Category: Better Public Transit

Elrich Thinks Parts Of BRT Will Get Built In Next 4 Years

Posted on by Andrew Brown

The Montgomery County Councilmember who is credited with first proposing a Bus Rapid Transit network for the county is optimistic parts of a BRT system will start being built in the next four years.

Councilmember March Elrich (D-At large) also said he thinks ridership projections in the Master Plan for BRT before the Planning Board might actually be too low. Many opponents of a plan to include Rockville Pike/Wisconsin Avenue as a BRT corridor have claimed the ridership numbers in a study by Planning Department staff are inflated.

Elrich talked about where BRT stands on a County Cable Montgomery interview show earlier this month.

“You really can’t predict what ridership will be in the future if you replace the non-choice system with a system might choose to use,” Elrich said, comparing existing Ride On bus service to a potential BRT network. “They might make different choices if a bus ran every six minutes in rush hour and didn’t stop for lights because they had a greenway to go through.”

The “rapid” component of BRT is that the buses in the system would move faster than typical buses because the buses would have exclusive lanes.

That has caused a stir with communities and residents in Bethesda and Chevy Chase, where some don’t want to lose a lane of regular traffic to a bus-only lane. The Master Plan for BRT projects between 44,000 and 49,000 daily riders for a southbound MD 355 system and between 22,000 and 34,000 daily riders for a northbound MD 355 system by 2040.

It is projected to be the busiest of the 10 proposed corridors.

The Planning Board is working through its Master Plan on the system with the hopes of transmitting it to the County Council on July 22. The fourth and final planned worksession is July 11.

Meanwhile, the Coalition for Smarter Growth, a D.C.-based advocacy group is pushing for signatures on a pro-BRT petition. The Coalition’s executive director testified in favor of the BRT Master Plan at the Planning Board’s public hearing on it.

Click here to read the original story>>

Testimony before the WMATA 2025 Special Committee in Support of the WMATA Momentum Plan

Posted on by Andrew Brown

The Coalition for Smarter Growth is the leading organization in the Washington D.C. region dedicated to making the case for smart growth. Our mission is to promote walkable, inclusive, and transit-oriented communities, and the land use and transportation policies and investments needed to make those communities flourish.

Having helped win remarkably strong regional consensus for transit-oriented development as the framework for regional growth — reflected in the Region Forward and Economy Forward vision plans of the Council of Governments, and in the priorities of local leaders — the Coalition for Smarter Growth views investment in the Next Generation of Transit as a top priority and essential for supporting this regional vision.

We view the Momentum plan as the vision and framework for setting regional transit investment priorities and for working with all of our jurisdictions to create an expanded, well-maintained, and seamlessly integrated transit system our region needs to remain healthy, prosperous, efficient and competitive.

The Coalition for Smarter Growth is fully committed to achieving the Next Generation of Transit, as reflected in our report earlier this year. Key components include:

  • Rehabilitating and improving our Metrorail system as the region’s top priority investment;
  • Ensuring high-capacity public transportation networks to support a sustainable region of livable, walkable centers, and neighborhoods;
  • Expanding and improving the bus system by adding more service and providing bus priority on roadways is critical to meeting growing ridership demand and using our roads more efficiently;
  • Seamlessly integrating, physically and operationally, Metrorail, new priority corridor networks, bus rapid transit, light rail, streetcars, commuter rail and our bicycle/pedestrian infrastructure.

The Momentum Strategic Plan effectively makes the case for the value of the Metro system to our region and of reinvesting and strategically expanding the system. We believe that WMATA, through an extensive consultation process with COG and the jurisdictions, is the best entity for leading the strategic planning for our region’s Next Generation of Transit.

Perhaps no statistic stands out in the Momentum plan more than the value of investing in 8-car trains, which provide 35% more capacity-equal to 35,000 more passengers per hour to jobs downtown. To achieve this with roads, we would need 16-18 new lanes of highways. For comparison, widening just 2.5 miles of I-95 recently cost state and federal taxpayers $261 million or $52 million per lane mile.

