Jon Weintraub sent the following letter to the Planning Board Chairman about the propose development at 4 Bethesda Metro Center. See the last paragraph for the question referenced in the title.
June 2, 2008
Chairman Royce Hanson
Montgomery County Planning Board
8787 Georgia Avenue
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Re: 4 Bethesda Metro Center Project
Dear Dr. Hanson:
I am a founding member of the Bethesda Citizens Association, an owner and condo board President at 4821 Montgomery Lane in downtown Bethesda, and live within a few blocks of the Bethesda Metro Center. Both my wife and I ride the metro. I am convinced that the proposed 4 Bethesda Metro Center project is a bad idea for several reasons.
It is contrary to the intent of the sector plan which would need to be amended before anything can be done. When I considered moving to Bethesda, I reviewed the sector plan which calls for public open space where this building is being considered. I did my due diligence, let the builder do the same and request an amendment.
Bethesda traffic is already a problem. This project calls for a re-striping of the garage in order to add 400 additional parking spaces. When you add these 400 spaces to the additional spaces planned in the projects already approved for downtown Bethesda, we are talking about more than 2500 spaces to be added in a few years. I thought the goal was to get people out of cars and riding metro. Why is the Planning Board participating in this charade on the public?? A responsible public entity in the county must address the cumulative impact of the increased number of parking spaces on traffic in downtown Bethesda. We are creating our own BRAC traffic jam in downtown Bethesda, and it is of your causing by approving more and more parking!
The Bethesda Metro Center plaza area could be improved, but a looming office building will take away some of our dwindling open space and cut off air and light that currently makes the plaza a pleasant space for community use. We need to increase open space in Bethesda, not lose it. If the developers want to revitalize the plaza by adding a couple of restaurants, they could remodel the existing three-story food court building which they have purposely left fallow!
The Metro Center area was designed to be open at the center with easy passage for pedestrians. A lot of dedicated citizens, business people and developers spent a lot of time on the Citizens Advisory Committee that drafted guidelines for how they wanted this important area of Bethesda to look. The earlier developers followed the rules and were true to the vision for the Center. But, the 4 Bethesda project would destroy that vision.
It is obvious that what is planned is a dramatic change from what Montgomery County citizens want.
When we first heard of this project early this year, the staff recommended against it. Now the latest staff report supports it with flying colors. We would like to know what changed, and respectfully recommend a postponement so our Association, and undoubtedly others that have been following this project, can get some answers.
Sincerely,
Jon Weintraub,
Bethesda Citizens Association
Thursday, June 05, 2008
A Question for the Planning Board
A Question for Robert Harris
Mr. Harris, thank you for replying to my post on 4 Bethesda Metro Center. I have a question regarding your response.
It is true that the Planning staff saw many virtues in your client's application. (I encourage interested readers to look at the staff's recommendation for approval.) But my coverage of the issue focused on density calculation under the county's Floor Area Ratio (FAR) standard. In responding on that issue, you said:In calculating the density for the building, the developer followed gross tract area provisions of the Zoning Ordinance and approved by the County in 1989. This calculation allows for the inclusion of road rights-of-way attributable to the property when determining FAR. There are many other development projects in Bethesda and around Montgomery County that relied on and used this calculation in determining the density of buildings.
Section 59-A-2.1 of the county's zoning ordinance defines gross tract area, the denominator of FAR, as, "The total area of a lot or parcel of land including any existing or proposed streets, highways, or other land required for public use that is attributable to the lot or parcel dedicated by the owner or a predecessor in title." [Emphasis Added]
On May 29, 2008, the staff of the Montgomery County Planning Board recognized in their staff report that Meridian calculated density precisely as defined in the zoning ordinance.
The above ordinance means that if an owner dedicates (turns over) a portion of his or her property for public use to the county (such as for a roadway), the owner and his or her successors are still entitled to use its area for the purpose of a density calculation for the remaining property. But the owner must at one point have actually owned the dedicated property used for the density calculation.
As the graphic taken from the Planning staff's report shows, half the width of Wisconsin Avenue, Old Georgetown Road, Edgemoor Lane and Montgomery Lane is included in calculating density for the project. (The blue line shows the lot area included in the staff's density calculation.) This implies that at one time, your client or a predecessor owner actually owned half of those streets.
Mr. Harris, can you tell me the date on which your client or a predecessor owner transferred half the width of Wisconsin Avenue or Old Georgetown Road to Montgomery County or the State of Maryland?
Attorney for the Developer Replies
Hoisted from the comments, here are the thoughts of Bob Harris, the attorney for the developer, on the proposed building for Bethesda Metro Center:
4 BETHESDA METRO CENTER will be the epitome of smart growth with its location right at the Metro in the heart of Bethesda.
This landmark building is being proposed in place of the old and dysfunctional 3 story food court building. The Meridian Group owns the food court, the office building behind the food court, The Hyatt Regency Hotel and the parking garage.
Meridian Group’s proposed 4 Bethesda Metro Center will reactivate the plaza area by including plaza-facing restaurants at its base and by renovating the public area. In addition, Meridian Group is spending $2 million to improve the bus transfer station below the plaza.
In calculating the density for the building, the developer followed gross tract area provisions of the Zoning Ordinance and approved by the County in 1989. This calculation allows for the inclusion of road rights-of-way attributable to the property when determining FAR. There are many other development projects in Bethesda and around Montgomery County that relied on and used this calculation in determining the density of buildings.
On May 29, 2008, the staff of the Montgomery County Planning Board recognized in their staff report that Meridian calculated density precisely as defined in the zoning ordinance. The report saluted the proposed project for its Metro-centric location, noting its reliance on mass transit for its future office workers.
Key Points and Merits of the Proposed Development
•One of the busiest Metro stations on the Red Line, also served by 14 Metro bus and Ride-On Routes
•Served by miles of sidewalks and bikeways connecting to the office buildings and the Metro
•Within 10 minute walk of many neighborhoods
•Extremely strong demand in downtown Bethesda for office space close to Metro
•Meridian Group will contribute $2 million to improve uninviting bus transfer station
•Developer will also make a significant investment to enhance the street-level plaza with new landscaping, public art, water features and an outdoor movie stage. The developer will include a program for community events including movies on the lawn for the entire community etc.
•Proposed building will be built on footprint of existing food court
•Does not include any new impervious areas
•Building will be built with a LEED Silver designation
•Enables major Bethesda employer to remain in Bethesda
•The new development is no taller than surrounding buildings
•Opportunity for new restaurants facing the plaza
•No new public infrastructure investment
•Major tax benefits to county and state
•Economic return to Metro to support its operations
•Endorsed by Metro, Washington Smart Growth Alliance, Maryland Department of Transportation, Coalition for Smarter Growth, Sierra Club, Action Committee for Transit, Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development, and various bicycle organizations and local businesses.
Planning Department Knew About Traffic Measurement Flaws, Part Two
Ten years ago, the Planning Board considered whether to raise the county’s Critical Lane Volume (CLV) standards by up to 100 points. This would have allowed developers to escape traffic mitigation requirements near some intersections exceeding the CLV standards in their policy areas. But citizen activists questioned whether allowing CLV standards to rise would result in more congestion since higher CLVs are thought to indicate more congestion. The surprising answer from the Planning Department’s staff was no. Why? The staff found that CLVs were unrelated to real-world traffic delays.
In a 1998 study entitled, “Measuring Congestion and Delay: The Critical Lane Volume Method,” Planning Department staffers Richard C. Hawthorne and Ronald C. Welke looked at how CLVs compared to other measures of congestion. The authors stated:In researching how to measure congestion, the study group selected actual delay as the best measure as perceived by the roadway user. The average stopped delay per vehicle in the peak hour is the measure used in the operational analysis of intersections in the 1994 HCM [Highway Capacity Manual], and therefore provided a quantifiable standard.
The authors then gathered data on CLVs and actual delays from 27 observations taken at 15 highly-congested intersections to see if the two measures correlated. They plotted each of these observations against each other on the chart below:
If the two measures were directly related, the observations would cluster tightly around a line rising from zero on both axes. Instead, the observations form an amorphous blob. The authors found that the coefficient of determination between delay and CLV, also known as R-squared, was only 14%. That means that only 14% of the variation in one measure is explained by changes in the other. The authors concluded, “There is little relationship between delay and CLV.”
