On Saturday, June 1, 2013, the Coalition for Smarter Growth partnered with Wheaton Urban District Advisory Committee to tour recent and upcoming changes in “A Walkable Wheaton.” Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett and County Council President Nancy Navarro toured new developments and were joined by speakers from Kittelson & Associates, Housing Opportunities Commission, Latino Economic Development Center, and Just Up the Pike.
Category: Maryland
Montgomery parking requirements looser, but not enough
Montgomery County’s new zoning code will allow less parking in new developments in order to use land more efficiently and encourage alternatives to driving. However, the regulations still require parking in ways that will hinder the walkable urban places the county wants to build.
Space for people, or space for cars? All photos by the author.For four years, the Planning Department has been revising its complicated, unwieldy zoning code. First written in 1928, the code hasn’t been updated since 1977, when the county was still mostly suburban. The new code will go before the County Council in a public hearing June 11.
Under the current code, buildings must have lots of parking, even near transit or in areas where most people don’t drive. The new parking regulations are simpler and allow developers to build fewer parking spaces, though they do require other amenities, like bike racks, changing facilities and spaces for car sharing or carpools.
New rules require less parking, more amenities
The new code reduces parking requirements throughout the county, especially in its parking benefit districts where public parking is available, like Silver Spring, Bethesda, Wheaton, Montgomery Hills and eventually White Flint.
Restaurants currently must have 25 parking spaces per 1000 square feet, a little smaller than a Chipotle. Under the new rules, a restaurant would only need between 4 and 10 spaces, depending on whether it was in a parking district. Meanwhile, office buildings outside a parking district will only need 2.25 spaces per 1000 square feet, compared to 3 today.
Some rules have been simplified. The current law requires different amounts of parking for different kinds of stores; for instance, a “country market” must provide 5 parking spaces for each 1000 square feet, while a furniture store needs only 2. Under the new code, all stores would be required to have 3.5 spaces per 1000 square feet in parking districts, and 5 spaces elsewhere.
New buildings would also have to accommodate alternate modes of transportation by providing bike parking. Larger buildings will have to include space for car sharing, while developers would be able to swap out car parking spaces for carpool spaces, bikeshare stations or changing facilities.
However, the parking requirements for housing won’t change much. Single-family homes and townhomes would still need 2 off-street parking spaces or 1 if they’re in a parking district, same as before, while new apartments would need at least 1 parking space, regardless of where they are. However, apartment developers could build less parking if they “unbundle” them, meaning that residents could buy or rent a space separately from their unit.
Do we still need parking requirements?
While the new requirements are an improvement, some local groups argue that there shouldn’t be parking requirements at all. The Coalition for Smarter Growth, the Montgomery County Sierra Club, and the Action Committee for Transit, where I sit on the board, have all come out against parking minimums.
Parking requirements don’t always make great places.Why? For starters, parking is expensive to build and rarely pays for itself. Construction costs for a space in a parking lot are about $3,500, compared to $30,000 for one in a garage and $100,000 for one underground, not counting the cost of land. Parking fees rarely cover these expenses alone, so the costs get passed on to the public in other ways, like higher prices at a restaurant that’s charged higher rents by its landlord.
Meanwhile, our communities pay for a glut of parking. Surface parking lots that are only full on Black Friday take up valuable space that could be used for buildings or parks instead. And even attractively designed parking garages like this one in Rockville still create a dead space, hurting street life. On top of that, parking lots produce a lot of stormwater runoff, polluting waterways.
This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t have any parking, but the costs of excess parking outweigh the benefits. As Matt Yglesias writes in Slate, people will continue to want parking, and any developer who wants to stay in business will satisfy them without being told to:
Almost 100 percent of Washington-area residents like to sleep on a soft comforable surface at night. But there’s no regulatory requirement that residential buildings contain mattresses. The lack of mattress mandates doesn’t mean people are forced to sleep on the floor. It means that if people want to sleep on a mattress
— and they generally do — they need to go buy one.
