Selected works in media, policy and research
Op-Eds
Beltway Blunder
The Virginia Department of Transportation is planning for another expansion of the southern Beltway to ease projected future traffic. VDOT prefers to add two express toll lanes on either direction crossing the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, among other projects, along the eleven mile corridor between Alexandria and Springfield.
Following months of public outcry, however, VDOT tabled discussion until next year. Alexandrians should use this time wisely and consider alternatives that actually benefit our neighborhoods.
Residents already know how to provide economically sound alternatives. This goes back to fundamentals of community building: do top-down mandates promote prosperity or are bottom-up processes better? Of course the answer is a bit of both, not either-or. But what about the job of the engineer? Is the purpose of the highway engineer to improve the highway, or to improve the communities serviced by the highway? What happens when the former overrides the latter?
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VDOT considers this outside its purview because it is a highway bureau, not holistic planner. A highway engineering bureau can only conjure up traffic solutions that involve highway engineering. We don’t need engineers to expand an already congested highway. As a result, VDOT plans are routinely out of step with local planning decisions. We need them to engineer the solutions that bolster alternatives to the Beltway.
This study began in 2022 and the result was predictable: just add more lanes. True, VDOT does provide access for bus and bike lanes, but these are tangential not the crux. The crux is highway expansion. Three years could have been spent canvassing every nook and cranny of every southern Beltway community to arrive at the only logical solution to traffic congestion: reduce our reliance on the highway itself.
This is not hypothetical. VDOT commissioned public opinion surveys earlier this year as part of a comment period/branding tour. Over 300 people responded. The surveys can be seen
Only 18 percent of the respondents participants liked the proposed project. Answers were split for the entire point of the project: “extending … the express lane system.” How could VDOT miss the mark so badly on a $1.5 billion project?
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We need options to the Beltway, but VDOT is not providing them.
Our jobs, our groceries, our social life and our entertainment all increasingly rely on access to the highway because VDOT has routinely chosen to make it more important for the region. The Beltway encourages land use planning that prioritizes cars, big box retail and atomized luxury apartment complexes. It’s a downward spiral.
VDOT’s proposal is estimated to cost $1.5 billion. What could we the residents of the southern Beltway do with $1.5 billion that would tangibly reduce traffic and improve our communities? Transportation funds should instead be entrusted to the above communities to alleviate the source of traffic, which is dependency on the Beltway itself. Human scale architecture, walkable infrastructure, family owned enterprises, multi-generational housing and bustling sidewalks all go hand-in-hand in a virtuous circle.
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You can heat a house with proper air circulation principles in the design phase, or install a central HVAC system; the former feeds off natural bottom-up processes and the latter imposes top-down infrastructure that requires maintenance, fuel, specialty labor, and forces other inefficient design decisions. VDOT assumed we needed the costly HVAC system and forgot the design principles based on natural processes of economic development.
Given the chance, our neighborhoods would likely prefer to control their own destinies. It is the basis of a free society. But, VDOT saps this foundation in the well intended dependency they have created.
When we depend on our cars and the Beltway and big box retail stores and soulless apartments, how free are we? Do you expect your children to flourish in such conditions? What else can you imagine besides this for your neighborhood? What else around you do you need that isn’t being fulfilled? I’m eager to hear your comments.
-James Clark, Alexandria
This story was originally published in the Alexandria Times
The Problem with King Street
King Street is the heart of Old Town here in Alexandria. What happens there pulses up to Slaters Lane and down to Robert E. Lee High School in Fairfax County.
Which is why any problem that King Street does not resolve becomes magnified for the en-tire city.
King Street is often associated with timeless architecture, which abounds there, and with good food, which is plentiful. It is a magnet for tourists, from Washington, D.C. residents looking for an upscale restaurant to out-of-towners basking in the quaint Americana of Gadsby’s Tavern.
And yet, for all this attraction and amenity, there is an undertow of conflict for King Street’s future life. For every local deli and cafe, there seems to be a half dozen franchised food chains. For every art supplier and gift shop, countless rug boutiques and high-end antique stores. The ground underneath our feet has shifted, I fear, from local to national, from resident to tourist, from community and commerce to gentrified transactions.
I mean not to admonish those workers and owners of said businesses, but I do mean to suggest that the essence of King Street’s strength is becoming the exception, now, not the norm.
The problem with King Street is that it is not Alexandria.
This can and should be fixed before more damage is done. The norms governing the essence of King Street should prioritize resident prosperity and community gathering through addressing the needs of Old Town, not abstractly and arbitrarily maximize returns to fund precarious city services.
I am curious to know others’ thoughts on the subject. Does King Street fulfill your needs? What is it about King Street that you enjoy most, and how might you go about protecting it? Is too much emphasis placed on King Street, and if so, what would you like to see done about that?
-James Clark, Alexandria
This story was originally published in the Alexandria Times
Read a resident’s response here.