RESTON, VIRGINIA — A Boston-based startup called Optimus Ride has launched a new self-driving vehicle service in the Washington, DC suburb of Reston, Virginia. On Monday, I traveled to the site, a 45 – minute drive from my home in the nation’s capital, to see it first-hand.
Since August, the company has been ferrying passengers between a Fannie Mae office building at the site and an overflow parking lot a few minutes ‘walk away. But Optimus Ride has much larger ambitions for the site.
The 36 – acre property is directly adjacent to a new stop (“Reston Town Center”) on the DC Metro system’s Silver Line. The site’s owner, Brookfield Properties, is planning a massive mixed-use development here it has dubbed Halley Rise. There will be new homes, office space, and retail stores — including a Wegmans grocery store.
Optimus Ride is betting that self-driving vehicles can transform the way projects like this are designed — making it much easier to build pedestrian -friendly, high-density developments far out in the suburbs.
Why walkable suburban neighborhoods are hard to create
There are fundamentally two kinds of neighborhoods: high-density neighborhoods oriented around walking and transit, and low-density neighborhoods oriented around cars.
High-density urban neighborhoods have enough foot traffic that stores and restaurants can thrive without parking lots. The lack of parking lots allows stores and homes to be closer together, which improves walkability.
Transit plays a key role here. High-density neighborhoods have a lot of people within walking distance, including many without cars, which means there’s a lot of demand for transit. That allows buses and trains to run frequently, further improving the appeal of a car-free urban lifestyle.
The opposite dynamic is at work in the suburbs. Most people drive, so stores, restaurants, and apartment buildings need large parking lots. All that parking spreads things out, so walking isn’t practical for most trips. With widespread car ownership, demand for transit is low, so buses run infrequently.
In large metropolitan areas, there’s still significant demand for rapid transit from the suburbs into the urban core. Lines like the DC Metro’s new Silver Line cater to this demand. But parking is a major challenge. Few people live within walking distance of a suburban train station, so the station needs to offer parking. But the parking lots fill up quickly, and during rush hour you wind up with traffic jams around the subway station.
Urban planners sometimes try to address this by encouraging high-density development right around suburban subway stops — essentially creating an island of urban living around the subway stop. But it’s not easy. A family within walking distance of a subway stop can take the subway for some trips, but if the area around the subway stop is all car-oriented suburbs, the family is still going to need a car to travel anywhere else. That means you need a parking space — and probably two— for every housing unit. That limits how many people can live within walking distance of the station.
This problem is illustrated by the subway stop’s namesake, Reston Town Center, which is on the north side of the subway line (Halley Rise is to the south). I had lunch at Reston Town Center prior to my Optimus Ride visit.
Reston Town Center is a high-density mixed-use development much like Brookfield is planning for the Halley Rise site. The site pre-dates the subway line, so developers were forced to build several massive parking garages to accommodate people who drive to the area’s shops and restaurants. That drives up the cost of a development like this while making it less appealing for people living in the area — since no one wants to live next door to a parking garage.
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