A group of bus rapid transit supporters say AAA Mid-Atlantic’s opposition to bus-only lanes is rooted in a “fatally flawed,” traffic-solving approach of building more roads and more lanes.

Next Generation of Transit, a project of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, on Thursday issued a response to AAA Mid-Atlantic’s testimony from Monday.

The Coalition is lobbying for the Planning Board’sCountywide Transit Corridors Functional Master Plan, which establishes the framework for a 10-corridor, 81-mile bus rapid transit network in the county. The plan is now in front of the County Council’s Transportation Committee.

In May, AAA spokesperson Lon Anderson said proponents’ claims that drivers would flock to bus rapid transit, “makes one wonder if they’re smoking something funny.” AAA is against dedicated bus rapid transit lanes where it would mean the loss of a regular mixed traffic lane.

Next Generation of Transit said dedicated lanes will mean a better chance to solve traffic issues at a cheaper cost than building new lanes and roads. The group also said AAA Mid-Atlantic “misused and took out of context,” a report from an outside consultant that concluded Rockville Pike/Wisconsin Avenue was the only road in Montgomery that could support a gold standard bus rapid transit system:

AAA’s approach of continuing to solve our traffic problems by building ever more and wider roads is fatally flawed.  Solving our traffic challenges means focusing on moving people, not just cars, and that means using our existing infrastructure most efficiently.  By making it attractive to walk, bicycle, and take a high quality bus rapid transit service, we can provide more choices and make the transportation system work better for everyone – especially those who need to or choose to use a car.

Dedicating travel lanes to transit will provide a better chance for our road network to function more effectively – and will do so at far less cost to our communities than the other major option – increasing the size of our major arterial roads. Many jurisdictions that have dedicated roadspace to transit or bicyclists have seen no impact or even an improvement in traffic.  Even LA has dedicated lanes to buses this year on their congested Wilshire Boulevard, knowing that the only way forward is to focus on providing options to move people, not just cars.

The bus rapid transit proposal before the County Council right now is a great opportunity for Montgomery County to provide new transportation choices along major roads like Rockville Pike where new construction is bringing thousands of new residents. Experts like the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (whose report AAA misused and took out of context) say that the 355 corridor, in addition to US29, Veirs Mill, and Georgia Avenue are all good candidates to start upgrades to transit service to achieve a BRT network.  Montgomery’s own planning department who conducted much more detailed modeling indicates a similar prioritization of corridors.

To solve our transportation challenges, we must look to the future, not an auto-oriented past.  That’s why a diverse coalition of over 36 business, civic, environmental, and social justice organizations have come together to call for a future that includes a robust bus rapid transit network for Montgomery County.

The Council’s Transportation Committee will hold a worksession on the proposed east county BRT corridors on Monday morning.

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Following two well-attended public hearings last week on the proposed Bus Rapid Transit system, the Montgomery County Council will now consider transit routes, approximate station locations, and rights-of-way. But one of the most significant policy issues will be whether the county gives transit priority on key routes with bus-only lanes.

Dedicated lanes allow for much faster, much more reliable service, which in turn attracts more riders and lowers costs per passenger. They make rapid transit a real alternative to driving in traffic, but removing general travel lanes to create bus-only lanes can be a hard sell to some members of the public. After all, many people consider it common sense that eliminating a lane of traffic will cause traffic to exponentially worsen.

Fortunately, evidence suggests that eliminating a lane often has no serious adverse effect on traffic. It may seem counter-intuitive, but removing a lane can occasionally cause traffic to flow better than it did before.

In 2002, a team of researchers looked at hundreds of situations where transportation planners reallocated roadspace away from general car travel. Most situations they examined experienced little to no increase in traffic, and in many cases local transportation planners reported, “the traffic has disappeared and we simply don’t know where it has gone to.”

The empirical evidence from dozens of case studies demonstrates that reducing roadspace for cars, especially when paired with providing better transit options for residents, can actually improve traffic operations. All of the case studies looked at affected and surrounding roads, and over half the cases saw more than a 10% reduction in traffic in the area.

Of the bus lanes studied in their report, there was an average 5% decrease in overall traffic. The study concludes that people make a much wider range of behavioral responses in these cases, including switching modes from driving to transit, chaining trips, or shifting their travel times away from peak hours.

Other recent traffic studies on repurposing lanes for transit have predicted a similar result. In Alexandria and Arlington, where the Potomac Yard-Crystal City BRT line will open in 2014, the traffic analysis for the environmental impact statement indicated that dedicating one curb lane in each direction to transit vehicles would cause no significant change in traffic flow.

In fact, modeling indicates that where repurposed curbside lanes are planned in Crystal City, exclusive lanes for buses help to channelize automobile flow and reduce traffic delays compared to not doing anything at all. In other parts of the corridor, the modeling predicted minor increases in traffic at a few intersections, balanced out by reductions in traffic at other intersections. Meanwhile, transit planners from Seattle tell us that their traffic study predicts a similar result on Aurora Avenue where plans call for repurposing two curb lanes for transit service.

In New York, data on traffic flow following the creation of bike lanes and bus lanes, as well as closing some streets to car traffic completely, indicates that traffic speeds have actually improved. The data matches similar observations in Brooklyn that travel times on Prospect Park West decreased after city planners converted a car lane to a bike lane several years ago.

The Maryland State Highway Administration is already planning on giving lane repurposing a try along the Purple Line on University Boulevard. SHA will reallocate two center lanes to the light rail line instead of widening an already large arterial road. The agency will make other improvements in the surrounding area to mitigate potential traffic impacts and keep people moving.

Planners and traffic engineers will be able to learn from that experience as they implement BRT in Montgomery County. The BRT plan recommends repurposed lanes where forecast transit ridership exceeds the capacity of a general traffic lane to move single occupant vehicles, a simple but sensible threshold.

While there are choke points along some of the corridors, in general, the proposed BRT routes are wide roads with six or more lanes. Montgomery planners and transportation officials alike seem to understand that continuing to widen these roads forever is not desirable, given the negative impact on neighborhoods and the long-term ineffectiveness of such an approach.

Lane repurposing offers the opportunity to move more people in Montgomery County’s limited road space. When combined with simultaneous improvements to bike and pedestrian networks that connect neighborhoods and work centers to the BRT stations, dedicated bus lanes offer Montgomery its best chance to create safer roadways that encourage walking, biking, and transit use.

Experience from other cities show that we can’t assume that traffic will increase. If we build a great system that can actually attract riders, traffic may not change much at all, and in fact may even decrease.

Photo courtesy of Oran Viriyincy. Click here to read the original story.