Maryland and Obama’s Stimulus Package

By Sharon Dooley.

The message posted by Adam from the Obama Saturday message could hold great promise for Montgomery County’s transportation dilemma.

The recent series about Council member Marc Elrich’s bus rapid transit (BRT) proposals and options for the Purple Line transit mentions the costs and problems in trying to pull all of this together. But a drive through the down county shows the discussion is passionate and divisive as signs are popping up like winter cabbages throughout the area. Along Jones Bridge Road one sees signs stating “No BRT on Jones Bridge”, while further east one sees signs about no routing along Wayne Avenue. Additionally “Save the trail” and “Purple line now” signs continue to proliferate and add to the visual pollution of opinions. Routes have been proposed for light rail along the Capital Crescent Trail and bus rapid transit along Jones Bridge or even along the beltway, among others.

In this down-county route, options have been discussed about underground, above ground, and almost every thing except a monorail. Alternatives are proposed for the east and west terminal stations. There are great commercial gambles in attempting to guess which route will prevail and just who will be the final owners of which critical – and potentially quite profitable - properties along the chosen routes. Business concerns are said to be funding some of the activists on each side. Preservationists and environmentalists are finding some areas of concert and others of confusion. No one person is seemingly positioned to be the “decider” here, and maybe that is a good thing. There appears to be enough that is both positive and negative about many of these suggestions that dilution of the ultimate decision-making by a committee of some sort may well provide excellent political cover when and if a route is chosen.

However, in the middle of this debate about one section of the county is the fact that we have an entire county that is approaching gridlock in multiple areas as has been discussed in the previous series. (This is not the place to address the problem potentials of BRAC.) Companies who complain about delayed deliveries, or have to change routes due to construction or congestion frequently describe the cost to businesses. But the one question that is too important to be overlooked is how we, as an increasingly urban county, can provide adequate transportation to the approximately one million people who live here NOW? It appears abundantly clear that we must construct transit of some type to provide an east-west conduit for those who work within the county. It is also obvious that the orientation of the Metro, planned as it was in the 1950’s when we had bedroom communities sending all of their workers downtown to the city is no longer the operational model. The long-planned, much maligned (and properly so, in my opinion) Inter-County Connector will not serve this function for the working commuter and gobbles up most of our state transportation efforts in dollars and sense.

The Cross-county BRT routes that were presented by Marc Elrich in the previous week hold much promise, in my opinion. In my 2006 campaign I encouraged commuter express buses be established from Park and Rides at the county lines whether at the Prince George border or along our borders with Howard and Frederick Counties and encouraged major employers to supply van pool pick-ups from those same lots. This could have reduced the enormous parking lots at some of our new bio-techs, especially in the upcounty, where workers find 270 to be such a huge bottle neck.

Park and Planning needs to again look at the traffic planning areas and try to find more experts from outside the area who have done things differently. And, as Adam discussed, the traffic mitigation solutions utilized here at times ask for suspension of one's belief system! Portland, Oregon is expanding light rail to its various suburbs and as Delegate Al Carr recently noted, Cleveland is looking at varied expansions for its transit. Toronto is known for creative and non-automobile related solutions. While these are major cities and Montgomery County is not a city, it shares many of the same urban concerns seen in big cities.

Now – back to the title of this piece – Obama – stimulus and Montgomery County.

As was mentioned, President-elect Obama wants infrastructure stimulus projects that are set and ready to go, but are waiting for funding. This means that municipal or state areas have had the routes decided, the environmental impact studies are completed and there is agreement on the process by the community. To me that states clearly – let’s get on with the Corridor Cities Transit way (CCT) – it certainly meets each of these criteria. The CCT is primed and ready to go – the BRT pilot project can start here. Even though I think light rail might be the ultimate solution, were the line to be completed all the way to Frederick County as originally planned, Bus Rapid Transit could be ready to go in fairly short order; the route would provide good jobs and a necessary stimulus to the tax base here in the county. It is a cost-effective solution, and, although by no means inexpensive, this could jump-start this long delayed project. I think the council under the direction of new council President Phil Andrews – known for his environmental views – should have a plan ready for County Executive Ike Leggett to endorse before January 20th and get it ready to present to our new President on January 21st. (Now I know they go on vacation shortly and this might be a stretch – but a near approximation might well accomplish the same goal. California is already jumping forward with its wish list; Maryland should not lag far behind.)

Once we can implement this, and residents see the efficacy of the initiative, then we should be easily able to step in and gradually add those other BRT transit corridor routes proposed by Councilmember Elrich across the county. Also, by that time maybe those claims and counter claims in the down-county about purple-line routes and means will have been decided by a commission established by Governor O’Malley and the SHA. The SHA in its most recent MARC transportation decision has decided to decrease the numbers of routes and trains serving in Montgomery County, even though ridership is up along the Montgomery County MARC routes. In some convoluted thinking the gas tax – which comes from cars on the road – helps fund MARC, which takes drivers out of their cars, so when drivers drive less there is less money for trains. Reports of a recent hearing will be shared in a future article.

Next problem: convincing commuters to leave their cars – also more on that later.