Category: CSG in the News

Bus Rapid Transit Boosters Unveil Wish List for Unfunded Montgomery County System

Posted on by Will Reckley

Two of the groups pushing hard for bus rapid transit in Montgomery County don’t want officials weighing difficult funding questions to forget the features that could make the system a success.

The Coalition for Smarter Growth (CSG), a Washington, D.C.-based smart growth advocacy organization, and the Communities for Transit on Tuesday released a 23-page report titled “Best Practices In Rapid Transit System Design,” to guide residents, transit advocates and policymakers in the county.

The CSG argued for the proposed 81-mile bus rapid transit system, officially known as the Rapid Transit System or RTS, back when it was approved in 2013 as part of a countywide roadway master plan.

Now, the group is pushing for dedicated bus lanes, frequent and reliable service, properly spaced stations, boarding areas on the same level as bus entrances and other features it says are hallmarks of successful bus rapid transit projects around the country.

“Those are the devils in the details that we just don’t want to get lost in the conversation about funding,” coalition member Pete Tomao said Tuesday. “This is an equally important task.”

That conversation about funding is now in full swing as a task force organized by County Executive Ike Leggett considers its final recommendations due at the end of the month.

The latest cost estimate from the county for just the first four RTS corridors (state Route 355 north, state Route 355 south, Veirs Mill Road and U.S. Route 29) pegged construction of the system at $1.6 billion and annual operating costs at $51.6 million.

The county’s Transit Task Force is considering recommendations for how to fund that system through an Independent Transit Authority, including the possibility of a countywide property tax increase, special county sales or gas tax and special taxing districts that would tax property owners closest to the RTS stations.

The CSG report examined more than 30 bus rapid transit systems operating across the U.S. and Canada to look for best practices in station design, dedicated lane placement, branding and other operating procedures.

The report didn’t delve quite as deep into funding mechanisms, though it did recommend a dedicated funding source and showed how each system was paid for.

Almost 48 percent of the Los Angeles Orange Line was paid for by state funds. Almost 42 percent came from a voter-approved half-cent sales tax. The City of Los Angeles and the federal government contributed most of the rest of the funding.

That system, which consists of just one line and runs only 18 miles, has seen an average weekday ridership of 29,845 people this year, according to the report.

It also cost $21 million per mile to build, almost half of the $41.1 million per mile projection the county and an engineering consultant made in July about the first four local RTS routes.

Leggett’s first attempt at state legislation to enable an Independent Transit Authority (ITA) failed earlier this year after staunch opposition from civic groups, the main county employee union and some residents wary of a potential tax increase to fund RTS.

Last month, county officials on the Transit Task Force and Gino Renne, president of the county employee union that represents Ride On workers, hammered out an agreement that would mostly keep Ride On employees as government workers and not put them under the control of the ITA.

With many expecting Leggett to make a second attempt at a state bill to authorize the ITA, transit advocates are planning a “Transit Day of Action” Sept. 9 at the Silver Spring, Rockville and Shady Grove Metro stations.

Tomao, who’s helping to organize the effort, said too many people who currently use transit in the  county aren’t aware of what’s being discussed when it comes to bus rapid transit.

The CSG and the Communities for Transit have also been doing advocacy work in other areas. A few weeks ago, Tomao and others were at the Bethesda Central Farm Market, held in the parking lot of Bethesda Elementary School.

“We had a great response from some people who didn’t take transit very much or who only take Metro to go to work,” Tomao said. “When we showed people the proposal, what bus rapid transit does and how it could complement existing systems, people were very receptive.”

Read this at Bethesda Magazine >>

Not everyone thinks D.C. traffic is the worst

Posted on by Will Reckley

WASHINGTON — This week, an annual Texas Transportation Institute report once again found that the D.C. metro region has the worst traffic in the country.

But not everyone agrees with the report’s findings.  Transit advocates point out that the report focuses solely on highways and ignores the role mass transit plays in taking cars off the road.

“The annual report from that Texas group is always great for grabbing headlines, but the report itself is flawed, biased and frankly not helpful for D.C., Maryland and Virginia residents,” said Alex Posorske of the Coalition for Smarter Growth.

Posorske said the report does not account for potential congestion avoided by hundreds of thousands of residents who commute via transit, bicycle or their feet.

The transit group points out that millennials are moving to areas like D.C., Arlington, Alexandria, and Tysons in Virginia, and Bethesda, Silver Spring, White Flint, Hyattsville in Maryland–locations where they can use public transit, walk or bike around.  Many of these millennials don’t even own cars.

