In an effort to stem the tide of new cars flooding the roads, mortgage lenders, Metro and public officials are pushing new incentives to get people to commute by public transportation instead.
Fannie Mae, which helps home buyers secure mortgages, intends to give area home buyers up to $10,000 more in home loans provided they live close to transit. At the same time, Metro is granting a 50 percent fare discount to home buyers who take advantage of the program.
To be eligible for the Smart Commute initiative, as the program is known, borrowers have to agree to live within a half-mile of a Metro station or within a quarter-mile of a bus stop. They also have to have no more than two cars. Maps distributed by Fannie Mae show that almost all of the District and sizable portions of the inner suburbs are close enough to transit to qualify. Jim Taylor, the company's director of product innovation, said there are about 7,000 properties on the market right now region-wide that would be eligible.
"We wanted to provide products that provide resource efficiency," he said. "It's a recognition that the whole issue of sprawl is one that we wanted to address."
Metro expects about 10 home buyers a month to take advantage of the new deal, meaning that the discount could cost about $50,000 a year.
"Because of our public transit in the areas that are more densely developed we have a lot of eligibility," said Metro CEO Richard White at the initiative's kick-off ceremony last week at Union Station.
Taylor said he did not know how many people would use the program. But, he added, "we think we'll see a fairly large group of consumers decide to do this."
TAYLOR SAID it would be hard to tell how many people who use the program will actually ride Metro to work.
"You can't always predict people's actual behavior," he said.
If the program proves too successful, it might add to crowding on rush hour trains and buses.
"We have become a bit of a victim of our own success," said White. "We have growing pains. We desperately need more capacity to relieve the crowding that exists today."
The new program, he said, points to Metro's dire need for "$800 million over the next six years to buy enough trains and buses."
"We're pretty close to making a very public cry for help."
Fairfax County Board Chairman and Metro Board member Katherine Hanley (D) said the program could help in several ways.
"This is one of the solutions to addressing two of our most serious problems in the region: housing affordability and transportation."
She pointed to Fannie Mae's map of the eligible areas in Northern Virginia and said it showed the extent of public transportation in the region. It's a recognition, she said, of "how we have matched land use with public transportation."
She also called the program "another good reason to have rail through Tysons and on to Dulles."
The initiative has also been hailed by environmental groups.
Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth called it "a good first step" that recognizes "that people can save significantly on their transportation costs by using transit."
"This is a way to enable people to buy homes which are often more expensive because they are close to transit."
Similar programs have proved successful in Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles, he said.