The Planning Department staff’s new recommended growth policy encourages development away from transit and throws in the towel on congestion mitigation. Here are some ideas for doing this better.
1. Restructure the impact taxes to move development into the Downtowns.
Currently, there are three categories for transportation impact taxes: Metro Station Policy Areas (MSPAs), which has the lowest rates; Clarksburg, where rates are three times the MSPAs; and general (the rest of the county), which has double the rates of the MSPAs.
Developing near Metro stations is a better option than sprawl (or opening the Ag Reserve), but the best development opportunities apply to Metro stations that are combined centers of residential, office and retail uses. We have four of them: the Downtowns of Bethesda, Silver Spring, Rockville, and Wheaton. We should create a new impact tax category for these Downtowns that has lower rates than the MSPAs and at the same time raise the rates in Clarksburg and in non-MSPAs. That would channel development into the Downtowns, where it belongs. It would also make sprawl development more expensive and effectively subsidize downtown development. Moderately-priced dwelling units (MPDUs) and workforce housing units should continue to be eligible for impact tax waivers.
2. Get rid of gobbledy-gooky data measures.
Overly complicated statistical barometers have two problems. First, they may not measure what you think they measure. Second, they sometimes behave unpredictably. The classic example is critical lane volume (CLV), which the Planning Department uses to measure intersection congestion for local area transportation review. The department’s own transportation staff found in 1998 that CLVs have no relationship to actual delay and yet they continue to use them. We exposed this dismal planning failure a year ago and the Planning Department has never responded. Planners should be using simple, easily understood measures like actual speed and delay data, which are commercially available.
3. Junk PAMR.
Policy area mobility review (PAMR), the procedure invented by the staff in 2007 to assess traffic and transit congestion across sub-segments (policy areas) of the county, is based on a trade-off premise. If cars are moving slowly, a policy area could still be judged to have adequate transportation capacity if transit was relatively mobile. The problem is that transit mobility is defined as a percentage of highway speed. So imagine a policy area without Metro stations in which cars are crawling at rush hour. If the buses crawled along at an equally slow speed – say, 80% because of their frequent stops – the policy area would be judged to have a “B” level of transit service. Under PAMR’s current tradeoff, that would allow a “D” level of auto congestion, meaning that cars could still move at 40% of highway speed. So under PAMR, as long as all transportation modes are equally jammed, the transportation capacity is called “adequate.” Do you see the illogic here?
A better way to do this is to use real-world speed and delay data for both local area and policy area transportation review. How congested are the intersections and the major corridors? Higher levels of congestion could be allowed in major Downtowns with Metro service. Lower levels would be tolerated in Upcounty. Projects built in congested areas would require more mitigation, especially directed to financing transit.
4. Give neighbors a voice in devising mitigation techniques.
Right now, a developer who builds near a highly congested (or “failing”) intersection can mitigate vehicle trips through building sidewalks, bike paths, pedestrian refuges, bus shelters, information kiosks, bike lockers or transit signs. Few of these measures do anything to mitigate traffic. The residents who live near that intersection should have a formal role in devising and approving real mitigation measures that actually impact traffic. If citizens are allowed to vote on speed bumps, they should be allowed a real voice on traffic mitigation.
5. Build more transit!
This is outside the bounds of the growth policy recommendations, but transit availability is vital to the future of the county. It has been more than six months since we reported on Council Member Marc Elrich’s bus-rapid transit plan, which is the only proposal now on the table for a comprehensive transit system across the county. Since that time, we have seen little if any progress on its implementation. Montgomery County desperately needs a geographically diverse network of fast transit service, especially on its east-west corridors. The Purple Line by itself cannot solve all of the county’s mobility issues. A county-wide transit system is required for that. Dedicated impact taxes, tax districts around prospective BRT stations and private equity partnerships should all be considered as ways to pay for this proposal.
The above five measures would steer development into Downtowns, provide sound data for evaluating transportation capacity and begin the process of building more transit options. So let’s forget about channeling development to Upcounty and strip malls and give some different ideas a chance.
Friday, July 03, 2009
Is This Smart Growth? Part Five
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Is This Smart Growth? Part Four
In Part Two of this series, we detailed how the Planning Department staff recommendation for a new growth policy relaxed standards on mitigating traffic congestion. In Part Three, we explained how the staff proposal would cut impact tax rates on projects in areas that were far from transit, including Clarksburg, Damascus and Olney. But all of that pales beside what you are about to read.
