Come join us explore East Falls Church – an area centered on the Metro station and on the cusp of big changes. Divided by I-66 and split between two jurisdictions, the area is surrounded by well-loved neighborhoods, with parks and the booming W&OD bicycle trail.
Category: CSG in the News
Plans for HOT lanes on 14th Street Bridge and D.C. freeways still just warming up
The District’s transportation planners envision sets of high-occupancy toll lanes stretching from Interstate 295 by the Maryland border to the 14th Street Bridge and the Virginia side of the Potomac River. But to see what they see, you’ll need powerful binoculars.
D.C. mayoral candidates call parking ticket system ‘maddening’
Both candidates for D.C. mayor want to overhaul the District’s parking enforcement to end bad tickets, confusing signs and lengthy appeals. Council members Muriel Bowser and David Catania, who will face off in November, have signed on to support a bill to overhaul the ticketing process in the District.
Rival bureaucracies are not the way to manage traffic congestion in Washington, D.C.
The D.C. transportation department is building a record of partially fulfilled promises on bike lanes, bus lanes, street parking, streetcar service and pedestrian safety. “In the 12 years since the District Department of Transportation was spun off from the Department of Public Works, no one has asked the critical question: Does the current agency structure work,” D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) said last week.
DC region’s new long-range plan fail to meet its own climate goals
If sea levels rise just one foot in the Washington, DC, area, nearly 1,700 homes could be lost. Is the region’s transportation planning agency doing enough to stop that from happening? Several environmental and smart-growth organizations in the region are saying no. Seventeen groups have signed on to a letter, being delivered today, urging the agency to take action. The comment period on the agency’s latest long-range transportation plan closes tomorrow.
DC council’s Cheh gains early support for major overhaul of city transportation agencies
D.C. residents and visitors would have to deal with one agency instead of four for transportation issues including parking tickets, taxis, bike sharing and other problems under a new proposal that is likely to pass.
Takoma Metro development moves forward
A new apartment complex at the Takoma Metro station got the go-ahead Thursday from the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Board of Directors, though some neighbors disapprove.
Prince George’s adds incentives to get developers on track
Developers just received more reasons — a package of reasons, to be exact — to bring business plans to five Metro stations in Hyattsville, Largo, New Carrollton and Suitland. Prince George’s County officials announced the new incentives Monday at the University Town Center, a mixed-use project located near the Prince George’s Plaza Metro, and in front of the site where a $23 million Safeway supermarket project is expected to break ground in May.
Prince George’s County pushing development around five of its 15 Metro stations
Prince George’s County announced a new strategy Monday that officials say is aimed at spurring development and growth around the county’s transit centers. Officials plan to focus on five of the county’s 15 Metro stations, using investment in infrastructure, financial incentives and regulatory policies to jump-start development.
Takoma Metro Development Set for Approval, Despite Cross-Border Opposition
Nearly every new development project that’s taller than most of the surrounding neighborhood raises a few hackles among locals. Less common is one that arouses opposition across state lanes.
Tomorrow, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority board will vote on plans for an apartment building at the Takoma Metro station. The plans are the latest in an effort to redevelop the area around the station that has spanned two decades. They’ve changed form a few times, from townhouses with two-car garages that neighbors found insufficiently transit-oriented, to abuilding with five residential stories that neighbors found too tall, to the current scheme, which is one story shorter and contains about 210 apartments. The latest proposal has won plaudits from the Coalition for Smarter Growth as a compromise between suitability to a Metro-adjacent site and compatibility with a medium-density area.
But neighbors still aren’t pleased with the plans, on either side of the D.C.-Maryland border. Both the Takoma Park City Council and local Advisory Neighborhood Commission 4B have passed resolutions objecting to elements of the proposal.
“The biggest problem is, the building is too big,” says Takoma Park City Council Member Seth Grimes. (The project, by developer EYA, is on the D.C. side of the border, but Takoma Park is just across the street.) Grimes says the “vast majority” of neighbors are opposed to the design, largely because of its scale, which exceeds the standard zoning for the area by about 20 feet. He also personally believes there should be fewer parking spaces to encourage more Metro ridership.
Sara Green, an ANC commissioner on the D.C. side of the border, is frustrated that the neighbors are being portrayed as naysayers for opposing the current plans after getting some of the revisions they wanted from the earlier proposals. “WMATA said, ‘OK, we want to do what you suggested,'” she says. “And we said, ‘Fabulous!’ And then they came to us with something that was so much bigger than the existing zoning! We’re being painted as people who don’t want anything. What we’re rejecting is greed.”
Ward 4 D.C. Councilmember Muriel Bowser, whose ward includes Takoma and who sits on Metro’s board of directors, argues that the changes to the plans have addressed neighbors’ concerns. “A few issues popped out at everyone, especially involving the green space and how we could maintain it,” she says. “That’s gonna happen. We wanted to make sure that the height was fitting with the community.”
Bowser says she’ll vote for the proposal tomorrow, as, most likely, will the majority of her colleagues on the WMATA board. “We do expect it to be favorably voted by the WMATA board on March 27,” says Grimes, resignedly.
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Photo courtesy of EYA.