Last month Fairfax County essentially had a call to arms for designers to help rethink the streetscape along the elevated concrete tracks for the Silver Line in Tysons. One developer even called it a “tangle of concrete”. The critique continues with Chairwoman Sharon Bulova adding “When I first saw the Silver Line infrastructure go in, my heart sank and I thought: ‘Ack. Why didn’t we do something with the concrete to make it more attractive?’”.
Well I am here to cheer them up, and sober them to the reality that they have created. Elevated rail in and of itself is not ugly. There are dozens of cases of beautiful elevated rail in the world which I actually summarized and discussed previously.
Unfortunately for Fairfax County, that isn’t the real issue. What they continue to ignore is the 100′ wide asphalt swath of pavement that is Route 7 and Route 123 with their far more “tangled” mess of on-ramps and off-ramps, and even worse for them, it’s not just an aesthetic problem; these are serious safety and functional obstacles.
Cue the moment where someone affiliated with the county (or VDOT) tows the company line “For the foreseeable future Tysons will still need to prioritize vehicle access into town, and even after the Silver Line, vehicle commuters will make up… yada yada yada”. Yes, all of us who live in town have heard it before, and of course they are the officials, with the power, and I guess it is up to them what they want to believe. I can say, as someone who has some experience in this field, so long as they tow this political line the dream of a “walkable Tysons” will be just that, a dream.
Dreams become reality with action, not pretty talk about Paris, where a company line like the one above would be laughed out of the room. If you want to be Paris you have to stop caring so much about how many cars you can cram in. Until then, it doesn’t matter if Gehry, Pei, or any other world renowned architect were to imagine a building, it will still remain a building in a field of suburban office parks.
What kind of changes would signify this shift in prioritization and design?
Obviously a road diet on Route 7 and Route 123 would be my first recommendation, but then again I don’t want to be chased out of town by commuters with pitchforks and lit torches… who are we kidding? They’ll be chasing me in their cars because it’s far too dangerous to walk around Tysons.
A more digestible solution would be to rethink the idea of how highway ramps exit and enter the urban zone. There have been many studies showing that drivers often zone out while on highways and forget to reduce speed when they exit from the highway onto local roads. In Tysons, it’s no wonder this happens, considering the design of Route 123 and Route 7 have created defacto highways. Here is the rub, both roads have speed limits of 35 mph.
Ok, ok, get those laughs out. I know that sounds like a joke considering most people drive above 50 mph on these roads. Go head out there at 7:15AM and see for yourself if you don’t believe me, despite all of the talk about how Tysons traffic is awful, inside of town it’s actually fairly clear with the exception of the nightmare that is Route 7 westbound in the afternoon. In the morning, flow in is at speed and, in fact, dangerously above speed. One reason might be the complete lack of signage, enforcement, and massive 8-lane wide, 12′ lane, section.
Another reason is the interaction of entrance and exit ramps. See 495, where the on ramps and off ramps both have acceleration and deceleration merge lanes onto Route 123.
Can someone explain to me the logic of needing an acceleration merge lane on a road with 35mph speed limits? Everywhere else in the world this would be a right turn, not a ramp; especially when stacking can be maintained. A small change to realign the ramps to come to an intersection would allow for a safe crossing for pedestrians and maintain the urban fabric. People should not be told to cross highway ramps where vehicles routinely make a blind curve at highway speeds. That is insanity and frankly borderline negligence on behalf of Fairfax County.
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You can paint the piers, you can add material mixes in the facade, you can do I as I have suggested previously and incorporate experimental small business spaces under the tracks to provide a better street section, but all of that is moot if there is no way to walk down Route 123 or Route 7 without crossing a highway ramp.
If you want people to walk, you probably shouldn’t create conditions more similar to Frogger than Paris.