So if CLV is such a poor predictor of “the best [congestion] measure as perceived by the roadway user,” why not stop using it? The authors said, “The problem is that delay data is difficult and expensive to gather and thus not readily available.” So because CLVs were shown to be unrelated to delay, the Planning Board raised the allowable CLV standards – a move that was opposed two years later by then-Council Member Ike Leggett. And rather than search for a better data source that truly measured actual traffic congestion, the Planning Department has continued to rely on CLVs. The situation is compounded by the fact that Richard C. Hawthorne, one of the study’s authors, was then and still is now the department’s Chief of Transportation Planning.
This has potentially severe consequences for traffic management in Montgomery County. CLVs are used by Planning staff to form recommendations on traffic mitigation for new developments. Under Local Area Transportation Review (LATR), if an intersection near a new development exceeds the CLV standard for its policy area, a developer is required to pay for traffic mitigation measures. But what if, as the above study holds, CLV is not a reliable predictor of congestion? That means there is a possibility that mitigation measures have been installed at intersections that do not need them, and have not been installed at intersections that desperately require them. And this has been going on for at least ten years even though the Planning Department KNEW that CLVs by themselves were a flawed measure of actual congestion.
Planning’s knowing reliance on a defective congestion measure is difficult to understand and impossible to excuse. But it can be fixed. Perhaps delay was expensive to collect ten years ago, but that was prior to GPS units being available for rent at $5 per day.
Our Planning Department was once the best in the country. It is important to every one of us that it produce the highest-quality information on traffic and development that is humanly possible. We do not deserve the cheapest traffic measurement system, or the quickest and dirtiest, or the one we have been using for a long time merely because the bureaucracy wants to avoid change. We deserve the best. We put our alternative on the table and now it’s the Planning Department’s turn.
The long-forgotten CLV study is not available online, but we reproduce it in its entirety below.
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Connect with the Trail
Thanks to John Barnes for his photo from the Connect with the Trail event hosted on the Capital Crescent Trail by 18 communities and attended by around 400 people according to the Washington Post photo of the event (which does not seem to be online).
The mock up gives an idea of the scope of placing trains on the Trail--all of the trees in the picture would have to go to make way for the light rail. Even if a new small paved trail is constructed next to the light-rail trains, the tree canopy that makes it such a pleasure would be gone. And no, there is not enough room for new trees once construction. The right-of-way is just wide enough to accommodate the trains. You can see more photos of the event at Save the Trail.
Planning Department Knew About Traffic Measurement Flaws, Part One
After last week’s marathon five-part series on traffic measurement, I was prepared to move on to other things. But an anonymous friend of the blog sent me proof that the issues I have been discussing have been known to the Planning Department for at least a decade. An internal study prepared by Planning staff back in 1998 found that Critical Lane Volume (CLV), the measure they use to estimate traffic congestion, has “little relationship” to actual delays. This revelation throws into question the entire system of traffic mitigation used by Montgomery County.
To understand the magnitude of this statistical debacle, we must first review the role played by CLVs in the county’s planning procedures. As I detailed last week, CLVs are hourly sums of conflicting movements (both through and turns) of cars through an intersection. They reflect volume: the more cars pass through an intersection, the more a CLV count will increase. But some of the county’s most congested road corridors have low CLVs because they are too gridlocked for large numbers of cars to get through. Nevertheless, the Planning Department uses CLVs to construct their regular lists of the county’s most-congested intersections and make recommendations for capital improvements.
CLVs play an even more important role when the Planning staff assesses traffic impacts of new developments. One of the review procedures that a new development must pass is Local Area Transportation Review (LATR), an analysis that explores the development’s traffic impact on a handful of nearby intersections. Under LATR, the developer is required to submit a traffic study to the Planning staff estimating the number of new trips that will be created at peak travel hours. The staff then obtains the CLV estimate for the affected intersection(s) and compares it to the standard set for the development’s policy area. If the CLV exceeds the relevant policy area standard, the developer will be required to pay for traffic mitigation measures to offset that impact. These measures might include purchasing Ride-On buses, building bus shelters, installing turn lanes, widening an intersection or other remedies.
The county’s policy area standards provide for acceptable CLVs to be relatively low in rural areas and higher in dense areas. The rationale is that dense areas are likely to have more transit options, especially when they are near Metro stations. As established in last year’s growth policy, the CLV standards by policy area are:
1350: Rural East, Rural West
1400: Damascus
1425: Clarksburg, Gaithersburg, Germantown East, Germantown West, Montgomery Village/Airpark
1450: Cloverly, North Potomac, Olney, Potomac, R&D Village
1475: Aspen Hill, Derwood, Fairland/White Oak
1500: Rockville City
1550: North Bethesda
1600: Bethesda/Chevy Chase, Kensington/Wheaton, Germantown Town Center, Silver Spring/Takoma Park
1800: Bethesda CBD, Friendship Heights CBD, Glenmont, Grosvenor, Rockville Town Center, Shady Grove, Silver Spring CBD, Twinbrook, Wheaton CBD, White Flint
Here’s an example of how this review procedure might work. Suppose a developer wanted to build a commercial project near the corner of Connecticut Avenue and Jones Bridge Road in North Chevy Chase. The Planning Department estimates CLVs for three nearby intersections: Jones Bridge at Manor Road (679 AM, 676 PM), Jones Bridge at Platt Ridge Drive (773 AM, 963 PM) and Jones Bridge at Connecticut (1731 AM, 2017 PM). The policy area standard for Bethesda/Chevy Chase is 1600. While two intersections fall below that standard, Jones Bridge at Connecticut exceeds it in both the morning and evening. This developer would have to agree to a package of mitigation measures to offset the traffic impact on Jones Bridge at Connecticut.
Now suppose the developer wanted to build the same project near the corner of Connecticut Avenue and Knowles Avenue in Kensington. The Planning Department estimates CLVs for three nearby intersections: Plyers Mill Road at Metropolitan Avenue (687 AM, 866 PM), Connecticut at University Boulevard (1335 AM, 974 PM) and Connecticut at Knowles (1433 AM, 1274 PM). The policy area standard for Kensington/Wheaton is 1600. Since none of the intersections exceed the standard, this developer would not be required to pay for mitigation (at least not under LATR).
The county’s traffic mitigation system under LATR is thus based on the premise that CLVs are reliable measures of congestion. When intersections “fail” – that is, they exceed their policy area standard CLV – traffic mitigation is required for new developments. When intersections “pass” – in other words, fall below their standard – traffic mitigation is deemed unnecessary.
But we called into question whether CLVs truly measure congestion all last week. We even revealed a list of four heavily-congested corridors with low CLVs using the Planning Department's own data.
And now we learn that the Planning Department’s own staff confirmed our suspicions ten years ago. More on their long-forgotten findings tomorrow.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Is This Smart Growth?
In April, the Post depicted the battle over a new office tower on the Bethesda Metro station as a struggle between Goliaths: the developer proposing the tower and the surrounding building owners and tenants opposing it. But this dispute is about far more than that. In fact, the Planning Board’s impending decision on this issue may very well change the allowed densities of commercial development all around Montgomery County.
In one sense, the Post is right: both parties to the dispute include commercial property owners. Meridian, which owns the 3-story food court building on the Metro station, would like to replace it with a 16-story office tower. The owners of the Clark Building (just to the north) and the Chevy Chase Bank building (across Wisconsin Avenue) oppose the new tower because it would interfere with their views and sunlight, thereby lowering their property values. But Meridian’s opponents also say that the new tower violates the Bethesda Central Business District Master Plan. Does it?
The key disagreement involves the concept of Floor Area Ratio (FAR), a planning standard designed to regulate building density. FAR is defined as gross building area divided by lot size. So a 10,000-square-foot lot with a FAR designation of 2.0 could have, at most, a 20,000-square-foot building. FAR limits are key components of proposals to limit density and “mansionization” in both Chevy Chase and more broadly throughout the county.
