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More
than 200 business and community leaders attended DCRA's July 11 Seminar
and Reception celebrating the completion of the Draft Environmental
Impact Statement (EIS). The
event, which was held at the Virginia Center for Innovative Technology,
was co-sponsored by the Committee for Dulles, the Dulles Area
Transportation Association, and the Washington Airports Task Force.
Delegate Vincent Callahan, DCRA Vice Chairman, welcomed the
attendees. Patty Nicoson
moderated the program, which consisted of a presentation on the findings
of the Dulles Corridor Rapid Transit Project Draft EIS by Corey Hill,
Northern Virginia Manager, Department of Rail and Public Transportation;
a panel on station area land use issues consisting of Julie Pastor and
Fred Selden, Planning Directors of Loudoun and Fairfax counties
respectively; and a panel on financial issues with speakers Anthony
Griffin, Fairfax County Manager, and Eric Peterson, Executive Director of
LEADER. Corey
Hill, Northern Virginia Regional Manager, provided an overview of the
Draft EIS and the planning process. He described previous studies, the issues that are addressed in the
Draft EIS, the alternatives that were considered and their
transportation effects. The
alternatives considered are: the baseline/no build alternative; BRT to
Loudoun County; Metrorail through Tyson/BRT to Loudoun County; Metrorail
to Washington Dulles International Airport and Loudoun County; and
phased implementation, which includes BRT as an interim step to
Metrorail. Hill
defined BRT as a special bus system that would use the reserved lanes of
the Dulles Airport Access Road and have the same hours and frequency as
Metrorail. BRT could have
one to five Metrorail stations along the corridor and a similar fare
structure and collection system (pre-payment of fairs).
Riders transferring between BRT and Metrorail would bypass the
fare gates at the West Falls Church Metrorail station. Hill's
handout included tables, which indicated transit trips by mode in the
modes opening year and trips in the year 2025.
For year of opening, Metrorail had more than double the total
amount of riders and more than seven times the number of new transit
trips than BRT. In the year 2025,
BRT was projected to have 49,400 trips of which 12,500 were new transit
trips. Metrorail would have
101,000 trips based on density bonuses approved by Fairfax County.
Hill made the point that only Metrorail had the capacity to
respond to the growth in travel demand in the corridor. Next
steps in the process would include holding public hearings at the end of
July and the selection of the locally preferred alternative by the
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority and the Commonwealth
Transportation Board by the end of the year.
The Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transit will request
to enter rail preliminary engineering in September 2002.
The final EIS will be submitted to the Federal Transit
Administration (FTA) in April 2003, and it is expected that FTA will
issue a Record of Decision in June 2003.
Next
steps also include undertaking preliminary engineering, securing local
funding agreements, developing a final design under design/build,
carrying out right-of-way acquisition, securing a federal full
funding grant agreement, and beginning construction. Land Use. Fred
Selden, Director of Comprehensive Planning, Fairfax County,
said that in May 2001, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors had
approved changes to the Comprehensive Plan to encourage transit-oriented
development (TOD) with increased densities within one-quarter and
one-half mile of the four transit station areas in the Dulles Corridor.
The plan for Tysons Corner had been amended to accommodate the
three rail transit station locations identified in an earlier study.
Tysons would have to be revisited once the Locally Preferred
Alternative was selected and the
location of stations finalized. Selden
noted that a three-tiered level of intensity had been adopted for
stations in the corridor. The
baseline reflects the existing zoning but it was modified in the Wiehle
Avenue and Reston Parkway areas to allow for residential use.
An intermediate level of intensity is permitted with full funding
of the BRT system that would allow for an increase in mixed-use
development. The intent is to
have some incentive for mixed-use if BRT was implemented.
The highest level of development is associated with reaching a
full funding grant agreement with the federal government for rail.
Selden noted that this was a different approach than the county
has used at other rail stations. In
the Dulles Corridor, developers will need to provide residential and
retail uses to get the highest intensity.
