Author: Nick Ruiz

Testimony to the TPB re Climate Change and the CLRP Update

Over the past three years and particularly since last summer, the TPB has asked the staff to review CLRP updates for conformance with the goals of Region Forward, the COG Climate Report, Access for All, and the Regional Transportation Priorities Plan. The COG staff, elected officials and a wide range of stakeholders have committed significant time and resources into developing these plans and associated goals.

Letter to TPB Regarding the 2014 CLRP Update

Dear Chairman Wojahn and Members of the Transportation Planning Board:
Please accept the following comments on the draft 2014 update to the Constrained Long Range Plan (CLRP). The Coalition for Smarter Growth (CSG) urges the Transportation Planning Board (TPB) to fundamentally reevaluate the entire Constrained Long Range Plan this year in order to meet the Council of Governments’ (COG) own goals, including addressing climate change and meeting ever-stricter air quality standards for human health. This reevaluation should include the ability to remove projects which do not support your goals, including allowing for shifting funds to transit and the internal connectivity needs of the mixed-use, walkable and transit-oriented activity centers to which you have committed.

Rival bureaucracies are not the way to manage traffic congestion in Washington, D.C.

The D.C. transportation department is building a record of partially fulfilled promises on bike lanes, bus lanes, street parking, streetcar service and pedestrian safety. “In the 12 years since the District Department of Transportation was spun off from the Department of Public Works, no one has asked the critical question: Does the current agency structure work,” D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) said last week.

DC region’s new long-range plan fail to meet its own climate goals

If sea levels rise just one foot in the Washington, DC, area, nearly 1,700 homes could be lost. Is the region’s transportation planning agency doing enough to stop that from happening? Several environmental and smart-growth organizations in the region are saying no. Seventeen groups have signed on to a letter, being delivered today, urging the agency to take action. The comment period on the agency’s latest long-range transportation plan closes tomorrow.

The Constrained Long Range Plan update must address regional climate change goals

The undersigned organizations call on the National Capital Transportation Planning Board (TPB) to commit to full disclosure of the forecasted climate change impact of the 2014 Constrained Long Range Plan (CLRP), and to take action to align the CLRP with the region’s climate change goals. One of the most important national and
multi-national public policy issues of our time, climate change must be tackled by every city, county, region, state, and nation. Given that our region has already adopted important goals, it is past time to begin implementing them.