(The new million-dollar bus stop at Walter Reed Boulevard and Columbia Pike in South Arlington. Only half was for construction- the rest was management overhead. Photo Arlington County.)

I have several friends who are passionate about their gardens, and they have taken the time to write me extensively about selection of plants, herbs, and defensive tactics against root rot and critters. I am internalizing, and think I will address their advice and concerns this weekend in the Farm Report.

Increasingly, I feel like I need to get out of here. I have enjoyed the last decade in Blue Arlington. Living close-in has lowered my blood pressure, but it comes with exposure to the unicorn-and-pixie-dust public policy crowd.

It is normally a fair trade: this is a nice and placid place compared with The District across the river, but the imposition of the Master Plan is approaching Big Pink and I am not sure what to think.

The vibrant Rossyln-Ballston corridor over the Orange Line of the Metro is exactly that. It is filled with twenty-somethings and bright lights, but there is a social component that is pressing for extremely high density living within a few blocks of the subway, and lousy and expensive parking options.

The whole “smart growth” thing makes me uneasy, since the Buckingham neighborhood is one of the targets of social engineering.

I have not written about the hood lately, but there are big changes. They are erecting the next phase of the luxury town-homes on George Mason. The privilege of doing so is predicated on the provision of affordable housing in two new gigantic insula buildings behind them, with a designated percentage of 8a renters. Other blocks of the old garden apartments have been demolished and replaced with new rental units.

It may be all right. I don’t know. But this plays to an ancient war here in the County that goes back to before the riots in the District. Arlington north of Route 50 was always were County money went in the days of defacto segregation, and the minority population south of the big road was marginalized with benign malice.

When Fairfax  and the surrounding Counties burgeoned with white flight, Arlington was on its heels. Now, it is an internationally recognized laboratory of human engineering. And the County Commissioners guilt about the historic inequity between north and south.

American passenger rail is having a renaissance among the people who know how to spend our money better than we do. The Brookings Institution just issued a report that bolsters the public policy position endorsing more trains, and the partnership between jurisdictions and perennial hand-out Amtrak, an institution rivaling the Postal Service as a model of efficiency.

Blue Arlington is jumping all over this one. Columbia Pike is the major east-west artery south of Route 50. The County unveiled a really cool new bus station there a couple weeks ago. It is quite a marvel, and billed as the first of 24 “Super Stop” bus stations that will line the Pike.

Check it out: it resembles the high-tech hoods that the Metro people have had to install above the escalators leading down to the tracks. Originally, they were exposed to the elements and predictable, the moving stairs shorted out in slush and rain. Oh well.

(They forgot that snow and rain might screw up the escalators of the Metro system. Hrer is the answe at Virginia Square just up the road. Photo Metro).
The new bus stop is gleaming glass and stainless steel. Of course, it doesn’t actually shelter anyone from rain or snow, but this is about esthetics, you know? Plus, they only cost a million dollars a pop.
I was a little startled about that, since the old plexiglass shelters had sides and a sturdy roof and cost $10,000, an order of a couple of magnitudes less.

Of course, this is actually the beginning of an infrastructure for light rail, which will travel from the western edge of the county and loop down toward Crystal City. That has people in an uproar- there was a near battle royal over whether I can’t imagine a circumstance in which it would be useful for any of us up here, unless there was a surface bus to deliver you to one of the super-stations. I imagine there is, but I have no interest in meeting my fellow citizens on mass transportation.

I suppose the people who live in the market rate rentals along the Pike feel the same way about the yuppies who live along the Metro. The County is committed to spending our tax dollars for perfectly commendable reasons.

The Board adopted a new thirty-year plan to preserve the six thousand existing “affordable housing” units on the Pike, and invested in major infrastructure upgrades like the million dollar bus stop to “enhance the streetscape.” This will make it easier for citizens to “reduce or eliminate their personal vehicles,” with an eye toward making their household incomes more affordable.  The Board is committed, they tell me, to incentivize growth on the Pike while “retaining its affordability; its cultural, economic and ethnic diversity; its history, its heritage and its strong sense of community.”

I don’t go down there much, since it is still a little scary in the barrio. With the increased taxes to support all this, I am thinking about just relocating to the farm in my personal vehicle. I will be interested in see how it turns out, but in the meantime I have a thirty year plan of my own, and it does not feature trolleys or Blue Arlington.

The next time I stay in the County, it will be in South Arlington, all right, but probably at the national cemetery.

(Artist’s computer conception of the new Columbia Pike Trolley. Image courtesy Arlington County).

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.comRenee Lasche