Once you take away the Agricultural Reserve, residential neighborhoods, and other uses, you’re left with about 4% of Montgomery County that’s available for development. That land is valuable, and we need to use it well. Covering it with big parking lots isn’t the right solution, but that’s what our current zoning code requires. While the new law’s a step in the right direction, it may not go far enough to create the kind of places we want.
The County Council will hold a public hearing on the Zoning Rewrite on Tuesday, June 11 at 7:30pm. To sign up to testify or submit written comments, visit their website.
Photos courtesy of thecourtyard on Flickr.
Transit projects in Gaithersburg to benefit from fuel tax revenue
The increase in Maryland’s fuel tax, signed into law by Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) last week, is projected to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for Montgomery County road and transit projects, including two major projects in Gaithersburg.
The proposed Corridor Cities Transitway bus rapid transit system and an interchange on Interstate 270 at Watkins Mill Road are among 10 new projects — totalling $1.2 billion in spending — that will benefit from the increase in revenue.
The Corridor Cities Transitway is a 15-mile system of dedicated bus right-of-way that will run from the Shady Grove Metro Station in Rockville to the COMSAT site in Clarksburg. The first part of the route, between Shady Grove and the Metropolitan Grove MARC station, will receive $100 million for final design work and for rights of way.
“That project will still require a significant amount more to get the project fully funded,” said Tom Lonergan, Gaithersburg’s director of economic development.
The source of those remaining funds — expected to be upward of $400 million — has not yet been determined. Construction on the system is expected to begin in fall 2018.
Lonergan said the $125 million allocated for the Watkins Mill interchange will be used for final design and construction costs of the $165 million project.
The interchange will link two unfinished portions of Watkins Mill Road over I-270 in Gaithersburg. Drivers will be able to enter and exit I-270 from Watkins Mill Road, providing relief to the intersection of Md. 355 and Montgomery Village Avenue.
Watkins Mill Road west of Rt 355 is a dead end that is currently used for parking by construction crews working nearby. The fuel tax revenue will be used to complete the interchange with Interstate 270.The state budgeted about $40 million to the interchange project earlier this year, Lonergan said.
“It should get the job done,” Lonergan said.
County Councilman Phillip M. Andrews (D-Dist. 3) of Gaithersburg said the interchange would encourage economic development in the upcounty as well as relieving congestion.
“I’m very pleased to see [the projects] moving forward,” he said.
Also funded, the proposed Purple Line light rail system which will run from New Carrollton to Bethesda. The project is projected to cost $2.2 billion in total, and will receive $280 million for final design work from the tax revenue.
“Without the new funding, these critical transit projects could not have moved forward,” said Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth.
Transit projects are the ideal way for the county to accommodate its traffic and growth and to remain competitive in the future, Schwartz said.
Construction on the Purple Line could begin as early as 2015 for a 2020 opening; daily ridership is expected to reach 69,000 by 2040, according to the state Department of Transportation.
The transportation funding law indexes the state’s current 23.5-cent-per-gallon fuel tax — which has not been increased since 1992 — to inflation but limits increases to 8 percent per year.
A sales tax of up to 5 percent also is added to the wholesale price of fuel, to be phased in throughout three years. If the federal Marketplace Fairness Act is adopted, the new sales tax would be limited to 3 percent.
County Executive Isiah Leggett (D), who has been an advocate for increased state funding for transportation, praised the new law after the bill-signing, saying that it would support thousands of jobs in Montgomery County by allowing projects to move forward. The new law is expected to support 57,200 jobs over the next six years, according to the O’Malley administration.
Photo courtesy of Dan Gross/The Gazette
PG planners propose bold new smart growth future
Prince George’s County has diverged from its smart growth goals, says the county Planning Board in a searing assessment. The board says residents have a choice: push for more transit-oriented development and walkable communities, or “be resigned to business as usual.”
