Between 8:30 and 9 one recent morning, commuters lined the platform at the Vienna-Fairfax Metro station. A train pulled in. A handful of people got off, and the inbound passengers rushed aboard to get seats. When the train pulled out several minutes later, there were still several seats available. Soon, more commuters were lining up on the platform waiting for the next train.
This was a typical morning, said Mitch Vakerics, who was on his way to his job in Arlington.
"When you get here, you always get a seat, which is good," he said. Manuel Ramos, another commuter, agreed. "Right now it's fine," he said.
Anne Pastorkovich thinks differently. Even though she often gets a seat for her early-morning commute to D.C., she said, "The Orange Line strikes me as particularly bad. I used to live on the Yellow Line in Arlington. It really was not as miserable."
By the time the train reaches West Falls Church, there are no seats left, she said. And the return trip in a crowded car is unpleasant too, she added.
THE UNRESOLVED question of whether the Orange Line can take any more riders has emerged as one of the biggest issues in the discussion over whether to approve the construction of 2,300 new homes within walking distance of the Vienna-Fairfax station. The Planning Commission is reviewing an application by Pulte Homes to redevelop a parcel of land into townhomes, condos and office-and-retail space in the Fairlee area adjacent to the station.
Residents of several neighboring communities who ride the train say the development will overwhelm Metro and make a regular commute a nightmarish odyssey.
"By the time you reach East Falls Church if not Ballston, there's not any room for people on the train. You're leaving people standing on the platform," said John Lehrer, a resident of Briarwood Farms, who has been riding the Metro to work for five years. "We want to double the density from 1,000 units to 2,000 units? Come on."
But the transit system can accommodate more riders, said Jim Hughes, director of Metro's Office of Planning and Operations. "Nowhere in our system are we at capacity." In fact, Hughes said he welcomed the new development as a way to boost ridership. "We like areas were we can have development where people can get to our system other than parking," he said. "Parking is a big constraint."
Pastorkovich said she was dubious.
"I don't see how they can say it's not at capacity when people can't sit down," she said.
But the fact that people can't sit down doesn't necessarily mean that the train has reached its maximum ridership, noted Charlene Fuhrman-Schultz, in the county's Department of Planning and Zoning.
Faced with communities on one side and transportation planners on the other, local officials are taking a wait-and-see approach.
"It's one of the things we need to sort out," said Providence planning commissioner Linda Smyth, who scheduled a Planning Commission vote on the Fairlee application July 24.
"We have to try to find the right balance, and I want to make sure that any community impacts get addressed before we move forward on this," said Supervisor Gerald Connolly (D-Providence). But Connolly also said that any redevelopment of the site had to take into account the station's proximity.
COUNTY STAFF reviewing the development proposal predicted that about 33 percent of the new residents of the Fairlee development would take Metro to work every day. That estimate was based on a formula produced by Metro, said Leonard Wolfenstein, chief of the Planning Section of the Fairfax Department of Transportation. But Metro's models are not specific to the Vienna-Fairfax station. They also have not been updated since 1989, meaning they don't take into account shifts in transportation patterns over the last 14 years.
"We use that because it's the best data we have available," said Wolfenstein.
Recently, Pulte Homes and its attorneys hired a company to do a telephone survey of households in the immediate area of the proposed development. That survey found that about 52 percent of residents ride Metro to work, leading the developer's attorney, Tim Sampson of Walsh Colucci, to suggest at the Planning Commission's public hearing a few weeks ago that the Fairlee development would produce a similar percentage of riders.
That's exactly what worries Victoria De Arce, a resident of Circle Woods, who rides the train every day.
"We cannot say, 'Oh, we're close to the Metro so let's build all these anthills,'" she said.