Author: chogan@directresearch.com

Post #236: The tear-down boom actually has zero impact, or, by-right jumps the shark

After sitting through Wednesday’s Planning Commission (PC) meeting I had a revelation.  I’ve been looking at the tear-down boom (Post #217) all wrong. Now that I have revised my thinking, and modeled it after the logic used by some members of the planning commission, I now realize that the tear-down boom has absolutely no impact on anything in the Town of Vienna.

Here’s the key:  Every owner of a small home in Vienna has the right to tear down their home and build a vastly larger home on the lot.  And so, because they have the right to do that, the only logical way to assess actual tear-downs is against this by-right baseline. This was the key bit of logic that had escaped me before.

And so, the following are inescapable conclusions of that logic:

  1. These new, much larger homes have zero impact on the schools.
  2. There is no impact on the Town of Vienna tax base.
  3. The tear-down boom leaves the look of our residential streets unchanged.
  4. Conversion of the entire housing stock to very large homes has no impact on the perception of Vienna as “small town”.

If you think this looks a bit off, I’ll just remind you of the logic used to get there.  The right way to assess a change that actually will occur (an actual tear-down), is against a baseline of what could possibly have been done, by right.  No matter how improbable.  And so, logically, because all homeowners have the right to tear down and rebuild, the actual tear-down boom has zero impact.

This is exactly the logic used by some, at Wednesday’s PC meeting, to justify, in part, the size of 380 Maple West.  This is the logic of the by-right analysis as it is currently being done. Continue reading Post #236: The tear-down boom actually has zero impact, or, by-right jumps the shark

Post #235: Please keep the sidewalks open

I got an email today from a reader asking about the sidewalks.  Specifically, is the Town going to keep the sidewalks open as developers build the three (four?  more?) MAC buildings on Maple?

Turns out, all I can say is, that’s a great question, I can’t even come close to an answer, and please start asking the Town about this. This has the sound of one of those decisions that might (e.g.) be made by Fairfax County months before we even know there’s a decision to be made.  It would be nice to think that the Town of Vienna was on the case and acting on our behalf.

Sidewalk closure on the west end of Maple will (e.g.) inconvenience students walking to Madison.  If 444 closes the sidewalks,  students walking to Madison from my neighborhood will first have to walk away from Madison (to Nutley/Courthouse or to Maple/Pleasant HAWK light), cross the road, and the continue to Madison.  Not the end of the world, but clearly a disincentive to walking.

Continue reading Post #235: Please keep the sidewalks open

Post #232: 380 Maple West and Wade Hampton

Tonight (4/10/2019), at 8 PM in Town Hall, the Town of Vienna Planning Commission continues its public hearing on 380 Maple West (40 condos plus retail, corner of Maple and Wade Hampton).  The public is invited to speak for up to three minutes.  You can find the meeting materials, including the current plans for the building, at this link.

I’m going to spend my three minutes talking about what this proposal is going to do to Wade Hampton.  Briefly:

 

Continue reading Post #232: 380 Maple West and Wade Hampton

Post #231: Credit where credit is due

The Town has made good on its recent promise to make recordings of public meetings accessible in a timely fashion.  I didn’t want to pipe up about this until I started seeing all of the public meetings showing up.  But if you will go to this page on the Town website, you can see, for the first time, recordings of the Transportation Safety Commission (TSC) and associated sub-committees.

Mostly I want to say, kudos to the Town’s audio engineer.  I sat in and recorded the bicycle portion of the TSC meeting.  Those folks were not used to being recorded.  It was a mess, from an audio standpoint.   People didn’t use the microphones, they forgot to turn the microphones on, they banged the microphones — you name it.  And as much as I may appreciate low-key soft-spoken people in real life, they are a right pain to deal with when setting sound levels in an audio recording.

Producing clear audio is not as easy as you might think.  As I was recording it, I was wondering how the Town was going to deal with all that.  And the Town’s audio is clear as a bell. Despite the absolute hash that the speakers made of their own sound levels.  I have no idea how they managed that.

There are still various “work sessions” that the Town does not record, and so there would be some rationale for me continuing to record.  But I believe that everything that is of official record — where people could in theory vote on stuff — is now recorded and posted on the Town’s website.  At this point, for any of my recordings, it’s always preferable to use the Town recording if it exists.  Their audio is much better than anything I can manage to do.

This is a boon for anyone who wants to know what the Town is doing.  I did not stay for the TSC portion of this meeting, but I now know (in hindsight) that they discussed, in part, the process for petitioning for traffic calming in Vienna.  I need to listen to that.  And now I can.  Without this, I would have no idea what went on in that meeting.

