I knew that DC Metro ridership was down during the pandemic, and hadn’t really recovered. But I was still shocked when I parked in the nearly-empty lot at the Vienna Metro, on a weekday morning last week. Continue reading Post #1892: Vienna Metro has lost its groove.
Town Council is planning to pass the new Town of Vienna Zoning Ordinance (Mainly, replacing Section 18 of Town code) tomorrow, Monday 10/23/2024, per this Town of Vienna webpage. Continue reading Post #1865: The new Town of Vienna Zoning, checking a few details.
No less an authority than the USDA is now on the bandwagon for #leavetheleaves. That is, the idea that gathering and disposing of fallen autumn leaves is foolish from an environmental standpoint.
The conspiracy-minded among you may view this as just another facet of the Deep State, an evil cabal within the U.S. Civil Service determined to disrupt every facet of the American Way. Yes, stooping so low as to attack that most harmless of small-town fall rituals …
… requesting that citizens rake/blow leaves to the curb, so the Town can repeatedly drive its high-decibel fleet of dedicated leaf-vacuuming equipment through town, and so spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to suck up those leaves, then trucking hundreds of tons of leaves down the interstate so that they can be sterilized via hot composting at some remote location, ensuring that no offspring of this year’s crop of butterflies and similar insects survive.
Well, at least, that’s the tradition in my small town. It’s an industrial-scale process that’s a far cry from Normal Rockwell, if you get my drift.
Source: Pinterest.
The USDA is just the most recent in a long line of organizations that have gotten behind the idea that leaf collection and disposal of this type is a relic of the past. Historically, in this area, it’s the immediate successor to the era in which suburbanites routinely raked up and burned fall leaves. Before that was banned owing to the resulting air pollution.
Locally, even the surrounding county (Fairfax County, VA) has proposed to stop doing vacuum leaf collection (see Post #1821). In part, because that turned out to be a real hassle for county staff this past year. But also for all the good reasons outlined on the USDA web page.
But in Vienna, VA, traditions die hard, unless there’s some profit to be made in killing them. And new learning percolates excruciatingly slowly. Town-wide, this is mostly about doing our bit to slow the insect apocalypse (reference National Academies of Science). Not sure that matters to most residents, even though it should, from a survival-of-our-species standpoint. All said and done, it’s still an open question as to whether we can break ourselves of this 40-year-old tradition. Just to benefit a bunch of butterflies and such.
My prior screeds on this subject include:
This, in addition to several posts on the economics of the Town of Vienna’s centralized leaf collection and disposal process.
Pictures in this post are mainly from Gencraft.com and Freepik AI
I recently returned to my habit of walking the length of the Maple Avenue commercial district in Vienna VA. Just to run errands. These are my observations, after about an 18-month hiatus. Continue reading Post #1847: A stroll down Maple Avenue in Vienna VA
Edit 10/28/2024: I walked past there yesterday and the situation is unchanged. The token retail space remains empty. The orange traffic barrels are still in place. It’s weirdly desolate and trashy-looking, given that they finished building this three (?) years ago.
Original post follows:
Vienna Market is one of many “mixed use” developments that you should expect to see along Maple Avenue in the future. Most will likely be “stumpies”, that is, stumpy little apartment/condo buildings with first-floor retail and underground parking. But Vienna Market is a development of townhouses, with some vestigial retail space along Maple.
In theory, in exchange for rezoning that part of Vienna’s commercial district into a housing area, citizens of the Town of Vienna were to have been given a pleasant new quasi-public gathering space. As a quid-pro-quo.
This space, per the plans submitted to the Town of Vienna, below. Note the couple enjoying the day at one of many tables, set in a large, level green area.
Other imaginary views show it as a substantial open, level green space.
What we actually got looks like this, from some pictures I took while on a walk a couple of days ago, below.
You may notice a few things.
