Category: CSG in the News

Legendary developer Gerald Halpin, creator of Tysons, dies at 94

Posted on by Christopher Richter

West-Group Management CEO Gerald Halpin, who saw the potential for what Tysons could become long before it emerged as one of the busiest submarkets for development in Greater Washington, died Monday in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He was 94 and moved to Wyoming in 2013.

Halpin launched West-Group in 1962 with co-founders Charles Ewing, Thomas Nicholson and Rudolph Seeley. That same year, West-Group acquired 125 acres of farmland that would become, in combination with other rural land nearby, Tysons Corner.

“Jerry Halpin was a real giant in the Tysons development community and a visionary,” Fairfax Board Chairman Sharon Bulova said in a statement. “He was a true community-based developer and will be missed.”

The legend of Greater Washington real estate oversaw more than 12 million square feet of commercial and residential development across the D.C. region, including the West-Gate and West-Park office parks in Tysons.

Those office parks were modern for the time, though they did create the auto-centric, pedestrian-unfriendly Tysons that Fairfax County and West-Group’s successors, sparked by the expansion of Metro through Tysons and beyond, are currently working to undo. Millions of square feet of new residential and commercial construction are planned, much of it on the site of both West-Gate and West-Park.

Halpin recognized at least a decade ago that change was necessary in Tysons. The Coalition for Smarter Growth recognized him in 2013 “for his determined leadership in the transformation of Tysons, one of the nation’s most important redevelopment projects.”

“Without Jerry Halpin’s leadership, the new vision for Tysons might never have been realized. Tysons is the most important redevelopment initiative on the East Coast and Jerry Halpin is the most important private sector figure behind that initiative,” Coalition for Smarter Growth Executive Director Stewart Schwartz said at the time.

West-Group sold its Tysons portfolio, including 115 acres of land, to DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners in 2010 for $222 million in what the WBJ recognized as one of the best deals of the year. Halpin continued to keep his hands in the real estate business after that in varying capacities, including serving as chairman of D.C. developer Four Points LLC and hotel management firm Alexandria Management Corp.

Among those reflecting on his passing was Mark Lowham, CEO and managing partner at TTR Sotheby’s International Realty, who served as executive vice president of West-Group under Halpin before making the leap from commercial real estate to residential.

In a Facebook post, Lowham noted: “Northern Virginia lost one of its great, visionary leaders this morning with the passing at age 94 of my former partner and close friend, Jerry Halpin.”

Photo courtesy of Washington Business Journal. Click here to read the original story.

Who Rides the Bus? Exploring the Stereotypes and Stigma of Washington’s Public Transit

Posted on by Erin Phillips

As Metro has struggled with a loss of rail riders due to Safetrack maintenance surges, some riders have opted for the bus, and have been surprised to find them to be generally efficient, reliable and pleasant. While some people only avoid buses because they find their schedules and routes confusing, others have more ingrained negative perceptions of buses. To some, they are not just slow, but dirty and “sketchy.” Kojo explores the subtle stigma of buses, including the racial and economic data behind what forms of public transit people choose.

Guests

  • Martine Powers Transportation and Development reporter, Washington Post @MartinePowers
  • Peter Tomao Montgomery Advocacy Manager, Coalition for Smarter Growth @TomaoPete
  • Veronica O. Davis Co-Owner, Nspiregreen LLC; Contributor, Greater Greater Washington

Photo courtesy of D Monack. Click here to read the original story. 

New YIMBY group hopes to increase housing in D.C.

Posted on by Christopher Richter

It’s that time again, time to rewrite Washington, D.C.’s Comprehensive Plan. This plan influences every decision done by the city’s agencies, including the Zoning Commission who is in charge of what can be built where in the District. Curbed sister site Vox reported that because of this time of change a new, diverse political coalition has been formed to “defeat the blocking power of change-averse incumbent homeowners.”

This coalition is a mixture of affordable housing proprietors, real estate developers, urbanists, and poverty advocates. Groups include developer EYA, anti-poverty group Bread for the City, and organizations like the Coalition for Smarter Growth and local blog Greater Greater Washington. To put it simply, the group is composed of YIMBY groups, the opposite of NIMBY (which stands for Not in My Back Yard).