The Bethesda CBD Master Plan sets a FAR limit of 4.0 for an area around the Metro station bounded by Wisconsin Avenue, Old Georgetown Road, Edgemoor Lane, Woodmont Avenue and Montgomery Lane. That area includes not only Meridian’s food court building and the pedestrian plaza but also the Clark Building to the north and the Hyatt Hotel, Lorenz Building and Post Office Building to the south. That FAR limit has been in effect for at least 30 years and has served to balance space in the existing buildings against the open space between them. Indeed, the developers of the existing buildings had to respect that FAR limit when those buildings were originally constructed.
Meridian’s opponents claim that the new 16-story tower would push the FAR limit for the area around the Metro station above 4.0, thereby violating the master plan. But in recommending approval for the project, the Planning staff calculated the FAR limit differently from the opponents. The staff cited a 1989 definition for gross tract area, the denominator of FAR, appearing in the county’s zoning ordinance:Gross tract area: The total area of a lot or parcel of land including any existing or proposed streets, highways, or other land required for public use that is attributable to the lot or parcel dedicated by the owner or a predecessor in title.
This provision was designed to compensate a developer for turning over, or “dedicating” a portion of their land for public use to win approval for a project. If a developer did surrender land for a park, road or other amenity, he or she could still use the land for the purpose of calculating the allowable density of the project under a FAR limit.
But the Planning staff went further. They based a new FAR calculation for the Meridian project in part on a lot size that includes half the width of Wisconsin Avenue, Old Georgetown Road, Edgemoor Lane and Montgomery Lane – the streets that surround the FAR-limited area. (The expanded lot size under the new calculation is indicated by the blue lines on the staff’s map below.) The staff presents no evidence that the owners or former owners of the property ever dedicated or turned over any of these streets to the county as a condition of their properties’ development. How could they when the streets are centuries old?
The Planning staff’s arbitrary inclusion of surrounding street area in density calculations has sweeping consequences for the county. FAR limits are contained in many of the county’s zoning codes. If Meridian is allowed to benefit from this new, more permissible definition of FAR, then property owners elsewhere will want the same right. This will lead to greater density in areas all over the county, including office developments far away from any transit. How smart is that?
If the Planning staff wanted to approve Meridian’s office tower, they could propose amending the Bethesda CBD Master Plan or even writing a new one. But that would take many months of staff time, many thousands of dollars and lots of community input. That would slow down Meridian’s timeline. Instead, the staff has chosen to create a new standard for measuring density that would speed this particular project but create unintended consequences down the road. I have previously written in favor of channeling development into downtowns, but not at the cost of opening a Pandora’s Box of soaring density everywhere else.
Will the Planning Board go along with the staff? We’ll find out after they hold a hearing on the project on June 12.
Monday, June 02, 2008
Thoughts on the Vice-Presidency
By Marc Korman.
I try to keep my posts limited to Maryland politics, but the national political climate is too exciting to ignore. If you are a political junkie, and I suspect you are if you are reading this blog, then you have been talking about who will be the Democrats’ Vice Presidential nominee.
No One Says No
Last weekend, a friend of mine wrote to me upset that his favored Vice Presidential candidate, Jim Webb, had said on Meet the Press that he was not interested. John Edwards has also said he is not interested in the Vice Presidency. There has also been a lot of discussion about whether or not Hillary Clinton would accept the Vice Presidency. Setting aside the question of if the likely nominee, Barack Obama, would even ask any of these people, pundits and junkies are already trying to determine whether these people would or would not accept the job.
Let me share with you a secret about the Vice Presidency: no one says no.
The two people who have had the best reasons to turn down the job were Speaker of the House John Nance Garner in 1932 and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson in 1960.
In 1932, the Democratic Party gathered in Chicago and picked FDR as their nominee. The convention turned to Speaker of the House Garner to serve as the Vice Presidency. Despite his powerful position as Speaker of the House, he gladly accepted the nomination.
When the Democrats gathered in Los Angeles in 1960 to nominate JFK for the presidency, Democrats in the Senate had 65 seats and Lyndon Johnson was the “Master of the Senate.” The Vice Presidency was a step down in terms of power, but he took the job anyway.
The power and prestige of the Vice Presidency has only increased since these two legislative titans abdicated power for it. President Carter’s Vice President, Mondale, brought the office into the West Wing by getting office space in that center of power. Al Gore had weekly lunches with President Clinton, an unprecedented level of access. Dick Cheney’s power and influence in the current Administration is well known.
Not The Best Launching Pad
The political prestige of the Vice Presidency is also, despite some sobering history, quite high. Despite most people’s conception, the only proven path from the Vice-Presidency to the Presidency are circumstances of death or resignation. Nine times in our nation’s history Vice-Presidents have ascended to the Presidency this way.
But short of those death or removal circumstances, only a handful of Vice Presidents have directly succeeded the Presidents they served in elections. These are John Adams, Thomas Jefferson (who defeated the President he served as Vice President under), Martin Van Buren, and George H.W. Bush. Harry Truman was also the next elected President after the President he served as Vice President under, but he had already succeeded to the office.
Other Vice Presidents have tried, and failed, to be elected president. Alben Barkley, Truman’s Vice President, failed to even get nominated by his party. Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, and Al Gore all had more luck in the primaries, but failed to win the general election (conceding for the moment that Al Gore lost the election).
By the numbers, Governors (preferably of large states) have a much better path to the presidency. 11 Presidents held governorships as their last political office before becoming president. 5 presidents held Senate seats as their last political office before the presidency. By comparison, three Presidents served as Secretaries of State as their last political office before the presidency. Another great path to the White House, at least until Eisenhower, was being a general.
My Bet
In case you care, my bet for the Vice Presidency is a middle-aged white guy, probably a Clinton loyalist like Wesley Clark, Ted Strickland, or Evan Bayh. Potentially, you could also see a non-Clinton middle-aged white guy such as Jim Webb. Kathleen Sebelius and Janet Napolitano will probably be spoken about because they are able, female governors, but none bring the defense and foreign policy weight that Obama needs (nor does Strickland). But my bet in 2004 was Tom Vilsack, so that shows how poor my track record is.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
What Might Have Been...
When Senator Patrick J. Hogan (D-39) of Montgomery County stepped down last year, he changed history. We are only now beginning to realize the magnitude of that decision.
Senator Hogan was Vice-Chairman of the Budget and Taxation Committee. Senator Ulysses Currie (D-25) of Prince George's County was the Chairman, so Hogan was next in line. When Hogan retired, a prominent Rockville politician told me, "It's devastating to lose P.J. We are going to get screwed." Shortly afterwards, the Special Session passed an income tax hike that relied disproportionately on revenue from Montgomery County because of its progressive nature. An even greater targeting of Montgomery County taxpayers was the reason much of the county's state delegation fought bitterly, and ultimately unsuccessfully, against the millionaire tax.
Hogan's departure resulted in the promotion of Senator Edward Kasemeyer (D-12) to the Vice Chairman position. Longtime Montgomery County Delegate Marilyn Goldwater (D-16) left around the same time, prompting this observation from the Gazette:The leadership changes leave Montgomery, the state’s largest jurisdiction, with a single committee chairman in each chamber and House Majority Leader Kumar P. Barve (D-Dist. 17) of Rockville. Baltimore city boasts three chairmen, three vice chairmen and the majority whips in each chamber; Prince George’s County has three chairmen and one vice chairman in the General Assembly.
Montgomery County's committee chairs include the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee (held by District 16 Senator Brian Frosh) and the House Ways and Means Committee (held by District 20 Delegate Sheila Hixson).
Senator Currie appears to be in some trouble. If he falls, Kasemeyer, who represents Baltimore and Howard Counties, will be in line to become the next Senate Budget and Taxation Committee Chairman. That is good news for a Governor who is targeting swing areas in Baltimore County for his re-election. But it is bad news for Montgomery County. With a Chairman Hogan, Montgomery would have been better able to resist humiliations like this. Instead, the county's politicians will be left to ponder what might have been.
