Category: CSG in the News

Smart growth key to Montgomery County’s future

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

Montgomery County is implementing a Smart Growth Initiative to build on the area’s strengths in biotechnology and health care in a way that will create mixed-use neighborhoods and walkable new housing developments.

The three places where most of this new construction will occur are the Greater Seneca Science Corridor along Route 28, the White Oak Science Gateway west of Gaithersburg and the White Flint expansion along Rockville Pike. Each project possesses the core elements of walkability, rapid transit options and mixed-use development.

“Montgomery County has made it a point to invest in transit-oriented communities, and the most successful were Bethesda and Silver Spring. In the future, it will be Shady Grove, Rockville and White Flint,” said Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth.

He said the market demand is very strong for development of mixed-use communities around transit. “It’s much stronger than for traditional suburban development,” he added.

Bonnie Casper, the 2012 president of the Greater Capital Area Association of Realtors, said smart growth is the next generation of development after the superfund trend, which involved taking contaminated sites and redeveloping them through mixed-use development to bring commercial and residential areas back to life.

“Smart growth is an extension of that, taking compact urban centers and turning them back into viable areas around transit nodes to avoid the sprawl,” she said. “More urbanized places like Bethesda, Rockville, Kensington, where the population has grown dramatically.”

The Montgomery County Planning Department’s website shows the Greater Seneca Science Corridor along Route 28 includes a major hospital, academic institutions, such as Johns Hopkins University, and private biotechnology companies. It will offer an array of services and amenities for residents, workers and visitors, including connecting destinations by paths and trails and providing opportunities for a range of outdoor experiences.

“There are 60,000 new jobs slated as part of the Shady Grove and Hopkins sites and new housing that will come into the area,” Casper said. “The key is the rapid transit system. It will cost $2 billion to expand the transit nodes to develop a 160-mile system of modern buses that look like subway cars.”

The White Flint project will enhance and expand development that has already occurred along Wisconsin Avenue and Rockville Pike.

“Retail and mixed business are already there, and it will be revamped into more of a mini town center,” Casper said. “There will be condos and townhomes of various sizes.”

The plan calls for 375-square-foot condos with Murphy beds that are the size of a hotel room.

“It’s based on the theory that younger or single people or oven older people will spend less time in their homes,” Casper said. “They will be in the local coffee shop, going to the movies and sitting out on the bench. Kids who have first jobs will be able to afford these.”

Bethesda is undergoing a huge expansion upward, she noted, and there is a tremendous amount of development to feed the needs of the area. A new Harris Teeter is going in, and Casper said it will have a very different look in the future.

Bordered by Route 29, Cherry Hill Road, New Hampshire Avenue and the Prince George’s County line, the White Oak Science Gateway is focused on developing options for a new research and technology node that capitalizes on the growing presence of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and is complemented by mixed-use development.

“White Oak is where the FDA is, and it was developed a while ago,” Casper said. “That’s another area slated for expansion with additional research facilities and also commercial development — not just roads to jobs but mixed-use development.”

Schwartz and Casper agreed there is a critical need to fund Metro’s Purple Line to Silver Spring and Bethesda.

“We need to continue to fund the rehab of our Metro systems and to tie these traditional transit corridors to development,” Schwartz said. “The real news is that the Washington, D.C., region is beginning to lead the nation in offering effective alternatives and personal solutions to congestion — well-planned, walkable, and transit-oriented neighborhoods and centers.”

Read the original article here >>

Arlington is Booming, And Traffic Fantastically Remains at 1970s Levels

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

Science fiction fans will recognize this plot line. A woman travels into the past, telling her ancestors about her reality in the future, only to be called a lunatic because of the incredible nature of what she is saying.

Anyone who lives and works in 2013 Arlington, Virginia might be met with the same reaction if she were to go back to 1979 and tell someone about the county’s population, employment, and transportation trends.

Arlington’s population and employment have jumped nearly 40 percent over the past three decades. Meanwhile, traffic on major arterials like Wilson and Arlington Boulevards has increased at a much lower rate or even declined.

Nevertheless, according to our latest research (also embedded below), most executives and business managers based in Arlington County think it’s a fantastical notion that the county will meet its goal of capping rush-hour traffic at 2005 levels over the next two decades.

