County Council President Phil Andrews, who represents Rockville and Gaithersburg, has issued a memo explaining his support for adding two reversible lanes to I-270 and constructing the CCT as bus rapid transit.
Andrews favors adding two reversible lanes to I-270 that would be restricted to carpools, buses, motorcycles and drivers paying a congestion-priced toll. His rationale is that adding two lanes rather than four would save hundreds of millions of dollars and reduce adverse impacts of the project. He favors BRT on the CCT because of lower cost, greater federal competitiveness and the fact that high density in Gaithersburg West, which he opposes, would be necessary to make light rail cost effective.
Two months ago, we identified Andrews as the key voice on the I-270 debate. The fact that he represents a district that is home to much of the I-270 project, the CCT and the Gaithersburg West master plan combined with his previous opposition to the ICC and refusal to take developer contributions makes him difficult for road opponents to target. Now that Andrews has come out in favor of a build option for I-270, the County Council seems likely to debate competing build options rather than arguing over build vs. no-build. The council is scheduled to vote on a recommendation for both I-270 and the CCT tomorrow.
We reprint Andrews' memo to the rest of the council below.
Monday, November 09, 2009
Andrews: Widen I-270, BRT for CCT
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6 comments:
As one who actually goes north on I-270 to Frederick on many mornings, I know we need a widening within the existing right of way. I do wonder though if some of those taking positions against widening ever drive to Frederick in the morning and watch the gridlock coming south. I still think that extending Metro to Germantown with kiss and ride lanes adjacent to I-270 wiykd be a giid idea.
Mr. Ficker appears to be channeling his inner Welshman at the very end of his post. A real Renaissance man.
Jonathan Shurberg
haha. I would also like to see the Red line go to Germantown. The only sensible solution to the I-270 problem is to actually try to get people to quit moving to the NW of Montgomery County. Here we are looking at spending Billions of dollars for those people who don't even live in the county.
There should be concerted effort to get DC and Eastern Montgomery county livable and affordable enough that 270 doesn't need a mega Billion dollar face lift every 25 years.
People are only moving to Frederick and points west because they either can't afford to live in the nice parts of Mont Co, of they don't want to live in the ghetto areas of the county or DC which they could afford.
With that said high quality and high density development is what is needed. And that can only be served properly by a light rail system. A BRT system would be a joke and largely seen as being as much of an accomplishment as "taking your sister to the prom".
We already have buses, if you want to built a BRT, just layout a route on existing roads and give the buses the same tech to change lights green like is used on Emergency Vehicles. Bingo, you have CCT for under a few million.
So i hope the council uses LRT for the CCT.
Another option for getting cars off I-270 is to create jobs in Germantown - which is what the recently approved Germantown Master Plan intends to do.
Some of the cars on 270 are people leaving Germantown because they are the victims of a foreclosure action---about 120 per month in the Germantown zipcode now.
The council voted to exceed the charter property tax limit by 420% giving us a 13.5% increase in property taxes which increase continues each year. So if you want to keep cars which are leaving Germantown, off 270, stop raising property taxes by huge amounts which causes hundreds of foreclosures.
How would 2 reversible lanes be less expensive? Would not that require much more in the way of overpass reconstruction/replacement?
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