Under Policy Area Mobility Review (PAMR), developers of projects in local areas with both road congestion and slow transit are required to install trip mitigation measures, all of which cost money. The new staff recommendation would allow developers to use an “Alternative Review Procedure” to offset all or part of their mitigation cost requirements. This procedure could be used for projects that have a minimum 50% residential use, achieve at least 75% of the maximum density allowed by the zoning, meet certain energy efficiency standards and provide additional below-market housing above county requirements. The procedure would only be available in two types of areas:
1. Projects within a half-mile of an existing or planned transit station or “high-quality transit corridor.” The latter term is defined as “a corridor with fixed route bus service where service intervals are no longer than 15 minutes during peak commute hours.” These projects would be eligible for a 100% mitigation offset.
This category is more inclusive than it may first appear. Montgomery County has two bus services: WMATA and Ride On. Between the two of them, they have a rather high frequency of service on some major roads during rush hour. Consider the stretch of Georgia Avenue between Randolph Road and Norbeck Road. It is covered by four WMATA routes (Y5, Y7, Y8, Y9) and one Ride On route (51). Between 6 AM and 9 AM on weekdays, southbound WMATA buses come down Georgia Road every 11-17 minutes. The Ride On bus comes through every 20-30 minutes. The two of them together meet the standard of “high-quality transit corridor.” That means developers along this stretch of road would have no mitigation requirement even though there is no Metro station other than Glenmont, which is near the southern point of the route. Other major corridors without Metro stations but with at least four WMATA bus routes include US-29 from Four Corners through Burtonsville, Randolph Road from Rockville to US-29, New Hampshire Avenue from Takoma Park to US-29 and Veirs Mill Road from University Boulevard to Randolph Road. Projects in all of these corridors may just escape any PAMR traffic mitigation requirements under the staff proposal.
2. Projects within a half-mile of ten “basic services.” These services “include but are not limited to: bank, place of worship, convenience grocery, day care, cleaners, fire station, beauty, hardware, laundry, library, medical/dental, senior care facility, park, pharmacy, post office, restaurant, school, supermarket, theater, community center, fitness center or museum.” These projects would be eligible for a 50% mitigation offset.
Where are the locations in which these basic services are clustered? Many are in the county’s four downtowns (Bethesda, Silver Spring, Rockville and Wheaton) or are around Metro stations, but those areas are already covered by the transit offset category. The rest are strip malls. The staff proposal explicitly acknowledges this:This category recognizes that not all development in the County will be near a major transit corridor. Many of the 106 strip malls in the County do not qualify. However, they should be redeveloped in a more sustainable manner.
Since the staff refers to US-29, let’s consider one area that might be eligible for an offset under their proposal: Four Corners. This is the intersection of US-29 and University Boulevard, the gateway to East County. It has a school (Blair High School), a church, a pharmacy, a supermarket, a bank, a dry cleaner, several restaurants and many other retail services, so projects there may qualify for a 50% mitigation offset. It also has four WMATA bus routes (Z9, Z11, Z13, Z29) and three Ride On routes (9, 19 and 22), so projects there may even qualify for a 100% mitigation offset.
A strip mall on Route 29 could offer amenities that would reduce vehicle trips through mixed uses and a minimum of stores that provide services and products that residents and workers use on a daily basis, or what LEED for New Construction and Major Renovation defines as “basic services.”
Basic services include grocery stores, dry cleaners, fire stations, medical office, and fitness centers. People who live near these services frequently walk to them, reducing car trips. For projects that qualify, the PAMR requirement would be offset by 50 percent.
But let’s be honest: encouraging dense development at a place like Four Corners is not smart, it’s madness. The intersection was explicitly designed to move cars by splitting University into opposing segments. Yet, it is still congested, acquiring special infamy at rush hour. It is near two Beltway intersections (US-29 and University). Some of the retail resides in the Woodmoor Shopping Center, a strip mall on the eastern corner. Pedestrian travel is difficult at best, dangerous at worst. There is no Metro stop and no plans to build one. Why should developers receive a traffic mitigation offset of any kind here? And how many other strip malls will be eligible for those offsets?
This proposal for traffic mitigation offsets is the worst single element of the staff recommendation. It would reward dense development of at least 75% of zoning along several corridors far from transit stations, as well as many of the county’s strip malls. This is NOT smart growth. In fact, it is a prescription for endless traffic congestion with no way out.
In Part Five, we’ll offer a few ideas for improvement.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Is This Smart Growth? Part Three
Smart growth holds that development should be directed to areas with abundant transit access. The Planning Department staff proposal for a new growth policy pursues that goal through a variety of measures. But it also directs more development to areas far from transit. Here is one way it does that.