Other statistics that we find compelling are that:

  • Regional riders will save an additional $100 million per year by purchasing less fuel and other out-of-pocket travel costs.
  • The region will avoid building 30,000 new parking spaces, saving $675 million.

Investing in Metro is the most critical step in supporting compact, efficient transit-oriented development, lowering per capita infrastructure costs and saving land.

If we are to continue our regional success and grow without reaching total traffic gridlock, we must rehabilitate Metro, maximize the capacity of the existing system and strategically expand Metro and connecting transit services. This must be our top priority.

Thank you.

Stewart Schwartz
Executive Director

At Public Hearing, Montgomery County Residents Say They Are Ready for Rapid Transit

Posted on by acustis

Dozens of Montgomery residents packed the Montgomery County Planning Department headquarters in Silver Spring Thursday evening to support the Planning Department’s goal of advancing a new rapid transit system for Montgomery. Citing the proposed system’s potential for offering the best solution to the County’s traffic challenges, reducing local air pollution from car emissions, and providing more affordable transit options and access to jobs for working families and young people, the residents asked the Planning Board to adopt the proposed system into Montgomery’s General Plan for transportation.

What’s our vision for a next generation of transit?

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

Fifty years ago, visionary leaders conceived, planned, and built Metro, radically reshaping the Washington DC region. Today Metrorail is a national example of how a well-planned transit system can help fuel economic growth by revitalizing communities and helping hundreds of thousands of people get where they’re going each day. But where’s the plan for the next generation?


Regional transit map by John Peck and Aimee Custis for CSG. Click for full version (PDF).

Today, with a new report, Thinking Big, Planning Smart: A Primer for Greater Washing­ton’s Next Generation of Transit, the Coalition for Smarter Growth wants to engage residents in a campaign to win a new transit vision and the funding to implement it.

Regional leaders have expressed strong support for transit-oriented development in their Region Forward vision and in recent state of the county addresses, but our regional transportation plans are dominated by a never-ending list of new highways and road expansion projects, with a few disconnected transit projects.

Just two weeks ago, the Virginia Department of Transporation (VDOT) added a number of new road projects to the regional plan, but not a single transit project. While the road projects march forward, transit projects are forced to beg for funding.

So, our report is both a call to action and a baseline resource. It offers the first compilation of the region’s many transit and transportation plans, briefly summarizes the many benefits of transit to the DC region, and features and compares the metrics for six major transit projects or systems that are under construction or reasonably far along in planning, including the Silver Line, Purple Line, DC Streetcar, Arlington Streetcar, Alexandria Bus Rapid Transit and Montgomery Rapid Transit System.

A CSG volunteer, John Peck, worked to create a base map of all of the current rail transit lines and the six systems featured in the report. We gained a respect for the GIS professionals!


Transit projects comparison. Click to enlarge (PDF).

While we are encouraged by the new transit systems being proposed, we are very concerned that the region has no plan to interconnect the systems nor to ensure operational coordination including common fare card use and real time information, not to mention who should operate each system. We also found that the studies for these systems don’t share a common set of performance measurements. So we owe it to University of California engineering student Haleemah Qureshi for creating the first comprehensive, comparative table of metrics derived from the technical reports for each of the featured transit systems.

How do we get there?

“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will not themselves be realized.” Daniel Burnham’s quote is perhaps overused, but nevertheless, we need a regional commitment to a new transit plan, the funding to support it, and a hardnosed commitment to implementing it.

We are recommending extensive public involvement and modern crowdsourcing. We believe that a joint committee of elected officials who serve on the WMATA and Council of Governments boards, should oversee the process and complete a plan within two years. WMATA staff, who have been leading the PlanIt Metro analyses and the development of the Momentum program, should provide the lead technical support, and be assisted by COG staff and local transportation and land use planners. Your thoughts on the process?

Finally, our report includes a recommended set of principles to justify and guide the development of a new transit vision. Do you agree? What might be missing?

Principles to guide a next generation of transit

High-capacity public transportation is the most important investment for supporting a sustainable region of livable, walkable centers, and neighborhoods.

