Bethesda-Chevy Chase area residents and businesses today called for Montgomery County officials to ensure that the rapid transit line proposed for 355 connects Friendship Heights’ jobs and homes to the rest of the county. Stopping the route at Bethesda, instead of connecting it an additional 1.5 miles to the D.C. border could shortchange the area and the county in several ways, supporters said. “With traffic congestion rising and the possibility of local Metro stations shut down for extensive repairs, residents in our area are seeking more options for getting north to Bethesda and beyond, or to Friendship Heights and D.C.” said Chevy Chase resident Ronit Dancis. “BRT would be a great new option for our neighborhoods.”
Author: Elena Sorokina
How to testify in support of the DC Zoning Update at the Zoning Commission
How to testify in support a progressive update to the DC zoning code before the DC Zoning Commission
Sign up to testify in advance 1. In person: call to get on the list –DC Zoning Commission at: 202-727-
6311. You can also sign up to testify by arriving by 6:00 pm at the Zoning Commission hearing
room on the hearing date. Hearings will start at 6pm and continue until everyone has testified or
11:30 pm.
Full schedule of November 2013 hearings on the D.C. Zoning Update
DC Zoning Update Hearings Monday, November 4 – Subtitles A, W, X, Y, and Z
o Topic – Authority, practice, and procedure of government bodies that work
with zoning Tuesday, November 5 – Subtitle B o Topic – Definitions and terminology used in zoning code Wednesday, November 6 – Subtitle D
o Topic – Accessory apartments in low-density residential areas and
corner stores Thursday, November 7 – Subtitles E and F
o Topic – Corner stores
Accessory Apartments & Corner Stores: What you should know about the DC Zoning Proposals
ACCESSORY APARTMENTS: Issue heard on Nov. 6, regarding Subtitle D: Residential House (R) Zones: Allow one accessory unit in single family residential zones; Allow accessory apartment in owner-occupied home or existing accessory building (e.g. carriage house or garage) with access through alley or side yard, special exception for any construction or additoin
Maryland DOT letter to Virginia rejecting Potomac Bridge Crossings
Dear Secretary Connaughton: Thank you for the opportunity to clarify our position on the proposed study of the Potomac Crossings for Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. Based on the draft press release you shared with my office, it appears you may have misconstrued former Secretary Swaim-Stanley’s letter regarding our position on new crossings of the Potomac River.
Fight Over Virginia Transportation Priorities Takes on New Importance
The Commonwealth Transportation Board, Virginia’s decision-making panel on roads, rails and other mobility efforts, is ready to spend money. Now that the governor and General Assembly have given the board more revenue to work with, a lull that set in over the past few years may yield to a more active phase of transportation projects.
Many Northern Virginians are aware of this changing dynamic, so they came to a public meeting sponsored by the board Tuesday night in Fairfax County to argue for or against particular projects. The most frequently mentioned were the rebuilding of the interchange at Interstate 66 and Route 28 — everybody’s for that one — and the proposed Bi-County Parkway, which has generated strong opposition in the neighborhood bordering the north-south corridor on the western edge of the Manassas National Battlefield Park.
The broader issues at play emerged when two people spoke: Stewart Schwartz of the Coalition for Smarter Growth and Bob Chase of the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance.
Schwartz urged the transportation officials to pursue a “fix it first” strategy in setting priorities. Rather than focusing new spending on expansion of the roads network, rebuild the deteriorating parts of the existing system to make it easier for people to get around.
Schwartz doesn’t equate road building with congestion relief, which puts him at odds with many of the people who supported Virginia’s new transportation revenue law. New lanes, he said, “can generate more traffic than you relieve.”
Land use policy that focus development near transit “is a regional traffic solution” and does a lot more to address congestion than new lanes, Schwartz said. This may be the way of the future as empty-nesters who no longer need their big houses but want to stay in Northern Virginia seek new housing positioned to let them stay mobile as they age.
Schwartz opposes the Bi-County Parkway as, among many other things, a traffic-inducer. But it’s an unfair shorthand to characterize him as anti-road. Of the plan to rebuild the I-66/Route 28 interchange, he said, “We agree it should be fully funded.” But planners deciding how to ease the awful congestion all along the I-66 corridor need to address the public’s desire for better transit service, Schwartz added.
He also noted that Virginia state officials who are contemplating the new transportation revenue need to get interested in Metro’s long range plan, called “Momentum,” to expand the transit system’s capacity, including the purchase of enough rail cars to make all trains eight-cars long.