There are no tables. Actually, there’s not even enough level space to put a (one) table. There’s no green gathering space. Actually, there’s no gathering space, period. There’s a broad brick sidewalk, a stairway, and some utility paths for residents of the development. There’s the building’s electrical transformer, which will eventually be hidden by shrubbery. And all of the electric meters for the building, which may or may not get hidden by shrubbery. Inexplicably, there are some construction cones stored where the couple was sitting in the first picture. Which is OK, because that’s a walkway at the bottom of a stairway, not someplace you could sit and sip your coffee.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter anyway. Maple Avenue is typically so noisy from passing traffic that the whole idea of a pleasant daytime pocket park, directly adjacent to the roadway, is just kind of silly. At least, not one that you could have a conversation in, at any rate (see this post for sound level measurements.)
But that was the solemn promise the last time Town Council tried to rezone Maple. It just has never come to pass. Not for the Chick-fil-A car wash, where the builders provided a broad sidewalk, terminated by a drive-through exit and two large electrical transformers for the building. Not in any sense for the new old folks’ home, where the residual green space on the lot is less than it was for the prior building. And not for Vienna Market.
This, despite how spacious and inviting those spaces looked, in the materials developers used to sell the development to Town Council.
I doubt we’ll see anything in the form of a pleasant public outdoor area from the last of the MAC buildings, still to be built. Nor, I predict, will the postage-stamp plaza streetside of the new glass-and-steel Patrick Henry parking garage and library get much use.
Directly-adjacent-to-Maple Avenue is just not a nice place to hang out during the day. Never was. Likely never will be. Route 123 is an arterial highway, for goodness sake. And it’s the only east-west non-Interstate through crossing for a roughly five mile stretch. It’s going to be jammed with vehicles, most days, most of the day.
Source: The Traffic Legacy of the W&OD Railroad.
In general, Vienna Market has turned out to be a rather grim-looking development, in my view. Maybe it was just the low cloud cover, the day I walked past it. I guess it reminds me too much of Chicago. This, despite the best efforts of the Board of Architectural Review to salvage something after the original ornate Georgetown-style building plans they approved were somehow swapped for a dull, plain brown brick building. Before Town Council passed it (see this post for my epitaph on Marco Pologate).
It does at least look relatively energy-efficient, with (by modern standards) a relatively small area devoted to glass, in the townhouses.
All the retail there remains dark (un-rented). Judging from Fairfax County tax maps, those townhouses began to be purchased in late 2021. And it’s more than a year since title on the retail spaces was transferred, again per the tax maps. So we’re well past a year, I think, since the building was essentially finished.
Again, it doesn’t matter. Based on my earlier analysis of the economics of such housing developments for Vienna’s MAC zoning, it really doesn’t matter whether or not the retail space is rented. If they can manage to rent it, it’s icing on the cake. This development’s value is in the housing, not the retail. New “mixed use” with significant dark (unrented) retail is the new normal in the suburbs.
Consistent with the vacant retail, every expense was spared for the entrance to the parking garage. Luckily this is something that drivers along Maple will likely not notice. Only if you walk past it will you be treated to this view. I may be confused, but at some point I thought there was supposed to be a mural of a train on that wall, to lighten things up.
So why build this way? The only new land on which you can build stumpies and other high-density housing, in the fully-built-out suburbs, turns out to be the old retail districts. Slap some shops along the street edge of the first floor of the parking garage, and you can build high-density housing in the rest of the space, and term it “mixed use” development.
Fig-leaf retail, maybe that’s a better term for it. It’s the fig leaf that allows the Town to convert the commercial district to a housing district. Under the rubric of “mixed use development”.
So there you have it. It’s kind of grim and unfriendly. But so is much of the rest of the future. So this is just a sign of the times. I question the wisdom of building significant “mixed use” development along a skinny, typically half-block-wide strip of land, directly adjacent to a thoroughly congested urban highway. No matter how trendy mixed-use may currently be, the plausible social benefits of mixed-use development aren’t going to happen in a linear strip like Maple Avenue. But the increased traffic? Yeah, we’ll all deal with that.
As an economist, part of my job was to compare the actual end result with the prediction. That’s good science, and good public policy. Here, this is clearly not the building that was planned. Aside from more tax base, any promised benefit to the general public, from that rezoning, in the form of a street-side pocket park area, has failed to materialize.
On the plus side, it’s not a partially-vacant lot. So that’s a good thing. But you wonder whether or not the promise of profit from the rezoned parcel is what kept it under-used for so long in the first place.