Friday, May 30, 2008
A Better Way to Measure Traffic, Part Three
In Part Two, we listed four corridors with high volumes and low speeds. Today, we list four corridors with modest volumes and low speeds. While these corridors perform differently than the ones we listed yesterday, they may be even more clogged. Several of these roadways contain chains of gridlocked intersections that collectively cut down on auto movement.
The Worst Modest Volume, Low Speed Corridors
These corridors have very low speeds but do not have critical lane volumes that exceed policy area standards (at least not in the evening). The relatively modest volumes combined with the crawling speeds suggest that cars have an extremely difficult time squeezing through these gridlocked areas.
Colesville Road, 16th Street to Spring Street
Test Run #1
5/23/07 at 5:06 PM, Eastbound
0.77 Miles in 7.87 Minutes, 5.9 MPH
Test Run #2
5/23/07 at 7:34 PM, Eastbound
0.66 Miles in 5.57 Minutes, 7.1 MPH
PM Critical Lane Volumes
Colesville at East-West Highway: 1061 (Recorded on 6/2/04)
Colesville at Georgia: 1049 (Recorded on 9/26/06)
Colesville at Spring: 1248 (Recorded on 9/20/06)
Notes: This corridor is located in Downtown Silver Spring and runs past the Metro Station.
Frederick Road, Chestnut Street to Montgomery Village Avenue
Test Run #1
5/15/07 at 5:47 PM, Northbound
0.54 Miles in 4.97 Minutes, 6.5 MPH
Test Run #2
5/15/07 at 6:15 PM, Northbound
0.67 Miles in 5.85 Minutes, 7.1 MPH
PM Critical Lane Volumes
Frederick at Chestnut: 1204 (Recorded on 9/30/04)
Frederick at Odenhal: 1372 (Recorded on 11/10/04)
Frederick at Perry: 974 (Recorded on 3/10/04)
Frederick at Montgomery Village: 1427 (Recorded on 5/2/05)
Policy Area CLV Standard: 1450
Notes: This corridor runs near Lake Forest Mall and the I-270/Quince Orchard Road interchange.
Georgia Avenue, Prince Phillip Drive to Olney-Sandy Spring Road
Test Run
5/30/07 at 5:32 PM, Northbound
0.97 Miles in 5.17 Minutes, 11.3 MPH
PM Critical Lane Volumes
Georgia at Prince Phillip: 1145 (Recorded on 3/6/07)
Georgia at King William: 1095 (Recorded on 12/9/03)
Georgia at Olney-Sandy Spring: 1251 (Recorded on 3/15/07)
Policy Area CLV Standard: 1450
Notes: This corridor is just south of the Olney commercial district.
Georgia Avenue, Spring Street to Dennis Avenue
Test Run #1
6/4/07 at 5:15 PM, Northbound
0.46 Miles in 8.32 Minutes, 3.3 MPH
Test Run #2
6/4/07 at 5:15 PM, Northbound
1.46 Miles in 6.67 Minutes, 13.1 MPH
PM Critical Lane Volumes
Georgia at Spring: 1080 (Recorded on 11/17/05)
Georgia at Seminary: 1374 (Recorded on 4/7/05)
Georgia at Beltway: 1206 (Recorded on 11/20/03)
Georgia at Forest Glen: 1377 (Recorded on 6/6/07)
Georgia at Dennis: 1437 (Recorded on 6/7/07)
Policy Area CLV Standard: 1600
Notes: This corridor includes Montgomery Hills, the Beltway/Georgia Avenue interchange and the Intersection of Death. The Planning Department’s staff witnesses this congestion every day because their headquarters is at the southern tip of the corridor. A redesign of Georgia Avenue between 16th Street and Forest Glen Road is the top county priority for state projects requiring planning. The state announced it would undertake planning for this corridor back in January.
These four corridors, as well as the four listed yesterday, present the most urgent and intractable traffic problems in Montgomery County. The Planning Department should be able to dig into these corridors in great detail if they adopt the measurement system that I recommended in Part One. Some of the questions that need to be answered are:
1. Is some level of congestion actually desirable? Heavily populated down-county areas like Bethesda and Silver Spring have large numbers of pedestrians. Policies that speed cars may cause increases in pedestrian accidents.
2. Are there any transit improvements that could ease the congestion? Five of the eight corridors (Wisconsin, Rockville Pike, Colesville, and two on Georgia) are already near Metro stations. Could some of the traffic be headed to areas beyond Metro’s reach? If it is, Metro extensions (including bus rapid transit) may be warranted. US-29 would be a particularly good candidate.
3. What does this information mean for the Purple Line? Four of the eight corridors (Wisconsin, Connecticut, Colesville and Georgia) would be along or close to the route for the Purple Line. But the congestion measurements we have now apply to north-south traffic during evening rush. Would the Purple Line really be effective in alleviating north-south traffic? Perhaps a GPS test drive should be held on East-West Highway, which is the major auto connection between Bethesda and Silver Spring. If its congestion level matches that found in these eight bad corridors, that would strengthen the case for a direct transit connection.
Dear readers, never in the history of Maryland blogdom (or as far as I know, the mainstream media) has anyone suggested such a radical redesign of our traffic measurement system as I have. The Planning Department’s over-reliance on critical lane volumes without context has produced an incoherent, unreliable measurement system that is plagued with bad data. If we cannot correctly diagnose our problems, we will never arrive at a solution. Our current economic downturn will not last forever. When it ends, development will resume and traffic will get even worse. High gas prices will increase our cost of sitting in congestion. The time to re-evaluate, improve and plan for the inevitable is now.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
FBI Raids Home of Senator Ulysses Currie
The Post has details on the raid here. While we do not yet know the reasons for the raid, or even if Senator Currie is the target of of an investigation, this event is hugely significant. As Chairman of the Senate's Budget and Taxation Committee, Currie is one of the most powerful politicians in Annapolis. He has also been a rumored potential successor to Senate President Mike Miller. If Currie falls, many chairs will be rearranged in the State House.
A Better Way to Measure Traffic, Part Two
In Part One, we discussed how GPS-based traffic measurement could work on a county-wide basis. The Planning Department has already done test drives on several corridors, plotting out distances, times and speeds in evening rush hour. When combined with critical lane volume (CLV) measurements, we can get a sense of which corridors are really the worst rush hour drives in Montgomery County.
In general, there are two types of problematic corridors. First, there are stretches of major roads characterized by high volumes and low speeds. Second, there are stretches characterized by modest volumes and low speeds. The modest-volume corridors are no less troubled than the high-volume corridors. In fact, some corridors may record lower volumes because chains of clogged intersections prevent large numbers of cars from getting through.
Using Planning’s preliminary data, we have identified four high-volume and four modest-volume corridors that all recorded low travel speeds. These are the true problem areas in Montgomery County, not the “most-congested intersection” list that is based on flawed, one-day CLV estimates.
Today, we report the worst high-volume corridors and tomorrow we report the worse modest-volume corridors. Unlike the Planning staff, we do not rank them; I am sure Wisconsin Avenue drivers are just as miserable as Georgia Avenue drivers like myself. For each corridor, we report the date, time and results for the test drives as well as any CLV measurements taken in its component intersections. We also report the policy area standard CLV. Any intersections with CLVs measured above their policy area standard are rated as “failing” by the Planning Department.
The Worst High Volume, Low Speed Corridors
The following four corridors are characterized by high auto volume (often exceeding allowable policy area standards) and low speeds. Lots of cars can and do get through these areas, but the experience is agonizing.
Connecticut Avenue, Bradley Lane to the Beltway
Test Run
6/4/07 at 6:20 PM, Northbound
2.01 Miles in 19.6 Minutes, 6.1 MPH
PM Critical Lane Volumes
Connecticut at Bradley: 1577 (Recorded on 3/17/04)
Connecticut at East-West Highway: 1829 (Recorded on 3/29/06), Exceeds Standard
Connecticut at Jones Bridge: 2017 (Recorded on 6/6/07), Exceeds Standard
Connecticut at Beltway: 1245 North, 1100 South (Recorded on 3/9-3/10/04)
Policy Area CLV Standard: 1600
Notes: This is the major commuter route between Chevy Chase, Kensington and Downtown D.C.