According to Vox, the most “conceptually significant” proposed change to the Comprehensive Plan is to increase the overall amount of homebuilding, while “reprioritizing the creation and preservation of affordable housing, and strengthening protections of lower-income tenants,” as stated by David Whitehead, Greater Greater Washington’s top housing organizer.

After over eight months of input from housing and development stakeholders, the amendments proposed include focusing on housing with at least three bedrooms in order to accommodate families and adding housing for all income levels in every part of the city with an emphasis on transit and commercial corridors.

For a full overview of this new group’s plans, be sure to check out this document, uploaded by Greater Greater Washington. Below, see the full list of members that have given input to the amendment proposals:

  • All Souls Housing Corporation
  • Bread for the City
  • Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development
  • Coalition for Smarter Growth
  • D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute
  • Enterprise Community Partners
  • EYA
  • Greater Greater Washington
  • Latino Economic Development Center
  • Local Initiatives Support Corporation
  • The Menkiti Group
  • MidAtlantic Realty Partners
  • Neighborhood Legal Services Program
  • Trammell Crow Company
  • United Planning Organization
  • Ward3Vision

The Office of Planning will release their official amendments in the fall with reviews and votes on a final version held in early 2018.

Click here to read the original story.

It’s Back

Posted on by Christopher Richter

Study of second bridge recommended.

The National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board voted July 19 to study the feasibility of an Upper Potomac River bridge as an option in the area’s long-range transportation plan.

Yet the discussion on even getting that far was “very intense,” said Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth.

Marc Elrich, Montgomery County councilmember who represents the county on the Transportation Planning Board, made a motion to pull discussion of the bridge from study but the vote was 17-12 to reject the amendment and leave it in, Schwartz said.

Schwartz’s group is opposed to the idea of the bridge, preferring area governments spend resources on improving the current Metro system and encouraging transit oriented development.

“There is a $6.2 billion shortfall for building and improving the Metro system,” he said. “And I hear various people say the American Legion Bridge will need major reconstruction [in the time it takes to study a second bridge],” he said.

“[The bridge] would be totally at odds with the region’s vision in the Region Forward Plan and would undermine the network of transit-oriented development which is so much in demand today. It would worsen auto-dependent sprawl and traffic, worsen the east-west economic divide, and undermine efforts to fight climate change,” Schwartz wrote in a press release.

In a phone interview he explained that a new bridge would not relieve traffic congestion on the American Legion Bridge, rather it would increase development leading to more commuters.

“Because of induced driving demand, it would add new traffic without reducing traffic at the American Legion Bridge,” he wrote in the press release. “The upstream bridge would also represent a threat to the region’s drinking water supplies — creating a risk of toxic spills upstream from drinking water intakes during bridge construction and from tanker truck spills.”

Schwartz said the largest opposition his group faces is the 2030 Group, the group urges the study of an outer Potomac River bridge, according to its website.

Neither the idea of a bridge study nor the controversy of the idea are new. Other efforts to move the idea of an outer bridge took place in 1980, 1988, 1997, 2000 and 2003, according to Schwartz.

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Urban Turf profile on Van Ness: Redevelopment with a community-oriented focus

Posted on by Christopher Richter

Van Ness isn’t going to “become the city’s next hip commercial strip,” concludes Urban Turf in its new profile of the Van Ness commercial strip. “[W]hile the last decade has seen the blooming of popular business corridors along 14th Street and other thoroughfares further east, the redevelopment happening here has a different, more community-oriented focus.”

Reporter Zak Salih spoke to Van Ness Main Street’s Theresa Cameron and Forest Hills Connection’s Marlene Berlin about the community-led efforts to revitalize Van Ness. And like so many projects Marlene is part of, it begins with a walk.

Read the neighborhood profile at dc.UrbanTurf.com.

Photo courtesy of Forest Hills Connection. Click here to read the original article.

A promising new coalition looks to rewrite the politics of urban housing

Posted on by Christopher Richter

An innovative new political coalition in Washington, DC, is trying to remap the contours of the urban housing debate by uniting poverty advocates, real estate developers, affordable housing proprietors, and urbanists under the banner of more construction. The idea is that by banding together, such a diverse coalition can defeat the blocking power of change-averse incumbent homeowners. This would free them up to stop fighting among themselves for scraps and start sharing the wealth that DC and other coastal cities can easily create by changing their approach to land use.

