Posts about Glenmont

For example, in Montgomery County, the state will build a $63 million interchange at Georgia Avenue (MD 97) and Randolph Road, to speed up traffic near the Glenmont Metro station. With ramps and longer crossings, the interchange will further degrade pedestrian access to nearby shopping from residences.

For the amount spent on this project, the county could build much of the long-discussed Georgia Avenue bus rapid transit project from Wheaton to Olney instead.

Montgomery County is pushing another grade-separated interchange at the Veirs Mill Road (MD 586) and Randolph Road. Based on past experience, we can expect that the planned Veirs Mill bus rapid transit project (the county's largest bus route) will continue to lose out to the expensive interchange for priority.

The interchange would not only compete for funds with this proposed rapid bus corridor, it would also make conditions much worse for the many pedestrians who cross these roads to stores and bus stops at the intersection. Read the whole list of the county's priority transportation projects here.

In Prince George's, despite numerous setbacks, the 6,000-acre greenfield Westphalia development project outside the Capital Beltway and miles from the nearest Metro station still maintains a top ranking on the list from local elected officials. The price tag for the road infrastructure to serve this massive tract of largely undeveloped land is $460 million.

The transportation projects would convert Pennsylvania Avenue (MD 4) into a freeway from the Capitol Beltway to Woodyard Road (MD 223), and add 4 interchanges along the way. The Westphalia plan calls for adding 14,000-15,300 new residential units and up 6 million square feet of commercial space.

The county transportation lists also contain important transit, bike, and pedestrian projects, but often these proposals languish while road projects advance. Other important transit, pedestrian, bicycle, and complete streets solutions never even make the list. We need to fund projects that meet the growing demand for more transportation choices that save time, energy, and money.

If Marylanders are asked to pay more, each dollar must be invested wisely. Residents need better and more affordable transportation choices. So where should this money go?

First, let's fix Maryland's existing infrastructure, like our aging roads, bridges and transit systems. Then, let's build modern transit to move more people efficiently and competitively, while providing alternatives to congested highways like the Beltway, I-95, and I-270. It's long past time for critical rail investments like the Purple Line, Baltimore Red Line and MARC expansion, and better bus service.

At the local level, state revenue to local governments should go to fix and maintain local street connections, sidewalks, and bikeways for existing communities.

Moreover, given high unemployment, smart growth transit options can help the economy. Public transportation and road maintenance are the biggest job creators. According to the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership, investments in road maintenance projects create 9% more jobs than spending on new highway capacity; increasing transit capacity creates 19% more jobs than new highway capacity.

If Marylanders are going to pay more, we deserve to know what the money will buy. We need a bill that that specifies smart, fix-it-first policies for the state. Otherwise, we're just throwing our money into the dark.

Our experiences around the Washington region have taught us that opening a Metro station has the potential to completely change the local economic systems, provided that the government and landowners take advantage of their infrastructure investment. However, the Gazette article shows that the investment in transit is not being leveraged:

With a new high-end apartment and condominium complex being built on Layhill Road, the raising of Georgia Avenue over Randolph Road and the move of the fire station to the Glenmont Metro, where a new, 12-floor parking garage is being built, residents are holding out hope that a sparkling new shopping center could be just a few years away.

One can't emphasize enough that an elevated highway and a walkable neighborhood in the same space are mutually exclusive things. If you only plan for cars and traffic, you get cars and traffic. That is just as true in Glenmont as it is anywhere else.

The landowners of the Glenmont Shopping Center appear to be far less business savvy and enlightened than the coalition of landowners who cooperated to plan for the recently passed White Flint Sector Plan that envisions a new human-scale town. It appears from the article, that there is none of that kind of cooperation going on in Glenmont:

Karen Durbin, the manager of Arcade Florist, has been selling flowers to shoppers since 1969. When asked how the shopping center has evolved over the years, she laughed as a co-worker slowly dropped a thumbs-down.

"The problem here is that there's a lot of different landlords, and they don't cohesively get together, Durbin said. "...Major renovations? The only thing I ever see them do is work on the parking lot."

As more and more new projects are completed in the immediate area that leverage their proximity to the Metro, the Glenmont Shopping Center will become more and more of a weight around the neck of revitalization.

If the shopping center gets a street grid as a result of a suburban-to-urban retrofit, there will be more connectivity with the surrounding small streets like in the White Flint Sector Plan. People living within walking distance of amenities in a new mixed-use development adjacent to the Metro will contribute to reversing the whirlpool of induced demand.

If the demand for road space could be better managed, Montgomery County wouldn't have to build the overpass for Randolph road over Georgia Avenue. (Sadly, the county DOT's Level of Service traffic metrics will always recommend building more roads.) The county would get tax revenue from redevelopment because walkable urbanism has more billable floor space per unit land area, and also a smaller road bill. I wonder why no one thought of it, despite the fact that it has already been done within Montgomery County in Bethesda, Silver Spring, and soon White Flint.

Montgomery is very lucky that the landowners in the White Flint Sector Plan area are forward-thinking enough to cooperate to improve environmental sustainability while increasing their long term profits. Clearly, the county is not as lucky in Glenmont. I have never met the landowners of the Glenmont Shopping Center. I do not know how they view their commercial rental property. However, I do know that any profit-seeking private business is motivated by improvements to their own bottom line. They stand to make a fortune in either redeveloping their property as a mixed-use town or by selling it to someone who will. The article in the Gazette demonstrates a lack of vision in the area. However, the county needs to provide zoning and planning support to make something happen.

Developers are profit-seeking businesses just like any other. It is up to the citizenry, through its elected officials in government, to set up a business environment that incentivizes developers to do the right thing. The landowners in White Flint had to jump through hoops to do the right thing. The status quo will not produce more transit-oriented, sustainable, human-scale towns. We can do better than dreaming of a more sparkly 1960's era strip mall flanked by a Metro station on one side and an overpass on the other. That's just putting lipstick on a pig. The opportunity costs are too high to waste the investment of the Glenmont Metro station.