The big transportation story played up by the Washington Post yesterday was the dedication of the first of two drawbridges in the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, which will expand the capacity of Interstate 95 across the Potomac River. I’m sure that’s exciting news to commuters, who have to wait only three more weeks for the long-awaited span to finally open. But the important transportation news — important in the sense that it may presage changes to Business As Usual — was buried in a two-paragraph insert in the Fairfax County Times.
Addressing the Dulles Area Transportation Association, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine announced a regional pilot program that will use Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties as a testing ground for Senate Bill 699. That bill, which will officially go into effect in 2007, allows localities to submit rezoning and comprehensive plan changes to VDOT staff for an analysis of the transportation impact. The idea is to alert local governments when growth resulting from proposed zoning changes would overwhelm local transportation facilities.
The law is the first tentative step toward linking transportation and land use planning. The Kaine administration has picked a good place to start: Much of the new growth in Washington New Urban Region is funneling into the Loudoun/Prince William area where the transportation infrastructure clearly does not exist to accommodate it. VDOT analysis will no doubt confirm what everyone already knows. Now we will be able to put numbers on the problem.
What the new law cannot do is tell us what to do with the information. Should Loudoun and Prince William impose growth controls, which might funnel growth to outlying localities even less prepared to handle it? Should they institute crash campaigns to build more roads, as Prince William appears to be doing? Or… and long-time readers knew this was coming… should the state acknowledge that one way to accommodate growth is to allow the Washington New Urban Region to grow up, by means of greater density in core municipalities, so it is not forced to grow out?