Developers of new projects are required to pay impact taxes to the county to help offset the cost of building and maintaining infrastructure to support them. Commercial projects are charged impact taxes to subsidize transportation, while residential projects are charged taxes to subsidize both transportation and school construction. Currently, the county has three schedules of impact tax rates for transportation. Projects in Metro Station Policy Areas (MSPAs), which are small areas immediately surrounding all metro stations in the county except for Forest Glen, are charged the lowest taxes on the grounds that substantial transportation facilities are already in place. Projects in Clarksburg are charged three times the MSPA rates on the grounds that Clarksburg requires substantial infrastructure investment to meet the needs of its residents. Projects in all other areas are charged double the MSPA rates. The net effect of the schedules is to encourage development around Metro stations through charging lower impact taxes than elsewhere.
The staff proposal would create a fourth schedule for transportation impact taxes: “other urban areas.” Chapter 49 of the County Code designates a number of areas as “urban” for the purposes of road design. The vast majority of them are near Metro stations and are covered by the MSPA impact tax schedule. But a few of them are not. The Planning Department staff proposes to charge projects in those areas two-thirds the impact taxes of the general (non-Metro, non-Clarksburg) schedule.
Where are these “other urban areas?” The Montgomery Hills Parking Lot District is near the Forest Glen Metro station, but is located on one of the most clogged stretches of state highway (Georgia Avenue just south of the Beltway) anywhere in the county. The Flower/Piney Branch Arliss urban area would have a Purple Line stop assuming that the transit line is constructed. The Germantown Town Center and Clarksburg Town Center urban areas would have Corridor Cities Transitway stops assuming that that project is constructed. But neither project is guaranteed and even if they are built, construction will be completed many years in the future. Yet the staff proposal would encourage development there now. The Damascus and Olney Town Centers may never get transit stations. Yet projects in those areas will be eligible for lower impact taxes too. Why?
The staff provides this reasoning in encouraging development in these “other urban areas:”As described above, the MWCOG [Metro Washington Council of Governments] Travel Survey conducted in 2007 and 2008 found that housing proximate to regional activity centers generated both fewer trips-per-household and shorter vehicle-miles-traveled, reflecting higher non-automobile use and the proximity of jobs and services prevalent in land use clusters. An equitable approach to taxing the households in these areas would reduce the per capita tax for new dwellings appropriately, similar to the lower rates available in Metro Station Policy Areas. We therefore recommend a new category for these residences to coincide with Urban Areas classified in Chapter 49 of the County Code that are not in MSPAs.
The staff is making a significant mistake here by lumping in all “regional activity centers” together. Most urban areas in Montgomery County are located in Downcounty. Residents there have shorter distances to travel to work, to retail, to school and to D.C. and Virginia than Upcounty residents. They also have access to Metro stations, while Upcounty residents do not. But the staff assumes that travel patterns in Upcounty “regional activity centers” or “urban areas” resemble those in Downcounty. That violates common sense. Most Damascus residents will have far longer commutes than Bethesda residents because the jobs will almost always be farther away. Plus, they will have to drive a much longer distance to access Metro.
Data from the 2008 MWCOG household survey shows a VMT [vehicle miles traveled] rate of approximately two-thirds that of a residence located outside of an activity cluster. Households in MWCOG activity centers generated 19.6 VMT per day, compared to 29.3 VMT per day generated by households outside of the activity centers. Therefore, rates proposed are calculated as two-thirds that of the 2007-2009 adopted rate for general residential.
By giving developers impact tax breaks for projects in places like Germantown, Clarksburg, Damascus and Olney, the Planning Department staff is actually encouraging more auto activity. That’s not smart growth at all.
But this is the tip of the iceberg compared to what is coming next. We’ll have more in Part Four.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Is This Smart Growth? Part Two
In 2007, the Planning Department devised a new system for measuring a project’s impact on transportation capacity: Project Area Mobility Review (PAMR). The system relied on a trade-off between road congestion (defined as actual speed divided by free-flow speed) and transit mobility (defined as transit speed divided by road speed) in each of 22 bite-sized “policy areas.” A policy area with congested roads could still be deemed to have “adequate” transportation capacity if transit service was almost as fast as road speed. Inversely, a policy area with very slow transit relative to road speed could still be deemed “adequate” if cars often approached the posted speed limit. But if a policy area had both slow transit and congested roads, it would be designated “inadequate” and developers would be required to mitigate at least some of the vehicle trips their projects generated.