Of course, first these leaders had to learn that Arlington even has this target. Only 11 percent surveyed knew that the county actually intends to keep rush-hour trips and rush-hour vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) at or below 5 percent growth of their respective 2005 levels by 2030 (PDF; 1 MB). This goal is in place even though Arlington County planners expect that the population will rise by 19 percent and jobs will increase by 42 percent over that same period.

Once business leaders heard about the cap, a majority (61 percent) agreed that keeping traffic near 2005 levels is important to achieve. However, given the growth projections, it’s not surprising that so many in our business community do not think that we can get to our goal. It may be worth reminding them that other jurisdictions have more aggressive targets. San José, California, for one, wants to reduce the VMT within its borders by 40 percent from its 2009 level by 2040.

Arlington County Commuter Services continues to refine the way in which the county government keeps a lid on traffic with the infrastructure already in place. In 2012, ACCS’s outreach work throughout the county shifted 45,000 car trips each work day from a solo-driven car to some other form of transportation. The Silver Line’s opening at the end of the year will give new options for the large numbers of Fairfax County residents who travel into Arlington or through it to Washington D.C.

Yet now is also a time in which many of our region’s transportation visionaries and transit providers are thinking big about the future. The Coalition for Smarter Growth just released a report that catalogues the many existing plans to improve transit across the region in order to get us Thinking Big, Planning Smart, and Metro’s Momentum plan for improvements by 2040 is a expression of what the heart of our region’s transportation success could look like for the next generation.

Clearly, the billions of dollars needed to make these and other investments possible will not appear out of thin air and, as a community, the D.C. region will need to make bold decisions (just as Arlington has by strictly following its transportation vision set out in the 1970s).

Luckily, Arlington’s business community seems to be on board. Seventy-nine percent think that improving the transit system is important. And Arlington’s track record of success and the attitudes found in our survey of business leaders indicate that meeting the county’s traffic goal is realistic after all.

Does your community have an explicit goal to cap traffic? If so, we would like to hear about it, because seeing the state of practice helps us all make the case that taming traffic is, in fact, possible. Just like in science fiction, it only seems crazy because we have not done it yet.

Photo courtesy of Mobility Lab

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Helping Virginia grow — wisely

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

The March 13 editorial “Leave well enough alone,” on the Virginia transportation bill, characterized the coalition that defeated the 2002 referendum on a sales tax for transportation as “anti-growth activists and anti-tax conservatives.” This is a false characterization.

The leading activists have consistently supported planning for robust growth in the region. During the referendum debate, the Coalition for Smarter Growth and the Piedmont Environmental Council released a plan for redevelopment and economic growth that focused on the areas around the region’s rail stations. The region has embraced this vision through its Region Forward plan and local implementation of new transit-oriented development projects.

In Fairfax County, business and political leaders recognize transit-oriented development as the pivot for continued economic growth. The Coalition for Smarter Growth has endorsed and supported millions of square feet of development and thousands of housing units that bolster a smart-growth future. The Post should recognize this.

Douglas Stewart, Fairfax

The writer is a grants specialist at the Piedmont Environmental Council.

Read the original article here >>

D.C.-region smart-growth organization releases transit report

Posted on by admin

Earlier this week, the Coalition for Smarter Growth issued a report on the Washington, D.C. region’s public transportation, including a set of nine principles to guide long-term regional planning for the next generation of transit. The Coalition for Smarter Growth, a non-profit, works to promote smart growth in the Washington, D.C. region.

For those living or working in Washington, D.C., Maryland or Virginia who ever tried to travel to one of the three major area airports, work, or activities and errands without driving a car, they know that Metro serves as a backbone of our regional public transportation network, and they understand that this network includes numerous transit entities that cross local jurisdictional lines.

Relying in part on 2012 and 2013 reports on next-generation transit goals issued by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments and Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, respectively, the March 4, 2013 Coalition for Smarter Growth’s primer summarizes plans to grow the Metro system and to expand public transportation.

The report discusses six ongoing transit initiatives: Metrorail’s 23-mile Silver Line extension in Virginia; a new eight-line light-rail and streetcar network throughout D.C.; Metrorail’s Purple Line cross-county connection in Maryland; a new 5-mile streetcar service along a mixed-use corridor in Arlington and Fairfax Virginia; three rapid bus transportation corridors in Alexandria and Arlington, Virginia; and a 160-mile rapid bus transportation system in Montgomery County, Maryland.