Largo Town Center. Photo by the author.The board released a policy paper called How and Where We Grow as part of an update of the county’s 20-year plan for growth and development. It offers aggressive proposals to tame sprawling, scattered development and focus public resources at Metro stations and priority urban centers.
While official plans and rhetoric say transit-oriented development is important, land use trends show a different story on the ground. The county must recommit to managing its growth in a sustainable way by preserving open space and focusing development around Metro stations, says the board. Otherwise, the county will remain a place known for bedroom communities, underutilized Metro stations, and weak job growth.
Members of the public can offer their input on the county’s future at a day-long town meeting next month.
Prince George’s is at a crossroads
“Prince George’s County is at a crossroads,” the Planning Board states. “Will we choose bold action or business as usual?”
The document recounts how the 2002 General Plan vision for growth and land use fell short of its original goals over the years. Without commitment to a new direction, the county can expect more spread out development, continued failure to capitalize on the promise of transit-oriented development, and lagging investment to spark revitalization of communities inside the Beltway.
Tier boundaries from the Prince George’s County General Plan.Between 2002 and 2010, residential growth in the county departed from the General Plan by spreading out into over 6,400 acres of the “Developing Tier,” a rapidly suburbanizing area outside the Beltway. The lion’s share of the county’s development occurred there, including 73% of residential and 60% of commercial growth.
In the “Developed Tier,” inside the Beltway, growth lagged. It fell short of goals by capturing 25% rather the hoped-for 33% goal. However, what was built there consumed just 5% of the county’s land area.
Development in the pipeline, which has been approved but not yet built, promises more of the same. More than 79% of residential units in the development pipeline are single-family detached houses in the Developing Tier. Yet according to the Planning Board, demand forecasts show that more than 60% of the new housing units to be built should be multifamily units located in walkable communities at transit-accessible locations.
All photos by the author unless otherwise noted.How and Where We Grow points to the costs of these growth patterns: spread-out development at densities that are difficult to support with quality transit or retail services, long commutes, and a future as a bedroom community to the region. Over the past 40 years, a third of the county’s open space, agricultural, and forested land were converted to low-density residential development. The loss of open space has fragmented natural areas and undermined the agricultural economy.
Furthermore, the board notes that the county has attracted the fewest number of new residents of an area jurisdiction from 2000 to 2010. “Without recalibration of county priorities and policies that promote TOD [transit-oriented development] and high-quality, mixed-use development,” the paper says, “it is likely that the county will be at a continued disadvantage to its neighbors when it comes to attracting residents and employers who value the connectivity and amenities that other such communities provide.”
The county needs a unified vision
The board notes that the structure of county government undermines unity and fosters internal competition through the lack of at-large council members on the county council. “While the County Executive can focus and coordinate resources, the nine different Council members, oftentimes with nine different priorities, it is difficult to agree upon a single vision for the county,” says the paper. “In practice this means that public dollars get spread across the county, instead of being concentrated in a few places to make a truly significant impact.”
A “clear mismatch in stated goals and actual infrastructure investment” emerges when assessing the county’s transportation spending priorities, the board finds. There’s also far more commercial and mixed-use zoning than the market can support. The paper notes that the county’s weak commercial tax base makes it a challenge to compete for employers or have the financial resources to address community needs, like crime and poor schools.
Given these tough observations, the planners put forth a realistic agenda for the future with this set of specific recommendations aimed at leveraging existing infrastructure:
- Define density targets and growth goals for the tiers to shift the focus of development to the centers and the Developed Tier.
- Make a stronger commitment by targeting new growth to the Developed Tier and increase the growth objectives for the tier.
- Locate the new hospital center and key government functions at a transit-oriented development location.
- Reduce the backlog pipeline development (which can linger for decades). Prioritize and phase development by requiring bonding for infrastructure improvements. Also use the water and sewer process to more aggressively discourage greenfield development.
- Prioritize and fast track building permits in targeted areas (County Council is currently advancing a bill to do this).