Currently, developers have five options to mitigate trips in congested policy areas:
1. Sign a binding Trip Mitigation Agreement to reduce trips using transportation demand management techniques.
2. Provide non-auto facilities to make transit, walking and bicycling more attractive.
3. Add road capacity by building more lanes or widening intersections.
4. Add transit capacity by buying Ride On buses and subsidizing their operating costs.
5. Make a payment to the county in lieu of the above measures.
It’s important to note that the County Council set a floor for allowable auto congestion in its 2007-2009 Growth Policy Resolution. No matter how fast transit service was relative to road speed, the council established that road level of service should not fall below Level D, defined as car speeds of at least 40% of free-flow speed (essentially, the posted speed limit). So if a policy area had an average speed limit of 40 mph and the average car speed was 15 mph (38% of the speed limit), the policy area would have inadequate transportation capacity regardless of transit speed. The council defied the wishes of the planning staff, who argued that Level of Service E (25% of the speed limit) should be the allowable floor.
In its new proposal, the staff reasserts its recommendation that Level of Service E, and not D, should be instituted. Here is the staff’s reasoning: Staff finds that LOS E conditions are appropriate for two reasons.
The staff is actually claiming that many areas of the county should be congested. According to them, congestion relief through added road capacity is inherently harmful to pedestrian activity. But the above mitigation measures provide many other ways for developers to counter congestion, including buying buses and contributing to transit. The staff would simply let developers off the hook.
First, from a technical perspective, LOS E is the condition at which the throughput of a roadway facility is maximized. This is somewhat counterintuitive simply due to the fact that the LOS grading system is oriented toward the customer. For the customer, LOS A represents the least delay, and therefore the best level of service. Provision of LOS A service to all customers, however, is not practical from either fiscal or community-building perspectives. Most jurisdictions across the country require conditions ranging from LOS C to LOS E.
Second, from a community-building perspective, the establishment of more stringent LOS requirements in urban areas can create pressures to widen roadways to provide auto capacity, an action which not only uses valuable property but also tends to reduce pedestrian comfort and accessibility. In the White Flint Sector Plan, staff has recommended that the end-state conditions, which would result in Transit LOS B and Arterial LOS E conditions, should reflect an appropriate balance between land use and transportation.
The staff’s recommended change has a real impact on many policy areas. Under the current system, developers of projects in the Bethesda-Chevy Chase policy area are required to mitigate 30% of trips generated by new projects. Under the staff’s proposal, that requirement would drop to 0%. Trip mitigation in Derwood and Shady Grove would fall from 20% of trips to 0%. North Bethesda mitigation would fall from 35% to 20%. Rockville City mitigation would fall from 25% to 20%. Aspen Hill mitigation would fall from 20% to 5%. And in Olney, Kensington/Wheaton and Silver Spring/Takoma Park, mitigation would fall from 10% to 0%.
Current PAMR Mitigation Requirements
Proposed PAMR Mitigation Requirements
This particular change only serves two purposes. First, it undeniably reduces costs for developers. Second, it undeniably increases costs for the rest of us by allowing more congestion with no offsetting gain. How smart is that?
But there is more – MUCH more. Come back tomorrow for Part Three.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Is This Smart Growth? Part One
The new Adequate Public Facility Ordinance (APFO) proposed by the Planning Department staff would provide new incentives for development around transit stations. That’s smart growth by anyone’s definition. But the proposal would also encourage development around strip malls and in Upcounty areas far from transit and would throw in the towel on congestion in many parts of Downcounty. How smart is that?
To understand how the staff proposal works, we must first understand how new projects are evaluated for their impact on transportation capacity. Two years ago, I wrote about how transportation review works in Montgomery County on Just Up the Pike. Here is an excerpt.
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Between the early 1980’s and 2004, new developments in Montgomery County were subject to two kinds of analysis for their impact on traffic: Policy Area Transportation Review (PATR) and Local Area Transportation Review (LATR). LATR examined the impact of development on traffic in a handful of intersections close to the project. PATR examined the impact of development on traffic in a large area surrounding the project called a “policy area.” The county had 21 of these policy areas in addition to 10 smaller “Metro Station Policy Areas” and “Town Center Policy Areas.”
The idea behind both LATR and PATR was that if the new development caused traffic congestion to rise above a certain threshold in either a small immediate area around the project (LATR) or a large area around the project (PATR), the developer would be required to provide certain mitigation measures, such as additional road or transit capacity. If traffic conditions were extremely congested in a policy area (as measured by an average congestion index), a moratorium could be declared. In 2004, the last year PATR was in effect, the county had eight policy areas in moratorium for housing construction and six policy areas in moratorium for commercial construction.