The report, “Thinking Big Planning Smart,” states that its purpose “is to get you involved in creating a vision and plan for the new public transportation investments we need to link together our region’s ever-growing number of livable, walkable centers and neighborhoods.” The Coalition offers the 35-page report as a primer on the next generation of transit and a resource on already-planned regional transit proposals in progress.

As Aimee Custis, Communication Manager at the Coalition for Smarter Growth, wrote on the popular blog Greater Greater Washington, “[the] report is both a call to action and a baseline resource.”

Photo courtesy of Doug Canter.

Read the original story here >>

 

 

Transit, Purple Line Activists Hit Annapolis For Lobby Day

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

Transit and smart growth activists greeted leaders in Annapolis today with gravestones representing “the impending death” of transportation projects such as the Purple Line if the General Assembly does not come up with transportation funding in this legislative session.

Representatives from D.C.-based Coalition for Smarter Growth, which is spearheading the “Get Maryland Moving” campaign, Purple Line Now and others made the slushy trek to the State House to meet with about 20 legislators and put on the demonstration.

State Transportation officials say without a source for state transportation funding, matching federal dollars for the 16-mile Purple Line light rail that would connect Bethesda with Chevy Chase, Silver Spring and College Park, among other places, would be in jeopardy.

The Maryland Department of Transportation plans to halt design work on the $2.2 billion project if no funding is provided from the current General Assembly.

On Monday, Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), House Speaker Michael Busch (D) and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller (D) announced their plan for a new tax on gas wholesalers that is projected to mean a 2-cent hike in gas prices this July and another 7-cent hike next July. The plan is projected to bring in $3.4 billion over the next five years, which likely would not be able to fund for the Purple Line and the Red Line light rail project in Baltimore simultaneously.

“In spite of the weather, we couldn’t have chosen a better time to come to Annapolis. We’re thrilled to finally see unified action and leadership from Governor O’Malley, Speaker Busch, and President Miller, and will do all we can as residents to organize for a statewide solution that invests in real transportation solutions for all Marylanders”, said Robbyn Lewis, founder of the Red Line Now PAC, in a prepared statement.

According to polls, a clear majority of Marylanders are against any raise in gas prices. Republicans against the proposal have argued the transit projects the funds will help support do not benefit rural areas of the state.

Rendering via Maryland Transit Administration

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Why It May Soon Become Harder To Park In Some D.C. Neighborhoods

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

The District of Columbia’s Office of Planning is considering a proposal that would potentially reduce the number of available parking spaces in some neighborhoods.

Planning officials may submit a proposal this spring to the zoning commission eliminating the mandatory parking space minimums required for new development in transit-rich corridors and in downtown Washington. The idea squares with the vision of making the district less car-dependent and would let developers decide how many parking spaces are necessary based on market demand.

Opponents, however, say the plan denies the reality that roughly 70 percent of Washington-area commuters drive, and removing off-street parking requirements in apartment and office buildings would force motorists to circle city blocks looking for scarce spaces.

“This is a very dangerous proposal. We think it threatens the future of Washington, D.C.,” says Lon Anderson, the chief spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic, which represents motorists and advocates road construction as a solution for traffic congestion.

A city where a car isn’t a necessity

Thirty-nine percent of D.C. households are car-free. In some neighborhoods with access to public transit, more than 80 percent of households are car-free. Some recent developments wound up building too much parking to adhere to the mandatory minimums, including the D.C. USA shopping center in Columbia Heights, right next to a Metro station and busy bus corridor.

“The parking garage there is probably as twice as big as it needs to be, and the second level is basically not used, so the city has had to scramble to find another use for it,” says Cheryl Cort, the policy director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth and advocate of the zoning change.

Developers favor eliminating the mandatory parking minimums, because the construction of parking garages, especially underground, is enormously expensive. Each underground space adds $40,000 to $70,000 to a project’s cost, according to Harriet Tregoning, the director of D.C.’s Office of Planning, who is working on the overhaul of D.C.’s zoning code. It was last updated in 1958, when planners assumed the automobile would remain the mainstay of individual transportation.

“No matter how much mandatory parking we require in new buildings, if the landlord is going to charge you $200 per month to park in the building and the city is going to let you park on the street for $35 per year, you may very well decide… to park on the street,” Tregoning says. “Many developers are finding they have parking that they can’t get rid of, that they don’t know what to do with. That’s really a stranded asset.”

