“Colossal pent-up demand for TOD”

The New Republic’s Bradford Plumer attended this morning’s Brookings Panel on the Purple Line. According to Plumer, MoCo Councilmember Mark Elrich is still unsure whether to spend more on the better light rail or save money with the bus, but Christopher Leinberger says Elrich is thinking about it all wrong: better transit creates more and better development, and more tax revenue.

Ryan Avent rightly points out that the belief that transit drives development shouldn’t be controversial at all. Most of New York City’s growth happened around, and thanks to, its transit lines, for instance.

Here’s the most interesting part of Plumer’s recap:

By [Leinberger’s] count, 30 to 50 percent of residents in most U.S. metropolitan areas want to live in a walkable urban environment—a trend that’s, in part, fueled by the growing prevalence of single and childless couples, who will constitute a whopping 88 percent of household growth through 2040. Trouble is, he estimates that there are only enough walkable areas to satisfy about 5 to 10 percent of residents, which is why transit-oriented areas are so exorbitantly expensive.

Plumer goes on to identify the second, and perhaps greater, obstacle to more walkable areas: suburban zoning. The mindset we saw in Kensington sees new walkable, urban places as a direct threat to their way of life. BeyondDC covered a TOD proposal in Chevy Chase Lake, which is quite modest in size, yet opponents claim it will “destroy the community.”

BeyondDC notes the irony in one opponent’s argument that the area has “good green space” when the project would replace a parking lot and a lumber yard. Sounds familiar.