In 2003, the County Council voted to abolish PATR, keep LATR and institute a combination of increased and new development impact taxes. The council’s reasoning at that time was that new development should pay for added infrastructure capacity (like roads and schools) rather than be subject to a moratorium until the county could construct the added infrastructure.
New developments would now be analyzed only for their traffic impact on immediate surrounding areas. For example, under the old system, a new development at the corner of Georgia Avenue and Forest Glen Road would be analyzed not only for its impact on that intersection and a couple others nearby (LATR), but also for its impact on the average congestion level for the Kensington-Wheaton policy area (PATR). Under the new system, only the impact on a small number of nearby intersections would be considered.
Critics of PATR’s abolition contended that it was unrealistic to believe that traffic impact from a new development would only spread for a couple blocks away from the site. After the 2006 County Council elections, the council called for an analysis of the county’s growth policy from the Planning Board and specifically requested a recommendation on whether to bring back PATR. The board’s response was to suggest instituting a similar, but not identical process called Project Area Mobility Review (PAMR).
Like PATR, PAMR also assesses the traffic impact of a project on a broad policy area. However, its methodology differs. PATR relied on an average congestion index to determine whether a policy area’s transportation infrastructure was “adequate” to handle additional traffic. PAMR calculates a tradeoff between auto congestion (termed “relative arterial mobility”) and transit capacity (termed “relative transit mobility”). If a policy area had low relative arterial mobility (meaning it had lots of auto congestion), it could still be judged as “adequate” if residents could use transit to get to destinations almost as fast as through car travel. Conversely, if a policy area had transit use that took substantially more time than car use, it could still be judged as “adequate” if auto congestion was low. If a policy area had both high auto congestion and transit options that were much slower than car use, it would be judged as “inadequate.”
Developers in adequate policy areas would not be required to provide mitigation measures under PAMR, though they might face requirements if nearby local intersections were found to be excessively congested under LATR. The planners contended this new system fairly reflected the tradeoffs that residents could make between cars and transit – for example, by switching to transit if car travel was too slow.
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We’ll learn more about how PAMR works and how the staff would like to change it in Part Two.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Planning Board Shenanigans
Adam has an upcoming series taking you through some of the arcana surrounding the proposed new growth policy with a great focus on proposed radical changes to transportation tests for new development. However, I didn't want to let the weekend go by without flagging the approach to schools.
And Here's to You Mr. Robinson
Planning Board Commissioner John Robinson's term expired on June 15th but he is still sitting on the board. The Montgomery County Council has yet to fill the appointment. Yet there is no vacancy on the Board:This time, the council and Planning Board Chairman Royce Hanson quietly came to an agreement to delay picking Robinson's successor until later this summer, allowing Robinson to stay on as the panel attempts to complete some major pieces of work. . . .
No formal or public approval required, I guess.
The decision to allow Robinson to stay a bit longer was not publicly announced or formally voted on by the council. It has not sparked any dissent from members, council President Phil Andrews (D-Gaithersburg-Rockville) said. . . .
Hanson and Andrews said they thought it was a good idea to keep Robinson on. "Otherwise we lose the benefit of his expertise," Andrews said.
Don't Build a School, Just Lower Standards
Needless to say, the desire to keep Robinson on the Board was related to the "major pieces of work"--and the desire to have Commissioner Robinson's vote on them.
The County requires that a moratorium be placed on new development when a school district is overcapacity. Not over 100% of capacity--that doesn't cause developers any problems or even new fees--but at 120% of capacity. And not just overcapacity in one school but in an entire cluster. The B-CC and Clarksburg clusters have to placed in moratorium in less than a month under this standard.
The Solution? Make sure the problem doesn't get worse so that the schools which are an enormous economic asset and the pride of the County don't decline? Work with the County and the School Board to increase capacity?
Nope. Not according to the Planning Board:Montgomery County planners pushed through the approval yesterday for a 497-unit apartment building in downtown Bethesda before a residential development moratorium takes effect, despite concerns about the building's design and its potential to add students to crowded schools.
Maybe it's just a coincidence, but the project would have failed on a 2-2 vote if Commissioner Robinson had not been there to give the project a 3-2 victory.
Now, one might give the Board the benefit of the doubt and assume that this is an unusually meritorious project. Except that the proposed growth policy changes regarding schools will exacerbate the problem by raising the capacity levels at which developers begin to pay impact fees from 105% to 110% of capacity. So less money to solve the problem.