The specific occasion for the coalition is a scheduled rewrite of the city’s comprehensive plan, a guiding document that influences the decisions of city agencies — and most of all the Zoning Commission — in deciding what should be built and where.

But the underlying principle is applicable to a wide range of cities and political decisions. DC, like most expensive central cities and their suburbs, currently takes a fundamentally defensive approach to land use aiming to “protect” the most affluent and expensive areas from change. That leaves for-profit developers of market rate housing and builders and custodians of subsidized affordable housing locked in a zero-sum struggle for scarce buildable land, while leaving city governments straining under the budgetary cost of providing subsidies for those in need.

An alternative approach emphasizes the benefits of market-rate construction and the reality that allowing more of it in the places where land price is highest can reduce displacement, create new funding streams for subsidized housing, and ultimately provide the fuel for a more inclusive city.

A new coalition beyond YIMBY

Around the country, various YIMBY groups — a play on the old acronym NIMBY for Not in My Back Yard — have sprung up to advocate for more density and more market-rate housing development in expensive cities, backing candidates for local office and having some influence over state-level initiatives in California. YIMBYism has even gone mainstream enough to have its own conferences.

But even as YIMBYs are, in their way, obsessed with the price of housing, they’ve had relatively little success engaging the longstanding “affordable housing” communities that exist in American cities. Affordable housing advocates and especially those who build and maintain “affordable” developments are dealing with a population that is simply too poor to afford anything that would get built under anything resembling current market prices. Changing land use rules to allow for more construction would, in some sense, increase affordability in almost any expensive city. But it wouldn’t necessarily do anything to address the specific needs of the affordable housing population.

That’s what’s different about the new coalition, which united YIMBY urbanists like the Coalition for Smarter Growth and Greater Greater Washington with affordable housing groups like the All Souls Housing Corporation and the Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development. Cementing the deal are several of the city’s big real estate development groups (EYA, Midatlantic Realty Partners), broad anti-poverty groups (Bread for the City), and the wonks at the DC Fiscal Policy Institute.

The basic glue holding it together is that what affordable housing groups really need is resources — land, money, and buildings that can accommodate a population in need of subsidy. And rather than fight with the market rate developers for a small amount of resources in a handful of greenfield or ex-industrial locations, they could team up to push for an expansion in the overall amount of building allowed.

A comprehensive plan that says yes

Perhaps the single most conceptually significant proposed change to the comprehensive plan concerns the drab-sounding Framework Element 218.3, which serves as an overall thesis statement for how the city looks at the relationship between development and affordability. It currently states that “the recent housing boom has triggered a crisis of affordability in the city, creating a hardship for many District residents and changing the character of neighborhoods.”

This perfectly captures the mentality of a defensive planning process and the kind of political coalition that dominates most coastal cities. The basic framework is that residents in affluent neighborhoods get to say no to new development (thus preventing the dread changing of neighborhood character), and in exchange, residents of poorer neighborhoods get to hope that blocking new market rate development will stop gentrifiers from moving in.

The proposed change inverts cause and effect, arguing that “[t]he recent housing boom is the consequence of rising demand. That demand has contributed to a crisis of affordability in the city, creating a hardship for many District residents and changing the character of neighborhoods.”

Prices rise, in other words, because of demand. And the question for a planning document is not how to prevent that demand from changing the city, but how to channel that demand in a constructive way that builds an inclusive city.

As David Whitehead, Greater Greater Washington’s top housing organizer, puts it, their vision for a new plan entails “reprioritizing the creation and preservation of affordable housing, and strengthening protections of lower-income tenants,” but doing so in the context of increasing the overall amount of homebuilding. The proposals go line by line through the existing comprehensive plan, attempting to strike defensive or exclusionary language in favor of welcoming new construction conditional on a degree of inclusiveness.

Big gains if someone wants them

The political impediments to persuading entrenched upper-middle-class homeowners to embrace any kind of change are large.

But the key to the emergence of new coalitions for change is the recognition that the possible gains from change are also very large. An eye-popping 2015 study by Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti concludes that constraints on construction in expensive metropolitan areas “lowered aggregate US growth by more than 50% from 1964 to 2009.” A separate paper of theirs concludes that getting the most constrained metro areas to relax their regulations not all the way, but simply to be as tight as the average American metro area, could grow the overall size of the economy by about 9.5 percent.

