Following are responses to Delegate Jeff Waldstreicher's (D-18) position on the Purple Line from Ben Ross, President of Action Committee for Transit and Wayne Phyillaier, former Chairman and current Treasurer of the Coalition for the Capital Crescent Trail.
Ben Ross
Del. Jeff Waldstreicher comes up short on the facts about transit.
He says he prefers the same Purple Line alignment as Del. Al Carr and Sen. Rich Madaleno. But these two legislators have endorsed different alternatives. Del. Carr supports a bus rapid transit line on Jones Bridge Road. Sen. Madaleno opposes both BRT and light rail and supports the “Transportation Systems Management” (TSM) alternative. Neither of these alternatives would provide the fast east-west transit connection that we need and that is supported by the vast majority of elected officials in Montgomery and Prince George's Counties.
The rationale offered for Del. Waldstreicher's position – whichever position it is – is that the Corridor Cities Transitway will remove more cars from the roads than the Purple Line. This simply isn't so.
The Purple Line, because very few of its riders will arrive by car, will remove about 14,000 daily trips from the highways. (This compares medium LRT to TSM.) Unfortunately, the corresponding figure has not been calculated for Corridor Cities, but the number will clearly be much smaller. The most recent state study of Corridor Cities, a 2002 DEIS, says that Corridor Cities LRT will only carry about 36,000 riders per day, and nearly half of them will arrive at the transitway by car. Many of the others will be people who will be on buses even if the transitway isn't built.
Del. Waldstreicher claims that almost 90% of Corridor Cities riders will be new to transit (including people who take the transitway instead of driving to Shady Grove). Wrong. Out of 14,000 morning rush-hour LRT riders, 5,000 will be people who otherwise would take MARC to work. Only 8% of Corridor Cities passengers will be new transit riders (comparing LRT to TSM). This 8% doesn't include those who would be riding the Red Line from Shady Grove even without the transitway, but of that group only a minority will drive to the Metro station if the transitway isn't built. Currently around 11,000 passengers get on Metrorail at Shady Grove in the morning rush hour and the station only has 5,745 parking spaces. The proportion of bus-to-rail transfers is already highest in the nearby areas that the transitway will serve, and it will go up in the future because space for new parking is limited.
Construction of Corridor Cities as envisioned in the DEIS will even create new automobile trips. (This is one of the reasons ACT supports a revamped alignment.) The DEIS assumes unlimited free parking at all stations. Free parking that never fills up will attract many commuters who would otherwise take buses from home to Shady Grove.
Del. Waldstreicher claims to agree with two colleagues whose positions are incompatible – unless both positions are really excuses for doing nothing. He rationalizes his position by arguing that the Corridor Cities Transitway will remove more automobile trips from the roads than the Purple Line, when the facts point strongly to the opposite conclusion.
Wayne Phyillaier
Delegate Waldstreicher:
As a resident of Woodside and one of your constituents, I am writing to ask you to give more attention to your stated position to oppose the Purple Line in order to protect the utility of the Capital Crescent Trail.
We have been waiting for the Capital Crescent Trail in North and East Silver Spring for 20 years, and we are still waiting. Nothing could enhance the utility of the CCT more than to complete it through our neighborhoods, and to connect it in downtown Silver Spring to the Red Line Metro station and to the (future) Metropolitan Branch Trail and Green Trail.
The Purple Line would complete the CCT, and would also rebuild the existing Interim CCT as a wider paved trail with grade separated crossings of dangerous Connecticut Ave. and of Jones Mill Road, and create a direct off-road connection to the Rock Creek shared use trail. It is unlikely the CCT will ever be completed through the North and East Silver Spring neighborhoods in your district without the Purple Line, because of the difficulty of getting essential CSXT right-of-way into downtown Silver Spring. It is largely for this reason that the Washington Area Bicyclists Association has endorsed the Purple Line. The importance of completing the CCT for its increased utility is so important that even the Coalition for the Capital Crescent Trail, the leading organization dedicated to protecting the CCT, has decided not to oppose the Purple Line provided good trail design standards are met.