What it’s not, for sure, is what was depicted in those final plans. And it just doesn’t matter. Sunk cost, water over the dam. Pick your metaphor. As long as promises like that aren’t used going forward, to sell the idea of yet more high-density housing along Maple.
All we can ask for is reality-based rezoning. Anything but wishful thinking.
Source: clipart-library.com To me, the original for this seem as if it were genuinely old. But I got it, presumably without copyright restrictions, from that source. If this is new, kudos to the creator for the look of it.
Fairfax County Department of Public Works and Environmental Services (DPWES) employees recommended discontinuing fall vacuum leaf pickup. Continue reading Post #1821: Fairfax County staff recommend discontinuing fall leaf vacuuming.
Today I stumbled across the dollar value of the 1961 Town of Vienna operating budget, in an old Town of Vienna newsletter. It seemed small to me, even after considering inflation. So I decided to compare a few key statistics for the Town of Vienna, 1960 (ish) versus 2023 (ish). And, in fact, it was small.
N.B., one U.S. dollar, in 1960, was worth just over $10, in current (July 2023) currency. Actual silver coinage (90% silver coins) did not disappear from U.S. circulation until 1964.
Town of Vienna, VA: 2023 versus 1960
Population: 43% increase
Dwelling units: 100% increase:
Persons per household: 26% decrease.
N.B. 2 x .74 = 1.48, so even though the data above come from different, independent data sources, the math very nearly reproduces the actual increase in population (44%, not 48%) over the period.
Median house price: Roughly five-fold increase.
Town of Vienna operating budget: Roughly 10-fold increase.
Most of the operating revenue for the Town comes from real estate taxes. To reconcile the 10-fold growth in house prices, and the five-fold growth in the cost of government, you have to know that the tax rate per $100 of market value fell by roughly 50% over this period. In 1961, it was $1.35 per $100, assessed at 32% of market value, or (1.35 x .32 =) 0.42 per $100 of market value. That, from the June 1961 Town newsletter. Currently, the rate is just over $0.20 per $100 of market value, per the 2023-24 Town budget.
References:
1960 Census of Population and Housing: https://usa.ipums.org/usa/voliii/pubdocs/1960/pubvols1960.shtml
2020 Census: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/viennatownvirginia/PST045222
Town of Vienna 1961 newsletter: https://www.viennava.gov/engagement-central/newsroom/vienna-voice-town-newsletter
Town of Vienna operating budget: https://www.viennava.gov/your-government/town-budget
Inflation calculator: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
Source: WTOP.
There was an article today on the local news-radio website (WTOP) regarding speeding in school zones. I took note, because I routinely drive through one of those zones where Fairfax County VA operates speed cameras. The zone is clearly marked, and you’d have to be blind to miss it, as shown above.
And yet:
In total, 23,431 cars were caught going 10 or more miles per hour above the speed limit in April, May and June combined.
I supposed I should be impressed by the sheer numbers. But instead, a completely different figure caught my eye: They only ticketed folks for going at least 10 MPH over the limit.
First, I thought it was intemperate of the reporter to note that exact figure. Anybody reading the article realizes that there’s no risk of a ticket at anything up to the posted speed plus 9 MPH. So, presumably, if generally known, that now becomes the de facto speed limit.
But second, I’d heard that same figure before, a few years back, in a discussion of red-light cameras and speeding cameras in Vienna, a town in Fairfax County. There it was phrased as “we don’t ticket unless they are going at least 11 MPH over the posted limit.” The explanation given at the time was that Fairfax County courts would not accept cases for any infraction less than that.
Short answer is, yes and no.
In theory, by Virginia statute, you can get ticketed for traveling one mile an hour over the speed limit in a residential area. This is my interpretation of § 46.2-878.2 of Virginia statute, which says :
Operation of any motor vehicle in excess of a maximum speed limit ... in a residence district of a county, city, or town ... shall be unlawful and constitute a traffic infraction punishable by a fine of $200, in addition to other penalties provided by law.
The black-letter law provides no slack. If you’re in a residential district, on a highway (meaning, in Virginia, any public alley, street, road, or highway), and you’re going a mile over the limit, you can, in theory, be ticketed and will owe a minimum of $200.
