Opinion

Progressive Voice is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the individual author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com.

Arlington County Board candidate Alan Howze has announced a set of proposals to improve the streetcar system that would link Arlington with Alexandria and Fairfax and improve transit along one of the busiest corridors in the region.

The streetcar project will also provide significant financial returns to Arlington through economic development that, in turn, will generate revenues to help create needed schools while protecting neighborhoods and preserving affordable housing.

I support Alan’s campaign and his fundamental tenets of engaging Arlington’s voters and communities to improve on a project that has been the centerpiece of multi-year revitalization efforts for Columbia Pike and Crystal City. I applaud the many Arlingtonians who participated in those efforts.

In making his proposals, Alan has respected the long-standing and inclusive community planning process while looking for innovations to improve upon project implementation.

After talking to thousands of Arlington residents at their doors, he has made five proposals based on their suggestions:

1. Timely construction should be a key contract requirement to minimize disruption, protect taxpayers, and accelerate streetcar benefits. Speed and accountability in government matters.
2. Create a small business contingency plan to support small businesses affected by construction.
3. Create a business and residents advisory council to ensure community issues arising during construction are dealt with promptly.
4. Examine the feasibility of streetcars that run without wires for sections of the streetcar line to reduce use of overhead wires.
5. Secure 100 percent renewable energy power supply for the streetcar to ensure a zero emissions system.

I have known and worked with Alan as a community leader. These proposals reflect his approach to meeting community challenges — thoughtful discussion, community input, considering needs of neighborhoods and the broader Arlington community, finding innovative solutions, looking to conserve community and taxpayer resources, addressing the vital imperative of climate change and environmental protection, and respecting community processes in order to encourage Arlingtonians to participate actively.

These attributes are important to me as a lifelong Arlingtonian dedicated to service making a difference.

More importantly, they are important to me as someone serving as President of the Yorktown Civic Association and taking a leadership role in the Lee Highway Revitalization project.

Formed in 2013, this project is a grassroots strategic partnership for re-visioning Lee Highway, involving the presidents and other interested members of the civic associations along Lee Highway. Moreover, this project has taken its template/lead from the thoughtful, inclusive, and deliberate Columbia Pike revitalization process that has been undertaken since the 1990s.

We anticipate developing a joint community vision for a more economically vibrant, walkable, attractive Lee Highway corridor to benefit neighborhoods and the business community. I expect that our vision will lead to a corridor that avoids disjointed development and that will support improved transit options as well.

We also anticipate that our joint community vision will be sent in 2015 to the County Manager’s office with a recommendation that the County Board appoint and fund a task force to develop a Lee Highway Sector Plan guiding future rezoning and development applications. (more…)

Progressive Voice is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the individual author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com.

The concerns raised regarding Arlington’s streetcar program remind me of my own journey from streetcar skeptic to streetcar supporter.

As a planning commissioner for the County from 2002 and 2012 and as a transportation commissioner for part of that time, I participated in the development and review of the long-range plans for Columbia Pike and Crystal City and the eventual selection of the streetcar as the preferred option for improving transit services.

The County’s path to choosing the streetcar project rather than enhanced bus service was not a short, straight line. The process included:

• a progression of public planning charrettes, community meetings, public task forces and public hearings supplemented by surveys and other forms of outreach to gather public opinions;
• professional working groups involving state and local agencies, expert contractors and WMATA; and
• both internal and contracted studies on financing options, economic development impacts, engineering options, right-of-way acquisitions, and impacts on neighborhoods, businesses, affordable housing, and historic resources.

At each step along the way, transportation and economic development experts, citizen advisory groups, and the County Board asked tough questions and identified gaps in information and analysis, leading to additional work and public review.

In keeping with “The Arlington Way,” the County Board listened to the questions and objections raised, weighed the merits of the arguments in support of each alternative, and unanimously agreed that the streetcar was the best method for achieving and balancing Arlington’s various goals.

While we can always identify more questions and raise more objections, we must eventually, on any major project, reach a point where the information gathered is deemed sufficient, a decision is made, and we move forward.

That said, here are a few of the criticisms I considered along the way to becoming a streetcar adherent.

First, the streetcar requires a fixed rail infrastructure that does not permit routes to be changed. I believe the benefits of a light rail approach offset this concern. The “guarantee” offered by fixed light rail is essential to building momentum for private investment according to economic development and real estate professionals. This private development will generate additional demand for the streetcar as well as tax revenue needed to support our schools, parks, libraries, human services programs, and maintenance of basic infrastructure. We can still add transit services as demand for additional routes materializes.

Second, a streetcar operating in a mixed-use travel lane is sub-optimal. Having separate dedicated lanes is optimal for any form of transit. However, the Columbia Pike community identified a range of goals that work to limit street width — wider sidewalks, traffic calming, and the preservation of historic buildings.

Combined with limitations imposed by private property lines and VDOT’s requirement that all travel lanes be maintained, widening Columbia Pike to accommodate dedicated lanes is not feasible. Planners and civil engineers will continue their work on ensuring success of the shared use approach. (more…)

Progressive Voice is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the individual author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com.

As we watch the events in Ferguson, Mo., unfold, I am thankful for the progress we have made in Arlington to create a more diverse and welcoming community. I am even more determined that we work together to foster civic engagement and leadership opportunities for African Americans and to honor the historic contributions of African Americans in Arlington and all Arlingtonians who have worked to eliminate discrimination and expand opportunity.

Since I was younger than I can remember, I have watched documentaries on the American civil rights movement. Growing up in the 1990s, my mother made sure I understood the struggles and accomplishments of African Americans in our country and also how far we had to go as a community and a country.

These early conversations and experiences shaped my philosophy about civic engagement. I have wanted to do everything I can to repay those who lost their lives and sacrificed so much for me to go to integrated schools, use the same bathrooms as everyone else, and live in any neighborhood I wanted to make my home.

Not long ago, things were very different.

In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled that American schools should be desegregated. In defiance of the Court, our state government in Richmond chose to work actively to prevent integrated schools.

In the midst of Virginia’s “massive resistance” efforts, the NAACP filed a suit on behalf of Arlington parents and students. Judge Albert V. Bryan ordered the Arlington schools to be desegregated. In 1959, four Black students entered Stratford Junior High School (now H.B. Woodlawn) with the protection of Arlington police officers, changing our history forever.

Since the 1950s, the struggle for full equality has changed. While our schools are legally desegregated, African Americans are still not fully represented in political leadership.

I founded Virginia Leadership Institute (VLI) in 2006 with the goal of increasing the number of African American elected officials in Virginia.

African Americans are 20 percent of the Virginia population and approximately 8 percent of the population in Arlington, yet only about 250 African Americans across the Commonwealth hold elected offices (county boards, constitutional officers, school boards, city councils, state legislature, Congress).

VLI believes that our elected and appointed officials should be diverse in age, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and the like.

We believe that residents can be represented effectively by someone different than themselves, yet VLI also believes that one’s background, experiences and characteristics can provide different perspectives that are important as leaders seek to represent and discover solutions for growing and changing communities in Arlington, and throughout Virginia.

VLI, based in Arlington, focuses on teaching African Americans skills needed to win elections and govern successfully. VLI also provides personal leadership consultations to assist them on their life journeys.

In 2014, there are many who question why an organization would focus on helping one group of people get elected to office. Yet current events show us that diversity in leadership continues to be an important element of creating safe and healthy communities as well as addressing crises. (more…)