Number Crunches in the County

The 2008 data from the American Community Survey has a lot of new numbers to bask in and some unsurprising information on the home front.

Fairfax County has one of the lowest percentages of commuters who take take transit among jurisdictions around or inside the Beltway. Almost three quarters of commuters drive alone to work. Farther out jurisdictions, such as Loudoun and Prince William counties, score even lower in transit use. But Fairfax has a high percentage of carpoolers and Prince William has even higher, likely owing to slugging (carpool lines) along interstates 95 and 395. And even though Fairfax's transit commute numbers are below average inside the Beltway, they're above the national average.

Moreover, transportation patterns reflect housing and land use. For Fairfax County, the same survey data also show:

• 96.6 per cent of households have a car, almost half of households have two cars, and about a quarter of households have three or more;
• more than half of housing units are one-unit detached structures (suburban-style single-family houses unconnected to other buildings), and about a quarter of housing units are one-unit attached structures (single-family houses that are clustered together); and
• construction of new housing units has come down considerably since the 1980s.

BeyondDC crunched population numbers and noted that Fairfax County -- the most populated jurisdiction in the region and "20th-century sprawl champion" -- is now the slowest growing jurisdiction in the area between 2005 and 2008. Growth in Fairfax was outpaced by that in neighboring areas, both inner-Beltway suburbs and far-flung bedroom communities, and mostly before the recession.

Decades ago Arlington -- already fully built out and suffering from pollution, traffic, and a shifting demographic that was taking a tax base with it -- faced much the same situation. As the nests of the baby boomers empty and media reports herald an end of the era of single-family cul-de-sac developments, what choice does Fairfax have but to pursue an Arlington-style transit-oriented reboot?

Photo credits: map of mean commute time by the Census Bureau, two-car garage by Rich McGervey, Rosslyn and Courthouse aerial view by the Environmental Protection Agency.