White Plains & Tysons corner both have large retail & office complexes, however the downtown core of White Plains is walkable while Tysons is not. Although that is not the end of the story. A large percentage of the office space is along Westchester Avenue east of Downtown towards Harrison & Rye Brook. For several miles Westchester Avenue acts as a service road for I-287 wich runs in the middle of it & the road lacks sidewalks except where bus stops are located.

There are shuttle services from the White Plains train station door to door, but during non rush-hours you have to walk to the nearist bus stop wich may require crossing both halfs of the street, wich can be dangerous even with traffic signals & walk signs.

For some reason Maryland officials when given a chance to fund large scale transit projects, decides to build a toll road that most residents apose instead.

Arlington gets it. You cant squeze more & more cars in a finite amount of space without some kind of backlash. Now it is time for the rest of the region to get on board. Rockville & Bethesda are moving in the right direction

http://www.walkscore.com is a good resource as well as the links I posted above.

Tyson’s is an odd place, because you can find vacant land in the middle of some of the most intensive development. Regardless of what planners do now, there will be more vertical development and the place is far from capacity for this. This may or may not add to the attractiveness of Tysons as a retail destination. Office construction didn’t rescue Bethesda’s retail core (filled more successfully with restaurants) and Crystal City’s underground mall struggles as retail space despite being a huge employment hub.

OTOH, people like me who dread going there will love the Metro access.

BTW, the concept of a midday circulator service is a joke, it should run all day long. Except for Arlington, all of DC’s suburban jurisdictions seem pretty clueless about transit.

Fairfax County planners are inching closer to making pivotal decisions about the transformation of Tysons Corner: How much development will be allowed, and when?
“The big-picture growth strategy is to concentrate future growth in centers, and Tysons is one of those centers,” said James Zook, director of planning and zoning.
Now, the Planning Commission committee preparing a blueprint for the urban core in Tysons must draw its conclusions about how much development will be allowed around the four new Metrorail stations in the area and what infrastructure must be in place before new high-rises start to go up.
One task will be to pick a side in the density debate, settling a longstanding disagreement between county land-use planners and members of the Tysons Land Use Task Force about how much Tysons should be allowed to grow. The task force, which developed the vision plan for the area, says higher densities are needed to encourage the type of development the task force advocates.
Last week, county transportation planners released an outline of what road and transit projects will be needed to accommodate certain levels of development. County staff previously estimated what the other public facilities needs will be as Tysons grows, including police and fire stations, parks and schools.
As part of the new Tysons plan, county leaders must decide what “triggers” will allow development to proceed. There are several approaches to accomplish this, Zook said.
One technique is to tell a builder he has to build his project in phases, tied to the completion of certain infrastructure. This, however, does not work well for small projects, Zook said, and can hamper a builder’s ability to get financing for a project.
Another idea is to encourage multiple property owners to come together and allow them to finance a share of the public improvements in their section of Tysons. Building would go ahead from there, with no triggers, he said. Commissioners like this concept because it would allow the planned grid of streets in Tysons to be built faster, for example.
“It sounds like it could help with consolidation; it could help with coordination,” Commissioner Rodney Lusk said. “Assuming we could get a group of developers that would agree.”
Despite the two major transportation projects now under way in Tysons Corner, there are many other additions needed to handle the expected growth in the next 10 years, according to Dan Rathbone of the Fairfax County Department of Transportation. Transportation planners used computer models to determine the timing of needs.
Even with the completion of the high-occupancy toll lanes and the four Metrorail stations, anticipated in 2013 — as well as the accompanying widening of Route 7 around the rail stations, new sidewalks and improved bus service — Tysons will not have much room to grow above its current 44 million square feet of development, according to the report.
Between 2013 and 2020, to accommodate up to 60 million square feet of development in Tysons, the full 23-mile Metro extension to Washington Dulles International Airport must be completed, along with a number of road improvements in Tysons. These include widening Route 7 from Route 123 to the Capital Beltway, starting the grid of streets and building new ramps from key Tysons local roads to the Dulles Toll Road.
“This being only 10 years ahead is very sensitive to where development takes place,” Rathbone noted, referring to which portion of the street grid will be the highest

