Montgomery County Planning Chairman Royce Hanson says not much can be done about traffic without a massive upping of the gas tax and limiting parking in new developments:
Montgomery County might be unable to do much to reduce traffic congestion without such drastic measures as a big gasoline tax or substantially limiting parking in new developments, the county's top planner said yesterday.He may be right but my guess is that we're not going down either road just yet since (1) members of the County Council don't have the power to tax gas, and (2) all of these politicians worked far too hard getting elected to the Council to have political death wishes, though Marc Elrich said he agreed with Hanson's assessment.
Although the Planning Board's chairman, Royce Hanson, stopped short of endorsing any of those ideas, he said he thinks that county officials need to face some hard realities: Simply changing formulas for how many houses can be built might not make a dent in the byproducts of growth -- traffic congestion and school crowding.
"In some ways, the methods that will have the largest effect on development patterns or congestion may not be investment or infrastructure or design, but some really big, mean tool such as a big tax," he told a County Council committee that had asked him to provide an update on a study of growth and its impact.
Personally, I don't think either of Hanson's ideas would have much effect on existing traffic in that the major backup remains people trying to go from the 270 corridor out towards Dulles Airport every day. However, I suppose if the tax were high enough, it might encourage more carpooling or force people to even move to Virginia. Or they just might buy their gas on the other side of the Potomac--something many already try to do when they can as gas prices are already higher in Maryland.
Perhaps more creative thinking and a multifaceted approach is in order?
