The Residential vs.

Employment Balance in TOD Areas:

Optimizing for Reduced Congestion and Environmental Damage

Terry Maynard
RCA Reston 2020 Committee
April 23, 2011

Summary

An analysis of WMATA Metrorail ridership data shows that residents within a ½-mile
radius of a Metrorail station tend to use Metrorail and not use autos much more than
their commuting worker counterparts. Higher jobs to residents ratios—and implicitly
jobs:housing ratios—make the situation worse although this may be partially offset by
emphasizing office development in the inner quarter-mile of the TOD area. These
findings are consistent with RCA Reston 2020’s position that the jobs:housing ratio in
Reston’s TOD areas ought not to exceed 2:1 if we are to substantially increase Metrorail
use and minimize congestion growth and associated environmental damage, and ease
needed investment in road improvements.

The Reston Citizens Association (RCA) Reston 2020 Committee has argued since mid-2010 that the
appropriate balance between residents and employment in Reston’s TOD areas should be one-to-one.
On a jobs:housing ratio basis, that translates roughly into a 2:1 ratio given the assumptions the Reston
Task Force and Reston 2020 have been using about space expectations for workers and residents.
Some members of the Task Force have argued for a 4:1 jobs:housing ratio goal. The core of the Reston
2020 argument for a balance between residents and workers in TOD areas was that we expected this
relationship would reduce the number of people driving to and from each Reston half-mile radius TOD
daily. This, in turn, would help substantially increase Metrorail use and reduce congestion—especially
during peak periods—and associated environmental damage, as well as ease the need for roadway
improvements, all major concerns for Restonians. Our reasoning for this conclusion is that we thought
the propensity to use public transit, especially Metrorail, would be roughly equal among those who lived
in and those who commuted to work in the TOD area.

Metrorail data that has recently come to our attention—albeit now six years old—indicates that our
assumption about the essentially equal propensity for people working and/or living near Metrorail
stations to use Metro or other public transit means was wrong. The Washington Metropolitan Area
Transit Authority (MWATA) 2005 Development-Related Ridership Survey—Final Report conducted a
survey of more than 1,000 residents and office workers at 49 locations near Metrorail stations, all but
two of them outside downtown Washington, DC. The survey has the benefits of being reasonably large,
diverse in types and locations of survey sites, and actually reflecting the behavior of people who live or
work in TOD areas. The bottom-line results of that survey, shown in the summary table below, indicate
that residents near Metrorail stations have a much stronger propensity to use public transit—including
Metrorail—than their working commuter counterparts as reflected in the following chart from the
report.

April 23, 2011 1

This summary table from the Metrorail report shows the propensity of office commuters and residents
in the areas around Metrorail stations to use Metrorail, other public transit, or their own automobiles.
It specifically measures these propensities for those who live above an underground Metrorail and those
who live at ¼-mile and ½-mile distances from the Metrorail station.
The table makes two key points about the propensity to choose Metrorail or auto transportation:
 Residents use Metrorail about 20% more than office commuters on average, no matter their
distance from the Metro station. At a half-mile from the station, residents use Metrorail three
times as much as office commuters.
 Office commuters choose to drive with much greater frequency than their residential
counterparts, up to half-again as much at the ½ mile periphery.
Because these statistics are a linear regression from a dispersed data set described in the report, the
logical, but tenuous, extension of this finding is that, other factors being equal, all space within a half-
mile of a Metrorail station ought to be residential to maximize Metrorail use, minimize congestion
growth and environmental damage, and reduce needed road improvement spending.

Metrorail Mode Share as a Function Auto Mode Share as a Function of

of Distance from the Station (Miles) Distance from the Station (Miles)
60% 100%

50% 80%
40%
60%
30%
40%
20%
20%
10% Office Commute Office Commute
Residential Residential
0% 0%
0 0.25 0.5 0 0.25 0.5

The general greater propensity of residents than commuting workers to use Metrorail in TOD areas is
borne out for the specific case of the Ballston Station area in the survey’s results for two office and two
residential sites there.
 At the two residential sites (both about one-quarter mile from the station), respondents used
Metrorail 48% and 50% of the time while using autos 38% and 40% of the time.