But when you talk about transit, you have to talk about Metro. It is the primary transit option in the region.  Even ardent defenders of Metro agree that the agency has had a tough year, and customers are starting to wonder if the system is reliable.

“As a regular Metro rider, I can tell you that three out of every four trips I take are uneventful and relatively on time.  That’s not a great percentage, by the way.  It’s far short of what a world class system ought to be doing,” said Falls Church Vice Mayor Dave Snyder, who serves on the regional Transportation Planning Board.  “But compare that to being on I-95 or I-66, where you’re guaranteed that every day the congestion will be bad, or if there is an accident on top of it, it’ll be even worse,”

Snyder and Posorske agree that the solution to the transportation problems in this region is to offer options.  Develop a reliable rail system, enhance the bus network, and continue to build and support walkable and bikeable communities.  Snyder said it’s about offering people options and making the alternatives as attractive as possible, then leaving the decision up to the individual.

Read this at WTOP >>

Pro-Transit Group Attacks D.C. Traffic Congestion Report As Deeply Flawed

Posted on by Will Reckley

We’re No. 1 again. But what does it mean?

A study by researchers at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) confirms what most car commuters already think: The D.C. metropolitan region has the worst traffic congestion in the country.

But critics of the institute’s methodology say the report rests on false assumptions and draws misleading conclusions because it ignores region-wide gains in commuting by transit, walking, and biking. In the District itself, city data shows that roughly two-thirds of all work trips are in modes other than single-occupant vehicles, for instance.

“The report’s authors don’t really understand the region. They are telling D.C., Maryland, and Virginia residents that at the end of the day we need to spend billions of dollars on new highway connections, new capacity, for cars,” said Alex Posorske, the managing director at the Coalition for Smarter Growth, a pro-transit group that lobbies against most highway expansions.

TTI’s Urban Mobility Scorecard, the first issued since 2012, found the average auto commuter in the Washington area spends 82 hours a year sitting in traffic. The region was ranked at the top — or the bottom, if you are sick of gridlock — in the 2012 report, too.

Tim Lomax, one of the report’s authors, said expanding road capacity is only one of their proposed remedies for reducing congestion, which also include additional transit investment combined with denser real estate development.

“I certainly agree with that. I just don’t see that our report should reflect their preferences about what the solutions ought to be,” said Lomax in response to the coalition’s criticisms.

The transit advocates sought to poke holes in TTI’s research, pointing out that the report ranks “the cities with the strongest transit systems the worst on congestion, ignoring the much lower automobile commute mode shares in the transit cities, and therefore the lower per-commuter congestion delays,” a statement said.

Accounting for population increases

In an interview with WAMU 88.5, Posorske said the report ignores long-term trends that demonstrate driving has either declined or leveled off.

“In D.C. we’ve got 83,000 new residents in the last decade. Over that time, commute times for D.C. residents have stayed consistent. We’ve had 83,000 new residents who, by and large, do not own cars, who take transit, walk, or bike to work,” he said.

“If you move over to Arlington, from 1996 to last year we saw significant decreases in total traffic on some major arteries in Arlington,” Posorske added. “And this is at a time when they’ve added millions of square feet of new development and added 50,000 residents.”

In response to the coalition’s criticism, Lomax conceded the report’s methodology does not take into account non-car commuting modes.

“They have some good points,” Lomax said. “And they are points that we have included not only in our proposed solutions, but also in terms of our methodology.”

“We have backed away from trying to make estimates of what is happening on the transit side because we don’t have very good transit data. We don’t have good data about how people are walking. So we concentrated on where we have the data,” he said.

Read this on WAMU >> 

D.C. Has Worst Traffic in U.S., Study Says

Posted on by Will Reckley

More jobs and cheaper gasoline come with a big, honking downside: U.S. roads are more clogged than ever now that the recession is in the rearview mirror.

Commuters in Washington, D.C., suffer the most, losing an average of 82 hours a year to rush-hour slowdowns, a new study finds. Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York come next on the list of urban areas with the longest delays.

But the pain reaches across the nation.

Overall, American motorists are stuck in traffic about 5 percent more than they were in 2007, the pre-recession peak, says the report from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute and INRIX Inc., which analyzes traffic data.

D.C. Tops US Traffic Rankings

D.C. ranks number one for time spent in traffic, among all U.S. cities. NBC4 reporter Meagan Fitzgerald has the story on how much gas and time commuters are wasting sitting in traffic. (Published Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2015)

Four out of five cities have now surpassed their 2007 congestion.