The shorthand for Chase would have him be the road-building guy, but that’s also unfair. Chase backs construction of Metro’s Silver Line. Key elements in his vision are that transportation projects can solve congestion problems, but we need to think big, and the projects selected need to have regional impact.
Chase praised state leaders for approving new transportation revenue that can refill budgets for maintenance and construction. “After many years, we finally are talking about additions, rather than subtractions,” he said.
In this new environment, Chase said, a “big picture perspective is more important than ever.” Planners must target “regionally significant transportation investments that will reduce congestion,” and he looks to the Commonwealth Transportation Board and the Virginia Department of Transportation to provide the leadership that will support such projects, including the Bi-County Parkway. People who say they don’t want a parkway in their yard have a right to oppose it, he said, but to say that the region doesn’t need a north-south route in that area isn’t factual. The state must base it’s decisions on regional needs, Chase said.
Chase and Schwartz have been fighting it out along this line for years. The key difference in 2013 is that they’re now talking to officials who have money to spend.
Photo courtesy of Karen Bleier. Click here to read the original story.
Zoning Over Pizza
If you’ve signed up to speak in front of the Zoning Commission at the public hearings on the zoning update this November (we need more supporters to sign up!), this workshop is for you! Over snacks, we talked about what the Zoning Commissioners will be looking for when you speak, and what you can say to best show your support for the zoning update. We’ll break into small groups and brainstorm what we can say.
CSG Testimony to regional Transportation Planning Board on Regional Transportation Policy Plan
The Regional Transportation Priorities Plan represents progress in identifying and setting transportation priorities. Particularly noteworthy is public identification and support for fixing the existing system first and the focus of the RTPP priorities on fix-it-first including maintenance, operational performance, transit crowding and improved alternatives to driving for every trip.
However, significant concerns were raised last month by officials on this body, particularly the failure to conform the RTPP to the goals and objectives of Region Forward. The updated letters packet includes a detailed set of recommendations from DC, and I understand that the Region Forward co-chairs have, or will be, making recommendations. WMATA and others, including my organization and the business group – Urban Land Institute, have also provided important recommendations.
These recommendations center on the failure of the RTPP to integrate within the Region Forward vision, goals and objectives, the failure to incorporate Momentum, the failure to address climate change, and the focus on toll lanes which lack the proven record of our transit and TOD investments. I wonder if you are all ready to endorse a vast, costly network of toll lanes.
The newly adopted draft falls short of addressing these concerns and we are concerned about it being released for public comment without additional fixes. In particular, the Executive Summary doesn’t even mention Region Forward and the Introduction continues to portray this 2010 regional compact as a subset of the now very old 1998 TPB Vision. Instead of Region Forward, it adds a lot of text regarding the recent Economy Forward forum, but that one day unscientific poll was hardly as carefully thought out an investigation of the land use/transportation connections as the effort that went into Region Forward.
While the RTPP now mentions Momentum, it only proposes incorporating the 2025 investments provided funding can be found, while not applying the same standard to its toll and other highway investment proposals. The RTPP also fails to incorporate Momentum 2040 and other transit expansion in the scenario B, even while it proposes a very costly, and still unproven, network of high occupancy toll lanes. The RTPP also utterly fails to mention the threat of climate change and the resulting need to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation using land use and transit solutions.
In addition, the draft solicitation document for the CLRP fails to mention Region Forward, the climate report, and activity centers, despite the fact that we’ve debated this before, when you adopted an amendment to the solicitation document a few years ago. The goals of Region Forward, activity centers and climate report can be integrated into the federal planning factors. And, of real concern is that you are being asked to vote on the CLRP solicitation document in November, one month before you vote on a revised RTPP, but your expressed goal of the RTPP is to shape the CLRP. The solicitation document should say more than that the RTPP “should be considered.”CSG Testimony to regional Transportation Planning Board on Regional Transportation Policy Plan
We are at a crossroads as a region, nation and world. We must fight climate change. We must recognize the success of our region’s transit-oriented development in growing our economy, reducing the amount of driving, fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. We must recognize how demographics and the market have changed. Therefore we urge you to amend the RTPP to conform it to Region Forward, fully incorporate Momentum, and let it guide the most effective transportation investments for a sustainable and efficient future.
Testimony to Regional Transportation Planning Board on Regional Transportation Policy Plan
The Regional Transportation Priorities Plan represents progress in identifying and setting transportation priorities. Particularly noteworthy is public identification and support for fixing the existing system first and the focus of the RTPP priorities on fix-it-first including maintenance, operational performance, transit crowding and improved alternatives to driving for every trip.