- Revise surcharge fees for schools and public safety, encourage development in the Centers and Developed Tier by reducing fees, and phase growth in the Developing Tier through fee increases.
- Adopt new zoning ordinance and subdivision regulations. Ensure they are supportive of the General Plan goals, including encouraging transit-oriented development.
The planning board’s honest, stern assessment of the county’s challenges and practical list of reforms offer the chance for Prince George’s County to change its ways. County leadership has shown some appetite for meaningful reforms. At the request of the county council and executive, the state delegation enabled the county to reduce fees for developments around Metro stations during the last Maryland legislative session.
The County Council is also advancing a bill to expedite development review for projects close to Metro stations. Meanwhile, the debate over where to locate the proposed Regional Medical Center has shifted away from expansive open sites to parcels around the Largo Town Center Metro station.
However, the county’s spending priorities still reflect business as usual, with a focus on building costly intersections for new communities like National Harbor and Konterra instead of investments to enhance access to transit stations or improve bus service. Expensive sprawl-supporting highway projects remain high on the county’s wish list for state funding, such as roads to support the 6,000-acre greenfield Westphalia development located outside the Capital Beltway and miles from the nearest Metro station.
Despite the mixed and sometimes contradictory priorities pursued by the county, the Planning Board and staff are making waves by pointing out the costs of continuing old ways that will allow the county to fall further behind.
Check out the Plan Prince George’s 2035 website, and plan to attend the half day town meeting on June 15 beginning at 9:30 am at the University of Maryland College Park.
Photos courtesy of Greater Greater Washington.
Friends Around Town
Your Friends have been out in the community over the last month and we’re grateful to our partners for engaging us in these fascinating opportunities. Dan Reed and I were both panelists during a Montgomery Housing Partnership breakfast focused on social media in community engagement.
Montgomery Housing Partnership’s mission is to expand and preserve affordable housing in Montgomery County – something that will become an issue in White Flint if the county truly wants to draw a younger demographic. MHP doesn’t just advocate, they also walk the talk by “acquiring, rehabilitating, building and managing quality affordable housing.”
Friends of White Flint was very proud to be part of Coalition for Smarter Growth’s Walking Tours and Forum Series. ”White Flint: From Drag to Desirable” was the topic that kicked off this season of walking tours – and to a sold out crowd! Nearly sixty people joined Stewart Schwartz of CSG, Nkosi Yearwood of the Planning Department, Tommy Mann from Federal Realty and me on a beautiful morning’s trek through the past, present and future of White Flint.
The tour was a great way to feel and see the differences between streets that solely car-focused, as opposed to those that consider all travelers. Features like tree buffers, bike lanes, benches and trash cans equalize priorities among pedestrians, bikers and drivers. Many of our main White Flint streets still have a long way to go in becoming truly walkable.
Friends of White Flint also hosted a Developer Showcase on April 30th in the Whole Foods Rockville café. It was an opportunity for the community to browse new projects in White Flint’s future, and meet the people behind the ideas. Paladar Latin Kitchen, Montgomery County Parks Department (Wall Park), LCOR (North Bethesda Center), Lerner Enterprises (White Flint Mall), and Federal Realty Investment Corp (Pike & Rose) were all available to chat, show their plans and share guacamole. Friends of White Flint member Chevy Chase Land Company was also present with information about their plans for Chevy Chase Lake.
Over 100 visitors checked out the exciting plans for White Flint and appreciated seeing the images up close. If you weren’t able to join us that rainy morning, let us know if you’d like us to host a similar event on an upcoming evening!
Finally, Friends of White Flint has begun a monthly presence at the Pike Central Farmers Market! Find us among the food trucks and produce and learn more about your community while you browse!
And, wherever you see us – don’t hesitate to share your thoughts on the plans for White Flint. We’re here to have a positive and consensus-building conversation. Join in!
