedestrian-oriented boom town.

Mocking the supposed foibles of other countries makes for attractive sensationalist writing, but misses obvious land use shortcomings at home.

For me, home is near the Spring Hill Metro station in Tysons, Virginia. Opened in 2014, three years before Caojiawan, the area around it today remains the same land use catastrophe it was when it first opened.

Spring Hill Metro is quite possibly in the worst conceivable location for a station. Worries about loss of federal funding led Virginia to ditch plans to build the station underground. Now it sits propped up in the median above the 10- to 12-lane Leesburg Pike, surrounded by bustling car dealerships, half-full parking lots that seem more expansive than the struggling office buildings they’re supposed to serve, and various sidewalk gaps that leave non-drivers to figure out life threateningly creative routes to their destinations.

It is hard to describe just how hostile the pedestrian experience is around Spring Hill. Incredible numbers of cars rush at 40-plus mph along the primary access points to the station. Walking, biking, or (god forbid) scooting on the sidewalk near the station entrance means constantly monitoring drivers to try to determine whether or not they look like they might want to turn into one of the drive-thrus or gas stations along the route.

Drivers on the Pike are too afraid to brake for pedestrians out of fear of being rear-ended themselves, so failing to read a driver correctly can mean disaster. I have experienced a driver pull directly in front of me while biking causing me to brake sharply to avoid hitting them, subsequently losing control of my bike, and wiping out on the sidewalk.

The only bike lane accessible from the Pike is a one-blocker that abruptly ends on a curb, marked by a helpful sign that reads “Bike Lane Ends.” In theory, bicyclists could get onto the sidewalk and continue, but there’s not much point as it ends with no warning just a block later.

Much of the landscape around me looks just like this. (Source: Author.)

Can Tysons Change? Parking Reimagined Might Help

Fairfax County wants Tysons to become a “people-focused urban setting,” according to its 2010 Tysons Comprehensive Plan. It aims to create this “by providing mixed-use, transit-oriented neighborhoods that promote pedestrian, bike, and transit use.”

To try to reorient the area around the Spring Hill station toward multi-modal trips, the county has planned and approved a multi-family housing development with 516 units for people earning 60% of the area median income. Located just a block from the station, the Dominion Square development will replace a Jaguar/Land Rover dealership. The county worked with the Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing to cobble together funding from the American Rescue Plan and the Amazon Housing Equity Fund, and also issued bonds. The county-run Tysons Community Center will anchor the development.

However, if the idea is to take Tysons from a scarred wasteland primarily defined by two 10- to 12-lane roads knifing through its center, the county will need to consider more serious reforms that reduce car dependency. To that end, it has released the details of Parking Reimagined, a plan to significantly lower parking minimums, most dramatically in areas next to Metro stations.

Parking Reimagined is about “rethinking development in terms of space for people, rather than space for cars,” said Fairfax County Parking Program Manager Michael Davis in a June meeting about the program.

Currently, if a developer wants to construct a multi-family housing complex next to a Metro station, the development must adhere to the following guidelines:

While Parking Reimagined leaves the vast majority of parking requirements in the county untouched, multi-family developments in zoned Transit Oriented Development areas could have their requirements become as low as 0.3 spaces per bedroom.

This isn’t the first time in recent history that the county has lowered parking requirements. In 2018, Fairfax County reduced parking minimums to their current levels around Tysons Metro stations, but found that developers were voluntarily exceeding them, leading to dense developments near transit with large parking garages that still encouraged heavy car reliance.

Under the new parking regulations, the old parking minimums become approximately the new maximums—a big signal to developers of what the county is prioritizing at this moment.

Yes, many lots are still utilized, but never completely full. (Source: Author.)

Less Parking Means Housing Is Cheaper To Build

All this parking also hikes the expense of building housing. According to the county, each surface spot costs about $5,000 to construct, and the price for each garage spot is anywhere from $22–34,000.

Let’s imagine a developer wants to construct 300 one-bedroom units in an area zoned for Transit Oriented Development. Under the current parking regime, they will need to build 390 parking spots. Multiply that by the average construction cost per spot—in the middle of county estimates that’s $28,000—and you’re looking at $10.9 million just to build the parking spots, not to mention the expense of maintaining them.

With Parking Reimagined, those 390 spaces could become 90, and the parking garage goes from costing $10.9 million to $2.5 million. With the savings, developers would have more money to offer incentives to potential tenants, such as green space. Less parking also means that tenants are disincentivized from owning multiple cars.

A Walkable Future Is Still Hard To See

The future that the county envisages for the area is nice, and to its credit, it has permitted promising numbers of mixed-use developments to densify the area, albeit under the old (and frequently exceeded) parking minimums.

However, in many ways, the county’s vision of “mixed use, transit-oriented neighborhoods that promote pedestrian, bike, and transit use,” still seems like a pipe dream.

At night, after the noise dies down, I often step out from my residence not far from the station and walk through the sprawl. There’s almost nobody here, just field after field of empty parking lots and garages standing like monuments to our obsession with cars. I comb through these deserted tombs, learning every nook and cranny, every shortcut. Some are so big I can get lost in them.

The parking sprawl has its own geography—a series of shockingly expensive eyesores, unpleasant to be in, meant simply for car storage. Half-used during the day, some of the darker corners of the least trafficked garages are inhabited only by birds, or at night, bats.

As the sun sets, the asphalt cools from another long day of absorbing oppressive temperatures. The workers at the dealerships relinquish their claim over the only public parking spots near the station entrance. Food trucks and cleaning workers take their place.

Metro’s PA system reminders to, “See something, say something,” echo through the empty garages. There’s just the lifeless landscape in front of me and the limitless sky above. Somebody once thought this was all a good idea. Some days, I take comfort from the fact that at least some people out there don’t think it is anymore.

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Michael Dranove is an IT worker and public transit enthusiast who is no longer one of the 76% of Americans that drives alone to work.