The train is coming! At
last, the Silver Line will pull into Wiehle station within the next few
months. And just in time, Fairfax County
is finishing the revisions to our Comprehensive Plan to set the ground rules
for development in the station areas.
The draft Comp Plan goes before the Board of Supervisors next Tuesday,
with a vote likely within a few weeks.
The good news is that over four years of work by the Master
Plan Task Force is about to come to fruition.
Those long meeting nights and discussions about Floor-Area Ratio and
Levels of Service are over. I’m happy to
have my Tuesday nights back, and my family feels the same way.
The bad news is that the Comp Plan still falls short in
several areas. The plan doesn’t do
enough to protect Reston’s quality of life, or to ensure that the station areas
will be well-integrated into the surrounding community. In this week’s column, I’ll update you on where
the process stands, highlight the areas where RCA believes the plan can be
better, and explain what we’re going to do about it.
The last time I talked in depth about the Comp Plan was in
the wake of the Task Force’s final vote in September. In that
column, I spelled out why RCA felt the plan needed improvement. Since then, the plan has gone to the County
Planning Commission, which reviewed and approved it.
The Planning Commission spent several weeks reviewing the
plan, but ultimately made only minor changes.
We were particularly discouraged that the Planning Commission
disregarded the changes suggested by Reston’s citizen representatives, while
adopting several changes provided by individual landowners and/or their
lawyers.
As a result, RCA’s concerns about the plan are the same
today as they were back in September. To
refresh your memory, I’ll touch on a few of the key areas.
Traffic has been a key issue for RCA throughout this
process. The development around the
stations won’t benefit Reston if clogged streets mean that we can’t get to the
Silver Line, or that the Toll Road becomes a virtual wall during the rush.
The Rosslyn-Ballston corridor has been cited as a success
story for transit-oriented development; traffic in that area has actually
improved over time. Unfortunately, the
County Department of Transportation’s modeling suggests that won’t be true for
Reston; our traffic is projected to get worse – in some cases, much worse – if
the Comp Plan goes forward as written.
That’s why RCA supports a goal of Level of Service E at
Reston’s “gateway” intersections (where Wiehle Avenue, Reston Parkway, and
Fairfax County Parkway intersect Sunset Hills and Sunrise Valley). Level of Service E means an average delay of
55 to 80 seconds at each of these intersections. Currently, the Comp Plan calls for a
“network” Level of Service E, a fuzzy goal that allows for delays of up to 4
minutes at the gateway intersections, according to FCDOT models. That level of gridlock just isn’t acceptable.
Another issue that concerns RCA is open space and
recreation. We Restonians treasure our
open space and parks; they’re a prime reason why many of us chose to live
here. I
wrote last week about the athletic field situation, and why we’re concerned
that the workers and residents in the station areas will have a hard time
finding a place to play. But the open
space requirements in the draft plan concern us as well.
The Task Force originally planned for a minimum of 20% of net
lot area as public open space. But at
the Task Force’s final meeting, complaints from developers led to the minimum
becoming a “goal.” We believe that the
20% minimum is vital to Reston remaining a thriving, livable planned community. That’s why we support the Task Force’s
original requirement.
The other area where RCA would like to see improvement is
implementation. We’ve said throughout
the process that planning without implementation is empty, and we were
disappointed that the plan approved by the Task Force contained very little on
implementation.
The Planning Commission took a step in the right direction here;
Hunter Mill Commissioner Frank de la Fe made a follow-on motion to recommend
“an inclusive process” to plan the funding of the transportation improvements we’ll
need to support the new development.
This is a definite plus; building and paying for new roads, bridges, and
other transportation infrastructure is essential for turning our vision of the
station areas into reality.
But transportation funding is only one piece of the
implementation puzzle. What about
phasing, to ensure that development doesn’t happen before we can build the
infrastructure to support it? What about
prioritizing our infrastructure needs and wants, so that we know how proffer
money or public funding should be spent?
What about the athletic field question I raised last week? These are some of the things an implementation
body should decide.
One thing we heard at the Planning Commission is that the
Comprehensive Plan doesn’t deal with implementation. And yet, Tysons included a “keeper of the
vision” to address implementation in its plan.
If Tysons can do it, why can’t Reston?
These are some of the issues RCA will raise at the Board of
Supervisors hearing on Tuesday. We hope
that other Reston citizen groups will also speak, and echo some of our
concerns. We will strive to convince the
Supervisors to make the changes we believe the plan needs.
But the process doesn’t end there. Once the Supervisors approve the Comp Plan
revisions, they will take effect. But
when the redevelopment proposals start coming in, that’s where the rubber meets
the road. If we want the development in
the Toll Road corridor to align with our vision for Reston’s future, we must
remain engaged with both the Planning Commission and the Board of
Supervisors.
Fortunately, RCA stands ready to keep going. No matter what happens with the Comp Plan, we
wll stay involved in helping Reston remain a special, thriving community for
our next 50 years.
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