Group Offers Walking Tour Of White Flint
Rockville Pike can be an unpleasant place to walk. The six-lane, highway-like road along the strip malls and parking lots of White Flint is heavy on traffic and light on the type of streetscaping in Bethesda Row or even Woodmont Triangle. Montgomery County and the developers behind the many mixed-use projects planned for the corridor would like to see that change. On April 27, the group leading the charge for smart growth initiatives will offer a glimpse of what that future might hold.
Testimony before Martin Grossman, Director of the Office of Zoning and Administrative Hearings in Opposition to Special Exception Request for S-2863, Costco Wholesale Corporation
Dear Hearing Examiner Grossman:
Please accept these comments on behalf of the Coalition for Smarter Growth. Our non-profit organization works to ensure that transportation and development decisions in the Washington, D.C. region, including the Maryland suburbs, accommodate growth while revitalizing communities, providing more housing and travel choices, and conserving our natural and historic areas.
We want to express our opposition to the Special Exception request for the Costco automobile filling station – a large scale gas station which will attract vehicle trips from outside the local area. We believe this proposal is wholly inconsistent with the 2012 Wheaton CBD and Vicinity Sector Plan, and antithetical to the goal of promoting transit-oriented, pedestrian-friendly development within one half mile of a Metro station. The Wheaton Sector Plan area not only offers high quality Metrorail service, but also extensive bus service and a planned rapid transit service. This concentration of transit services will increase the share of trips made by transit, encourage more walking, and reduce how much people drive in the area.
As a regional organization, we advocate for well-designed transit- and pedestrian-oriented development which focuses more housing and commercial activities within an easy walk of Metro stations and other high quality transit services and historic downtowns. We seek to mitigate existing automobile-oriented uses in transit districts, and prohibit new ones. Reducing auto-oriented uses and their impacts are important to fostering a public realm and private development that better cater to pedestrians rather than prioritize the movement of motor vehicles. Uses such as gas stations, automobile repair services, drive thrus, and similar uses that attract motor vehicular traffic and encourage automobile-oriented designs such as additional driveways, wider driveways, surface parking, and curb cuts should be minimized, reduced, and in some cases, prohibited in transit districts like the Wheaton Sector Plan area. The proposed, a high volume gas station, is an unnecessary new auto-oriented use that would detract from the county’s and our efforts to create a more pedestrian-friendly environment around the Metro station.
The Plan specifically identifies the existing “auto-oriented uses” of the area as one of the key issues to be addressed through the implementation of the Sector Plan. The addition of a large scale gas station would compound the “auto-oriented uses” problem identified in the Sector Plan. We recognize that the site of the gas station is on the outer part of the mall property and Plan boundary. Yet we find the proposed use not a neutral use related to our goals to improve the pedestrian environment, but rather a use that actively degrades the pedestrian environment and works against Sector Plan goals. With such a large scale gas station, additional vehicle trips will be attracted to the transit district from outside the local area simply for the purpose of refueling vehicles with cheaper gasoline. This regional automobile service use contradicts the Sector Plan’s and our goals to reduce vehicle miles traveled. Introduction of a new large scale gas station would directly oppose the Plan’s guidance to:
“Provide better pedestrian connectivity and support safe, secure, and appealing street level activity” (p. 25)
In an area like the Wheaton Sector Plan area, we have often found that the transition from auto-oriented land uses take time, but can be phased in to create more transit-oriented and pedestrian-friendly development. The Wheaton Sector Plan accommodates the existing auto-oriented regional mall surrounded by surface parking, but seeks to manage the negative impacts on pedestrians but proposing pedestrian access improvements, pedestrian-oriented street design changes, and encouragement of redevelopment to a more pedestrian-friendly design. Preventing new uses that would further degrade the transit district is also an important part of progressing towards a more pedestrian-friendly Wheaton Sector Plan and Metro station area. The large scale gas station would degrade the pedestrian environment by attracting additional automobile trips to the area and force more automobile-oriented designs for public rights-of-way to accommodate this auto-oriented use. Preventing this kind of use also promotes our overall goals to support greater use of transit, and build safe, walkable places, especially around major transit hubs.