Except that the law spells out a different set of penalties for drivers caught by speed cameras in school zones. My interpretation is that because the process is, in effect, automated, they cut drivers a lot more slack than they would if they’d been pulled over, in person, by a uniformed officer.
In the case of speed cameras in a school zone (§ 46.2-882.1), emphasis mine:
1. The operator ... shall be liable for a monetary civil penalty ... if such vehicle is found ... to be traveling at speeds of at least 10 miles per hour above the posted ... speed limit ... . Such civil penalty shall not exceed $100 ... ... 4. Imposition of a penalty pursuant to this section ... shall not be made part of the operating record of the person upon whom such liability is imposed, nor shall it be used for insurance purposes in the provision of motor vehicle insurance coverage.
There appears to be no hard-and-fast rule regarding ticketing for how much “slack” you get, speeding in a residential area in Virginia. The plain language of State law in Virginia law says that if you exceed the posted limit, you can be ticketed. I believe that pre-empts any local law, as we are a Dillon Rule state. That is, local governments can only make their own rules where the Commonwealth grants them permission to do so. And nothing in Commonwealth statute appears to do that, with a few limited and explicit exceptions spelled out in the law.
Except that “ten miles over the limit” is written into law, in Virginia, for speed-zone cameras. There, the Commonwealth leans heavily in the direction of protecting drivers’ rights, and avoiding Big Brother information harvesting. So, in exchange for what is basically an automated process, you face a small fine. There’s a monetary penalty, but (as I read it) no points on the license.
First, if you are speeding, in Virginia, you lose any claim to having right-of-way. So if some bonehead does something to get you in a car accident, where you had the right of way, but you were speeding at the time … tough luck. You cannot claim right-of-way while you are speeding.
§ 46.2-823. Unlawful speed forfeits right-of-way. The driver of any vehicle traveling at an unlawful speed shall forfeit any right-of-way which he might otherwise have under this article.
The reason for that is pretty clear. Traveling at excess speed makes it difficult for other drivers to judge whether or not an accident will occur.
We had a horrific accident in this area, last year, that is a classic illustration of that. The culprit was a bozo who was driving a BMW about 80 MPH in a 35 MPH zone. His car got struck by a car turning left, and his car subsequently jumped the sidewalk and killed two high school student who were on the sidewalk, walking home from school.
Normally, the car going straight has the right of way. Should the car turning left have therefore been charged with the accident, for failure to yield right-of-way? I don’t think any sane person would suggest that. If nothing else, on a curved road, excessive speed of that magnitude more-or-less prevents drivers from seeing you coming in time. The accident was entirely the fault of the speeding driver.
Second, if you speed significantly in areas with red lights, you will run red lights.
Not may, will.
This point is courtesy of Road Guy Rob on YouTube. Yellow light duration is set based on expected traffic speed. (Plus regional variation, I guess). High-speed roads have long yellow lights, low speed roads have short yellow lights. In both cases, the length of the yellow allows drivers that are far from the intersection to stop before the light turns red.
If you drive at high speed, on a low speed road, there will be a stretch of pavement, and a rage of excess speeds, so that if you see the yellow light while you’re in that zone, you will literally be unable to avoid running the red. That’s because, between your reaction time and the car’s stopping distance, your car will travel much further than the engineers who set up the light expected. If you are within just the right range of excess speeds, if you see the light turn yellow, you both a) can’t make it through the intersection before the light turns red, and b) can’t stop before entering the intersection. No matter what you do — hit the brakes, hit the gas — you go through the red light.
And so, at some level, excessive speeding and running red lights go hand-in-hand. There’s a certain pleasing symmetry to that. My guess is, the folks who don’t care about the first, don’t much care about the second either.
As a gardener, I try to keep an eye on the thievin’ varmints wonderful creatures of nature passing through my back yard.
As a retiree, I have nothing better to do.
But my eyesight ain’t what it used to be.
Keep that in mind when I say that I’m fairly sure I saw my first backyard coyote yesterday.