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  At the two office sites, the respondents use Metrorail 8% and 17% of the time while choosing
autos 79% and 85% of the time. (See Tables C-2 and C-17 in the WMATA report.)
Similar results were collected at the Court House station area, although Metrorail ridership was higher
and auto use lower there among both residents and commuting workers.

By applying the results of the Metrorail study to a simple model can help show how the ratio of
residents and jobs across the half-mile range of the WMATA analysis affects Metrorail and auto mode
choice. To do this, we have taken a look at three alternative scenarios in which there are a hypothetical
1,000 people who either reside or work within a half-mile radius of a Metrorail station:
 Jobs Heavy: Jobs are double the number of residents (2:1 population ratio; 667 workers, 333
residents).
 Balanced: Jobs equal the number of residents (1:1 population ratio, 500 workers, 500
residents).
 Resident Heavy: Jobs are half the number of residents (1:2 population ratio; 333 workers, 667
residents).

Workers Residents Total

Jobs Heavy 667 333 1,000
Balanced 500 500 1,000
Resident Heavy 333 667 1,000

The basic algebraic formulation for this effort is the following:

Y = (0.25*w.25*W + 0.75*w.5*W + .025*r.25*R + 0.75*r.5*R)/1000

Where:
 Y is the percent of residents and workers picking a particular travel mode
 wx is the percent of workers using the mode at the stated distance, and rx is the same
for residents
 W and R are the number of workers and residents in the scenario.
 The constants reflect the proportion of the ½ mile TOD circumference area within the
inner and outer rings around the station.

The following table shows the results across the range of job:resident ratios.

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 Auto & Metrorail Mode Share with
Overall Varying Jobs:Residents Ratios
80%

70%
69%
65% 60%
60% Auto Mode
50%
Metrorail
40%
27%
24% 30%
20%
20%

10%

0%
0.5 1.0 2.0
Jobs:Residents Ratio

This chart suggests that people choose to use automobiles more and Metrorail less as the ratio of jobs
to residents increases. In particular, a 2:1 jobs:residents ratio generates about six percent greater
automobile mode choice than a 1:1 ratio. Moreover, a 2:1 jobs:residents ratio suggests 20% fewer
people will choose to ride Metrorail. Even better congestion/environmental results obtain when the
number of jobs is half the number of residents.

A separate, but related argument has been made that it makes more sense to put more office workers
into the central quarter-mile of the Metrorail station than the outer ring because these people use
Metrorail less to go to their offices. This can be tested as well by allocating a different mix of workers
and residents within the two perimeters.

The following graph compares a “heavy office” scenario in which half of all the 500 jobs are placed in the
inner quarter-mile (one-quarter of the space) and no changes are made in the even distribution of the
residents across the space, that is, one-quarter within a quarter mile, three-quarters in the second ring.

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 Auto and Metrorail Mode Choice in Even and Office Heavy
Allocation in the Inner 1/4 Mile
80%
69%
70% 65% 67%
63%
60% 59% Job:Res Ratio
60%
2.0 1.0 0.5
50%

40%

27% 28%
30% 25%
24% 22%
20%
20%

10%

0%
Even Office Heavy Even Office Heavy
Auto Mode Metrorail

The chart shows that, in fact, the “office heavy” scenario does generate a one to two percentage point
increase in Metrorail use and similar decrease in auto use for each of the job:resident ratio scenarios.

The core conclusion drawn from this analysis is that the higher the jobs to residents ratio in a TOD area,
the greater the congestion and environmental damage and the lesser Metrorail use will be. This can be
mitigated on the margin by emphasizing job placement in the inner quarter-mile of the TOD area. We
acknowledge that the conclusion is incomplete, however, because of (a) the high variability in the data
collected and used by WMATA as it acknowledges, and (b) the clear recognition that developing TOD
areas involves more than local congestion and environmental goals, most specifically, economic and
financial goals.

Recognizing that there are other important goals, including corporate and county financial and
economic growth goals, other than maximizing Metrorail use, minimizing congestion growth and
environmental damage, and limiting expensive needed road improvements, RCA Reston 2020
Committee stands by its position that the jobs:housing ratio may rise to, but should not exceed 2:1—
essentially equal populations of total residents and workers—in Reston’s TOD areas.

April 23, 2011 5