Posts about Corridor Cities Transitway

Even before the vote, they had hired transportation consultants to study how to build the transitway on the cheap. Within days of the council vote, the developers pulled the plan out of their back pockets and began lobbying county and state officials for it.

The public has not been allowed to see the developers' plan. But reports are that it would delete overpasses from the transitway. Buses would get their own lanes only where the price is low. At intersections—the places where congestion is worst—the "rapid" buses would have to travel in regular traffic lanes.

Why would anyone want to spend tens of millions of dollars to build bus lanes where they won't do much good? The reason is that sprawl development in "Science City," on the west side of Gaithersburg, can't move forward until the CCT, or at least some version of the CCT, gets built. Johns Hopkins is the biggest landowner in the area.

Under a Master Plan approved in 2010, there can be no more development in Science City until certain requirements are fulfilled. The key hurdle is a requirement to "fully fund construction of the CCT from the Shady Grove Metro station to Metropolitan Grove within the first six years of the county's CIP or the state CIP." A transitway with overpasses left out wouldn't seem to be "fully funded," but Hopkins and its allies may have enough political pull to convince the county that it is.

Sometime in the future, after the dumbed-down transitway is built, the missing bridges could show up. But there's little chance of that happening if Hopkins can get a go-ahead for its real estate schemes. The developers are the main force pushing this transitway forward, and they are sure to lose interest once they have their approvals.

Meanwhile, the county Bus Rapid Transit task force has found itself in a pickle. Unless it abandons its commitment to "gold standard" BRT, it has discovered, it must choose between taking lanes away from cars and road widenings that would involve wholesale demolition of homes and churches. If Hopkins gets away with its bait-and-switch on the Corridor Cities Transitway, we can expect bus projects to suffer the same fate in the rest of the county.

This development, close to Shady Grove, was explicitly built around a central boulevard with a very wide median that could accommodate a light rail line in the future. Yet some residents afraid of a transit line have organized against bringing the line where it was always meant to go. Marcuccio and Gajewski both voted to ask the state to reroute the line.

Gajewski, who lives in King Farm, said the line would provide "no benefits." It's strange to think that a quick ride to the Metro in one direction and jobs in the other wouldn't benefit residents. Fortunately, the state isn't heeding this bad advice.

Patch contributor and lobbyist Richard Parsons wrote a useful summary of the growth and transit issues in Rockville. He says that few candidates in either city want to reform the damaging Adequate Public Facilities laws that hinder walkable development while encouraging sprawl. These laws, designed to ensure development doesn't overcrowd schools or roads, actually end up just stopping growth in the core and pushing it to less dense outer areas which will create more traffic and a need to build schools in the future.

Parsons' summary of Gaithersburg's races, on the other hand, are a lot more suspect because he was previous paid by Johns Hopkins to promote their so-called "Science City" development. The Gaithersburg council opposed the project at its proposed size, and Parsons criticizes this decision without disclosing his conflict of interest.

2 challengers to the Gaithersburg incumbents are criticizing that decision, which Parsons applauds on behalf of "those who want to see a more aggressive approach to job creation and transit-oriented development." "Science City" could have been true transit-oriented development by locating around Shady Grove or other underdeveloped Metro station areas; instead, Johns Hopkins brought enormous pressure and lobbying dollars to approve widely-scattered "towers in the park" office parks, connected by a winding bus route, and stamped as "transit-oriented development."

Gaithersburg voters should make up their own minds, but be wary of any recommendations around "Science City" from anyone who made some real money in exchange for promoting this lousy project.

The concept phase is early planning, including alternatives analysis and environmental clearance. Design is the engineering phase, including Preliminary Engineering (PE). For projects in this phase, conceptual details have been finalized and detailed construction plans are being prepared.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

Even BRT can be accommodated in a grass transitway, as Eugene, Oregon's Emerald Express illustrates:

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

In April, the State of Maryland responded. Rockville has its answer, and it's a resounding "no way."

According to Maryland Department of Transportation Secretary Beverley Swaim-Staley, any realignment outside of King Farm would increase costs, reduce ridership, lengthen trip times for riders, and would not meet Federal Transit Administration regulations. Swaim-Staley puts simply: "A King Farm Boulevard option is the most reasonable and effective for the project."