For all of these reasons, the Coalition for Smarter Growth urges denial of the Special Exception application for the Costco automobile filling station.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Cheryl Cort
Policy Director
Why Tolls Will Be Waived On One Virginia Highway This Weekend
Nearly five months after opening, the operators of the 495 Express Lanes are struggling to attract motorists to their congestion-free toll road in a region mired in some of the worst traffic congestion in the country.
Transurban, the construction conglomerate that put up $1.5 billion to build the 14-mile, EZ Pass-only corridor on the Beltway between the I-95 interchange and Dulles Toll Road, will let motorists use the highway free this weekend in a bid to win more converts.
“It takes a lot of time for drivers in the area to adapt to new driving behaviors. A lot of us are kind of stuck on autopilot on our commutes. That trend might continue for a while, too,” said Transurban spokesman Michael McGurk.
Light use of HOT lanes raises questions
McGurk says some drivers are confused about the new highway’s many entry and exit points. Opening the Express Lanes for free rides this weekend will let motorists familiarize themselves with the road, he said.
After opening in mid-November, the 495 Express Lanes lost money during its first six weeks in business. Operating costs exceeded toll revenues, but Transurban was not expecting to turn an immediate profit. In the long term, however, company officials have conceded they are not guaranteed to make money on their investment. Transurban’s next quarterly report is due at the end of April.
To opponents of the project, five months of relatively light traffic on Virginia’s new $2 billion road is enough to draw judgments. Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) has not recovered since the recession knocked millions out of work and more commuters are seeking alternatives to the automobile, according to Stewart Schwartz, the executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth.
“They miscalculated peoples’ time value of money. They overestimated the potential demand for this road,” said Schwartz, who said the light use of the 495 Express Lanes should serve as a warning.
“We should not have rushed into signing a deal for hot lanes for the 95 corridor, and we certainly shouldn’t rush into any deal on I-66,” he said.
Transurban is counseling patience.
“We’re still in a ramp-up period. You’ve probably heard us say that since the beginning, too, but with a facility like this it’s a minimum six months to two years until the region falls into a regular pattern on how they’re going to use this facility,” McGurk said.
In its first six weeks of operations toll revenues climbed on the 495 Express Lanes from daily averages of $12,000 in the first week to $24,000 in the week prior to Christmas. Traffic in the same period increased from an average of 15,000 daily trips to 24,000, according to company records. Despite the increases, operating expenses still outstripped revenues.
It is possible that traffic is not bad enough outside of the morning and afternoon rush hours to push motorists over to the EZ Pass lanes on 495.
“It may also show that it takes only a minor intervention to remove enough cars from the main lanes to let them flow better,” said Schwartz, who said the 14-mile corridor is simply pushing the bottleneck further up the road.
Even Transurban’s McGurk says many customers who have been surveyed complain that once they reach the Express Lanes’ northern terminus at Rt. 267 (Dulles Toll Road), the same terrible traffic awaits them approaching the American Legion Bridge.
Express Lanes a litmus test for larger issues
The success or failure of the 495 Express Lanes will raise one of the region’s most pressing questions as it looks to a future of job and population growth: how best to move people and goods efficiently. Skeptics of highway expansions, even new facilities that charge tolls as a form of congestion pricing, say expanding transit is cheaper and more effective.
“An approach that gives people more options and reduces driving demand through transit and transit-oriented development may be the better long-term solution. But we’ve never had these DOTs give us a fair comparison between a transit-oriented investment future for our region and one where they create this massive network of HOT lanes,” said Schartz, who said a 2010 study by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments pegged the cost of a tolled network of 1,650-lane miles of regional highways at $50 billion.
Transportation experts say a form of congestion pricing, either tolled lanes or a vehicle miles traveled tax, may be part of a regional solution to congestion. The public, however, needs to be explained why.
“As long as the majority of system remains non-tolled and congested then you are not going to solve the problem,” said Joshua Schank, the president of the Eno Center for Transportation, a D.C.-based think tank.
