How office development rules limit walkability in Tysons

When Fairfax County policymakers adopted a plan for redevelopment in Tysons in 2010, improving walkability was a key objective. The plan architects framed walkability as a way to improve Tysons’ position as “downtown Fairfax,” keeping it competitive with office markets in Arlington and DC that offered their tenants more vibrant neighborhoods.

But while new developments in Tysons are improving the area’s density and walkability, some of them retain characteristics of the county’s historically suburban character. In particular, regulatory barriers prevent office development in Tysons from having the features of the most walkable pedestrian environments.

Traits of walkability

In the most walkable places, buildings have no setbacks. Facades abut their property lines, and neighboring buildings share walls. Many urbanists agree that buildings should be at least as tall as the width of the right-of-way between them, and in some of the most pleasant pedestrian environments, that ratio is significantly higher. These proportions create a sense of enclosure for pedestrians. The Tysons Urban Design Guidelines are full of inspirational images from some of the country’s most walkable neighborhoods, like the New York City neighborhood seen in this example below.

In addition to these characteristics of walkable development, plazas and parks are a key piece of pleasant urban neighborhoods. But in Tysons and elsewhere, there can be a fine line between green setbacks that detract from walkability and well-used public spaces that invite people to spend time in them.

Restrictions on Tysons office development that limit walkability

The Tysons plan includes multiple features intended to limit new traffic. The Silver Line, along with other improvements to transit and pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure, provide people who work in Tysons with commuting options other than driving. Within ½-mile of Metro stations, office buildings are not required to include any parking spots, and parking maximums apply. And new residential development allows some Tysons workers to choose to live near their work if they choose.

On top of policies intended to reduce the share of office workers who drive to work, zoning in Tysons restricts office density. Because office development results in more car trips than other types of development, its density in the parts of Tysons closest to the Silver Line stations is limited by a floor area ratio (FAR) of 2.5, whereas other types of development are restricted only by a 400-foot height limit. In many cases, office developments receive bonus density in exchange for public benefits or by special exceptions from the County Board. Nonetheless, relatively low floor area ratio limits on office developments mandate characteristics of the suburban-style development that county policymakers say they are trying to avoid in Tysons.

Current FAR restrictions for office development alone do not necessarily stand in the way of walkable development in Tysons. However, policymakers and developers alike hope to see ongoing development of a distinctive Tysons skyline, which requires significant FAR to be dedicated to towers, which must then be offset with open space at the tower’s site to be compliant with FAR restrictions.

At Capital One, for example, strips of greenery and paved setbacks separate buildings from the public realm. The street and sidewalk design are somewhere between the traditional urbanism that the Tysons redevelopment plan calls for and the curvy office park roads that Tysons is known for. Pedestrians don’t get the sense of enclosure that a wall of buildings as tall as the right of way would provide.

Like Capital One, The View, an approved project that will be built near the Spring Hill Metro, will include a mix of towers, low-slung construction, and open space. Tysons guidelines require all developments in Tysons to provide open space. The intent is for this open space to serve as well-used parks, but some of it will also be landscaping that detracts from the development’s walkability in order to stay within permitted density.

Improving walkability in future developments

Using density restrictions as a traffic management strategy is directly at odds with the objective of walkable streetscapes. Expanding road capacity in an effort to maintain travel times to and through Tysons while accommodating more cars would likewise thwart the goal of making Tysons a safer and more pleasant place for pedestrians.

Rather than using the clunky tool of office square footage restrictions to control traffic—and accepting the inherent tradeoff in walkability—Tysons land use policy could use a more direct tool – pricing the roads. Congestion pricing requires drivers to pay for their use of roads. The most effective congestion pricing systems have prices that rise and fall with demand in order to maintain free-flowing traffic at all times. Congestion pricing encourages travelers to take fewer car trips, carpool when they drive, and choose transportation options other than driving.

Singapore’s Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) is a decades-old successful system of congestion pricing that shows its potential. The system requires drivers to pay to enter the island’s central business district using transponders that the government provides each car owner. Each access point to the central business district – highways and surface streets alike – is tolled. Following the ERP implementation, traffic decreased during peak times, the number of drivers who make multiple trips into and out of the central business each day fell, and transit ridership rose.

Until recently, the Singapore system used fixed prices at different times to achieve close to the desired level of traffic congestion. More recently, the system began implementing variable pricing that responds to real-time traffic, similar to the tolling system on I-66 in Northern Virginia.

Congestion pricing provides a tool for managing traffic directly, rather than using density restrictions in an attempt to manage it indirectly, and it works regardless of the intensity of development. The Comprehensive Plan for Tysons calls for using transportation demand management tools, including the use of congestion pricing, if development in Tysons isn’t matched with county policymakers’ goals for reductions in the share of trips made in single occupancy vehicles.

Putting a price on road space would encourage people who work in Tysons to use the other transportation options available to them. The Silver Line, where ridership has failed to meet projections so far, would see more use.

Implementing congestion pricing is always politically difficult. Drivers tend to oppose paying for their use of roads with money rather than with their time in traffic delays, and drivers are an influential voting bloc for elected officials. It would be particularly difficult in Tysons where it would require support from local, state, and federal policymakers in order to implement it on the area’s major arterials which are state routes and the I-495 beltway. However, congestion pricing presents perhaps the only tool available for meeting the objectives for walkability in Tysons without accepting serious increases in traffic congestion.