Good work, MTA, for following through with a good decision and not bowing to a truly ridiculous example of anti-transit paranoia.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

The Corridor Cities Transitway's winding route has long been criticized by urbanists for being too circuitous, though plans to bring the line through existing and emerging activity centers like Crown Farm and "Science City" will make the line more effective and useful to riders. Unlike past adjustments, routing the CCT around King Farm would hurt the project, avoiding thousands of people who would otherwise live within walking distance of the line.

Some activists may be hoping that if they can stymie the CCT, they might stop Science City, officially called the Great Seneca Science Corridor (formerly Gaithersburg West). When that controversial master plan for the area was approved, it included staging requirements that Montgomery County build the CCT before most development can proceed. The possibility of having many workers use transit was one of the arguments in favor.

However, there's enough momentum and muscle behind Science City at this point that if the CCT doesn't happen, the Council is more likely to simply waive the staging requirements. That will just mean even more traffic on the area's roads.

Joan Hannan founded the Coalition for the Preservation of King Farm after realizing that transit vehicles could run in front of her condominium on King Farm Boulevard. She claims that the builder never told her about the CCT and fear that it could force the closure of through-streets in the neighborhood.

The Gazette reports that seven people spoke against the CCT in King Farm at Tuesday's City Council meeting, though the online petition Hannan is circulating has just one signature.

Nonetheless, four out of five City Council members were swayed by opponents' arguments. Rockville Central reports that Councilmember Piotr Gajewski, a King Farm resident, said the Corridor Cities Transitway would give "no benefits" to the neighborhood while being "incredibly disruptive."

Another Councilmember, Mark Pierzchala, made a motion to suggest moving the line to the middle of I-370, which would bypass King Farm entirely. Only Councilmember John Britton, who noted that the Corridor Cities Transitway will serve King Farm residents going to the future Science City and other destinations in the upcounty, voted against the route change.

Meanwhile, residents in the New Urban community of Kentlands in Gaithersburg, to which King Farm is often compared, not only support light-rail for the CCT but have also gotten the MTA to consider rerouting the line into their neighborhood.

Rockville officials should look beyond the immediate, knee-jerk anti-transit views of a few King Farm officials. The whole city will be far better off with the CCT giving people a real alternative to driving right through Rockville, whether from communities like King Farm to jobs downcounty and in DC, or from points south and east to the new jobs in Science City and elsewhere.

The first two realignments, those shown in green and yellow, would more directly serve dense, walkable, mixed-use developments. The green one would move to run through the center and densest part of Crown Farm, a massive TOD-to-be. The yellow alignment would provide a station at Kentlands, the famous New Urbanist development.

The red alignment will more directly serve the so-called Science City. Although that won't be a particularly walkable destination, it is dense with jobs and will provide a significant boost in expected ridership.

All together, these three changes are expected to increase ridership from somewhere between 21,000-30,000 daily (depending on mode and other factors) to between 29,000-42,000 daily, at a cost of about $100 million on top of the estimates for the original alignment. That's such a phenomenally good deal that it would set the Corridor Cities Transitway as one of the most cost-effective projects in the pipeline in the entire country, therefore positioning it excellently to receive federal funds.

MTA should adopt all three realignments. Each one improves transit access to important destinations over the original route, and each improves Maryland's chances of receiving federal funds.

• Extension of the Metrorail Red Line from Shady Grove north along I-370 and I-270 to MD Route 118, where it would end at Germantown Town Center. There would be one intermediate station at Quince Orchard Road, where the line crosses the CSX rail tracks.

• MARC improvements resulting in more frequent, all-day, bi-directional service to Frederick.

• A new spur of the MARC Martinsburg branch to reach Hagerstown.

• The completed Corridor Cities Transitway as light rail, with slight modifications to the route at Crown Farm and Kentlands, and a one-station extension to Clarksburg Town Center.

• The completed Purple Line, using the adopted Locally Preferred Alternative alignment.

• A new light rail line beginning at Silver Spring Metro and extending north along US-29 to Burtonsville.

• A new streetcar line beginning at White Flint Mall and running north along MD Route 355 through Rockville and Gaithersburg, ending at an expanded multi-modal Metropolitan Grove station.

• (Not shown on the map) Various bus priority and/or BRT improvements throughout the county, such as on Veirs Mill Road.

For more about their vision for Montgomery County, visit ACTfortransit.org.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.