By Jud Ashman, Gaithersburg City Council Member.
Can someone please come up with a serious argument against the Corridor Cities Transitway? Apparently all this “agreement” and lack of controversy has had the ironic effect of moving the CCT to the media and political backburner at exactly the time it makes the most sense.
If you don’t know - or can’t remember – what the Corridor Cities Transitway is, don’t blame yourself. It’s our fault! What gets news media attention - far more than any boring aspects of merit a project might boast - is a fight. If we just could have found someone out there among the citizenry, the business community, or the elected officials who opposed the project, you surely would’ve been inundated with stories in the Washington Post, the Gazette, NewsChannel 8, etc. Marc Fisher could’ve filed two columns a month on the subject and Adam, here at MPW, could’ve posted a 4 part statistical analysis!
But we obviously failed to find that opposition. “Why?” you ask. Because the CCT makes too much sense. Here are the facts:
• The concept for the CCT dates back to the 1964 General Plan for Montgomery County. It’s a 14-mile transitway that would link the Shady Grove Metro to Clarksburg. (Ultimately, the CCT could be extended to Frederick but that is not currently under consideration.) The project has earned the support of the cities of Gaithersburg and Rockville, as well as Montgomery County.
• The stated goals of the CCT are:
o Provide efficient, reliable transit enhancement
o Extend Metrorail Red Line and reduce demand for drive access to Shady Grove Station
o Support current and planned land uses in the corridor
o Relieve traffic congestion on area roads (particularly I270)
• The CCT is more than simple north-south transit. It links the existing Town Centers of King Farm and Kentlands – as well as similar communities in Germantown and Clarksburg - with the approved future Town Centers of Crown Farm/Washingtonian Rio and Watkins Mill, and potentially with a Johns Hopkins Shady Grove Life Sciences Center. Collectively, these town centers will provide countless opportunities to live, work, shop, learn, and play without getting in a car. (Note: With the Kentlands and the Lakelands, the City of Gaithersburg pioneered the sort of Transit Oriented Developments that most jurisdictions have been emulating for the past decade. Problem is, we’ve had no “Transit” and thus haven’t seen the full potential of the planning model)
• For the last 45 years, the City of Gaithersburg has taken the CCT into account when making all land use decisions related to its western sections. 100% of the right-of-way within the Gaithersburg city limits is available for construction at no cost to the public.
• Overall, 60% of the entire right-of-way for the CCT is available for construction at no cost to the public.
• Based on year 2030 population and employment forecasts, the CCT is projected to have an average daily boarding in the neighborhood of 30,000 riders.
• MTA is currently studying whether it’s best suited for Light Rail or Bus Rapid Transit. As a Bus Rapid Transit mode, the cost effectiveness ratio meets Federal “New Starts” criteria and is eligible to compete nationally for Federal funding.
It should be noted that, all things being equal, most people when asked would support a Light Rail (LRT) option over BRT. However, all things aren’t equal; LRT is probably 3 or 4 times more expensive. Careful readers of this blog will remember the estimates from Marc Elrich’s BRT plan: Light Rail costs about $75 to $102 million per mile vs. about $20 million per mile for BRT. (In fact, if the Purple Line is built as Light Rail, as is the preference of both Park and Planning and the County Council, and the CCT is built as BRT, then the CCT will probably come in at about ¼ of the cost, based on published estimates.)
All of this isn’t to argue that the Purple Line (as light rail) isn’t a worthy project. It certainly is. But let’s not allow it to suck all of the oxygen from the room. The CCT has enormous merit, and can be made into a reality at a fraction of the cost; both in terms of dollars and political capital.
The Corridor Cities Transitway is good to go!
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Hey! What About Our CCT? What Are We, Chopped Liver?!
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3 comments:
The Corridor Cities Transitway is great and I think you overstate the lack of discussion about it. It is behind the Purple Line in terms of the planning process, but not regional importance. Most people usually group them together when discussing the future of transportation in our county.
That's important, because there are those out there who try to make the CCT and Purple Line an either/or debate, as though we cannot have both.
The other mini-controversy is the exact route. My understanding is that the latest Planning Board drafts for West Gaithersburg run the CCT all over the place, like a squiggly line. The purpose is to increase ridership in that area, partly so development meets traffic requirements. Increasing ridership in the area is a worthy goal, but too many stops in one community will make the transit line too slow for those who would want to ride it from a farther distance, like Clarksburg, or some day Frederick. Though perhaps there is some express BRT plan to mitigate that problem?
So as you push forward with your advocacy, which I wholeheartedly support, I hope you will keep in mind two issues:
1. We need the Purple Line AND the Corridor Cities Transitway.
2. We need a lot of people to ride it, but we also need the stops to make sense so that people will ride it from areas farther out, not just Gaithersburg.
Thanks for writing on this great issue.
-Marc
We need both routes as they serves very different purposes. The purple line is to connect areas not well served by the Metrorail system and move people in an east west urban corridor. It is the line to cross the counties and perhaps take some buses off our roads.
The CCT is to connect neighborhoods spread across suburban areas and bring the residents to the northern connector of the Metrorail system. Its' main job is to get people off the roads and decrease the gridlock so often seen in the inadequate transportation corridors of the northern areas far above the beltway.
For the CCT to work as designed we need it to both move people and to move people more quickly than if they were in their cars. For this reason, every time another stop is added, you may not also increase use. It may well be that there should be express routes that bypass some stops to make the ultimate best use. Of course the jury is still out on whether this will be light rail or a type of BRT as proposed by Council member Elrich, but the facts remain that the Upcounty was developed on the promise of adequate infrastructure - that is still a very long way from reality. Of course, BRT is so much cheaper as mentioned above. The Purple Line gets the press because it has a big and noisy coalition behind it, but that does not mean the the quieter crowd behind the CCT - (count me as one - which is known, if you have read my previous transportation posts here) is any less sincere in the need for this line. The CCT needs a sexier name I guess!
Currently Germantown is looking at considerable commercial development and Clarksburg is facing more build out of its 1994 Master Plan still and both plans are contingernt on adequate transit and commuter stations. Has that meant that these development plans have been stopped becuse this plan was not carried forth - nope! As mentioned Gaithersburg has the land in reserve and the stops and routes have most of the rights of way in place - all that is needed is the collective will voiced appropriately by the necessary forces of state, county and federal governments to give this the green light. Shovel ready - I think so!!
The problem with the CCT is that it doesn't really go thru residental areas. Once it gets past King Farm/Fallsgrove it's mostly office park to office park. People aren't going to get out of their cars to get on a light rail to go to somewhere they could have easily driven to.
If they had put it on a alignment thru more residential neighborhoods it would be easier to support.
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