Georgia Avenue, Arcola Avenue to Randolph Road
Test Run
6/4/07 at 5:15 PM, Northbound
0.69 Miles in 8.03 Minutes, 5.2 MPH
PM Critical Lane Volumes
Georgia at Arcola: 1471 (Recorded on 2/23/06)
Georgia at Randolph: 1910 (Recorded on 2/23/06), Exceeds Standard
Policy Area CLV Standard: 1600
Notes: Georgia at Randolph had the second-highest AM CLV in the county. A grade-separated interchange at this intersection is the county’s top priority among state construction projects. The state announced it would fund the project in January 2008. The Glenmont Metro Station is just to the north.
Rockville Pike, Congressional Lane to Edmonston Drive
Test Run #1
6/7/07 at 5:42 PM, Northbound
0.69 Miles in 4.62 Minutes, 9.0 MPH
Test Run #2
6/7/07 at 6:02 PM, Northbound
0.46 Miles in 2.93 Minutes, 9.4 MPH
PM Critical Lane Volumes
Rockville Pike at Congressional: 1538 (Recorded on 6/3/04), Exceeds Standard
Rockville Pike at Edmonston: 1590 (Recorded on 10/13/04), Exceeds Standard
Policy Area CLV Standard: 1500
Notes: This corridor is just north of the Twinbrook Metro Station and is adjacent to the Woodmont Country Club.
Wisconsin Avenue, Battery Lane to Cedar Lane
Test Run
5/12/05 at 4:52 PM, Northbound
1.24 Miles in 11.0 Minutes, 6.8 MPH
PM Critical Lane Volumes
Wisconsin at Battery: 1745 (Recorded on 2/8/07)
Wisconsin at Jones Bridge: 1536 (Recorded on 12/22/05)
Wisconsin at Cedar: 1996 (Recorded on 9/7/06), Exceeds Standard
Policy Area CLV Standard: 1600 (1800 at Battery)
Notes: This corridor extends from the northern edge of Downtown Bethesda through the National Naval Medical Center and is just south of the Beltway interchange. The extremely-congested, high-volume traffic provides a strong justification for BRAC-related transportation work.
Tomorrow, we will look at corridors with modest Critical Lane Volumes and slow speeds.
On Political Pulse
Maryland State Delegates Brian Feldman (from District 15, which is the Potomac Gaithersburg area) and Tom Hucker (from District 20, which is the Silver Spring, Takoma Park area) will be on the 'Political Pulse' TV Show on:
Thursday, May 29th at 9:00 p.m.; and
Tuesday, June 3rd at 9:30 p.m.
Issues that will be discussed include:
1. How the substantial raises given by Montgomery County to its employees are viewed by State Legislative leaders in Annapolis and what impact the raises might have during the process wherein it is determined how much in state funds is paid to Montgomery County and other Maryland counties;
2. The effect of the recently-passed 'millionaires tax' on Montgomery County residents;
3. Whether slots would be a less burdensome way to raise revenues from the perspective of Montgomery County residents (as compared to additional taxes); and
4. The Purple Line and the Corridor Cities Transit-way (proposed mass transit projects in Montgomery County) and whether there are enough funds to build either or both of the projects.
Political Pulse is on Channel 16 in Montgomery County.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
A Better Way to Measure Traffic, Part One
In our previous two posts, we outlined the county’s reliance on Critical Lane Volume (CLV) to measure traffic and identify problem intersections. We identified two problems with this system. First, the county’s measurement of CLV at each intersection only once every four years or so guaranteed the proliferation of fluky measurements. Second, CLV has different meanings under different circumstances. A low CLV could mean few cars or it could mean that few cars are able to move through an intersection due to excessive congestion.
There is a better way to measure traffic than this.
Any longitudinal data system must accomplish three things. First, the users must have reality-based data that actually measure what the users intend to measure. Second, there must be large numbers of observations to build an adequate sample size. Third, identical procedures must be applied over and over again in different conditions to isolate out their effects. The Planning Department’s current traffic measurement system has none of these characteristics.
But there is hope for something better that is buried deep within the planners’ own documents. In the appendix to the 2008 Highway Mobility Report, the staff has added something new: actual test runs by cars equipped with GPS devices on major corridors in rush hour. On pages 69-82, the staff shows the results of rush hour test drives on Wisconsin Avenue, Rockville Pike, Frederick Road, Georgia Avenue, Norbeck Road, Colesville Road, Columbia Pike, Connecticut Avenue, Clopper Road and Great Seneca Highway. Yes, these drives were only taken on one day each in May 2005, May 2007 or June 2007. But the results are very informative – you can actually see which intersections cause low speeds, and which stretches of these corridors have free flow.
Here is the kind of simulation that reflects reality. People do not drive through problem intersections once every four years, as the CLVs measure. They drive through long, clogged corridors every day, often during rush hour. The challenge is how to collect more of this data so it is not subject to outlier results determined by bad weather, accidents or other unusual conditions.
The solution is to draw on the hundreds of thousands of real live drivers who navigate this county every day. The Planning Department should offer county residents temporary GPS units for their cars in return for a payment of $100 per month. (That is the equivalent of one to two weeks of free gas!) These units would record all driving information and store them in internal memory for download upon return to the staff. Planning could rotate the units among different residents, perhaps 50-100 different people every month. After one year, Planning would have an unrivaled database of tens of thousands of actual drives under every condition imaginable. Planning would be able to judge the performance of any major roadway in the county under any weather condition, on any day, at any time of the day or night. Additionally, matching this traffic data with the police department’s online traffic accident database would enable planners to see the impact of auto collisions on roadway performance for every major route in the county.
How much would all of this cost? GPS units rent for as little as $5 per day and Planning could negotiate a better deal for lots of them. If Planning allocated them to 50 different residents each month and paid them $100 per month, the total rental and payment cost would be $151,250 per year. If Planning allocated them to 100 residents, the cost would be $302,500. Add on the cost of one full-time employee to monitor the program and the cost would be roughly $300,000 to $450,000 per year. The Planning Department’s total budget is approximately $19 million and it is currently suffering from cuts.
But Planning does not necessarily have to request lots of extra money. Why not pay for this, at least in part, by cutting back on CLV measurement? As we have seen, critical lane volume estimates taken in isolation do not by themselves provide reliable measurements of traffic. Do we really need 422 fluky, seldom-updated CLVs, many of which are taken at tertiary intersections with low volume? Why not reduce the number of intersections measured by CLVs and use the money for reality-based GPS measures instead?
Until the Planning Department moves to this sort of system, its existing test drive data provides a tantalizing peek at how a real traffic measurement system could work. In Part Two, we will begin looking at some of the new data Planning has already gathered.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Council Is Back To Full Strength
County Executive Ike Leggett looking on.
Didn't beat WaPo on the news on Don Praisner's swearing-in. But we do have pictures, something they do not have.
with his signature in the official register.
Besides the normal list of Praisner supporters and his family, several other elected officials were in attendance: Council President Mike Knapp; Council Vice President Phil Andrews; Councilman George Leventhal; and former Delegate Adrienne Mandel.
Why the Delay?
The reason for not immediately swearing in Don Praisner after he defeated Mark Fennel in the general election on May 13 was the Board of Elections (BOE) had to certify the elections and they could not do that until the final absentees (those from overseas) were counted on Friday.
The final official tally was Praisner 6,123 (66.2%), Fennell 3,092 (33.4%) with 32 (0.3%) Write-Ins. The 9,247 votes were less than the combined votes in the two party primaries of 9,577 (GOP 1,919 and Dems 7,658).
While the BOE does not list precinct results by party the mid day counts by the MCDCC had under 7% of the voters being Non-affiliated (NA) with either party. NAs are around 20% of the district. Which would explain the turnout not being higher than the primary on April 15. For a detailed analysis of the Democratic primary look at Adam's post.
Only twenty-one days until our next special election, to replace Congressman Al Wynn with either Democratic nominee Donna Edwards or Republican nominee Peter James. Even for a political junkie, I look forward to have nothing to not having a campaign on the horizon. Hurry up June 18!!!
