by James A. Bacon
Earlier this week the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors backed off from a proposal to set up a special tax district that would help pay for some $3 billion in public improvements in Tysons. News reports suggest that the reprieve may be only temporary. The board has not backtracked from its vision of transforming Tysons from a dysfunctional “edge city” into a model of higher-density, smart-growth urbanism.
Local citizens expressed ferocious opposition to the tax plan, which would have increased property taxes in Tysons by about 8.4%. According to an Examiner editorial, the taxes would raise a mere $250 million over the next 40 years, or only 11% of the total. Developers would kick in about $1.1 billion, still leaving the county $1.7 billion short. Condo owners would pay higher taxes for what — an incomplete solution? Who can blame them for getting fired up?
The Fairfax Board has backed itself into an untenable position. It agreed to a tripling of development density in Tysons to capitalize upon the opportunities created by four METRO stations in the soon-to-be-completed Phase 1 of the Rail-to-Dulles project. But the massive increase in commercial space would lead to an equally massive influx of commuters into the business district, the second largest in the Washington region, only a fraction of which would be accommodated by METRO. The new commuting patterns, in turn, would create traffic gridlock, necessitating an overhaul of the arterials leading in and out of the district — improvements that the Virginia Department of Transportation cannot pay for.
Something has to be done. I would propose resurrecting an idea I advanced several years ago — charging vehicles a toll for entering the Tysons district. The idea would emulate successful experiments in London, Stockholm and Singapore, which use tolls as a rationing mechanism for scarce roadway capacity in congested downtowns.
A cordon toll would do two things: (1) It would raise money for transportation improvements, and (2) it would incentivize commuters to seek alternatives to the Single Occupancy Vehicle. A cordon toll would encourage people who work in Tysons to live there, too, where they could walk or ride interior transit circulators to the office. A cordon toll also would encourage outsiders to avail themselves of shared ridership services — the METRO, buses, carpooling and vans — when they enter. Here’s the crucial point: Insofar as a cordon toll reduced the number of trips in and out of Tysons, it would reduce (though not eliminate) the need for new road construction.
A higher tax on real estate would address only the supply side of the transportation equation. A cordon toll would address both the supply and demand sides. The Fairfax Board could defuse opposition by discounting or eliminating the toll for Tysons residents on the grounds that they are not jamming the arterials during peak travel times. Indeed, such an exemption would encourage more people to move into Tysons, thus creating a better balance between residential and commercial land uses. By contrast, a special tax district would raise the cost of Tysons housing and discourage people from moving there.
Will it happen? I have seen no sign that anyone has considered the idea of a cordon toll. The tax-district proposal has a lot of bureaucratic momentum behind it, and Fairfax supervisors may have invested too much political capital to abandon it. When bureaucracy and politics conflict with economic rationality, bet on bureaucracy and politics to win every time.
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