The growth policy proposal also makes it easier to develop in places like Bethesda and Clarksburg--places already out of attainment. In short, the Board's approach is to eliminate standards for public facilities rather than make sure the infrastructure, even for schools, is available.
Perhaps we should just allow teachers in the schools to lower standards and grade easier. That's the lesson that the Planning Board has been teaching this week.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
How the Planning Board Vote Went Down
The Gazette reported the County Council’s selection of Joseph Alfandre and Amy Presley to the Planning Board yesterday. But the details of the vote are more interesting than the results.
By law, the council had to select one Democrat and one Republican to fill the two vacancies created by the departure of Allison Bryant and the death of Gene Lynch. On the Democratic seat, the first vote taken by the council resulted in four votes for Action Committee for Transit President Ben Ross (from George Leventhal, Valerie Ervin, Duchy Trachtenberg and Phil Andrews), three votes for Kentlands developer Alfandre (from Marc Elrich, Roger Berliner and Mike Knapp) and two votes for former Prince George’s County Director of Parks and Recreation Marye Wells-Harley (from Nancy Floreen and Don Praisner). Since no candidate had a majority, a run-off vote was held. Ms. Floreen and Mr. Praisner supported Alfandre, giving him a 5-4 victory.
The interesting fact here is the nature of the two voting blocs. Many observers expected the five slow-growth Council Members (Elrich, Andrews, Trachtenberg, Berliner and Praisner) to decide on one candidate. This group has been sticking together, more or less, on votes on the budget, free parking at libraries and demolishing the Hillmead house. But that did not happen this time even though the selection of a Planning Board candidate is about as critical a development decision as the council will ever make. Council Members Leventhal, Ervin and Trachtenberg are known to be enthusiastic Purple Line supporters and perhaps that was one reason why they supported Ross. But most of the others concluded Alfandre was the better overall candidate. Most surprisingly, anti-development bad boy Marc Elrich and former End Gridlock slate member Nancy Floreen agreed on the same Planning Board candidate – and a developer no less!
This is a very positive event for a rather rancorous county government. What else might Mr. Elrich and Ms. Floreen agree on? Perhaps they should find out. I for one would love to see the product of an Elrich-Floreen alliance, if only because its very existence would bewilder the rest of the council!
Legendary Clarksburg activist Amy Presley was expected by everyone to win the other seat. But her move to the Planning Board creates some challenges for her Clarksburg Town Center Advisory Committee. Clarksburg has been a mess in recent weeks with the filing of multiple lawsuits and an apocalyptic showdown in which residents turned against each other in front of developer Newland Communities. (As an activist, I can tell you that there is nothing worse than seeing your own troops go to pieces in the face of the enemy.) Presley’s successors must find a way to get the best deal possible from Newland while keeping their own people together. That is going to be a challenge.
A word on outgoing Planning Board Member Allison Bryant. I will not soon forget how Bryant nearly fell out of his chair with roaring laughter at the sight of our Crossing Georgia video last winter. I have testified many times before many panels and have often wondered whether some of the presiding officials were paying attention. I never asked that question of Bryant, an engaging man who delighted in sparring with speakers. I did not always agree with him, but the Planning Board will not be the same without Bryant’s rolling eyes and thigh-slapping good humor. Planning, politics and life are more enjoyable if you can have fun, a valuable lesson taught by Allison Bryant to the rest of us.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Trying to Get it Right on Traffic
Remember our description of Montgomery County’s screwed-up system for measuring traffic congestion? Remember our proposal for accurately measuring congestion through massive usage of GPS devices? Well, it turns out that the country’s largest traffic measurement company agrees with us.
INRIX is a traffic measurement firm based outside Seattle that was founded by two former Microsoft executives in 2004. The company just released a report ranking traffic congestion all over the United States. (The Washington area ranks fourth-worst after Los Angeles, New York and Chicago.) How does the company gather its data? The company states:The raw data comes from the historical traffic data warehouse of the INRIX Smart Dust Network. Since 2006, INRIX has acquired billions of discrete “GPS-enabled probe vehicle” reports from commercial fleet vehicles – including taxis, airport shuttles, service delivery vans, long haul trucks – and cellular probe data. Each data report from these GPS-equipped vehicles includes at minimum the speed, location and heading of a particular vehicle at a reported date and time.
How do they measure congestion? The company calculates a “reference speed” based on how fast GPS-equipped vehicles travel on a road in the middle of the night. Presumably, that reflects driving time in non-congested conditions. Then the company draws on more GPS data to calculate average speeds in each hour of the day for every day of the week. Then the company divides the reference speed (representing free flow) by the average peak-hour driving speed to calculate a Travel Time Index. The higher the index, the greater the congestion. For example, an index value of 1.3 indicates that a peak-hour trip will take 30% longer than a free-flow trip because of congestion.