Defining Deviancy Down at the Intersection of Death, Part Two
In Part One, we described how Montgomery County’s Planning Department relies on Critical Lane Volume (CLV) to estimate congestion at intersections across the county. Any statistical system that relies on just one measure, taken very infrequently, with little collaborating information is prone to fluky data. And that has happened at the Georgia Avenue-Forest Glen Road intersection, lovingly referred to by its neighbors as the Intersection of Death.
According to the Planning Department, this intersection went from being the most congested in the county to falling below the county’s allowable congestion standard for its policy area. Why? Because its morning CLV declined by 26% between surveys taken on 8/28/03 and 6/6/07. They would like us to believe that one-quarter of our traffic congestion has magically disappeared even though there have been no major engineering changes at the intersection. Similarly, only four of the ten most-congested intersections reported in 2006 have returned to the current 2008 list. Have the six intersections that fell off the list been “fixed,” surpassed by others that have become worse or simply fallen victim to bad CLV measurements?
While the Gazette covered our objections to traffic measurement at Georgia and Forest Glen, they spent a bit more time discussing the intersection’s infamous nickname than exploring the underlying data issues. I presented the following case study of the intersection to the Planning Board two weeks ago. Just looking at this one intersection calls into question the statistical validity of how traffic is measured in this county.
*****
Testimony of Adam Pagnucco
Montgomery County Planning Board, 5/15/08
Item 8: Highway Mobility Report 2008
Good morning. My name is Adam Pagnucco. I am Chairman of the Forest Estates Community Association's Crossing Georgia Committee as well as my civic association's incoming county government liaison. Today I offer my observations on the planning staff's new Critical Lane Volume (CLV) estimates for the Georgia Avenue-Forest Glen Road intersection.
In the 2006 Highway Mobility Report, the Georgia-Forest Glen intersection was ranked as the most congested in the county with an AM CLV of 2106 and a PM CLV of 1643. Those counts were taken on 8/28/03. No one in the surrounding area was surprised. What was surprising were the new CLV counts taken on 6/6/07: an AM CLV of 1553 and a PM CLV of 1377. If those counts are to be believed, then congestion has decreased at this intersection by 26% in the morning and 16% in the evening in just four years.
Now let's remember the location of Georgia at Forest Glen. It is adjacent to the Forest Glen Metro station, one block away from the Beltway interchange and three blocks away from Holy Cross Hospital, the second-biggest hospital in the state. Any car coming from the north to the Beltway must pass through it. Most vehicles heading to Holy Cross, and all of them coming from the Beltway, must pass through it. And hundreds of pedestrians cross the street every day to use Metro. No other intersection in the county, and possibly the state, has this combination of characteristics.
The principal change in recent traffic conditions around the intersection was the 2005 expansion of Holy Cross Hospital. That expansion, the biggest in the hospital's history, added 210,000 square feet of new space to the facility. The hospital reports that it had 128,591 visitors in 2003 and 157,573 visitors in 2007, a 23% increase after the expansion was finished. But now the hospital claims that it is bursting at the seams and it intends to expand again. Its plan calls for a new parking garage that would hold 500-700 more cars, which the hospital says it needs because cars are stacking up in its existing garage. Given the phenomenal increases in patient visits and the hospital's need for another expansion so soon after its last one, how can anyone believe that traffic congestion at Georgia and Forest Glen has really declined by double digits in just four years?
But there is more. In 1995, the planning staff estimated CLV at Georgia and Forest Glen at 1511 in the morning and 1530 in the afternoon. If the 2007 CLV is to be believed, then current traffic congestion is only 3% worse in the morning and is actually 10% less in the evening than it was in 1995. That's right, we are told that evening rush has actually improved by 10% over the last 12 years. Considering the dramatic redevelopment of Downtown Silver Spring and the residential construction upcounty in that period of time, that is extremely difficult to believe.
Last December, I showed you our video of conditions at the intersection. Remember the sight of cars stacked up towards Wheaton as far as the eye can see? Remember the constant illegal left turns? Remember how the pedestrians had to maneuver past cars stopped in the crosswalk? Of course you remember and there is no need to show you that chaos again. As I recall, that video provoked quite a reaction in this room. Many things were said at the time, but I do not remember anyone saying, "Hmmm… now that intersection has great traffic flow!"
Perhaps the issue here is how CLVs are used for purposes of analysis. Critical Lane Volume is after all a volume measure. As the number of cars proceeding through an intersection goes up, the CLV goes up. Now imagine a perfectly gridlocked intersection. No cars can move. What would its CLV be? Exactly zero. After all, no cars would be able to get through. Is it possible that the Georgia-Forest Glen intersection's declining CLV indicates more congestion and not less?
Members of the Planning Board, it is highly unlikely that you will find anyone in my neighborhood who believes that the biggest expansion in the history of the state's second-biggest hospital has led to less traffic congestion over the last four years. It is equally unlikely that you will find anyone who believes that afternoon traffic flow on Georgia Avenue has actually improved since the mid-1990's. I hope that you will ask your staff to explain how their data contradicts the facts I have cited today along with plain common sense. I for one would like to hear their answer.
*****
Tomorrow, we will show you a better way to measure traffic.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Defining Deviancy Down at the Intersection of Death, Part One
Imagine if we measured the American economy by estimating Gross Domestic Product once every four years. Forget about measuring other things like employment, unemployment and inflation. And forget about taking monthly or quarterly measurements.
“That’s ridiculous!” you would yell. “How would we understand the different trends in the components of the economy? How would we track the ups and downs? How would we get a complete picture of what’s going on?”
And you’d be right. But guess what: that is how we measure traffic in Montgomery County.
Montgomery County’s Planning Department measures traffic by calculating Critical Lane Volume (CLV) at each of 422 intersections in the county. CLV is the maximum hourly sum of conflicting auto movements, both through traffic and turns, proceeding through an intersection. (You can see how the measurement is constructed on page 6-26 of the 2006 Edition of the Mass Highway Manual.) CLV is dependent on volume. An intersection without cars would have a CLV of zero. As traffic picks up, CLV rises. But in a perfectly gridlocked intersection, no cars would be able to move and CLV would go back down to zero.
The Planning Department measures CLVs at each intersection by sending out traffic surveyors to count cars in both the morning and evening rush. But since Planning has limited resources, the surveyors can only appear at each of the intersections every four years or so. What if the weather is bad? What if there’s an accident nearby? Too bad, the survey results are in. Whatever happened on that one day is assumed to be the case on every day for at least the next four years.
Some of these measurement days are a bit unusual. Of the 422 reported CLVs in the 2008 Highway Mobility Report, 22 were taken in December, 23 were taken in January, 30 were taken in February and 3 were taken in August. Are these representative months of the year for driving conditions? Also, 29 of the CLVs were taken in 2003, 14 were taken in 2002 and 6 were taken in 2001. Can these measurements really be compared to estimates made in 2006 and 2007?
Moreover, the Planning Department assumes that a high CLV means high congestion. In fact, a high CLV means an intersection is carrying a lot of traffic. Remember – it rises with volume. An extremely congested intersection is one where it takes a long time to get through. In that case, the CLV may actually be quite low. How about measuring average delay times or average speeds? The Planning Department reports average speeds in travel runs taken on MD-355, Georgia Avenue, US-29, Norbeck Road, Connecticut Avenue, Clopper Road and Great Seneca Highway in 2005 and 2007, but those runs were one-day spot-checks covering only a fraction of the county’s intersections. Nevertheless, these travel runs provided valuable data and we will cover them in more detail later this week.
So why should you care whether Planning measures traffic badly? For one thing, an intersection’s CLV plays a role in determining whether developers building nearby will have to pay for traffic mitigation measures. If your CLV was measured on a day in which traffic was abnormally low, it might fall below the allowable traffic standard in that policy area. That would make it easier for a developer to escape responsibility for mitigating the effects of any new traffic generated by additional construction.
In Part Two, we’ll look at how the county’s faulty traffic measures have played out at the intersection of Georgia Avenue and Forest Glen Road, also known as the Intersection of Death.