Parking-free building coming to Tenleytown

On the corner of Wisconsin Avenue NW and Brandywine Street NW stands what used to be a billiards hall. The property, just a block from the Tenleytown Metro station, has been an eye-sore for years. Douglas Development is expected to redevelop the site this year, turning it into a mixed-use retail and residential space with 40 apartment units and no on-site parking.

“When the Zoning Commission looked at this site and DDOT did some analysis, they found a lot of availability of both on-street parking and off-street parking. There are actually hundreds of parking spaces around this Metro station that go dark at night,” says Cheryl Cort, whose group contends the construction of parking spaces drives up housing costs an average 12.5 percent per unit. If developers can’t find a market for those parking spaces, they pass the costs onto tenants.

Douglas Development, which declined to comment on this story, received an exemption from the zoning commission to avoid the parking minimum at the Tenleytown property. Situated close to Metro and planning to market the apartments to car-free residents, the developers escaped having to build 20 spaces under the current regulations in the zone (C-2-A).

Douglas’s plan may look sensible given the conditions in the neighborhood, but AAA’s Anderson says it will cause problems.

“Are you going to have any visitors who might drive there to visit you? How about your mom and dad, are they going to be coming in? Do they live locally or are they going to be driving in? If so, where are they going to park?” says Anderson.

Fewer cars in D.C.’s future?

In its fight against the parking policy change, AAA is being joined by community activists, who claim their neighborhoods will be clogged by drivers looking for parking. Sue Hemberger, a 28-year District resident who does not own a car, says Tregoning’s proposal is too harsh. In her view, District officials are making car ownership a hassle.

“What I see us doing in the name of transit-oriented development is pushing people who won’t forgo car ownership off the edge of the transit grid,” Hemberger says. “I’m worried about the future of certain neighborhoods and I’m worried about the future of downtown.”

Anderson says D.C. is waging a “war on cars,” but Tregoning says changes to zoning regulations are not designed to make motorists’ lives miserable. On the contrary, the planning director anticipates the number of drivers in the district will grow but they will have enough options to do away with car ownership, like the car sharing services of Zipcar and Car2Go.

“How does your walking, biking, or taking transit affect his ability to drive, except to make it easier?” Tregoning says in response to Anderson. “The national average household spends 19 percent of income on transportation. In the District, in areas well-served by transit, our number is more like 9 percent of household income. So we happen to think lots of choices are a good thing.”

In 2012 the city of Portland, Oreg., commissioned a study (pdf) to look at the relationship between car ownership and new development, after apartment construction with little to no on-site parking in the city’s inner neighborhoods raised concerns about the potential for on-street parking congestion.

The study found “that 64 percent of residents are getting to work via a non-single-occupant vehicle. Almost a third (28 percent) of those surveyed belong to car-free households; however, cars are still the preferred mode of travel for many of the survey respondents.”

About two-thirds of the vehicle owners surveyed in Portland’s inner neighborhoods “park on the street without a permit and have to walk less than two minutes to reach their place of residence, and they spend only five minutes or less searching for a parking spot,” the study found.

To Hemberger, the Portland study’s key finding is that people don’t give up car ownership just because they commute to work via public transit. In a city like Washington, Hemberger says, there will not be enough street spot to accommodate new, car-owning residents.

Decision could come this spring

The Office of Planning will submit the proposed removal of parking minimums to the Zoning Commission later this month or early April, where it will go through the public process again before a final decision is made.

“We are a really unique city because we have an amazing number of transportation choices. Our citizens end up paying a lot less for transportation than the rest of the region,” Tregoning says. “I don’t understand why that would be considered a war on cars to try to give people choices, the very choices that actually take automobiles off the road to make it easier to park, to make it easier to drive with less congestion.”

Photo courtesy of Victoria Pickering on Flickr

Read the original article here >>

D.C. Considering Lifting Mandatory Parking Minimums

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

The District of Columbia’s Office of Planning is considering a proposal to potentially reduce the number of available parking spaces in some neighborhoods as new development attracts more residents and jobs. If successful, it will mark the first major change to the city’s zoning code since it was first adopted in 1958.

It’s part of a growing city attempt to reduce congestion by offering its residents alternatives to the automobile – from bikes to buses to making walking more attractive.

Planning officials may submit to the zoning commission this spring a proposal to eliminate the mandatory parking space minimums required in new development in transit-rich corridors and in downtown Washington.  The idea squares with the vision of making the district less car-dependent and would let developers decide how many parking spaces are necessary based on market demand.  However, opponents say the plan denies the reality that roughly 70 percent of Washington-area commuters drive and removing off-street parking requirements in apartment and office buildings would force motorists to circle city blocks looking for scarce spaces.