What’s particularly striking is that though these possible national gains are large, the economic gains to the specific high-demand metropolitan areas themselves would be even higher, since much of the increase in economic activity would be localized there.

Some of the extra economic potential generated would, naturally, need to go to expanding infrastructure and basic utilities to accommodate the additional people. But broadly speaking, increased development for high demand cities should open up vast new fiscal and economic horizons that can be used to finance subsidized housing or just about anything else the local community needs.

Decades ago, sociologists John Logan and Harvey Molotch theorized that for this reason, urban politics would be dominated by “growth machine” coalitions that united developers who wanted to build with politicians, who wanted to hand out goodies to their constituents. In practice, that hasn’t happened, and many cities greatly strangle growth, finding themselves locked in a politics of housing scarcity and budget austerity. But the logic of the growth machine is strong and in many ways compelling — if organizers can do the practical work needed to put the coalition in place.

Click here to read the original story.

The Purple Line Finally Gets Some Good News

Posted on by Jason Adle

After two rulings that have resulted in a year of delays for the Purple Line, backers of the light rail project have finally gotten a break.

An appeals court ruled Wednesday that Maryland can continue working on the project even as a lawsuit continues, overturning a lower court decision that put work on ice. Most critically, it means that the state can pursue hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for the project, which would connect 16 miles between Bethesda and New Carrollton.

“The order will allow construction to commence and we will continue to do everything we possibly can to keep the Purple Line moving forward,” Maryland State Attorney Brian Frosh said yesterday.

Republican Governor Larry Hogan gave the project a surprise green light two years ago. Construction was slated to begin in late 2016 on the 16.2-mile light rail line. It would be run by the Maryland Transit Administration, not Metro, though there are connections to the Red, Green, and Orange lines along some of the 21 stops.

But it has faced fierce opposition from an organized group of neighbors, who at one point considered focusing their fight on the environmental impact to a tiny, shrimp-like creature.

Instead, they’ve had successes arguing that transit officials failed to sufficiently account for the impact of Metro’s safety and ridership issues. A U.S. District Court judge ruled in August of 2016 that the MTA needed to re-do its ridership calculations. This May, the same judge said that the state hadn’t sufficiently completed a “hard look” at the issues posed by WMATA and ordered additional study.

The project’s backers worried that it could mean the end of the line for the Purple Line, as it put already appropriated federal funds in jeopardy and meant the state couldn’t proceed on work or seek more federal funding.

Yesterday’s ruling overturned the 2016 decision, and reinstated the Purple Line’s federal environmental approval.

“The Purple Line is essential for access to jobs, for revitalization inside the Beltway, and for providing a transportation and smart growth option that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Stewart Schwartz, the executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth. “We hope this means that the full funding grant agreement can be executed and funding flow to the project.”

The Department of Transportation will now determine if there is enough certainty to sign a funding agreement and begin dispensing the hundreds of millions of federal dollars that have already been appropriated.

Click here to read the original story.

Planners Back Study For Another Potomac River Bridge — Again

Posted on by Jason Adle

As long as traffic congestion remains of one the Washington area’s most vexing problems, the idea of building another Potomac River bridge may be the most divisive potential solution, guaranteed to spur contention whenever it resurfaces in ongoing efforts to improve regional mobility.

This was in evidence on Wednesday, when the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (TPB) voted to include the bridge idea on a list of 10 major highway, transit, and land use initiatives warranting further study to assess their possible benefits to the region’s transportation system.

During the two-hour TPB meeting, the bridge was the only issue debated, completely overshadowing the other projects to be studied, including toll lanes on the rest of the Beltway, I-270, Dulles Toll Road, and Route 50; bus rapid transit in Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties and Northern Virginia; free public transit rides for poor residents; and placing more offices and housing near undeveloped Metrorail stations.

While no specific location for a new span was decided upon, some officials on the northern side of the Potomac condemned the possibility that it could be built upriver from the American Legion Bridge, connecting Rt. 28 in Virginia to the I-270 corridor in Maryland through Montgomery County’s agricultural reserve.

 

Montgomery County Council member Marc Elrich, who represents his county at the TPB, proposed removing the bridge study from the final list of initiatives but his amendment failed to garner adequate support. On Tuesday, the County Council unanimously passed a resolution to oppose another study.