Rounding out the Top 10 worst commuting cities are San Jose, Boston, Seattle, Chicago, Houston and Riverside-San Bernardino.

Cities with fast-growing economies and the most job growth are the most plagued by traffic. Other factors: Urban populations are increasing and lower fuel prices are making driving less expensive, so more people are taking to city roads.

David Alpert, founder of the D.C. transportation website Greater Greater Washington, said transportation in the area is improving.

“Unlike what some people have been seeing or hearing, there’s definitely traffic on the roads, but it actually seems to have stayed about even over the last few years,” he said.

The advocacy group the Coalition for Smarter Growth called the report “deeply flawed.”

“The report exaggerates congestion, underplays the major declines in driving by large demographic groups and ignores the wide ranging economic, social and environmental benefits of smart growth policies and transit, pedestrian and bicycle investments,” Executive Director Stewart Schwartz said in a statement.

Congestion increased in 61 of the nation’s 101 largest cities from 2012 to 2013, the data showed. The following year, nearly all cities – 95 out of 101 – experienced greater congestion.

The findings are based on federal data about how many cars are on the roads and on traffic speed data collected by INRIX on 1.3 million miles of urban streets and highways.

The growth is outpacing the nation’s ability to build the roads, bridges, trains and other infrastructure to handle all these people on the move. Congress has kept federal transportation programs teetering on the edge of insolvency for nearly eight years because lawmakers have been unwilling to raise the federal gas tax and haven’t found a politically palatable alternative to pay for needed improvements.

Frustrated by Washington’s inaction, nearly a third of states have approved measures this year that could collectively raise billions of dollars for transportation through higher fuel taxes, vehicle fees and bonds. But that’s just a down payment on decades of delayed maintenance, repairs and replacements.

“Our growing traffic problem is too massive for any one entity to handle – state and local agencies can’t do it alone,” said Tim Lomax, a co-author of the report. The report recommends a mix of solutions, including making existing road and transit systems more efficient, encouraging more flexible work schedules, adding capacity to high-growth travel corridors, and creating more high-density neighborhoods where homes, offices, stores and other development can be reached through walking, biking or public transit.

Transportation analyst Alan Pisarski said the nation missed a “tremendous opportunity” to catch up on building additional transportation capacity during the recession, when construction costs plummeted. “We didn’t take advantage of it and now we’re back in the soup again,” he said.

The national average time that commuters wasted stuck in traffic last year was 42 hours, about the same as in 2007 and more than twice the delay in 1982, when the transportation institute first began assessing urban mobility. But because there are so many more commuters today and far more congestion in off-peak hours, total delay across the country has increased over 2007.

Overall, Americans experienced 6.9 billion hours of traffic delays in 2014 compared to 6.6 billion in 2007 and 1.8 billion in 1982.

The problem has become so bad in major urban areas that drivers have to plan for more than twice as much travel time as they would normally need to account for the possibility of congestion delays caused by bad weather, collisions, construction zones and other impediments, the report said.

Other findings in the report:

– Trucks account for about 18 percent of urban congestion, although they represent just 7 percent of urban travel.

-The cost of congestion to the average auto commuter was $960 in lost time and fuel in 2014, compared to an inflation-adjusted $400 in 1982.

– About 40 percent of delays occur in midday and overnight hours, making it more difficult to avoid delays by avoiding commuter rush hours.

– Severe or extreme congestion levels affected one of every four trips in 2014, up from one in nine trips in 1982.

The report comes on the heels of other evidence that Americans are embracing driving more than ever. The Department of Transportation said Americans drove more than 3 trillion miles in the last 12 months, surpassing the previous record set in 2007. And the National Safety Council said preliminary data for the first six months of this year shows traffic deaths are up 14 percent, a turnaround after years of fewer fatalities.

If the economy remains strong, congestion will continue to worsen, the report projects. In the next five years, the annual delay per commuter would grow from 42 to 47 hours, the total delay nationwide would grow from 6.9 billion hours to 8.3 billion hours, and the total cost of congestion would jump from $160 billion to $192 billion, researchers estimated.

The following are urban areas ranked by the average annual extra hours commuters spend in their cars due to delay, together with the cost in lost time and fuel.