The Dulles Metrorail Project
By Robert ThompsonSunday, November 15, 2009
The Metrorail project is marching west through Tysons Corner and swinging north onto Route 7, where construction will probably have the greatest effect on drivers. The next six months of work along this one-mile corridor up to the Dulles Toll Road will be “fairly intense,” says Howard Menaker, communications manager for Dulles Transit Partners, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority’s contractor for this phase of the rail project. Here’s what travelers will see as they drive through the work zone in the coming months.
What will change
– The service roads along the eastbound and westbound lanes of Route 7 will be closed so the regular travel lanes can be pushed out. The closings, which will come in sections, have begun, starting on the eastbound side between Pike 7 Plaza and the Koons GM dealership. During the phaseout, drivers will be able to reach the businesses along the road, but they should expect to see different entrance routes. People heading for Marshalls, Pier One Imports and the Sports Authority in Tysons Square Shopping Center will enter through the usual spot from Route 7 just west of Wendy’s (Marshalls Drive) with one exception: Koons customers should enter the property by southbound Route 123.
– A retaining wall will be built along the south side of Route 7 to support the new road bed. (The grade is different between the service road and the eastbound travel lanes. That will need to be balanced.) Then the travel lanes will be pushed out, away from the median. The work will eventually occur along both sides of Route 7.
– Three places along the median where mid-block turns have been allowed will be closed. (The traffic signals at Westwood Center Drive/Tyco Road, Spring Hill Road and Gosnell Road/Westpark Drive will remain and can be used for U-turns.) The median will be widened to accommodate the elevated tracks and the two rail stations. The Tysons Central 7 station will be near SAIC and Marshalls. The Tysons West station will be between Spring Hill and Tyco roads.
Elsewhere on the rail line
Although the effect on Route 7 will be significant, the Metrorail construction to Reston has become visible along most of the route. Preliminary work is underway at all five stations: the two on Route 7, the two on Route 123 and the terminus at Wiehle Avenue.
Along the Dulles Connector Road near Interstate 66, piers and caissons are under construction. They will support a flyover taking the new tracks from the Orange Line to the Connector Road. Pile driving is underway to support new bridges at Idylwood and Magarity roads and at Pimmit Run. Construction trucks are using I-66 inside the Capital Beltway during certain hours. As many as 74 trucks a day will be allowed to use the Lee Highway/Washington Boulevard exit to turn around to go west on I-66.
Easing the pain
Two new bus services will help commuters get to work in Tysons Corner and get around the area without their cars during the middle of the day.
Tysons Express
The first commuter bus service with a direct route from Woodbridge to Tysons started this month. The fares on the new buses, operated by PRTC’s OmniRide and financed by the Virginia government, will be half the normal OmniRide price for six months. Commuters using SmarTrip cards will pay $2.40 a trip, and those using cash will pay $3.
Schedule
The buses travel between the Woodbridge VRE station and the Route 123/Interstate 95 commuter lot and stops in Tysons. The four inbound trips will leave between 6:10am and 8:05 a.m., ride the HOV lanes to Franconia-Springfield and then take the Capital Beltway to Route 7. They will stop at the Tysons Corner Transit Center and more than a dozen other points, mostly along Greensboro and Jones Branch drives. The return trips start from the Tysons Corner Transit Center between 4pm and 6p.m.
Tysons Connector
The other service launching this month in Tysons is an internal circulator bus. Tysons was built for cars: You can hardly get anywhere without one. The new Connector bus is meant to ease that burden.
The bus, operated by Fairfax County, will offer free midday service around Tysons Corner beginning Nov 23. Passengers on two routes will be picked up every 10 minutes from 10 a.m. to 2:30p.m. weekdays to go to Tysons Corner Center, Tysons Galleria and the major employers nearby.
Other transit options
These are the services available to travelers in Tysons:
– Fairfax Connector routes 401, 425, 427 and 574
– Metrobus 2C, 2T, 3T, 5A, 15K, 15L, 15M, 23A, 23C, 24T, 28A, 28B ad 28T
– Connections to other regional transit routes at the West Falls Church Metro station and the Tysons Westpark Transit Station.

That’s what I thought when I lived there, too. This was one of the many reasons I hated it there, and got out…thanks for the reminder, Sean!

Thanks for your comments, too mallguy!

Where are the two complexes in relation & distence to one another? How do obsticals such as department store placement, road withs, limited transit access & lack of sidewalks come into play beyond what was stated in the Post articles?

I suggest these websites for aditional information reguarding this area.

http://www.walkarlington.com

http://www.commuterpage.com

Although Arlington is the focus, there are links to other areas.