My smart growth buddies have issued a critique of the compromise transportation-funding deal. Among the highlights in the press release issued jointly today by the Coalition for Smarter Growth and the Piedmont Environmental Council: Cutting gas taxes by up to one-third reduces the tie between transportation use and funding. “Transportation,

Route 355 is the only road in Montgomery County that could support a two-way bus lane, county planners said Thursday as they presented a scaled-back bus rapid system to the county's Planning Board. Planners are pitching a 78-mile system that would include eight corridors in the center and downcounty regions.

Montgomery County planners think Rockville Pike is the county’s best candidate for a “true” Bus Rapid Transit route, meaning the traffic-clogged artery could support a two-lane median busway similar to major systems that serve millions of riders in other countries. The finding came today in a briefing from planners in

VIRGINIA - "Look beyond the deal specifics and look at the real implications of the announced deal on HB2313, and you'll see a bill that represents bad fiscal policy and bad transportation policy," said Stewart Schwartz, Executive Director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth. "It's a bad deal for Virginia. Without reforming VDOT spending the statewide component of the funding will be wasted, and all Virginians will have to pay for this waste. On the same day that the conference committee announced a deal proposing about $850 million per year in additional transportation funding, we learned that VDOT is wasting yet more of the $3 billion in funds approved by the General Assembly in 2011," said Chris Miller, President of the Piedmont Environmental Council. "Yesterday, in a presentation to the Commonwealth Transportation Board, VDOT said it would allocate $869 million in borrowed federal funds to Route 460 and the Coalfields Expressway, two of the most wasteful projects to ever be proposed in Virginia. Then there is the $1.25 billion or so they propose to waste on the Charlottesville Bypass and the NoVA Outer Beltway. "

Today, Montgomery County planning staff present to the Planning Board a 78-mile version of the proposed Rapid Transit System, based on several months of data-driven modeling and analysis. The Rapid Transit System would be a premium, reliable transit service using dedicated lanes as much as possible to bypass traffic, running frequently throughout the day, and stopping at enhanced stations featuring real time arrival information and efficient boarding like that found on Metro.