1. Washington, D.C.-Virginia-Maryland, 82 hours, $1,834

2. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, 80 hours, $1,711

3. San Francisco-Oakland, 78 hours, $1,675

4. New York-Newark, New Jersey-Connecticut, 74 hours, $1,739

5. San Jose, California, 67 hours, $1,422

6. Boston-New Hampshire-Rhode Island, 64 hours, $1,388

7. Seattle, 63 hours, $1,491

8. Chicago-Indiana, 61 hours, $1,445

8. Houston, 61 hours, $1,490

10. Riverside-San Bernardino, California, 59 hours, $1,316

11. Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, 53 hours, $1,185

12. Atlanta, 52 hours,$1,130

12. Detroit, 52 hours, $1,183

12. Miami, 52 hours, $1,169

12. Austin, Texas, 52 hours, $1,159

12. Portland, Oregon, 52 hours, $1,273

17. Phoenix-Mesa, 51 hours, $1,201

18. Honolulu, 50 hours, $1,125

19. Bridgeport-Stamford, Connecticut, 49 hours, $1,174

19. Denver-Aurora, 49 hours, $1,101

19. Oklahoma City, 49 hours, $1,110

22. Philadelphia, 48 hours, $1,112

23. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 47 hours, $1,262

23. Tucson, Arizona, 47 hours, $1,128

23. Baltimore, 47 hours, $1,115

23. Minneapolis-St. Paul, 47 hours, $1,035

Read this on NBC4 >>

Montgomery County Planners Peeking Ahead Into Bethesda’s Future

Posted on by Will Reckley

BETHESDA, Md. — Montgomery County planners are considering what Bethesda will look like in the next 20 years — and what they’re anticipating includes nearly twice as many apartments and a lot more park land.

It was one of the first successful transit-oriented spots in the region. It includes even more people with even more office space, parks, and places to live, and not just in the areas right on top of the Metro station.

Experts like Leslie Howerton, a planner coordinator with the Montgomery County Planning Department, worry there won’t be enough housing to meet demand in the coming decades since the population is expected to surge another 20 to 25 percent.

“Knowing growth is coming we have to put it somewhere… and we feel its best to focus that in urban downtown areas where there’s transit,” Howardson says.

The areas they’re targeting for redevelopment include the offices around the downtown Metro station, including the ones part of the Metro plaza. Other priority areas include the blocks on the north and south ends of downtown along Wisconsin Avenue, and just east of there on East-West Highway.

The next wave of new apartment buildings in downtown Bethesda will have even more units.

Stewart Schwartz with the Coalition for Smarter Growth calls it “Bethesda 2.0.”

“This allows us to reduce the demand on our roadways, making them work better,” Howardson says. “Allowing additional development on top of the Metro station will generate the revenues as well as provide the timing and opportunity to redo the transit center.”

The next public meeting on the drafting of this plan will be held Sept. 17.

Read this on CBS DC >>

Fairfax board votes to move forward on Seven Corners redevelopment

Posted on by Winstina Hughes

After hours of discussion and debate Tuesday that stretched toward midnight, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors voted 8-1, with one member absent, to move forward with an ambitious redevelopment plan for the traffic-choked Seven Corners area.

The plan would create three villages and add several thousand homes to the area, along with restaurants, shops and a street grid that could draw local traffic away from the confusing Seven Corners intersection.

The board argued over affordable housing and density before the vote on proposed changes to county planning guidelines, changes that would allow the redevelopment to take place.

“I do not think that there is value in deferring this any longer,” said Supervisor Penelope A. Gross (D-Mason), who represents the area and was referring to a nearly three-year-long community discussion marked by intense debate.

Residents of the neighborhoods of single-family homes that surround Seven Corners have opposed some aspects of the plan, saying it would lead to increased density and worsen traffic in the area, home to the Seven Corners Shopping Center.

This month, the county’s Planning Commission adopted an amended version of the original plan in an attempt to address community concerns. Although the revised plan reduced the number of new houses and apartments by several hundred units — bringing the total closer to 5,000 — it still generated worries.

During the hearing, about 40 people lined up inside the Fairfax County Government Center to express both support and concerns about the plan.

“Density, particularly residential density, must not be so high that the accompanying people overwhelm the support-services system, particularly schools and transportation,” James Kilbourne, president of the Lake Barcroft homeowners association, said to applause.

County officials say the plan’s latest version makes several compromises in response to community concerns, including worries about school crowding that would result from adding more residents.

The site of the former Willston Elementary School would also feature a second building that would house a day-care center, social services for school families and the multicultural center, Gross said.