Indeed, opponents argued on Wednesday that the idea already has been studied for decades by both Democratic and Republican administrations in Virginia, who repeatedly failed to convince their neighbors in Maryland to support such a project.

And a recent study, which focused not on a new span but instead on traffic and transit volumes at 11 existing Potomac River crossings, cast doubt on the potential benefits of building another bridge upriver from the hopelessly congested American Legion Bridge.

The study by the Virginia Department of Transportation concluded in 2015 that extending toll lanes across the American Legion to I-270 “be the top priority for addressing western Potomac River crossings,” although the recommendations did “not eliminate the benefits of a future ‘outer crossing’ to address the needs for interconnectivity/crossing the Potomac River.”

The conclusion was based on research that showed only a fraction of cars crossing the American Legion Bridge during rush hour originated from western Loudoun and Fairfax Counties with destinations, after crossing the river, to the north and west.

More study to come

Mountains of past studies notwithstanding, the Transportation Planning Board’s staff and consultants will take another look at it. To supporters, it is a no-brainer: a region expecting another million residents in the coming decades needs more ways to cross the Potomac.

Evan Pritchard, the executive director of the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance, said the region should have built multiple bridges across the Potomac decades ago to avoid the current traffic quagmire.

“The need for additional river crossing north of the American Legion Bridge is as apparent today as it was half a century ago,” Pritchard said in testimony to the TPB.

To opponents, another bridge would pave the way to more suburban sprawl, minimal congestion relief, and drain finite dollars away from more pressing transportation needs, including Metro.

Stewart Schwartz, the head of the Coalition for Smarter Growth which opposes major highway projects, said the region’s future lies in public transportation.

“If you build it, you will certainly induce new land use in those outer areas that will induce more traffic, and you will be left with a new crowded bridge plus an old crowded American Legion Bridge,” said Schwartz, who said the idea of ‘outer beltway’ belongs in the 1950s.

After studying the 10 initiatives for next few months, the TPB is expected by the end of 2017 to decide which ones should be added to the region’s long-range transportation plan, likely provoking another public debate like the one that engulfed Wednesday’s meeting.

But TPB chair Bridget Donnell Newton, the mayor of Rockville, sought to refute the notion that Marylanders have made up their minds. She called on officials on both sides of the river to approach the study with an open mind.

“It behooves us to take off our parochial hats, put on our regional hats, and work together,” she said. “It is difficult for people to do that. Sometimes it is because we become entrenched in our decisions and we don’t want to hear new information.”

Click here to read the original story.

Transportation Planning Board will study new crossing over the Potomac

Posted on by Jason Adle

WASHINGTON — Over strong objections from Maryland, Montgomery County and other leaders, the region’s Transportation Planning Board voted Wednesday to study a new Potomac River crossing north of the Beltway’s Legion Bridge.

It is part of a broader effort to identify big-ticket, regionwide projects that could improve the region’s terrible traffic.

Virginia business groups, AAA Mid-Atlantic and groups that generally lobby for increased road construction across the region spoke in support of the additional Potomac crossing, which has been considered for years.

Speaking against it were environmental groups; groups that support transit options; the Coalition for Smarter Growth; and representatives from Montgomery County, Prince George’s County and the state of Maryland.

“A northern crossing is antithetical to everything our county, and I believe our region, is committed to: smart growth, environmental stewardship, preservation of agricultural lands, and greenhouse gas reductions,” said Montgomery County Council President Roger Berliner during a public comment period.

‘We need real solutions’

“We need real solutions to address [terrible traffic], not fantasy solutions that will never happen — I repeat — never happen. And, just as importantly, [that] don’t truly contribute to solving the problem,” Berliner said.

Berliner cited Virginia Department of Transportation studies that found most drivers on the congested Legion Bridge are going to or from a point near the Beltway.

He and his Montgomery County Council colleagues support a greater focus on toll lanes along I-270 that would connect across a widened Legion Bridge to the I-495 Express Lanes in Virginia.

Expanding toll lanes even more to cover the entire Beltway as well as other roads like U.S. 50 is a separate part of the 10-item proposal.

Transportation Planning Board Staff Director Kanti Srikanth said that toll and express bus expansion is based on the idea that most highways around the region are “hopelessly congested” at rush hour.

