Traffic

Montgomery groups attack 270 widening, criticize "false choice"

by David Alpert   •   July 20, 2009 12:57 pm

The Action Committee for Transit, Audubon Naturalist Society, 1000 Friends of Maryland, and the Coalition for Smarter Growth just issued a blistering press release criticizing the Montgomery County Planning Board's recommendation to spend $4 billion to widen I-270 without even considering reasonable transit alternatives.

The Montgomery Sierra Club also sent a letter over the weekend asking the Council to reject the "false choice" presented by the I-270 "multimodal" study:

The plans for widening I-270 reflect a business-as-usual philosophy, a throw-back to a 1950s "roads first" approach rather than a forward-looking one that emphasizes transit and smart growth. We know now that increasing road capacity inevitably leads to greater car use, and then to car-centric residential and commercial construction alongside the new capacity.

We do recognize that I-270 is congested as far out as Frederick, including traffic caused by diffuse employment centers in Montgomery County. But road widening is not the way to solve it and the options the Council is being asked to choose among represent a false choice. Right now you can either choose the straw-man "no-build" option or select one of the remaining options that differ from each other largely in how many new lanes of highway are built and whether any of the lanes will charge dynamic tolls or not. The impact on I-270 congestion of making improvements to public transportation is limited to looking at the Corridor Cities Transitway. The possibility that more extensive and robust additions to the County's public transit system (over and above the CCT) might be as effective at reducing traffic congestion on I-270 as adding more lanes is not even considered.

The consequences of reaching a wrong decision within the confines of a false choice are serious. The financial cost of any of the alternatives is in the billions of dollars. Just as important are the environmental costs of choosing an alternative that will add several additional lanes of traffic traveling the length of the county.

In order to escape the confines of the false choice now before you, it is necessary to create and then analyze the impact on congestion of a comprehensive transit alternative serving the Corridor Cities and Frederick County. Such an alternative may cost less than widening I-270. A comprehensive transit solution would have a smaller environmental impact. It would support concentrated development at transit stations instead of promoting car-dependent, low-density development. It has the potential to help Montgomery County achieve the 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions called for in county legislation passed in 2008—something that having additional lanes of traffic on I-270 will never do.

We ask that you not select a Locally Preferred Alternative at the July 21st County Council meeting. Instead we request you postpone selecting a Locally Preferred Alternative until a comprehensive transit option is developed and its impact on projected congestion on I-270 is fully analyzed and compared to I-270 widening alternatives.

This is an opportunity for Montgomery County and Maryland to move away from the unsustainable approach of always responding to congestion by building more lanes of highway. At a time when destructive climate change seems increasingly likely in the not-so-distant future and rising oil prices affect our economic welfare today, we truly are at a fork in the road.

David Hauck
Chair, Sierra Club, Montgomery County Group

The Maryland State Highway Administration has cleverly maneuvered the Planning Board and County Council into a choice between a rock and a freeway widening. They only studied options that involve adding lanes, presenting leaders with a choice between "no-build," which won't do anything for residents of the area, and adding lanes.

At the same time, by putting in a circuitous Corridor Cities Transitway that won't accomplish much, they get to call the plan "multimodal" and argue that it's not just a freeway plan. The CCT is so stunted, now, that planners actually end up concluding that the lanes "provide an even larger transit and ridesharing benefit than the CCT itself".

Highway planners are still eager to add lanes, but realize that political winds are shifting away from auto-oriented development and toward transit. Therefore, they dress up the same old, tired plans in transit garb, but with inoffensive enough transit (in order to be "cost-effective" under the FTA's poor formula) that the transit doesn't outshine the highway plan. And they disregard options, like tolling existing lanes, that would improve the highway without adding more lanes.

The County Council doesn't need to play the role of pawn in SHA's paving game. They can reject the "false choice" entirely, and insist that state planners evaluate a "comprehensive transit option" before agreeing to anything. That's the approach Arlington is taking with VDOT, which also recommended adding lanes on I-66 while refusing to study realistic alternatives suggested by county leaders. Arlington and Fairfax officials together sent VDOT a "wake-up call"; it's time for Maryland officials to do the same.