“That is going to be many years in the future, because there is no money right now,” Gross said, referring to the idea of a new “urban-style school” inside a high-rise building. “But we are committed.”

Gross said the overall redevelopment plan is an attempt to bring new life to an area of Fairfax that has become worn in the years since the Seven Corners Shopping Center was a regional draw in the 1950s and 1960s. She called it a road map for what the county will look like in the next 50 years.

“We need to make sure that whole area is ready for all the newcomers who are going to be coming here,” Gross said. “We need to make sure that the community that is being developed is what they would like to live in.”

Urban-planning groups say the kind of walkable, transit-friendly communities envisioned for Seven Corners are needed in aging suburbs that have become homes to mostly vacant office buildings and discount stores with little commercial traffic.

“The future of Fairfax lies in these aging commercial corridors,” said Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth. “It certainly can be a win-win and enhance Fairfax’s competitiveness.”

Read original article here.

Fairfax board to vote on Seven Corners plan that has sparked heated debate

Posted on by Winstina Hughes

Fairfax County’s Board of Supervisors is expected to vote Tuesday on whether to move forward with an ambitious redevelopment plan for the traffic-choked Seven Corners area.

The plan to create three villages in the area would add several thousand new homes to the neighborhood, along with restaurants and shops and a new grid of streets that could draw local traffic away from the confusing Seven Corners intersection that is often backed up with cars and trucks.

Tuesday’s vote would addresses changes to county planning guidelines for Seven Corners that would allow the redevelopment to happen.

Residents from the neighborhoods of single-family homes that surround Seven Corners have opposed some aspects of the plan, arguing that it would bring in too much density and worsen traffic in the area, which is home to the Seven Corners Shopping Center.

Earlier this month, the county planning commission passed an amended version of the original plan that attempted to address community concerns. Though the plan’s new version reduced by several hundred units the overall number of new homes and apartments to be created – bringing the total closer to 5,000 — it still faces some opposition.

“It’s trending in the right direction, but if you talk to people and say it’s 5,000 units . . . in the Seven Corners area, they go: Whoa,” said Marty Machowsky, a local homeowner who who plans to testify during a public hearing scheduled Tuesday before the vote.

“How many total people does that mean and how many more cars will that generate?” Machowsky said. “We can hardly get through the Seven Corners area on a Saturday now.”

County officials say the plan’s latest version makes several compromises in response to community concerns. Among them are worries about school overcrowding that would result from adding more residents.

County executive Edward L. Long and Fairfax schools superintendent Karen Garza have agreed to work toward building a new school on the site of a former elementary school in the area that is now home to a multicultural center serving low-income immigrants who live nearby, officials said.

The site of the former Willston Elementary School would also feature a second building that would house a day care, social services for school families and the multicultural center, said Supervisor Penelope A. Gross (D-Mason,) who represents the area.

“That is going to be many years in the future because there is no money right now,” Gross said, about the idea of a new “urban-style school” inside a high-rise building. “But we are committed.”

Gross said the overall redevelopment plan is an attempt to bring new life to an area of Fairfax County that has been worn down since the Seven Corners mall was a regional draw for shoppers during the 1950s and ‘60s. She called it a road map for what Fairfax County will look like in the next 50 years.

“We need to make that whole area is ready for all the newcomers who are going to be coming here,” Gross said. “We need to make sure that the community that is being developed is what they would like to live in.”

Urban planning groups say the kind of walkable, transit-friendly communities envisioned for Seven Corners are needed in aging suburbs that have become homes to mostly vacant office buildings and discount stores with little commercial traffic.

“The future of Fairfax lies in these aging commercial corridors,” said Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smart Growth. “It certainly can be a win-win and enhance Fairfax’s competitiveness.”

Michelle Krocker, who heads the Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance, said there aren’t enough guarantees in the plan to keep lower-income families from being pushed out, which could have long-term repercussions for the Washington region.

“If there’s no place for them to live affordably, we potentially lose them as employees in the area or they move far out into the hinterlands,” Krocker said. “And, then they’d have to commute in, and that’s problematic for everybody.”

Read original article here.

D.C.-area motorists lose their ‘gunslinger’

Posted on by Winstina Hughes

For 21 years, Lon Anderson has considered himself a “gunslinger” against traffic jams, a “gladiator” against drunken driving and the “staunch defender” of nearly 4 million beleaguered motorists.

