With Amazon’s new headquarters heading to Northern Virginia, lots of changes are on the rise for the newly named National Landing area of Arlington County.
Many fear that 25,000 jobs means 25,000 more cars on the road in an area that’s already congested, and have questioned if the county is ready for that change.
“We most definitely are [ready] with the $228 million the authority has already invested in the area,” said Monica Backmon, Executive Director for the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority. “We have put some funding on the second entrance of the Crystal City metro rail station because that’s needed. It’s a huge point of congestion and with the anticipation of the 25,000 employees and potential citizens that’s going to be critical to get that improved,” she added.
The NVTA also funded nearly $70 million dollars for the Potomac Yards metro station which is in the works.
Other officials say the Amazon deal will be beneficial as they’ve seen a drop of about one third in ridership in the Crystal City and Pentagon City metro stations since 2010.
Together Arlington and Alexandria promised to invest more than $500 million in improvements.
But some Arlington residents have their concerns.
“None of that’s coming from new investments, that’s coming from funds we already have. We’ve let these things go untouched and crumble for this long and we had the funds to fix it and we haven’t for some reason until Amazon got here and that’s really disturbing,” said Roshan Abraham, member of Our Revolution Arlington.
Abraham added, “is it simply gonna be infrastructure that predominantly make it easier for people to get to amazon?”