Your position to oppose the Purple Line in order to protect the "utility" of the CCT is not logical, absent a credible plan to complete the CCT without the Purple Line. In fact your position obstructs the best opportunity your District 18 constituents in North and West Silver Spring have of ever seeing the CCT come to their neighborhoods.
Please reconsider your position. I welcome you to come out and walk the future CCT alignment in the eastern part of your District 18 with me, as Al Carr and several other elected officials have done. You may not change your mind about the Purple Line, but you at least owe it to your constituents in North and West Silver Spring to look at the situation in this part of your district before you make such a blanket statement about the "utility" of the future CCT.
Wayne Phyillaier
www.finishthetrail.org
Update: Wayne describes a phone call with the Delegate on his blog.
Monday, February 02, 2009
Rail Advocates Respond to Delegate Waldstreicher
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3 comments:
Adam:
I am an officer on the board with the Coalition for the Capital Crescent Trail, and also with Purple Line NOW. But I was writing to Del. Jeff Waldstreicher as an individual and not on behalf of either organization.
The CCCT board continues to not support or oppose the Purple Line, so long as the trail remains in the corridor and is built to a good standard. The CCCT position is described on the www.cctrail.org website.
Wayne Phyillaier
Wayne Phyillaier states brazenly,
"Nothing could enhance the utility of the CCT more than to complete it through our neighborhoods."
Whose neighborhoods?
Let me be clear that I am not suggesting anything inappropriate in Wayne's focusing on his own neighborhood, and my criticism below should not be read to suggest that there is. Indeed, that's why we have elected officials and politics.
But there is something very wrong with a provincialism that misrepresents reality.
Wayne, in what alternate universe does it "increase the utility of the CCT" to clear-cut its westernmost mile into Bethesda and end its use there as a linear park by 10,000 people weekly (20,000 heads the way the MTA counts).
It doesn't, but you discount that complication to zero because it's inconvenient.
More precisely, how does replacing a tree-lined CCT there -- shared by mothers with strollers, runners, cyclists, commuters, and pedestrians enjoying the park -- with an unshaded paved sidewalk adjacent to high-speed rail lines "enhance the utility of the CCT"?
Again, the claim is ludicrous.
The fact that different neighborhoods have different interests is unremarkable and neutral. But PLN's misrepresentation of hard numbers and reliance on deceptive slogans is not neutral. The support of "Finish the Trail" for that appears to have come to mean Destroy the Trail. That's a pity.
David:
You do not understand the "10,000 people weekly" number that you recite as using the trail. The 10,000 were "uses", NOT individual people. The traffic counter volunteer would count a "use" each time a person would pass by in either direction at the survey location at Elm Street Park. A round trip would count as two uses. 10,000 individuals were never counted to be on the trail in a week. The number of individual people on the trail in a week must be well under the 10,000 uses that were counted, since most individuals make round trips (2 "uses") and many individuals use the trail more than once a week. We have no way to convert the 10,000 weekly uses into the number of people who use the trail each week without knowing the average trail user profile.
Please see the survey protocol, available at the CCCT website, at www.cctrail.org, use the Traffic Survey link on the left menu on the homepage, then look for the link to the pdf file for the full report. Please take the time to understand the traffic survey data before you level charges at others of "misrepresentation of hard numbers".
MTA is estimating that more people will board the Purple Line light rail at the Bethesda station in one day than the "uses" that were counted on the Interim CCT there in a week. With numbers like these, I have no need to misrepresent numbers to show that many more people will use light rail than now use the trail.
And yes, I absolutely believe that if the Interim CCT is completed through the Silver Spring neighborhoods, connected to the MetBranch Trail at the Silver Spring transit center, paved, widened, and given grade separated crossings of busy highways like Connecticut Avenue and 16th Street, it will be both more useful and used by more people than it is now. The population along the future Interim CCT east of Rock Creek is roughly equal to that west of Rock Creek. How can you complete a trail, connect it to other trails, nearly double the number of households with direct access to the trail, and not increase its use?
And finally I find it interesting that arguing to finish the trail to serve the largest number of neighborhoods possible is viewed as provincialism. Doesn't arguing to keep the trail unchanged to best serve only Bethesda neighborhoods better fit the definition?
Wayne Phyillaier
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