As director of public and governmental relations for AAA Mid-Atlantic, Anderson has been the Washington region’s most visible and influential motorist advocate, verbally flogging area governments to crack down on unsafe drivers, fix dangerous roads and ease some of the worst gridlock in the nation. His weapon: catchy, go-for-the-throat sound bites that the media — and lawmakers — simply can’t ignore.

He’s accused “money-grubbing” District officials of turning one particularly profitable speed camera into “an old-fashioned, money-making, motorist rip-off speed trap right out of ‘The Dukes of Hazzard.’ ” Public officials in “Rip Van Maryland,” he says, have snoozed while Virginia has added express toll lanes to the Capital Beltway and built the Silver Line Metrorail extension.

His table-smacking interjections of “Outrageous!” have drawn gavel-pounding from legislative committee chairmen and earned him the nickname “the reverend.” Friends describe him as passionate — and laughingly agree with one veteran transportation journalist’s description of Anderson years ago as “the Billy Graham of the roadgangers.”

“He’s been a real mainstay in the region and one of the main voices for better transportation,” said former Montgomery county executive Doug Duncan (D). “A lot of people complain about it, but very few people advocate for solutions. He’s been that voice for a long, long time.”

Anderson, 66, is set to retire from AAA at the end of this month, but not before he lets a few more zingers fly at the government agencies he blames for the Washington area’s teeth-gnashing traffic.

“You don’t get to have the worst congestion in the United States without decades of bad decisions,” he said recently at AAA Mid-Atlantic’s offices in downtown D.C. “If they make a bad decision, I’m going to pounce on it and throw a punch.”

Yes, cycling has surged in the District, and suburbs are seeing millennials and empty-nester baby boomers gravitate to more walkable, transit-oriented communities so they can drive less — or not own a car at all.

But 72 percent of Washington-area residents still commute by car, and another 12 percent who use carpools or buses also rely on the roads. While many people think of AAA as a roadside assistance service, it also is one of the most influential advocacy groups in transportation politics. Anderson reminds politicians that his group represents 3.7 million motorists in the District, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware and parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

“On the power index, he was at the higher end,” said Jim Dinegar, president of the Greater Washington Board of Trade. “He represented a very powerful group, and he gave voice to it. . . . If, by God, Lon opposed your legislation, he’d come at you with everything AAA had — and that was quite a bit. And if he supported you, he’d throw the full weight of the organization behind you.”

Anderson has his detractors, mostly among transit and cycling advocates who clashed with him over street space for bike lanes and his calls for another Potomac River crossing beyond the chronically congested American Legion Bridge.

Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition For Smarter Growth, said Anderson is “very good with a quip” but “out of date” on transportation policy. Schwartz said the “outer Beltway” bridge Anderson wants would suck up billions of dollars needed for mass transit and lead to more sprawl development and, in turn, more traffic.

“Almost more than anyone else,” Schwartz said, “he’s never met a highway he didn’t like.”

Moreover, Schwartz said, Anderson has had an “inherent conflict of interest” because AAA relies on dues-paying motorists.

“That means he’ll support policies that result in more people driving more,” Schwartz said. “That could color your comments on transportation policy.”

But others say they have seen Anderson, along with AAA Mid-Atlantic, evolve from no-holds-barred road advocates to supporters of a more balanced approach that includes the need for better transit and pedestrian and bike safety. AAA Mid-Atlantic supported construction of the Silver Line and has embraced plans for a light-rail Purple Line in Maryland.

“I think there was an evolution in his thinking,” said David Snyder, vice mayor of Falls Church and a longtime member of the region’s Transportation Planning Board. “The reality is you can’t simply put down more asphalt.”

D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D), another longtime transportation board member, said Anderson and his group became “less strident” over the years.

“I think they realized that if you want to drive your car,” Mendelson said, “the whole system has to work.”

The way Anderson sees it: More people riding mass transit means fewer clogging the roads for those who have to drive. In turn, more free-flowing roads provide better transit service for bus passengers. He notes that he’s an avid walker — he works to get in his 10,000 steps daily — and that AAA Mid-Atlantic recently extended its roadside assistance program to bicyclists.

“But will walking and cycling replace the need for roads to offer mobility to cars and buses?” Anderson said. “No. . . . And transit can’t replace the need for automobiles.”

Anderson has had much of his influence as a vocal critic. One of his biggest beefs: His belief that the District government has declared “war on motorists” by placing some speed cameras to make money for the city rather than improve safety. The number of parking tickets the city writes also gets him riled up.

“People come to Washington to see the cherry blossoms,” he said in a booming voice, “but they have a better chance of seeing pink [citations] under their windshield wiper.”

