The Rosslyn-Ballston corridor in Arlington, Virginia, may

The Rosslyn-Ballston corridor in Arlington, Virginia, may be the best prototype in America for transit-oriented development. Dense, mixed-use, walkable development has been built around five stations in recent years, with dramatic results in terms of transit ridership and tax revenues. A just-released study by Reconnecting America and the Center for Neighborhood Technology looked at the five Arlington stations and four stations on the same line in Fairfax County. Unlike the urban, underground stations in Arlington, the Fairfax stations are above-ground and surrounded by huge surface parking lots. Roughly 40,000 passengers board at the five TOD stations. Of these, 75 percent arrive on foot, and 13 percent by car. About 29,000 passengers board daily at the four conventional suburban stations in Fairfax. Of these, only 15 percent arrive on foot, and 58 percent by car. “Even though the numbers of jobs and residents in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor have doubled since 1980, the number of cars at some key local intersections in the corridor has increased at a much slower rate, if at all,” according to a Washington Post article on the study. “Per capita car ownership is lower, too.” TOD has also been beneficial to taxpayers, according to the study. “The two square miles of the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, though it constitutes about 8 percent of the county’s land area, is home to about 33 percent of its real estate taxes,” the Post says. This has contributed to Arlington County having the lowest tax rates in Northern Virginia, says Hank Dittmar of Reconnecting America.