Several factors make public transportation investments critical:

  • High energy prices and the high cost of auto transportation
  • Climate change
  • Air and water pollution
  • Failure of road expansion to effectively manage traffic, due to induced demand and related inefficient patterns of auto-dependent development
  • The significant number of residents who cannot drive, cannot afford a car or do not own a car. This includes lower-income residents, the disabled, the young and elderly, and the growing sector of our population seeking to live in communities where they do not have to be dependent on a car.
  • The benefit public transportation provides in supporting compact, efficient development, lowering per capita infrastructure costs and saving land.

Rehabilitating and improving our Metrorail system must be our first priority.

Major public transportation investments must be tied to good land use: well-designed, compact, mixed-use, mixed-income, walking and biking-friendly neighborhoods with interconnected local street networks – both transit-oriented development and traditional neighborhood development.

Supporting build-out at our existing Metro stations should be a priority, and together with mixed-use development at all stations, will ensure that our Metro trains have high ridership in both directions all day.

New high-capacity public transportation corridors must include the region’s commercial/retail corridors. Given the strong commitment to preserving the character of existing suburban neighborhoods, these commercial corridors offer the best opportunity to absorb regional growth while protecting suburban neighborhoods.

We should be flexible and not locked into one public transportation mode as the answer. We should ensure we match the public transportation mode, design and service plan to the land use densities and levels of service we are trying to achieve.

Public transportation planners should ensure that each public transportation study considers all modes and the necessary mixed-use, walkable, and transit-oriented urban design essential to maximizing ridership and the value of the public transportation investment. Safe and robust access to public transportation by promoting walking and bicycling and supportive local street networks must be a part of any public transportation and funding plan.

Continuing to debate the mode after a final vote by an elected board or council isn’t constructive. It delays and even harms the advancement of much needed public transportation investments.

We can be proud of our region’s success with transit and transit-oriented development. But without the commitment of the public and our elected officials, we’ll fail to make the investments in the next generation of transit that are necessary to support the demand for transit-oriented communities, to offer an alternative to sitting in traffic, and to fight climate change.

With this report and the engagement of CSG members and GGW readers, we aim to spark a new transit plan for the region. In the coming weeks, we’ll be speaking to local elected officials, the WMATA board, the Council of Governments, the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission, transportation and land use planners, and the public. Stay tuned.

UPDATE 3/5/13: CSG has launched a Next Generation of Transit feedback catalog, where we’ll be cataloging feedback, comments, ideas and suggestions. Keep the conversation going in the comments below, but we also encourage you to check out and contribute to the catalog.

Photos courtesy of CSG via Greater Greater Washington

Read the original article on Greater Greater Washington>>

Coalition For Smarter Growth Report Calls For A Next Generation Of Transit

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

We don’t need a ranking to know our traffic is bad.  What the headlines miss is the crucial role our Metro and our other transit investments have played in preventing gridlock, in offering us an effective alternative to sitting in traffic, and in fueling an economic boom that has revitalized our city and transit-oriented suburbs.

Download the report – Principles for a Next Generation of Transit (Fact Sheet) – Benefits of Transit to the Region (Fact Sheet)

“Fifty years ago, visionary leaders conceived, planned and built Metro, and reshaped the Washington, D.C. region. The first order of business is to complete the reinvestment and full rehabilitation of this system that is so critical for our regional economy. We are also calling today for a new vision for a new generation — for a Next Generation of Transit investments and the leadership to make it happen,” said Stewart Schwartz, Executive Director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth. “We believe our region’s leadership is ready for the challenge.”

“In the Region Forward regional compact, regional leaders have made transit-oriented development the framework for our region’s growth, but we now need to put the “T into our TOD,” said Schwartz.

Last week, centerpieces of the State of the County addresses by Fairfax Chairman Sharon Bulova and Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett were their calls for transit-oriented revitalization and new transit investments  Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker has called transit-oriented development and the Purple Line top priorities, and D.C., Arlington and Alexandria are national leaders in implementing TOD.