He is unapologetic about seeking media coverage to promote his group’s agenda. He said he knows from his early years as a journalist — he was a reporter for the Frederick News-Post and once owned a weekly newspaper in Damascus — what reporters are looking for: accurate, quick information and frank quotes.

He made himself so available to reporters that his wife, Claudia Tidwell, said she is most excited at the prospect of soon dining out without her husband leaving the table for a restaurant parking lot interview.

“This is a town where everyone wants to be in the media and be quoted,” Anderson said. “If you want to rise above the chatter, you’ve got to be good.”

His biggest disappointment: leaving the job without persuading Virginia lawmakers to make driving without a seat belt a primary offense. Under current law, police can only cite motorists for failure to wear a seat belt if they stop them for another violation first.

Among his proudest accomplishments: persuading Maryland lawmakers to strengthen the state’s vehicular homicide law and leading a successful campaign in the 1990s for safety barriers on the George Washington Parkway after a string of fatal head-on collisions.

Addressing his team of 16 AAA employees at his recent retirement party, Anderson grew teary and barely choked out, “We’ve saved a lot of lives.”

Anderson said he and his wife will move soon from Silver Spring to West Virginia, where they plan to spend more time hiking in the mountains than stewing in traffic. He might even try his hand at blogging.

“I think,” he said, “I still have a few things to say.”

Robert Thomson contributed to this report.

Read the original article here. 

Prince George’s hospital plan approved by county, awaits key state clearance

Posted on by Winstina Hughes

It could be at least four years before a proposed regional hospital and medical campus opens at Largo Town Center, but the central Prince George’s community is already bracing for a development that could boost health-care options as well as the overall local economy.

Officials hope it lives up to their vision of creating a more urban, pedestrian-friendly community.

The $650 million, 231-bed hospital, which is under state and county review, promises to deliver a more urban street grid with smaller blocks to encourage foot and bicycle travel around what is primarily a car-oriented Metro station just outside the Capital Beltway.

Residents and transit advocates say the project, which has a tentative 2019 opening, can’t come soon enough to an area known for its big boulevards, giant parking lots and bus stops on sidewalk-free roads. They say the proposal offers the type of transit-oriented development that they have long sought.

“We have fought this battle for more years than I care to think about. This plan brings us far closer to where we need to be,” Chuck Renninger, president of the Largo Civic Association, told county officials discussing the project last month. “We need to get phase one up and operational as quickly as possible so that phase two and three can come quick enough.”

Recently, the project received the county planning commission’s blessing to move toward construction, an important step in the county’s land-use approval process. The realization of the project, however, is still contingent on a crucial state review that has already dragged on for a year longer than the county had hoped.

Maryland’s health-care commission must sign off on a “certificate of need,” which includes design plans and financial projections. After going back and forth with the applicant for a year, the commission finally docketed the case in April and the panel is weighing the needs, benefits and competition created by building the hospital. As part of the review, the commission is considering the concerns of two hospitals protesting the project’s scale.

A step to sway statistics
For the county, however, building the medical facility is the first step in remedying pressing health-care disparities for its residents, who have long complained about having to travel outside the county for care because of the limited options.

The new facility, which would be operated by the University of Maryland Medical System, would help tackle statistics that show Prince George’s residents have higher rates of chronic diseases — including diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, asthma and cancer — than people in neighboring counties. Studies also suggest that the county’s mortality rate is higher than that of Montgomery and Howard counties.

The new medical campus would replace the 100-bed Prince George’s Hospital Center in
Cheverly, which has struggled financially and requires frequent subsidies from the state and county. It would have a 10-story building at the center, housing an ambulatory care center, a cancer center, a women-and-children’s center and a resident program.

The project “represents turning a page on a chapter that has been, in a lot of ways, a drag on the county,” Brad Frome, an economic development aide to County Executive Rushern L. Baker III (D), told the planning commission last month, citing the conditions of the existing hospital. “This is really a foundation stone for the creation of a new health-care system that we look to have in the county.”

Later phases would bring more medical offices, a nursing home, hotels and more housing around it, officials say, touting the project as a driver for economic development promising to revive the Boulevard at the Capital Centre, which has struggled for years to fill and keep storefronts open.

The hospital project could spur $3 billion in economic activity for Prince George’s, according to a recent report that suggests it could help build a mixed-use development around the Largo Town Center Metro station that includes about 3 million square feet of commercial space, nearly 1 million square feet of retail, 653 hotel rooms, a 150-bed nursing home and more than 4,000 residential units.