Traffic Week on Maryland Politics Watch
Dear readers, I am going to tell you something you already know: traffic congestion has reached catastrophic levels in Montgomery County. We measure it badly. We do not plan around it very well. But we can do better.
In a special five-part series, MPW offers an unprecedented look at our county's traffic measurement system. Today and tomorrow, we look at how we currently measure traffic and why we come up short. On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we propose an alternative measurement system and preview its results. Our recommendations are radical. They are sure to be resisted by the county's Planning Department. But radical problems demand radical solutions. Our plight is truly dire. Let the timid flee, let the entrenched bureaucracy fossilize and let the naysayers be bound and gagged! None of them will be spared from Traffic Week on Maryland Politics Watch.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Montgomery County Planning Department Announces Cuts
For those who doubt that the County Council mandated actual cuts in its recently passed budget, the Montgomery County Planning Department is providing a sobering rebuttal. In a recent press release that we are reproducing below, Planning detailed the activities it will have to scale back to accommodate a 3% cut in its budget.
The Planning Department's work is vital for shaping the future of the county. They have an excellent, professional staff that struggles to keep up with the work load generated by servicing a county of nearly a million residents. If this year's cuts are followed by more in the future, their ability to update master plans, recommend traffic mitigation measures and assess the impacts of new developments will be severely impaired.
May 23, 2008
With Fewer Funds in 09, Montgomery County Planning Department Will Cut Traffic Relief Studies, Environmental Protection Analyses, Other Programs
SILVER SPRING, MD –The fiscal year 2009 budget approved yesterday by the Montgomery County Council includes $18.9 million for the Montgomery Planning Department, approximately a 3 percent cut from the previous year when factoring in mandatory spending increases.
Facing fewer funds, the Planning Board during budget discussions with the County Council identified services and programs that will be cut starting July 1.
On that list is the county’s oldest master plan – Westbard, on the western edge of the growing Bethesda area – that planners had targeted for an update. Master plans help guide development, set zoning, establish transportation improvements, lay out pedestrian routes and establish environmental protection measures. The Westbard community, surrounding River Road and Little Falls Parkway, will have to wait at least a year.
Another plan to be delayed is Battery Lane, a small neighborhood on Bethesda’s northern edge, where density, the expansion of the National Naval Medical Center and affordable housing are particularly important. The Council had asked the department to address those issues in a sector plan.
Last fall, the Council approved the 2007 Growth Policy, a biannual law that helps match transportation, schools and other public services to new development. At that time, the Council mandated aggressive new requirements for developers to mitigate traffic impacts in a number of innovative ways, including mass transit. That requires planners to even more carefully analyze every development plan for congestion relief strategies. With the funding cut, planners will not be able to fully carry out the Council’s intent, which they had hoped to achieve with additional transportation staff. Instead, for example, transportation planners might recommend that a developer fund construction of a new turning lane to alleviate traffic concerns posed by new growth rather than recommending more complex, long-term solutions like mass transit. In addition, planners will not be able to conduct much-needed analyses of countywide parking needs and traffic congestion.
Environmental protection initiatives also will be delayed or abandoned. A state-required plan to analyze the county’s long-term water supply and quality will be delayed by at least a year, while a proposal to study the county’s energy needs to recommend strategies to reduce demand and generate energy will be scrapped.
County residents used to visiting the department’s public information counter to learn about zoning, development plans and community master plans may find the counter closed. Planners expect to limit service hours given dwindling staff.
The fiscal shortfall mostly affects personnel, which makes up 90 percent of the Planning Department’s budget. The funding reduction forces the department to reduce staff. Unable to fund positions, the department will freeze vacancies resulting from retirements and resignations in hopes of shrinking the workforce and avoiding layoffs. In addition, for the first time in many years, the department will not offer paid summer internships to college students.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Bills in Honor of Jane Lawton Signed into Law
On Thursday morning, Gov. Martin O'Malley signed two bills passed in memory of Del. Jane Lawton. As Sen. Rich Madaleno explained:The Jane E. Lawton Loan Program will provide eligible homeowners with access to low interest loans to improve the energy efficiency of their homes through the installation of new windows, insulation, and heating equipment. The Jane Lawton Farm-to-School Program will provide public schools with the ability to buy local produce for school meals.
Both are excellent programs on issues Jane cared about and was working hard on before her death towards the end of last year.
Seated in the photo are Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, Senate President Mike Miller, Gov. Martin O'Malley, and House Speaker Mike Busch. Standing in the photo are Sen. Jennie Forehand, Del. Heather Mizeur, Karen McManus, Del. Anne Kaiser, Sen. Rich Madaleno, Steve Lawton, Lisa Jackson, Kathleen Lawton-Trask, Stephanie Lawton, and myself.
Katie Madaleno Hodge Signs Her First Bill
Governor Katie Madaleno Hodge Signs Her First Bill into LawSen. Rich Madaleno's daughter got some practice signing bills into law. Katie for Governor in 2034!
Is the Washington Post Credible on Labor Issues?
Last Sunday, a Washington Post editorial slammed Montgomery County’s recently-passed budget as full of “sweetheart deals” for the county’s public employee unions. The week before, the Post ran an article by Ann Marimow titled “Union Influence Sways Budget Talks” during the middle of the County Council’s budget deliberations. And when the Post endorsed labor-backed Nancy Navarro during the District 4 County Council special election, they offered one caveat:
Ms. Navarro makes no bones about her alliance with labor, but we hope she will be sufficiently independent-minded to see that annual pay increases of 8 percent are simply not sustainable in the current budgetary environment.These may not be disconnected events. In fact, they could be a product of the Washington Post’s long, contentious history with its own employees’ labor unions. Today we expose that history for our readers.
The Post’s labor difficulties date back at least to the early 1970s. At the time, two craft unions – the printers (who set type for the paper) and the pressmen (who ran the printing machines) – dominated the newspaper’s physical production. They occasionally abused their power with job actions, including a wildcat (unsanctioned) strike in 1973. The Post decided to fight back by introducing a new set of labor-saving photographic composition equipment, secretly training non-union workers to operate it in an Oklahoma City “scab school.” In 1975, the Post installed their new equipment in their headquarters, causing the printers and pressmen to walk out. But the pressmen sabotaged the new machines, set fire to one of them and viciously beat a manager on their way out, thus igniting a 139-day strike. Keeping the paper running with non-union labor, the Post eventually settled with the printers and permanently replaced the pressmen, crushing the latter union once and for all. Management’s experience with the violent, Luddite pressmen has shaped its labor philosophy ever since. (You can read accounts of this infamous strike here, here and here.)
Among the concessions secured by the Post from the rest of its now-intimidated unions was a two-tier wage scale. Current employees were given raises but the entry-level scale was not changed. As a result, new employees were often paid less than veterans even though they occupied the same positions and did the same work. Management made things worse by bumping up some new workers to veteran scale while not doing the same for others, a practice perceived by the workforce as reeking of favoritism. And the new, lower-paid workers were more likely to be minorities, adding a racial element to the tension.
In 1987, the Post declared a bargaining impasse with their reporters in the Newspaper Guild after 16 months of negotiation over this issue and others. Guild members retaliated with a “byline strike” during which they refused to allow their bylines to be used in their articles. The Post ignored the tactic and unilaterally imposed its terms on the union. The Newspaper Guild launched two more byline strikes in 2002 and was able to slightly improve the Post’s offer in that bargaining round.
The Post’s latest labor dispute involves its production workers, who are represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA). When CWA’s contract expired in May 2003, the Post insisted on withdrawing from the union’s defined benefit pension plan. After five years of stalled bargaining and no pay increases, CWA struck back with a publicity campaign. The Post has also not renewed a labor agreement covering 26 electricians that expired last December.
Do the Post’s recurring labor problems affect its coverage? Ann Marimow’s article describing union influence over the county’s budget may have appeared during the critical final week of the County Council’s deliberations, but a few of her sources tell me that it was being prepared for at least two weeks prior. Some political actors in Rockville suspect that the timing of the article’s release (which is not controlled by Ms. Marimow) was deliberately designed to shape the outcome of the County Council’s budget decisions. That suspicion may not be justified but the very fact that it is regarded as credible at all is a big problem for the Post.