“This is a very dangerous proposal.  We think it threatens the future of Washington, D.C.,” says Lon Anderson, the chief spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic, which represents motorists and advocates road construction as a solution for traffic congestion.

A city where a car isn’t a necessity

Thirty-nine percent of D.C. households are car-free. In some neighborhoods with access to public transit, more than 80 percent of households are car-free.  Some recent developments wound up building too much parking to adhere to the mandatory minimums, including the D.C. USA shopping center in Columbia Heights, which is right next to a Metro station and busy bus corridor.

“The parking garage there is probably as twice as big as it needs to be, and the second level is basically not used so the city has had to scramble to find another use for it,” says Cheryl Cort, the policy director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth and advocate of the zoning change.

“Rather than having the government tell the private sector how many parking spaces to build, we think it’s better for the developer to figure out how it best wants to market those units,” Cort added.

Developers favor eliminating the mandatory parking minimums because the construction of parking garages, especially underground, is enormously expensive.  Each underground space adds $40,000 to $70,000 to a project’s cost, according to Harriet Tregoning, the director of D.C.’s Office of Planning, who is working on the overhaul of D.C.’s zoning code. The code was last updated in 1958 when planners assumed the automobile would remain the mainstay of individual transportation.

“No matter how much mandatory parking we require in new buildings, if the landlord is going to charge you $200 per month to park in the building and the city is going to let you park on the street for $35 per year, you may very well decide… to park on the street,” Tregoning says. “Many developers are finding they have parking that they can’t get rid of, that they don’t know what to do with.  That’s really a stranded asset.”

Parking-free building coming to Tenleytown

On the corner of Wisconsin Avenue NW and Brandywine Street NW stands what used to be a billiards hall. The property, just a block from the Tenleytown Metro station, has been an eyesore for years. Douglas Development is expected to redevelop the site this year, turning it into a mixed-use retail and residential space with 40 apartment units and no on-site parking.

“When the Zoning Commission looked at this site and DDOT did some analysis, they found a lot of availability of both on-street parking and off-street parking.  There are actually hundreds of parking spaces around this Metro station that go dark at night,” says Cheryl Cort, whose group contends the construction of parking spaces drives up housing costs an average 12.5 percent per unit. If developers can’t find a market for those parking spaces, they pass the costs onto tenants.

Douglas Development, which declined to comment on this story, received an exemption from the zoning commission to avoid the parking minimum at the Tenleytown property. Situated close to Metro and planning to market the apartments to car-free residents, the developers escaped having to build 20 spaces under the current regulations in the zone (C-2-A).

Douglas’s plan may look sensible given the conditions in the neighborhood, but AAA’s Anderson says it will cause problems.

“Are you going to have any visitors who might drive there to visit you?  How about your mom and dad, are they going to be coming in? Do they live locally or are they going to be driving in? If so, where are they going to park?” says Anderson, who says the past three years have seen 16,000 new car registrations in Washington.

Fewer cars in D.C.’s future?

In its fight against the parking policy change, AAA is being joined by community activists who claim their neighborhoods will be clogged by drivers looking for parking. Sue Hemberger, a 28-year district resident who does not own a car, says Tregoning’s proposal is too harsh. In her view, district officials are making car ownership a hassle.

“What I see us doing in the name of transit-oriented development is pushing people who won’t forgo car ownership off the edge of the transit grid,” Hemberger says. “I’m worried about the future of certain neighborhoods and I’m worried about the future of downtown.”

Anderson says D.C. is waging a “war on cars,” but Tregoning says changes to zoning regulations are not designed to make motorists’ lives miserable.  On the contrary, the planning director anticipates the number of drivers in the district will grow but they will have enough options to do away with car ownership, like the car sharing services of Zipcar and Car2Go.

“How does your walking, biking, or taking transit affect his ability to drive, accept to make it easier?” Tregoning says in response to Anderson. “The national average household spends 19 percent of income on transportation. In the district, in areas well-served by transit, our number is more like 9 percent of household income. So we happen to think lots of choices are a good thing.”

In 2012 the city of Portland, Oregon, commissioned a study to look at the relationship between car ownership and new development, after apartment construction with little to no on-site parking in the city’s inner neighborhoods raised concerns about the potential for on-street parking congestion.