Today’s Coalition report, Thinking Big, Planning Smart:  A Primer for Greater Washington’s Next Generation of Transit, is both a call to action and the first compilation of the region’s many transit and transportation plans. The report summarizes the many benefits of transit to the Washington D.C. region. It features and compares the metrics for six major transit projects and/or systems that are under construction or reasonably far along in planning, including the Silver Line, Purple Line, D.C. Streetcar, Arlington Streetcar, Alexandria Bus Rapid Transit and Montgomery Rapid Transit System.

“While we are encouraged by the many new transit systems being proposed, we are very concerned that we don’t have a plan to interconnect the systems and to ensure operational coordination including common fare card use and real time information, not to mention who should operate each system,” said Cheryl Cort, Policy Director for the Coalition. “We found that the studies for these systems don’t even share a common set of performance measurements and had to crunch the numbers to do our own comparative analysis.”

“This report is a baseline and we hope a launching point for regional dialogue and collaboration to create a plan for a next generation of transit network for our region, said Schwartz. “We’d like to see an official process that brings together elected officials, transit planners, and top national consultants, and fully engages the community.”

Cheryl Cort concluded:  “The Coalition recommends that WMATA (Metro) planning staff provide the lead technical support for the study in accordance with the WMATA compact, and that a joint WMATA/COG committee of elected officials be convened to oversee the effort. Our goal is for the region to complete that plan within the next two years, while launching a concurrent effort to identify and dedicate significantly more funding to our public transportation needs.” The Coalition included a recommended set of principles that justify and should guide the development of the Next Generation of Transit vision.

About the Coalition for Smarter Growth

The Coalition for Smarter Growth is the leading nonprofit organization addressing where and how the Washington region grows, partnering with communities in planning for the future, and offering solutions to the interconnected challenges of housing, transportation, energy and the environment. We ensure that transportation and development decisions accommodate growth while revitalizing communities, providing more housing and travel choices, and conserving our natural and historic areas.

Read the original article here >>

Montgomery Planners Propose 78-Mile Rapid Transit system

Posted on by acustis

Today, Montgomery County planning staff present to the Planning Board a 78-mile version of the proposed Rapid Transit System, based on several months of data-driven modeling and analysis. The Rapid Transit System would be a premium, reliable transit service using dedicated lanes as much as possible to bypass traffic, running frequently throughout the day, and stopping at enhanced stations featuring real time arrival information and efficient boarding like that found on Metro.

Coalition for Smarter Growth joins fight for transit dollars in Montgomery County

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

D.C.-based nonprofit the Coalition for Smarter Growth has joined the cause for transportation dollars to build the Purple Line and Bus Rapid Transit system, both of which supporters say would ease congestion in Bethesda, BethesdaNow.com reported.

The nonprofit, which until now has dealt largely with Northern Virginia transportation and sprawl issues, has turned its attention to Montgomery County and will host an event on Feb. 13 at the Silver Spring Civic Building focused on the area.

Read the original article at Washington Business Journal >>

The Next Generation of Transit: the Key to Montgomery’s Green Future

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

Join us for the Coalition for Smarter Growth’s panel discussion on the need to “invest in transit to improve our quality of life, protect our open spaces, and do our part in stopping climate change,” on Wednesday. February 13th from 6-8 pm at the Silver Spring Civic Building.

The Planning Department will be part of the panel, discussing the update to our Master Plan of Highways, which will move that functional plan beyond roadways to address bus rapid transit, bicycle-pedestrian priority areas, and MARC service.

The Coalition shares some interesting data about bus rapid transit:

NextGenTransit-flier_Page_1

and provides a good description of bus rapdi transit (it’s not what you might expect from buses!):

NextGenTransit-flier_Page_2

Photos courtesy of The Straight Line
Read the original article here >>

More bus service may come to 16th Street’s southern half

More bus service may come to 16th Street’s southern half

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

WMATA might beef up service on the busy 16th Street (S) line with a bus starting in Columbia Heights, where existing S buses often become too full to pick up passengers. That was one of the options WMATA and DDOT bus planners discussed with riders at a meeting last Monday.


Photo by Jess J on Flickr.

Every bus commuter knows that during morning rush hour, the people who board a bus early in the route are the ones who get the seats. They can get some reading or work done, or fit in one final snooze before they start their days.