However, significant concerns were raised last month by officials on this body, particularly the failure to conform the RTPP to the goals and objectives of Region Forward. The updated letters packet includes a detailed set of recommendations from DC, and I understand that the Region Forward co-chairs have, or will be, making recommendations. WMATA and others, including my organization and the business group – Urban Land Institute, have also provided important recommendations.
These recommendations center on the failure of the RTPP to integrate within the Region Forward vision, goals and objectives, the failure to incorporate Momentum, the failure to address climate change, and the focus on toll lanes which lack the proven record of our transit and TOD investments. I wonder if you are all ready to endorse a vast, costly network of toll lanes.
The newly adopted draft falls short of addressing these concerns and we are concerned about it being released for public comment without additional fixes. In particular, the Executive Summary doesn’t even mention Region Forward and the Introduction continues to portray this 2010 regional compact as a subset of the now very old 1998 TPB Vision. Instead of Region Forward, it adds a lot of text regarding the recent Economy Forward forum, but that one day unscientific poll was hardly as carefully thought out an investigation of the land use/transportation connections as the effort that went into Region Forward.
While the RTPP now mentions Momentum, it only proposes incorporating the 2025 investments provided funding can be found, while not applying the same standard to its toll and other highway investment proposals. The RTPP also fails to incorporate Momentum 2040 and other transit expansion in the scenario B, even while it proposes a very costly, and still unproven, network of high occupancy toll lanes. The RTPP also utterly fails to mention the threat of climate change and the resulting need to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation using land use and transit solutions.
In addition, the draft solicitation document for the CLRP fails to mention Region Forward, the climate report, and activity centers, despite the fact that we’ve debated this before, when you adopted an amendment to the solicitation document a few years ago. The goals of Region Forward, activity centers and climate report can be integrated into the federal planning factors. And, of real concern is that you are being asked to vote on the CLRP solicitation document in November, one month before you vote on a revised RTPP, but your expressed goal of the RTPP is to shape the CLRP. The solicitation document should say more than that the RTPP “should be considered.”
We are at a crossroads as a region, nation and world. We must fight climate change. We must recognize the success of our region’s transit-oriented development in growing our economy, reducing the amount of driving, fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. We must recognize how demographics and the market have changed. Therefore we urge you to amend the RTPP to conform it to Region Forward, fully incorporate Momentum, and let it guide the most effective transportation investments for a sustainable and efficient future.
Montgomery County Debates Bus-Only Traffic Lanes For New Transit Network
Montgomery County lawmakers are considering plans for an 80-mile express bus network that is raising a divisive issue: how many car lanes should be turned into bus-only lanes?
About 80 percent of the lanes in the proposed bus rapid transit—or BRT—network would be new lanes, adding capacity to the existing corridors. About 20 percent would be “repurposed.” That’s the technical term for changing a lane now used by all traffic into “bus-only.” And AAA-MidAtlantic is asking Montgomery County to scrap that plan.
“The last thing we need to be doing is taking capacity away from traffic,” says AAA spokesman Lon Anderson. He says studies show “repurposing” lanes for buses makes traffic worse, and he calls the BRT plan lawmakers are now considering a recipe for gridlock.
Supporters say Anderson is cherry-picking his studies. Kelly Blynn at the Coalition for Smarter Growth—a major proponent of the BRT plan—says many studies have shown taking away lanes from cars actually reduces congestion.
The planning department actually hasn’t looked at each corridor yet to determine how things will change precisely because they are still at this 30,000-foot planning level. But when they ran their modeling with this proposed network, overall traffic congestion went down and traffic speeds went up.
How many lanes to “repurpose” is one of the most controversial aspects on the county’s plan, along with the potential cost and effectiveness.
Anderson says a study by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy found only two corridors in Montgomery County currently have enough population density to support BRT.
“Those two corridors are Route 355 and I-270. ITDP indicated the other proposed routes in the county did not have sufficient density to make it work. Therefore, if you don’t have enough people to ride it, you’ll be spending a lot of money and taking lanes away from general purpose traffic, and you will wind up with worse traffic.”
The Coalition’s Blynn says projected job and population growth will provide plenty of future BRT riders.
“A lot of the places around the United States that have successful BRT systems have very similar densities to Montgomery County. Already a lot of the bus lines in the county have higher ridership than some of the successful BRT lines in places like Cleveland and Eugene, Oregon,” she says.
The ITDP study is great in many ways, but it didn’t do any modeling into the future. It looked at current bus ridership. It did not forecast out what things will look like in 2040, which the Montgomery County planning department has done.”