At build-out, that means $150 million in state and local tax revenue, 16,000 new jobs and 4,340 households with an estimated $312.5 million in income, according to the report.

Approval hurdles
The project is expected to move through the county’s approval process without delay by early fall, which leaves state approval as the main hurdle between now and its projected 2019 opening.

The state commission docketed the case in April. A commissioner is expected to review it soon and could make a recommendation by the end of the year.

As part of its review, the commission is considering comments from Doctors Community Hospital and Anne Arundel Medical Center. Both oppose the size of the project, citing its potential impact on their operations.

Doctors Community, a 218-bed facility in Lanham, about six miles from the proposed medical center, estimates that it would lose nearly 400 admissions annually. Fewer admissions could lead to a shortfall of more than $1 million annually, the hospital said.

“A new hospital is needed, but the right hospital, not this proposal,” Doctors Community attorneys Peter P. Parvis and Jennifer J. Coyne said in a May 4 letter to the state panel. The Prince George’s Regional Medical Center “did not meet its burden of proving that the need for a hospital this large and this expensive exists, or that the hospital is financially feasible.”

Anne Arundel Medical Center, the third-busiest hospital in Maryland with 384 beds and an emergency heart-attack-response center about 22 miles east of the Largo site, cites the county’s “difficulty attracting and retaining a strong medical community of physicians.” The center estimates the project will result in
420 fewer discharges and questions the proposed cardiac surgery services at the new facility.

Thomas Himler, budget director for Prince George’s, said the new facility hopes to attract county residents who seek medical care elsewhere in Maryland, the District and Northern Virginia. Despite the objections of the two competing hospitals, he said, the county expects approval by the end of the year.

The medical center is tied to about 26 acres immediately east of the Boulevard at the Capital Centre, adjacent to the Largo Town Center Metro station and just off the Capital Beltway, north of Central Avenue. It would be funded with $450 million in bond financing, including about
$200 million each from the state and the county.

Transit potential
At the center of all that growth is the Metro station, which opened in 2004 as the Blue Line’s eastern-most terminal. The new Silver Line also ends there. Although the station now ranks in the bottom half in the system in terms of performance and has nearly 5,000 daily passenger boardings, it has the capacity to handle significant ridership growth, officials say.

Largo has the potential to be an example of successful transit-oriented development in a county that has 15 vastly underdeveloped Metro stations, planners and transit officials say. The community could develop into a downtownlike area similar to Silver Spring, with a large medical community anchoring diverse business and housing options. The housing stock is already growing, with at least one multifamily complex under construction across the street from the hospital site.

Having the hospital less than a quarter-mile from the Metro platform would make it an attractive choice for workers and patients, officials say.

Margaret Bowles, 75, a retired teacher who lives about three miles from the hospital site, said she goes to Holy Cross Hospital in Montgomery County for specialty care and has friends who travel to the District for health care.

“People go down to George Washington [University Medical Center] and they never take their car. They hop on the Metro and go downtown because the Metro stop is right there. It is perfect,” she said. “Before this project, we had not had the vision that we probably should have for development around the Metro station.”

The success, she said, hinges on building it right, with pedestrians, cyclists and motorists in mind.

The county-approved plan calls for sidewalks along both sides of the Boulevard, Arena Drive and Lottsford Road. Pedestrian plazas, seating areas and bicycle pathways also are part of the design. County planners said the streets will be narrow to foster a pedestrian-friendly environment.

Advocates for transit-oriented development, including Metro and the nonprofit Coalition for Smarter Growth, have pushed for wide, well-lit pathways connecting the station to the hospital and the surrounding commercial spaces to make it as easy as possible for workers and patients to take transit.

“Having a very large employment center at the station will absolutely change that ridership at Largo,” said Stan Wall, Metro’s director of real estate and planning, noting that the project also could benefit Metro’s plans to eventually develop 12 acres of land it owns at the site.

The medical center alone could generate 650 new daily entries at the Metro station, according to the transit agency’s office of planning. That would mean $750,000 in new revenue for the transit agency. But even more riders and revenue would stem from the development that would follow the hospital construction, Wall said.

Cheryl Cort, policy director for the Coalition for Smarter Growth, agrees that keeping in mind the pedestrian and bike traffic will ensure good circulation between the hospital’s front door, Metro and the shops at the Boulevard at the Capital Centre.

“We want to make sure it’s done to the full benefit,” she said.

Read original article here.