But to riders who board the 16th Street “S-line” buses on the the southern half of the route, it’s not just a matter of getting a seat. Full buses pass them by, one after another, during the morning crunch. More and more commuters in that section have been giving up on the bus altogether and either waste money and gasoline on taxis and cars, or walk relatively long distances, making them late to work.

25 residents packed a daycare room at the Jewish Community Center on a cold and rainy night last Monday evening and shared not only their frustrations, but also their thoughtful ideas. Express and Current reporters also were there. Dozens of residents who could not attend emailed me their concerns and ideas, which I shared with WMATA officials.

For example, rider Mary M. wrote,

Just this week (Tues, Wed, and today, Thurs), it has taken me 45-50 minutes to get from 16th & V to 14th & I, and anywhere from 4 to 6 buses have passed the stop each morning because they are too crowded to accept any more passengers. (Also, on Tuesday morning, 2 buses that had hardly anyone standing passed us by in the cold). There are usually 15-20 people waiting at V St in the mornings.

At the meeting, S bus riders heard from WMATA bus planners Jim Hamre and David Erion and DDOT’s Steve Strauss. All 3 have a wealth of experience with District bus service. They have worked to make improvements in the past, like the S9 express bus. Rapid population growth in central DC has created challenges for bus service to keep up, they said.

But they offered hope of addressing this problem without affecting service for those who live along the northern half of the route. On Friday, in a follow-up phone call, Hamre also told me that WMATA is working on new proposals which he can discuss with the community around the 3rd week of February.

New route could serve half of 16th, if there’s a space to lay over

One possibility discussed with Hamre during the meeting is a rush hour route focused on the morning problem strip: Columbia Road to downtown DC. But one obstacle is layover space—a bus route requires a location for the bus drivers to park, pause, and get ready for an on-time departure. My ANC colleague Noah Smith proposed inquiring about space in nearby neighborhoods.

We asked whether the route could run for only the 8-9 am hour, and therefore perhaps avoid the need for the parking stop. But the availability of a layover space is a very important part of running a bus route, the planners said. Would the elusive search for bus-length parking in one of the most congested parts of town stall this idea?

After the meeting, my wife Divya, who often jogs to Rock Creek and back, suggested asking about using the existing turnaround area on Calvert Street, by the Duke Ellington Bridge, where the 90s bus lines end today. That is less than 5 blocks from Columbia Road, and then just another 5 blocks from the 16th & Columbia intersection.

Hamre was intrigued by the idea when we discussed it by phone. While it’s not ideal, he said he’d look into it, among other possibilities. (None of those possibilities include reducing service to the northern half of the S route).

Other ideas that came up at the meeting include posting bus supervisors along the current S line to efficiently reorder buses en route, and consolidating certain stops that are very close together (at least during rush hour) along 16th Street.

We are looking forward to seeing WMATA’s proposals later this month. As soon as the meeting is confirmed, we will share it here and elsewhere to hopefully get an even bigger turnout than the one we had last Monday. Thanks go to the Jewish Community Center for providing the space, WMATA and DDOT officials for attending, and Noah Smith, who collaborated with me to organize the event.

Photo courtesy of Jess J on Flickr

Read the original article here. >>

Background Memo on Virginia Transportation Funding

Posted on by acustis

1. VDOT is wasting money on the wrong projects. These include: Route 460: This $1.4 billion proposed new highway between Suffolk and Petersburg; over $1.1 billion of taxpayer funds, plus tolls. The current Route 460 carries just 11,000 trips per day. Coalfields Expressway: $2.8 billion for a new highway in least-trafficked area of the state. Charlottesville Bypass: This $243 million project doesn’t solve congestion and saves minimal travel time for commuters. North-South Corridor: This estimated $1 billion piece of an Outer Beltway around D.C. doesn’t address commuter needs and would add development and traffic in areas without infrastructure. Meanwhile, the state says it will not contribute to roads for Tysons, it hasn’t provided adequate funds to reduce tolls for Dulles Rail and Midtown/Downtown Tunnels, and it has zeroed out secondary road funds.