The Dulles Corridor Land Use Task Force felt very strongly that
residential uses were needed to make the station areas function properly
and to have activity that was not just confined to 9 to 5. Selden
said that we are challenged by three realities. The first is the need
for implementing transportation demand management and other
transportation programs to support rail transit use.
The plan depends on the ability to get riders to the stations by
other means than single occupancy vehicles.
We need to be diligent about pursuing other strategies to reduce
roadway congestion. The second
challenge Selden noted he is the existing covenants on a lot of the
industrially zoned land as part of the Reston Center for Industry and
Government. These covenants
preclude residential use. We
need to address this by getting landowner approval for modification of
the covenants. This is essential to implement mixed-use around the transit station
areas, at the Wiehle Avenue station, in particular. The
third challenge Selden noted was the need to have a shared vision.
The task force, the county staff, the Board of Supervisors and
the people who have worked on amending the comprehensive plan have set
forth a vision for these areas that is quite a bit different from what
is there today and what is already zoned.
We will need to develop a partnership between the surrounding
communities and property owners to embrace the shared vision and to work
for it. Selden
cited the vision for the Pennsylvania Avenue corridor in the District of
Columbia, which as a result of cooperation between the public and
private sectors has produced an area of the downtown where there are
apartment buildings, restaurants, theaters and quite a bit of nightlife. Julie
Pastor, Planning Director of Loudoun County,
noted that Loudoun was in the enviable position of having created a
vision for the Dulles Corridor years ago.
The county identified rail service in the Dulles Corridor as the
backbone for Loudoun's transit system and the key to implementing smart
growth principles. Pastor noted
that when Dulles Airport made it clear they did not want to be the
terminal station, Loudoun made sure it was in a position to proactively
provide facilities that would extend rail beyond the airport into the
county. Loudoun adopted a land
use plan for the area surrounding the Dulles Toll Road extension even
before the Greenway had been constructed.
The county was able to set a direction and a tone for what would
happen in the future. The adopted plan called for a series of nodes all
the way to Leesburg, but they were potential nodes and were based on
meeting certain criteria. The
plan was modified in 1998. The county undertook special studies and looked at specific
nodes of development for implementation of rail in the 2020 time
horizon. Several nodes were
eliminated as part of the effort for the county to deal with its
increased growth and the need to match capital facilities with the
demands of growth. The 1998
amendments focused attention on the eastern portion of the Greenway
corridor. The most recent
amendments to the Comprehensive Plan (July 2001) focused more
specifically on the timing of development as it would relate to the
implementation schedule in the Draft EIS (2010).
The County wanted to address its specific vision for rail along
the Greenway. Pastor noted
the function of the two Loudoun stations is very important to how we
grow in the future. Loudoun
chose the same growth policies that were adopted in the 1995 plan
phasing development with the provision of various types of transit,
which is quite similar to what Fairfax County has adopted.
The difference is that there is more of a greenfield scenario in
Loudoun because much of the land around the two stations (Route 606 and
Route 772) is not developed. We
did establish requirements for bus, BRT, and then beyond that for rail.
These triggers were specifically tied to densities that would be
achieved through a rezoning process. The
station at Route 606 has challenges resulting from the inability to have
residential development because of the proximity of the site to Dulles
Airport. In this particular
case, there is an opportunity for nontraditional types of development
such as exhibition centers, hotels, and/or stadiums -- other kinds of
activities that will partly compensate for the lack of residential. "Notwithstanding
that, there will be a need to protect the road capacity for the
businesses along Route 606. Any new development in that area will be rail dependent, a
challenge for us as the station area develops.
The other station in Loudoun at Route 772 is between two
interchanges. In order to
have TOD, we found we would need to
locate development between the interchanges.
The idea was that the automobile access to park and ride
facilities would happen at the edge and the core or development would
not suffer from the negative interactions with the automobile.