Supporters of an additional bridge crossing argue it could be built along with improvements to the Legion Bridge and that it could provide an important backup option in the event of any issues.

“I hope that we don’t go another 10, 20, 50 years without looking at filling the missing gaps in our transportation system in this region,” said Loudoun County Supervisor Ron Meyer. “This has been a missing gap for 70 years. Our role as the Transportation Planning Board is to look at long-term plans, so talking about who’s governor now for the next year … it’s not a part of the conversation we’re having … we have to look long term here.”

Prince William County Supervisor and Northern Virginia Transportation Authority Chairman Marty Nohe supported keeping the outer crossing on the list of projects for further study because the list is expected to be narrowed down in December based on preliminary analysis.

“If in fact this project is so terrible, if it really is that bad, then the analysis will prove that and Ron and I will look really stupid,” Nohe said. “But I don’t know that yet because I don’t have the analysis yet.”

While the plan does not provide a specific location for the bridge, the expected location is between Virginia State Route 28 near Dulles Town Center and somewhere just across the river in Maryland that would allow for the construction of a highway connection to Gaithersburg.

Montgomery County Councilmember Marc Elrich, who unsuccessfully moved to remove the outer crossing from the board’s analysis, said there is no money or political will to pave over parts of Montgomery County’s agricultural reserve.

Montgomery County and the state of Maryland have consistently opposed the idea of a bridge, but would be responsible for much of the cost because the river is technically controlled by Maryland.

“Why would we put this into something to study? I would not do this to any other jurisdiction,” Elrich said. “For a lot of us, this is just a bridge too far.”

Concerns over who benefits

Prince George’s County Councilmember Dannielle Glaros expressed concerns that the project would only help Fairfax, Loudoun or Prince William counties rather than serving as the type of regional project the TPB is hoping to champion under this new aspirational section of the region’s long-range plan.

“It really talks about a narrow portion of the region … that has been the most-favored region, and could actually exasperate the east-west divide that clearly exists in our region,” Glaros said.

“I wish I could take you all out to Sterling and Herndon, Virginia, and walk you through those neighborhoods where we just had a young girl killed by an MS-13 gang member, and you can walk those neighborhoods and tell me that we don’t need economic empowerment in those neighborhoods,” Loudoun County Supervisor Ron Meyer responded.

“If you want to empower Sterling, empower Herndon, empower one of the most economically depressed areas in our region, this bridge would be the No. 1 thing that could do it, that could give them access to jobs and give jobs access to them.”

Arlington County Board Chair Jay Fisette reminded the board that it has no real power to force even the plans that are ultimately selected as priorities, but he hopes regional agreement and pressure could lead to changes that cut down on traffic issues.

“Nothing we do … can require any jurisdiction to alter any existing or future plans … we don’t have the authority to do it,” Fisette said. “We do have the authority to say no to a project.”

Fauquier County Supervisor Peter Schwartz worries that the analysis that will be done over the next few months may not show the true impacts of some of the proposals because planners have struggled to accurately project how the addition of a new road or transit project would change people’s choices and habits.

“That future behavior has always sunk all of our projects by overwhelming the additional capacity because it led people to change,” Schwartz said.

He worries that means people will read the analysis to support pre-existing views on certain projects like the outer crossing.

“It will be the same food fight that it’s been every time it’s come up in the past, and was frankly evidenced by the public comments and some of the discussion that’s gone on today,” Schwartz said.

Hopes for wide-ranging solutions

As the list is narrowed down, business groups hope for wide-ranging solutions.

“The Express Lanes travel network, the commuter and Metro rail enhancements, and a northern bridge crossing will serve as major opportunities for our region to preserve and attract talent and business,” said Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce vice president Mike Forehand. “It’s our hope that further study will beget action, as we do not have time to wait.

Whatever options are chosen, Metro planner Shyam Kannan emphasized that the region’s existing issues need to be addressed first.

“Before we get ahead of ourselves and start to think about these wonderful things that could make this region much more mobile, I think it’s important to remember … we can’t even begin to think about these things until we resolve the funding crisis that is WMATA,” Kannan said.

“We are beyond levels of incredulity with regard to the conversation. The Board discussion last week … involved essentially trying to raise money by holding bake sales at Metro parking lots on Thanksgiving. We are scraping the bottom of the barrel. That’s how bad it’s gotten.”

Click here to read the original story