INRIX has developed efficient methods for interpreting probe vehicle reports that are provided in real-time to establish a current estimate of travel patterns in all major cities in the United States. These same methods can aggregate data over periods of time (annually in this report) to provide reliable information on speeds and congestion levels for segments of roads. With the nation’s largest probe vehicle network, INRIX has the ability to generate the most comprehensive congestion analysis to date, covering the nation’s largest 100 metropolitan areas.
Is INRIX’s congestion formula the right one? Maybe yes, maybe no. But more importantly, their calculations are based on billions of actual trips recorded by GPS devices in commercial vehicles all over the U.S. Unlike Montgomery County, INRIX does not base its statistics on fluky critical lane volume measurements that are taken once every four years or so and, according to Park and Planning’s own research, do not actually measure congestion.
Folks, we have to be able to measure traffic congestion accurately in order to plan successful mitigations, including road improvements and transit. Here’s a private sector company that is getting a ton of real-world data and giving it their best shot. So if INRIX is doing it, why can’t we?
Friday, June 13, 2008
The Good List and the Bad List
I suppose it was inevitable that the Clintons are keeping an enemies list. After all, someone has to show Richard Nixon’s fans how this is really done. Well, I’ve got two lists: the people who make me happy and the ones who don’t.
The Good List
Mike Miller
Big Daddy’s decision to conquer, err, run again is the best news of the month. He is a blogger’s dream and has given us a lot of great material over the years. I am so pleased that he is coming back that I am even willing to forgive him for proposing that dreadful blogger tax.
Dana Beyer
Another politician that just keeps on giving back to bloggers. Whether it’s chasing away shower nuts, taunting right-wing zealots with campaign announcements or running amok on Teach the Facts Vigilance blog, Dana just can’t stop herself from raising Hell regardless of whether it’s good for her politically. If Robin Ficker had joined the County Council staff, I would be sitting in the council lobby with a video-camera every day to watch him go at it with Dana.
Rich Madaleno
He is my State Senator and will one day build us a new Forest Glen Metro entrance, so he has to be on this list. Hmmm… I guess that came across the wrong way. No Rich, you are here because we really, really like you!
Marc Korman, Bob Fustero, Sharon Dooley, Alan Banov, Eric Luedtke, Joe Davidson, Dana and the Rest of You
We really appreciate everyone who regularly reads and comments on this blog. It is both encouraging and necessary that we get feedback, good and bad, on our posts.
The Bad List
Planning Department Transportation Managers
Knowingly relying on a congestion measurement system that their own research proves is flawed is really intolerable. The new Planning Board members, whoever they are, must deal with this issue.
Montgomery County Council Member Marc Elrich
I like Marc and he should not be on this list. But Marc is not happy unless someone is mad at him, so here he is. I’ll come up with a reason for his inclusion later.
MCDCC
They haven’t done anything lately and that’s the point. They used to give us tons of great stuff in the good old days. But recently they have been so quiet and even constructive that I have been reduced to the sad fate of actually praising them. Come on, Central Committee Members, go back to your old ways and help a blogger in need!
And the Worst of the Worst…
My Blog Brothers
David has re-appeared, but what about the rest of you? Why are you making me do all the work?
Thursday, June 12, 2008
4 Bethesda Metro Center Heads to the Planning Board
The Planning Board is holding a hearing on 4 Bethesda Metro Center today, the new office building on top of downtown's Metro station. The Post covered the issue today but left out a couple things our readers should know.
In a previous post, I detailed how the Bethesda CBD Master Plan uses Floor Area Ratio (FAR) to set the density level of the area around the Metro station. FAR is gross building area divided by lot area. But Meridian, the applicant for the new 16-story building, persuaded the planning staff to include half the width of several roads around the project, including Wisconsin Avenue and Old Georgetown Road, in the FAR calculation. Why? Because supposedly the roads were once Indian trails associated with the property and Meridian is arguing that they should count towards lot area. Forget the fact that the Indians did not keep deed or plat records.
Furthermore, the project's opponents are alleging that the inclusion of undedicated road area in FAR has occurred several times before, but only when project applicants were represented by Linowes and Blocher. Charles Claxton and Jerry Pasternak, representing Clark Enterprises, wrote to the Planning Board:It thus appears that this whole theory of the "prescriptive dedication" of Indian trails is not an historic practice, but the recent creation of Linowes and Blocher, the attorneys who initiated this application for Meridian and who first argued that Wisconsin Avenue and Old Georgetown Road should be included in FAR calcuations for Bethesda Metro Center. Recent history has shown that the fact that Linowes and Blocher can convince staff to accept its concepts of zoning compliance is not necessarily a good thing.