The Post’s tempestuous union history calls into question its impartiality on labor reporting, especially with regards to local labor issues. I am not an impartial source on labor myself. As a result, I frequently disclose to MPW readers: “The author is the Assistant to the General President of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters.” Our readers should consider that fact when they read my reporting and opinion. Perhaps the Washington Post should issue a disclosure statement after every one of its articles on labor issues such as, “The Post is a unionized employer and has been party to numerous labor disputes over the years.” MPW readers have a right to disclosure. So too do readers of the Washington Post.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
TO PLAN - or not to plan?
By Sharon Dooley. Ms Dooley is the legislative Director of Upcounty Action and is looking closely at the selection process here.
The new line up of planning board interviewees shows a diversity of ideas, sexes, races and planning orientations. The council has whittled the original list of 29 – down to a round dozen. One (Wendell Holloway) has already withdrawn his name, but the others wait their turn for public and -council - scrutiny. It appears that each applicant has been an active participant in the concerns of this county for many years; in this we are fortunate.
The county, in my opinion, has an opportunity to take a giant step into an innovative future if it takes the bold leap forward that some of these applicants might provide. Few are professional planners, many are citizen activists, and more than a few are lawyers. Five are women, only two are Republicans (the board make up must include one Republican and one non Republican to balance the vacancies for the commissioners by party). I think, although I am not absolutely positive - as I could not find photos of each applicant, that three are African Americans (the soon to be open seat is currently held by an African American – Alistair Bryant). There appear to be neither Hispanic nor, Asian contenders for these positions.
Fewer members of this group are tied tightly to developers, few are known as environmentalists, one has been with the Housing Opportunities Commission (HOC), and a others have worked for local organizations, such as the WSSC, the PG Parks and Planning Board and Montgomery County Planning Board and the Smart Growth concept. Another is known as a developer, but he is linked with the new urbanism concept, which is conserving of urban areas, encouraging of the streetscape model and green spaces.
I think that there are great opportunities to find commissioners that will step up to the plate here and be ready to start without a steep learning curve. That should be one of the criteria, I think. We have for too long only looked at re-cycling residents from one agency to another in this county, and I am reluctant to advocate this narrowing of our scope. In a county of almost one million residents, we should look for diversity of ideas as well as gender and race.
I encourage the council to ask the tough questions about the future as they proceed with these interviews:
· What is their vision for the 21st Century in the county?
· What will they sacrifice to save our forests and agricultural reserve?
· How much density is tolerable; how much gridlock can we bear before insanity sets in?
· When will we create a real plan for affordable housing that offers more than a few hundred options each year? (We are currently more than ten years in arrears from previous schemes.)
· When will we seriously look at transit and create a realistic plan that funds it instead of more roads?
· What are their ideas for keeping clean air, increasing the green buildings in the county and reducing our dependence on traditional fuel sources in buildings here?
· When will the council ask more of the planners? Master plans are a way of life here – how can they be kept from becoming routine rote reviews that are retooled every twenty years or so? Hopefully, this new commission will deep six the mini-masters that were proposed as a way to circumvent the current schedules.
· When will the planning board step up itself to direct staff to create traffic studies and capacity measures that adequately address these issues using national norms and standards?
For quite a while Montgomery county planners have rested on their laurels using the standards that they set in place a generation ago. Quite properly, the county received many honors for these innovative practices; but in my opinion we have stagnated, while other parts of the country have taken our initial ideas and brought them to new levels and tried pilots with citizen input, development, housing and transit that we are not even considering. The cities of Portland and Minneapolis are among the new leaders in urban development. We have an opportunity to send a strong signal by starting down new paths and opening new doors – let’s take them and move toward real innovation and increased integrity in our planning process by selecting new commissioners who have a vision for tomorrow and for the tomorrows future generations can enjoy.
Governor, Leave it Alone (Updated)
One month ago, I criticized Governor O’Malley for allocating $46.3 million for school construction in Montgomery County instead of the $55 million he promised our state delegation in the special session. After that, I was willing to let it lie. I know how tight the state budget is. But the Governor will just not let this go.
According to Maryland Moment’s John Wagner, the Governor went after Montgomery County school construction director Joe Lavorgna at a recent Board of Public Works meeting. The Governor claimed, correctly, that his administration had allocated $98 million for school construction in its first two years – much more than Governor Ehrlich’s $19.6 million. Wagner reports this exchange:“Was there another county that got as much as $98 million?” O’Malley asked Joe Lavorgna, who oversees school construction in Montgomery County and attended the board’s meeting.
The Governor should have let this drop. Instead, he is putting this issue back in our faces. And he is badly misreading the political mood in this county.
Lavorgna had been invited to the lectern by Franchot, a former Montgomery delegate, to explain the ramifications of receiving less funding than Montgomery officials had anticipated based on closed-door conversations during the special session. During that session, lawmakers took tough votes on tax increases and slot machines.
Lavorgna said that some local money would be used to close the shortfall in construction funding and that some projects could be pushed back.
O’Malley asked Lavorgna to give a copy of a chart showing a comparison to the Ehrlich years to his boss, Montgomery Schools Superintendent Jerry D. Weast. O’Malley said spoke recently with Weast by phone.
Lavorgna appeared taken aback by the exchange.
“I’m not here to complain about the state aid,” he said.
1. Montgomery County residents have just suffered twin hits from state and county tax hikes. No one, not the richest nor the poorest, has escaped them. And on top of that, we are being reminded that our state aid is less than our legislators were promised.
2. The school construction fight exacerbates a long-held perception that the county does not get its fair due from the state. In last week’s apocalyptic budget sessions, County Council President Mike Knapp said from the dais that the state regarded Montgomery County as its “piggy bank.” None of his colleagues disagreed with him. More people are beginning to remark on the statistic that Montgomery gets only 15 cents of every dollar it pays in state taxes back in the form of direct state grants. The state average is 35 cents.
3. School construction is a big issue in this county. Frustration about over-crowded schools was a factor in electing several slow-growth County Council Members in 2006. Last year’s growth policy doubled development impact taxes in an effort to pay for more school capacity. And delays on school improvements have been a hot topic for many county parents over the last several months.
4. Opposition to disparate impacts on Montgomery County drove many of our state legislators to vote against the Governor’s proposed millionaire tax. Now that the Governor is resurrecting the school construction dispute, he is encouraging our delegation to act more parochially. This is unhealthy for his remaining agenda.
Politicians, of all people, are hardly surprised when other politicians break their promises. (It is always entertaining to hear one of them complain about how politicians in general can't be trusted!) The wise thing for the Governor to do would have been to let this lie and move on to other matters likely to attract our state legislators’ support. But instead he is throwing the school issue back at us and inviting discontent. Governor, for your own sake, leave it alone.
Update: The Baltimore Sun has more here. It seems the event was instigated by Comptroller Peter Franchot and that makes the Governor's reaction slightly more understandable. However, the Governor should have known better than to fall into the Comptroller's trap.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
On Political Pulse
Sam Schwartz, a nationally recognized traffic engineer and planner who has been retained by the Town of Chevy Chase, will be on the 'Political Pulse' TV Show on:
-Thursday, May 22nd at 9:00 p.m.; and
-Tuesday, May 27th at 9:30 p.m.
Mr. Schwartz has analyzed the ridership and other information compiled thus far by the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) regarding the different alternatives and routes that are being studied for the Purple Line.
Other guests that have appeared in the past on 'Political Pulse' regarding the Purple Line include Mike Madden, the MTA's Project Manager for the Purple Line, Ben Ross from the Action Community for Transit (ACT) and community activist Pat Baptiste.
Political Pulse is on Channel 16 TV in Montgomery County.
What Do Duct Tape & Kraft Mac and Cheese Have In Common?
You can also include the zip code, Barack Obama's parents, the Minimum Wage, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Lincoln Tunnel. If you don't know and are dying to find out their connection then just click here.
This has nothing to do with our normal focus of MoCo Politics. But it is still fun to think about.
