If You Build It, They Will Drive

How far is too far, asks this interesting article in the Wash Post, about a developer's plan to build a 4,300-unit residential development in western Maryland. And he figures some of the buyers will be commuters to the Washington area's suburban job markets along the I-270 corridor in Maryland.

' "If I was going to draw a realistic radius, I would think you'd get folks going to Germantown, to northern Montgomery County, to work," says the developer, Michael Carnock. "You can get there in an hour and a half in rush hour." '

Here's a thumbnail of the project: a 23-acre equestrian center, a hiking trail and a shopping center, 2,280 single-family homes, 424 townhouses, 912 condominiums and 684 apartments. Carnock says it will be kind of new urbanist, "similar to Montgomery County's Kentlands."

Carnock says it will attract "active adults" who are willing to commute for a few years before they retire, and the recently retired who want to be close to their former homes.

And speaking of distant commutes, here's Post auto columnist Warren Brown's bitter description of what has happened to another Washington highway corridor - Route 7, which used to be a ride through open countryside.

Now, says Brown, Route 7 is "a permanently congested artery filled with cars and trucks and drivers commuting to jobs miles away from their faux-rural, prefabricated houses and rushing to shopping centers to spend the money they've earned on stuff that they ferry back to their homes."