Visioning

Gaithersburg has begun a visioning exercise that will help in determining the city’s strategy going forward. The first step is a report from our consultants concerning trends in population and business in the city and in our region, which will be discussed at an all-day retreat on February 23rd.

The executive summary presentation is here: https://www.dropbox.com/…/Visioning%20Executive%20Summary%2…

The full report is available here:https://www.dropbox.com/s/krc48zuhm66px…/Final%20Report.pdf…

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Better Transit

Rethinking the Bus is a report from the Greater Washington Partnership. It recommends ways to modernize bus service in order to make the system more effective, in light of growing congestion and shrinking transit use.

“…the region as a whole lacks a forward-thinking
strategy to make buses a truly competitive transportation
option. With a new commitment to rethink the bus, the
region could become a national transportation leader with
buses that are fast, frequent, reliable, and easy to use.
Rethinking the bus does not require years of planning;
it can start today. “

Recommendations are:

1. Optimize routes. This worked wonders in Houston and elsewhere.

2. Make space for the bus on the region’s roads. Harder to achieve in crowded roads, but effective where possible.

3. Make boarding faster.

4. Make buses easier to use. Easy to understand route maps and many other suggestions.

5. Measure and report on bus progress. This is critical to any project if you want success — make sure a transparent and accurate measurement system is in place.

http://www.greaterwashingtonpartnership.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/201809_GWP_Issue-Brief_Rethinking-the-Bus.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2Xr0RgBro3gYgdIs9qHS7xxJupts86pLjZB6GWDWyJWxdH1LUth8IkweE

 

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TOWARD COST-EFFECTIVE TRANSPORTATION

 

Transit is much more expensive to build than highways. It’s politically correct to focus on transit. But is it the best use of our tax dollars? Let’s look at the numbers.

Transportation planners in our region look at many. At the most recent Transportation Planning Board (TPB) meeting, there was a presentation on the ways that transportation plans are measured and approved factors – social equity, air quality, and many more. But when I asked if there was a cost-benefit analysis, it became clear that this did not appear to be on anyone’s list of measures.

By cost-benefit, I mean this: when you build a new transportation project, how much money does it cost to move people?

Over the last few weeks, I went back through some presentations and found the two slides shown below that have the numbers to tell an important story. I spent a lunch hour on the phone with TPB staff to verify that what I was seeing was accurate, and what it might mean. Here is what I learned from TPB’s data:

The DMV region plans to spend $42 billion to expand transportation capacity over the next 25 years, split between $27 billion on highway expansion and $15 billion on transit. This will result in 2.7 million more daily trips by auto and 300 thousand more daily trips in transit. By simple arithmetic, this means that it costs just over $10,000 to add capacity for another auto trip, and more than $53,000 to add another transit trip. Building transit capacity currently costs more than 5 times as much as highway capacity!

 

If this was the only factor that was important, then decisions would be easy. Any CEO would immediately allocate more money into adding highway capacity. Of course, it’s not the only factor. Not everyone can afford to travel by auto – we want lower-income people to be able to get to their jobs, so we need transit. Transit trips are less polluting than autos, although TPB’s data shows a steady decrease in auto pollutants thanks to greater efficiency and the growing number of electric, zero-emission vehicles.

The other key is that, for parts of our region, building new roads or even expanding existing ones is terribly difficult. Where would you put a new thoroughfare in DC, or in the close-in suburbs?

The costs I focused on so far are the capital costs for new projects. The same TPB information can be used for operating costs – how much it costs for each trip. It turns out that we’re going to spend $130 billion over the next 25 years on transit operations and repairs, about $5.2 billion annually, with capacity growing to 1.5 million daily trips, for a per-trip cost of about $9.50. Each time someone takes a transit trip, the government subsidizes the trip by that amount. We’ll spend $72 billion to maintain roadways during the same period, about $2.9 billion annually, to move up to 16.6 million trips/day. That comes to just under 50 cents per trip.

The operating cost information is useful in a couple of ways. At the same TPB meeting, the Commuter Connections presentation unveiled a new program, piloted in Howard County MD, where auto commuters can receive a $10 stipend for taking a rider along with them. That number is almost exactly right – it is comparable to the cost of putting someone on transit instead, but we don’t need to build more transit lines.

That is the kind of thinking we need. When we look at a new project or a new idea, does it move people more effectively than how we’re doing it now? Is it better for some reason, is it faster, is it cheaper?

For example, the TPB recently recommended that we find ways to encourage employers to let more people work from home. What if the government provided an incentive to the employers? With these numbers, we can make informed judgments about how much of an incentive makes fiscal sense.

The amount of money we have to transport people is limited, so we need to think carefully about optimization strategies to move people cost-effectively as well as focusing on all the other factors.

Neil Harris is a member of the Gaithersburg City Council and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments Transportation Planning Board.

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Board of Education Six-Year School Construction Plan includes funding and planning for Gaithersburg

An amendment to the Capital Improvements Plan directs Montgomery County Public Schools officials to form a roundtable group to start planning for the new high school on the Crown Farms property in Gaithersburg. Board member Rebecca Smondrowski said the group should include representatives from the Gaithersburg, Richard Montgomery, Quince Orchard and Thomas S. Wootton clusters. The program includes about $136 million in project funding for a new high school in Gaithersburg.

Smondrowski also proposed instructing MCPS to work with representatives from the Quince Orchard Cluster on growth management planning and to collaborate with the city of Gaithersburg to identify future elementary school sites. Board members agreed to include the suggestion in the capital plan.

Thanks for all the advocacy, Rebecca Keller Smondrowski!

Link to more information: http://www.bethesdamagazine.com/Bethesda-Beat/2017/Board-of-Education-Gives-Unanimous-Support-to-Six-Year-School-Construction-Plan/

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MCPS Site Selection Committee recommended Kelley Park for new elementary school

Next steps are input from the City and from the public, followed by the Board of Education’s endorsement/comments.

MCPS has not made the final determination about the site — this is the committee’s recommendation. If you click the link in the post above, you can read the report and see why they are looking for a school site and which other sites were evaluated.

If Kelley is the site, then the actual configuration would have to be determined — a school would take up part of the park, not all of it. Based on the first diagram that was shared, the two baseball diamonds and part of the softball field would remain as a city park. One option would take away the softball field and replace it with something smaller, perhaps a soccer field.

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U-turns at Quince Orchard HS

The Maryland Department of Transportation has agreed that the morning traffic situation at Quince Orchard High School is an issue that needs remediation. As you can see in the attached letter, MDOT will eliminate morning u-turns at the Copen Meadow intersection.

Additional suggestions were made at this month’s Gaithersburg Transportation Committee meeting and have been presented to QOHS. We will continue to work on improving safety and keep you posted as solutions are implemented.

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