My only other comment, to the Town, would be to take this full circle and post the agendas for every committee, before each meeting.  On this one, for example, I only realized after-the-fact that traffic calming was on the agenda.

Post #230: MAC-related public meetings this week.

You can watch this week’s Town Council and Planning Commission meetings live on Cox (channel 27) or Verizon FIOS (channel 38), or by streaming, at this website.   (For me, streaming only works with Chrome, and not with IE or Firefox.  YMMV.)

On Monday 4/8/2019, at 8:00 in Town Hall, there is a Town Council meeting with two MAC-related items.  The initial portion of the meeting is a public hearing on the budget and on the proposed sewer and water rates.  (In a nutshell, the Town operating budget will go up about 6%; property taxes will go up 5.6% due solely to higher assessments; sewer and water bills will increase by an average of 10%).  The last two items on the agenda will set the dates for public hearings on the proposed 380 Maple West (public hearing April 29th) and on extending the MAC moratorium (public hearing May 13th).
Meeting materials can be found at this link:
https://vienna-va.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=654196&GUID=856FEEAE-3679-4A73-A36F-3A6292F8C6F8&Options=info&Search= 

On Wednesday 4/10/2019, at 8:00 PM in Town Hall, there is a continuation of the Planning Commission public hearing on the proposed 380 Maple West development (40 condos plus retail at Wade Hampton and Maple).  Public comment will be accepted, limited to three minutes per person.  If you spoke at the least public hearing, you may speak again as long as you speak about a different topic.

Meeting materials can be found at this link:
https://vienna-va.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=688177&GUID=A0F9E221-B438-490B-80FE-BE64D1869A73&Options=info&Search=

The Town reserves the right to change or cancel meetings on short notice, so check the Town’s general calendar before you go, at this URL:
https://www.viennava.gov/Calendar.aspx?NID=1&FID=220

Post #229: The Town’s 2015 Traffic Light Timing Study

Sometimes you just have to remind people of the obvious.  Just so we can focus on the doughnut, and not on the hole.

The graph above summarizes May 2014 traffic counts, from a Town of Vienna study, at peak intervals during the weekday and on Saturday, at four key intersections on Maple:  Nutley, Lawyer’s, Park, and Beulah.  The detailed data can be found in this Excel workbook.Traffic counts, 2015 TOV study, selected intersections

Currently, along Maple, motor vehicles outnumber pedestrians by a factor of 100:1, and motor vehicles outnumber bicycles by a factor of  1000:1.  Continue reading Post #229: The Town’s 2015 Traffic Light Timing Study

Post #228: Maple Avenue Corridor Multimodal Transportation and Land Use Study

For those of you who are already confused, merely by the title, I’m talking about the Maple Avenue traffic study.  That official title is why I keep referring to it as the (thing formerly known as the) Maple Avenue traffic study.  For the official title, I literally cannot remember all the buzzwords in the correct order.

I’m eventually going to have a lot to say about this, but here I’m just going to say two things.  First, the study, as scoped, is fundamentally inconsistent.  Briefly, if taken at face value 1) it’s impossible to predict traffic 10 years ahead, so we’re not going to do that and instead 2) we’re going to talk about “multi-modal strategies” that could only have significant impact decades into the future.  Second, I’m going to do my own analysis of these issues.  That part will take a while.

Continue reading Post #228: Maple Avenue Corridor Multimodal Transportation and Land Use Study

Post #227: Lessons the Town has learned

I don’t encourage email.  You can find my email address on the splash page for this website, and I occasionally include it in posts when I am looking for someone to correct me on the facts.

I got an email on Wedenesday, from a reader of this site.  It was a classic example of why I discourage email.  I hate having to be “that guy”, that guy who always has something mean to say.

But in this case, I don’t see much choice.  There was nothing wrong with the email.  It was perfectly pleasant.  And I don’t need to say anything mean about the sender.

But it brought to my attention yet another thing the Town is doing.  So now — yet again — I need to say something deservedly mean about Town government.

Here’s what set me off.  My reader went to the Town’s “community workshops” last Friday and offered her comments.  And in her email to me, she included this, about 444 Maple Avenue West (the Tequila Grande development), emphasis mine:

" ...  The person with whom I spoke last Friday night said there was nothing the Town could do to reverse that.  She did however indicate the Town had learned lessons from that venture.  ... " 

Oh, yeah, our Town government has learned some lessons, all right.  But they are probably not the lessons you think.  Rather than just quietly email her back, I’m  going to lay out my view of the lessons the Town has learned.  In a nutshell, rather than back off one inch in the face of public protest, the Town has done nothing but double down.

Continue reading Post #227: Lessons the Town has learned