It would be a truly pedestrian environment. Previous
rail studies have concluded that locating rail in the median was the
best way to go, and this has been reflected in the plan, as is the
location of stations in one of the quadrants. If the rail line
is run out in the median, Loudoun could construct an urban deck over the
station which could provide
access to development on both sides of the rail station. Pastor
noted that like Fairfax, the Loudoun plan calls for the highest
intensity of use within a quarter-mile radius.
The county is striving towards a 50-50 relationship between
residential and commercial development and stepping down from that in
the outer core. Pastor noted that there are great opportunities for Loudoun County. It may take 30 or 40 years to realize that opportunity but if we don't have the vision and stick with it then we will lose a great opportunity. Financial IssuesTony Griffin, Fairfax County Manager talked about how to pay for complicated and challenging project. The financial analysis in the Draft EIS is not the financial plan for the project. That plan will be developed once the Draft EIS goes through the full process and we are actually applying to the federal government for money. However, we are required to demonstrate that we have the capacity to actually on this project. The guidance the federal government has given us is they will pay 50 percent of the cost of rail and 60 percent of BRT. The non-federal partners, Fairfax County, Loudoun County, and the Metropolitan Washington Airport's Authority have agreed that the state would pick up one-quarter of the costs and the local partners the other quarter. VDRPT
is looking at the Priority Transportation Fund and excess toll revenues
for the state's share of the total. Fairfax
County has identified three sources of revenue: a tax assessment
district, general obligation bonds, and funding identified in the sales
tax referendum for the Dulles project with
referendum receipts also shared with Loudoun County.
Loudoun County has made a decision to use the BPOL fund is to
back bonds and the Airports Authority will primarily use passenger
facilities charges. The
ultimate cost of the project will be driven by which alignment is
selected to go through Tysons Corner. Financing costs will have to be added to the total project cost of
$3.1 to $3.3 billion. Early on it appeared that the federal government
might pay for 80 percent of the cost of the stations for bus rapid
transit. When they dropped the
rate to 60 percent in May, BRT became a lot less attractive.
It was attractive to use initially to front load station
construction. Washington
Metropolitan Transit Authority (WMATA) has agreed that operation and
maintenance subsidies will be split among the participating
jurisdictions according to the Metrorail formula for subsidies. Montgomery County and the District of Columbia will help pay
for the operation and maintenance of the Dulles extension. Congress
has already appropriated $117 million. The
Commonwealth of Virginia has appropriated $2 million from mass transit
funds and $75 million from the Transportation Act of 2000 and $6
million through passage of legislation by the General Assembly.
These actions have been extremely important to in moving this
project forward. Eric
Peterson, Executive Director of Leader (The
Landowners Economic Alliance for the Dulles Extension of Rail), said
that the sole purpose of his organization is to bring together the
owners of at least 51 percent of the commercially and industrially zoned
land in the Dulles dorridor for the purpose of preparing a petition that
asks Fairfax County to tax the commercial land to fund its share of the
cost of building Metrorail to Dulles Airport. The
current Board of Directors represents about 50 percent of the total of
the commercially zoned land in the corridor.
LEADER and the County Attorney's office will begin the actual
process of drafting a petition to be circulated with the intent of
requiring at least 51 percent and, hopefully, 60 or more percent of the
signatories of the commercially and industrially zoned land in the
corridor. That petition
will go forward to the County Board of Supervisors, who will hold a
hearing on it, pass it, and then execute completion of the tax district
or tax districts, which will then be the funding source for the Fairfax
County share of the cost of this project. Peterson noted that Governor Holton and Senator Robb, the co -chairmen of LEADER, and the LEADER board members are very excited about this project. In
answer to a question about the possibility of starting assuming that
all the funding was in hand, but then finding out it wasn't,
Tony Griffin noted that the experience of building the first
103-mile system showed that the region was able to reach agreement on
how to fund completion of the system. This included the provision of additional funds by Congress and a
fast tracking of construction to save borrowing costs. Ms.
Nicoson made clear that of all the alternatives analyzed in the EIS, the
Dulles Corridor Rail Association was advocating rail as the locally
preferred alternative. |
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