I don’t know … I can see both sides of the story. As much as I have this dream of transit friendly suburbs and know that transit oriented development (TOD) is a large component of this, I have to face the music and admit that the suburbs are so intrinsically and tremendously auto oriented that plunking down thousands of apartments next to a light rail stop is no guarantee of success. Those people are still going to need cars because, let’s face it, the light rail is only going to get you to so many destinations. And what with commuting patterns turned on their head in the past three years, light rail ain’t the solution that it was when it was built.

Look at any TOD built in the past 10 years. Take Odenton. You have these massive, kind of soul-less five-over-one buildings next to the Odenton MARC station. Ooohhh, ahhh, transit oriented development. Ok. But really, unless you’re going to DC, what purpose does the transit serve? You’re still stuck taking a car anywhere to shop, get groceries, take your kids to school, go to the park, and what have you. It’s nuts. And until we have some radical transformation in how we build towns in America, that ain’t gonna change.

So I understand the concerns of the people in Lutherville about traffic congestion. But I realize too that we have to start somewhere, and that perpetuating this attitude that suburban Americans have that they are entitled to never experience any motor vehicle congestion is a farce.