“Highways in this region are drastically underpriced. People are not paying enough to maintain them and they certainly are not paying enough to pay for the cost of congestion. The American people have been sold a bill of goods because they have been told that roads are free. Roads cost money,” he added.
The 495 Express Lanes are dynamically-priced, meaning the tolls increase with demand for the lanes. The average toll per trip in the highway’s first six weeks of operations was $1.07, according to Transurban records. As motorists enter the lanes they see signs displaying how much it will cost to travel to certain exits, but no travel time estimates are displayed. “It is important to be very clear to drivers about the benefit of taking those new lanes, and I am not sure that has happened so far,” said Schank, who said it is too early to conclude if the Express Lanes are working as designed.
“It’s hard to know if it works by looking whether the lanes are making money. I don’t know if that is the right metric. It’s the right metric for Transurban, but it’s not necessarily the right metric from a public sector perspective,” he said. “The real metric is to what extent does it improve economic development and regional accessibility, and that’s a much harder analysis that takes some real research and time.”
Photo courtesy of Transportation Nation
Transit Advocates Pushing For Support In Bus Rapid Transit Debate
Transit advocates are going on the offensive after the Montgomery County Planning Board expressed some reluctance toward the idea of wiping out a lane of regular Rockville Pike traffic for Bus Rapid Transit-exclusive lanes.
That idea, presented in Planning Staff’s Draft Countywide Transit Corridors Functional Master Plan a few weeks ago, almost immediately drew skepticism from residents and Planning Board members.
The D.C. based Coalition for Smarter Growth sent an email to supporters on Thursday asking people in favor of the BRT-dedicated lane to email Planning Board members ahead of next week’s second meeting on the Draft, set for Thursday, April 4.
In it, CSG asks “Will we continue to place cars above all else in the decisions we make, or will we begin to make a shift towards providing better options for people than sitting in traffic?”
Montgomery’s proposed Rapid Transit System can transform travel in our county, but there are a number of potential hurdles. This week we are approaching one of those hurdles and we need your voice.
A key part of the Rapid Transit System’s recipe for traffic relief is giving priority to rapid transit vehicles over cars where it’s the most efficient use of our roads. It’s also a principle that has been part of Montgomery’s general plan since 1993. But in hearings last week, some members of the Planning Board appeared to waver in their commitment to this key principle.
As the hearings pick up again, we need to make sure that Montgomery residents are voicing their support for lane priority so that we don’t end up with a watered-down system that makes no impact on reducing traffic.
County staff are hard at work calculating which roads would be the best fit for a high-quality, reliable Rapid Transit System to connect our communities and complement Metro and the coming Purple Line.
Priority lanes for transit aren’t a new idea. 20 years ago, the 1993 Master Plan’s transportation section stated we should “Give priority to establishing exclusive travelways for transit and high occupancy vehicles serving the Urban Ring and Corridor.”
Communities committed to prioritizing transit, like Arlington, Bethesda, and many others have seen success in relieving traffics, providing better options for people to get around, and improving quality of life. But last week’s Planning Board discussions indicate that they may be wavering on that fundamental point, and that they may need some convincing that prioritizing transit where it’s most efficient is the right decision for the county.
Without a commitment to that concept, building a high quality Rapid Transit System could be very difficult. The debate really comes down to this: How will we share the road? Will we continue to place cars above all else in the decisions we make, or will we begin to make a shift towards providing better options for people than sitting in traffic?
Many are against the proposal to make three-lane northbound and southbound Rockville Pike from the Beltway to the D.C. line into two lanes of regular traffic with a lane that would be dedicated exclusively to the BRT system, perhaps with stations and boarding areas in the median.
Residents have complained that the BRT system won’t be convenient enough for them to use for non-commuting purposes and that ridership would not offset the traffic impacts of reducing three lanes of already clogged traffic to two.