The pictures you might typically see — making the coyote look like some noble offshoot of the wolf — don’t match reality of the eastern Coyote. Around here, if you see something about the size of an adult fox, but without the good looks, chance are, that’s a coyote. If you see an ugly brown dog with a mottled coat and a long tail, not acting like a domesticated dog, chances are good that you’ve spotted an eastern coyote.
This was not unexpected. Coyotes are native to the western U.S., and have been expanding eastward for the better part of a century. The predominant theory is that we invited them in by killing off bigger predators (wolf, bear), and converting forest into open areas.
I got my first-hand introduction to the Eastern coyote about five years ago, camping at Sky Meadows State Park. That sits adjacent to the ridge of the Blue Ridge.
Just at dusk, the coyotes had themselves a howl. At first, you hear a few individuals starting it off. You think, oh, cute, that must be a coyote. A minute later the entire ridge is ringing with the sound of howling coyotes. Three minutes later they wind it down, and silence returns.
It was chilling. There aren’t a few coyotes in those woods. Like bear, or foxes. There were hundreds within earshot of where I was camping. At least by the sound of them.
In short, the Blue Ridge Mountains are infested with coyotes. Given how few bear and foxes there are left, I’m guessing coyotes are now the dominant predator species in this area. That’s a complete change from my youth, where there were no coyotes in this area, period.
And they are here in the ‘burbs. There have been sporadic reports of pets being eaten by coyotes, here in the D.C. area. I think I spotted one crossing a construction site a few years back.
But it’s a different thing entirely to find one eyeballing your back yard. It skedaddled as soon as I opened my back porch door.
I would like to think I’m not the sort of person to form an opinion about animals based on cuteness. For example, I loathe deer, for the destruction they bring. Despite being handsome creatures. Foxes, I like for the fact that they eat squirrels, and not just because they are really elegant-looking beautiful animals.
Eastern coyote? My gut reaction is, one step up from rat. They may be noble wolf-like creatures in the western climate. And most photos you’ll see of them make them look the part. But around here, they look like mangy stray dogs. As in this view, from Wikipedia:
Looks aside, near as I can tell, this newest invasive species brings along only one good attribute: They kill deer.
Better yet, they kill baby deer. More specifically, in many areas, coyotes are the number one cause of death for fawns. (See, e.g., this random reference).
Much of the literature on this topic comes from the deer-hunting community, which of course tut-tuts over these premature deer losses. The deer hunters have a valid point of view. For them, coyotes are competition. Having eliminated wolves and nearly eliminated bear in this area, the deer hunter is the only native carnivore that’s in competition with the coyote.
By contrast, as a back-yard gardener, I’m am definitely on Team Coyote on this one.
However.
However, coyotes are omnivores. Sure they eat fawns. They also eat poodles. And squirrels. And garbage. And fruits and berries, if there’s nothing else around.
Oh, and they are known to attack small children occasionally. Just thought you might want to know, in case you were still harboring some sympathy for coyotes.
This invasive species is definitely going to put some pressure on our local fox population. And that’s a pity, because the foxes in my neighborhood don’t go around hunting down my neighbor’s cats. Or kids.
So if the coyote succeeds in pushing out foxes, we’ll have replaced a relatively benign and good-looking wild creature with one that’s far more of a nuisance. And ugly to boot. But one that is capable of reducing the deer population.
If Fluffy goes missing out of your backyard any time soon, you’ll know whom to suspect.
Coyotes aren’t advertising their presence. They aren’t howling, here, yet. (I think that’s a large-group activity for them and they aren’t yet that numerous.) They are stealthy, and they are hard to spot. They are easy to mistake for a fox or a stray dog.
But they are here. As in, prowling the suburban back-yards of Vienna VA.
In the grand scheme of ongoing slow-mo environmental apocalypse — (reference insect loss, reference global warming) — I guess this hardly even registers. Just another nuisance invasive species to deal with.
I’m not one to bash the USPS. For two decades, my business-related financial transactions went through the mail. The only time a check ever got “lost in the mail” is when a client sent it to my prior address. To within rounding error, in all that time, the USPS had more-or-less a 100% success rate.
But for this post, I’m going to make an exception. Continue reading Post #1797: Rethinking mail-in voting in Virginia
