Instead of Showing Value of Toll Lanes, Report Confirms Value of Less Costly Smart Growth Solutions
PRESS RELEASE
Coalition For Smarter Growth
For Immediate Release
September 14, 2010
Contact:
Stewart Schwartz, CSG, 202-244-4408 ext 121
703-599-6437 (cell)
$51 Billion is COG’s Toll Lane “Aspiration”? It’s Not Ours
Instead of Showing Value of Toll Lanes, Report Confirms Value of Less Costly Smart Growth Solutions
The regional Council of Governments’ transportation staff has announced completion of their study of a 1650 mile network of toll lanes for the Washington, DC region. It will be briefed to the Transportation Planning Board on Wednesday at 12 noon.
Much of the focus has been on the wide-ranging application of tolls lanes but not their cost - $51 billion. “The price tag for the COG transportation staff’s scenario is jaw-dropping,” said Stewart Schwartz, Executive Director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth. “I don’t recall how this scenario became the ‘Aspirations Scenario,’ but it’s certainly not one this region should aspire to.”
In addition to the cost, the report states that the toll lane scenario increases the amount of driving, the length of trips and the potential for sprawling development. It also increases harmful air pollution including particulate pollution that is especially harmful to the development lungs of our children. It increases the CO2 emissions that have fueled harmful global climate change.
In contrast, the report makes clear that all of the increase in bike and walk trips, the vast majority of additional transit trips, and the reduction in per capita vehicle miles traveled is achieved through land use measures, not the $51 billion in toll lanes, and is accomplished using the existing networks of transit, not the scenario’s huge new bus rapid transit network on those toll lanes. The land use measures focus future jobs and housing in activity centers, with mixed-use, walkable designs and good transit access. The benefits could be far greater, because COG only measured the shift of a small percentage of the region’s jobs and housing through 2040.
“Rather than justify the exorbitantly expensive toll lanes, the COG study demonstrates the benefits of walkable, bikeable, mixed-use and transit-oriented communities. In short, the smart growth scenario that the Coalition for Smarter Growth has long promoted,” said Schwartz. “Proximity, not speed and distance mobility, is the best means of addressing regional traffic and pollution, and offers convenience, health, vibrant neighborhoods, lower transportation costs, energy efficiency and sustainability.”
Schwartz continued, “We are baffled by the portrayal by COG transportation staff of the scenario as an ‘aspiration’ and as the primary basis for a comprehensive approach to transportation in the Washington, DC region, and by their shunting aside of a separate smart growth scenario called ‘What Would it Take.’ Moreover, the toll lanes and their results are incompatible with the goals of COG’s “Region Forward” vision, its HUD regional sustainability grant, and its climate strategy.”
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