But Claxton and Pasternak actually go further, baldly stating that the dispute amounts to a repetition of the Clarksburg scandal:We have seen this scenario before - a developer gets too cozy with staff at the Planning Board and staff enables the developer to violate plans and the law. In Clarksburg I, there was no opportunity for the Board to prevent the integrity of the process from being shattered and citizen confidence in its government undermined. This Board, however, has the opportunity to prevent "Clarksburg II" and should do so by denying the application.
The irony of attorneys for Clark, which is a general contractor, developer and construction manager, deploring developer "coziness" with staff is rich. But then what does Rollin Stanley, the new Planning Director, do but add new ammo to the opponents' arguments. According to the Post:Stanley criticized the opponents during a speech Friday to members of the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Chamber of Commerce. He suggested that they are too focused on minutiae and don't see the big picture, which he said is a growing need for more housing and jobs near public transit as gas prices skyrocket.
The role of the Planning staff, including its Director, is not to criticize a development applicant or any other parties expressing views on an application. The staff's role is to offer its best professional guidance to the Planning Board. Stanley, who over-ruled lower-ranking staff who originally recommended against the new office building, is treading dangerously close to the line on this project.
"Planning shouldn't be about sitting in a room with five lawyers talking about the road in 1781. When you get to that level... something has gone wrong."
Stay tuned folks - this dispute is just getting started.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Planning Board Applicants Narrowed Down to 12
The Montgomery County Council has selected 12 interviewees from 29 applicants for two positions on the Planning Board.
The council’s press release states:Montgomery Council Sets Interviews for 12 To Fill 2 County Planning Board Positions
Several of these applicants are well known in Montgomery County. Pat Ryan and Cary Lamari are former candidates for the County Council. Amy Presley was a leader in the fight to expose misconduct at the Planning Department in the development of Clarksburg. Ben Ross is the current President and a longtime board member of Action Committee for Transit. Joseph Alfandre was a developer of the Kentlands in Gaithersburg. William Mooney is a former staffer at the Planning Department and was a business partner of Planning Board Member Gene Lynch.
ROCKVILLE, Md., June 10, 2008—The Montgomery County Council has set interview dates with 12 applicants seeking to fill two vacancies on the Montgomery County Planning Board.
The term of Allison Bryant, a Republican, will expire on June 14. Mr. Bryant has served two terms and is not eligible for reappointment. The other vacancy was created by the passing of board member Eugene Lynch, a Democrat, on Jan. 31. Mr. Lynch’s term will expire on June 14, 2011.
Interviews are open for public observation. They will be conducted at the Council Office Building at 100 Maryland Ave. in Rockville. The interview schedule is as follows:
Patrick Ryan June 12, 2008 1:30 PM
Benjamin Ross June 12, 2008 2:00 PM
Gerald Roper June 12, 2008 2:30 PM
Goldie Rivkin June 12, 2008 3:00 PM
Cary Lamari June 12, 2008 3:30 PM
Marye Wells Harley June 12, 2008 4:00 PM
Carol Placek June 19, 2008 1:30 PM
Alan S. Bowser June 19, 2008 2:00 PM
Joseph Alfandre June 19, 2008 2:30 PM
Paula Bienenfeld June 19, 2008 3:00 PM
Amy Presley June 19, 2008 3:30 PM
William Mooney June 24, 2008 8:30 or 9:30
The Planning Board has five members. No more than three members of the Planning Board may be from the same political party, and all members must be residents and registered voters of Montgomery County when appointed. Members serve four-year terms and are limited to two full terms. The positions can be filled by a Democrat; a Republican; a voter who declines to affiliate with a party; or by a member of another party officially recognized by the Montgomery County Board of Elections.
Of the twelve finalists, Alfandre, Bowser, Harley, Lamari, Mooney, Placek, Rivkin, Roper, Ross, and Ryan are Democrats and Bienenfeld and Presley are Republicans. Since the Planning Board will have only one Republican (former District 15 Delegate Jean Cryor) after Allison Bryant leaves, either Bienenfeld or Presley must be picked to fill one of the two vacancies.
We suggest that all the applicants read this series as preparation for what they will be encountering from the Planning Department!
Thursday, June 05, 2008
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?
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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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.
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Tomorrow, we will show you a better way to measure traffic.