The study found “that 64 percent of residents are getting to work via a non-single-occupant vehicle. Almost a third (28 percent) of those surveyed belong to car-free households; however, cars are still the preferred mode of travel for many of the survey respondents.”

About two-thirds of the vehicle owners surveyed in Portland’s inner neighborhoods “park on the street without a permit and have to walk less than two minutes to reach their place of residence, and they spend only five minutes or less searching for a parking spot,” the study found.

To Hemberger, the Portland study’s key finding is that people don’t give up car ownership just because they commute to work via public transit.  In a city like Washington, Hemberger says, there will not be enough street spot to accommodate new, car-owning residents.

Decision could come this spring

The Office of Planning will submit the proposed removal of parking minimums to the Zoning Commission later this month or early April, where it will go through the public process again before a final decision is made.

“We are a really unique city because we have an amazing number of transportation choices. Our citizens end up paying a lot less for transportation than the rest of the region,” Tregoning says. “I don’t understand why that would be considered a war on cars to try to give people choices, the very choices that actually take automobiles off the road to make it easier to park, to make it easier to drive with less congestion.”

Photo courtesy of vpickering on Flickr

Read the original article here >>

Morning Read: Big Week for Maryland Legislature

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

It’s a busy week for the Maryland legislature.

On Monday, Gov. Martin O’Malley introduced his own transportation funding plan, which would generate an estimated $833 million over five years in new funding for transportation through a 2-percent sales tax on gasoline.

The sales tax would increase to 4 percent in 2014 and the current excise tax on a gallon of gas would decrease by 5 cents and then be indexed to inflation.

The Senate has also been debating O’Malley-backed legislation to repeal the death penalty in the state. On Monday night, senators in support of the bill rejected eight amendments that would create exceptions under which convicted killers could still be executed.

Debate will resume Tuesday morning and a final Senate vote could come this afternoon.

The fate of another flagship legislation this session — gun control — will be shaped this week. The Senate already passed its version of the bill to tighten gun laws and ban assault weapons and the House committees are expected to put their versions on the House floor this week.

IN OTHER NEWS:

* Another day, another story about Virginia Lt. Gov Bill Bolling flirting with an independent gubernatorial bid. (Politico)

* A Washington City Paper writer has been named the new Washington Post ombudsman… kind of. (Washington City Paper)

* Former D.C. Councilman Kwame Brown leads a bus of D.C. students every year to attend a college fair in North Carolina. He wanted to keep the tradition alive this year, but a judge denied him permission to loosen his home-detention conditions for 24 hours. (Washington Post)

* Mayor Vincent Gray wants to use some of the District’s surplus money to delay welfare cuts by six months to families who have been receiving public assistance for more than five years. This could impact up to 7,500 families. (Washington Examiner)

* A dozen people from the D.C. area made Forbes magazine’s annual list of the world’s billionaires. (Washington Business Journal)

* Facing a $1 million funding cut and a growing elderly population, Maryland’s Department of Aging is focusing on providing more at-home services to keep people out of costly nursing homes. (Maryland Reporter)

* Something maybe, potentially fishy was revealed when Washington City Paper investigated why a fired staffer for Councilmember Anita Bonds had filed a complaint with the Board of Ethics over issues involving requests for her to work on Bonds’ campaign. (Washington City Paper)

* A federal judge ruled that the EPA had overstepped its bounds in trying to regulate storm water in Northern Virginia — a victory for AG Ken Cuccinelli, who said that it would have cost the state and Fairfax County more than $300 million. (Washington Times)

* A new audit of the Children and Youth Investment Trust Corp — the government-funded nonprofit from which former Councilman Harry Thomas Jr. admitted to stealing $350,000 — unsurprisingly reveals that there were major flaws in how the trust monitored its finances. (Washington Examiner)

* The Virginia transportation plan earned high marks from Moody’s bond rating firm, which called the plan a “credit-positive” for the state. (Washington Post)

* With a new report, the Coalition for Smarter Growth wants to engage residents in a campaign to win a new District transit vision and the funding to implement it. (Greater Greater Washington)

* Gov. McDonnell issued an executive order Monday to reconstitute a commission that will examine the impacts of the sequester defense cuts on Virginia and recommend the best course of action in light of these cuts. (Alexandria News)

Photo courtesy of Alex Wong/Getty Images

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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

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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 >>