TDM in Tysons: Helping Properties Improve Transportation, Attract Tenants, Reduce Parking

Tysons, Virginia (Tysons) is a well-known regional suburban employment and retail center in the Washington, DC region that faced the challenge of transitioning to a mixed-use, live-work-play community while also managing community concerns about growth and traffic congestion. Wells + Associates has been called upon to plan, launch, and manage Transportation Demand Management (TDM) programs to help address local government requirements about traffic congestion for nearly every real estate property developed in Tysons since 2007.

Background: Tysons’ Goals to Transform to a Mixed-Use Urban Center

Adaire Building bike lane, Tysons, Virginia — New properties in Tysons come with increased multimodal choices, like the Adaire Building, with views of downtown Washington, DC and the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Tysons, Virginia is often described as the quintessential edge city. Located 12 miles outside of Washington, DC in suburban Northern Virginia, Tysons is traditionally known for its Fortune 500 corporate headquarters and shopping as well as an auto-dominated design with some of the region’s worst traffic congestion.

With over 115,000 employees, Tysons is the 12^th-largest employment center in the United States. In order to transform into a more vibrant mixed-use urban center, Tysons has plans to grow over four times from a residential population of approximately 24,000 in 2020 to over 100,000 by 2050. This growth is being achieved by delivering high-density, transit-oriented development around four Metrorail stations throughout Tysons.

In order to facilitate this transition from an auto-dominated edge city to a more walkable and bikeable one, all new major development projects in Tysons are required to minimize their impact on auto traffic congestion by implementing TDM programs at their properties.

W+A’s Contribution: Plan, Launch, and Manage Award-Winning TDM Programs

W+A’s team uses its unique combinations of expertise that include urban planning, data science, research, marketing, communications, and evaluation to provide 360-degree TDM solutions for the properties we work with in Tysons.

Our unique four-phase approach is designed to create an ongoing cycle of improvement and refinement and includes:

Planning TDM programs
Creating customized plans
Engaging with each program’s unique stakeholders and community
Measuring TDM programs to optimize results

Wells + Associates manages TDM programs for nearly every real estate property developed in Tysons since 2007. These properties currently include:

> 2.2 million square feet of retail (including major regional shopping center Tysons Corner Center)
> 5,000 residential dwelling units at more than a dozen multifamily properties for developers that include Greystar, JLB, Kettler, LCOR, LMC, Macerich, Monogram Residential Trust, NVR, and The Meridian Group
> 4.5 million square feet of office with tenants that include Booz Allen Hamilton, Capital One, Deloitte, KPMG, Intelsat, MicroStrategy, MITRE, SAIC, and TEGNA

Wells + Associates manages email and social media communications for Access Tysons, as well as AccessTysons.com, a traveler information website for the Tysons Corner Center mall.

W+A ensures that each TDM program adds value to every Tysons property by providing unique mobility amenities and services that attract and retain today’s demanding tenants. Those amenities include but are not limited to:

In many cases, the TDM programs that we implement for the properties we work with can help reduce the amount of parking required for the site and save the property millions of dollars in parking construction costs.