The Planning Board sent Planning Staff back to the drawing board in order to find new language for the Draft that would put drivers at ease.
“To me, this document screams that we don’t care what happens to drivers and I’m not comfortable taking that position,” Planning Board Chair Francoise Carrier told lead Planning Staff member Larry Cole during the first worksession on March 18.
Activists say transit priority essential to traffic relief
As Montgomery County planners tweak wording in a draft transit master plan, some activists say prioritizing the 10 corridors and 79 miles of proposed future bus rapid transit is essential to easing traffic gridlock.
The county’s planning board on March 18 rejected the first draft of the Countywide Transit Corridors Functional Master Plan, sending it back to the staff to soften language and explain why the plan recommends giving transit priority over cars and drivers.
The planning board is scheduled to discuss the updated draft at 9 a.m. April 4.
Action Committee for Transit President Tina Slater expressed disappointment that debate over transit priority has delayed the plan’s progress, even if only for a few weeks.
Unlike the county’s Ride On bus system, which is mired in the same traffic that gridlocks cars, BRT will give residents an option they never have had before by moving riders more rapidly in dedicated lanes, she said.
The population of Montgomery is expected to increase by 205,759 people by 2040, according to a Montgomery County Demographic and Travel Forecast, based on a 2012 Metropolitan Washington Council of Government report. Slater questioned how even more residents will get around if the county does not prioritize transit.
“We are going to have a major transportation problem on our hands if we don’t do something now,” she said.
Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, saw the planning board’s delay as doing its homework to ensure the right routes and dedicated service are recommended.
However, Schwartz said his organization feels there are more corridors poised for dedicated lane service than the staff recommended.
During the discussion on March 18, Planning Commission Chairwoman Francoise M. Carrier said she quarreled with the plan’s “categorical statements that transit gets priority all the time everywhere.”
Carrier argued that any priority should be expressed in more nuanced language.
Acting Planning Director Rose Krasnow said that under the existing procedure, roads get priority, all the time, everywhere, which has greatly harmed the quality of life.
Planning Board Commissioner Casey Anderson cautioned watering down the language.
If the board were discussing a rail line, it would not debate whether it was fair to give it priority over other traffic, he said.
But both the problem and advantage of BRT is that it can operate in a myriad of ways — dedicated lanes, dedicated right-of-way, mixed in traffic, etc. — depending on where it is built.
“And that’s great because it’s very flexible,” Anderson said. “The problem is, whatever is in this plan then gets negotiated down from there. And so this is the high-water mark. If you don’t put it in the plan now, it’s not going to get better for transit, it’s only going to degrade.”
Dedicated lanes, signal priority and queue jumping are proven approaches to bus transit and are being implemented in Montgomery by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority with its MetroExtra limited stop bus service, Schwartz said.
About 700 people ride MetroExtra every day on its route on New Hampshire Avenue, and more routes are planned.
“There’s no better option to manage growth in traffic while maintaining economic competitiveness than investing in dedicated lane transit and transit-oriented communities,” Schwartz said.
Historically, the county approach to traffic congestion was to widen roads.
Yet, many routes proposed in the draft transit master plan cannot be widened, Slater said.
“The only thing you are left to do if the road is as wide as it is today, and you are trying to stuff more people down it, is to put people on something that can move more people than a car,” she said.
But to give BRT dedicated lanes north of the Beltway only to let it snarl in the urban traffic for fear that taking a lane could worsen congestion for the cars would defeat BRT’s purpose, she said.
Once built as planned, BRT will be its own advertisement, Slater said.
Drivers sitting in traffic who see buses bypassing the gridlock will consider taking a bus to get to their destination more quickly, she said.
Reduced from the 160-mile network of 20 corridors recommended last May by the Transit Task Force, planning staff have proposed a 79-mile network of 10 corridors, including U.S. 355 north and south, Georgia Avenue north and south, U.S. 29, Veirs Mill Road, Randolph Road, New Hampshire Avenue, University Boulevard and the North Bethesda Transitway.