Posts about I-270

The fact that large majorities of people don't want new highways and are closely split on widening existing ones shows the effect of our region's decades of debate on these issues. Residents realize that new roads actually don't make their lives better, since new vehicle trips just fill up the new capacity within a few years, and the existing driver faces the same traffic as before.

About two thirds of residents thought new bridges across the Potomac River were a good idea, though it's less clear what those bridges would connect to, since many of the same respondents apparently don't want to increase road capacity on each end.

Also not surprisingly, people don't want to pay for any transportation projects. They oppose both tolls and higher gas taxes.

Given this, it's sad that Governor McDonnell keeps pushing the Outer Beltway, and Maryland continues to put the $3 billion I-270 widening ahead of the Purple Line in its priority list for how to spend future federal funds. That's because 82% of respondents "agree with the strategy of locating growth around existing employment centers," while large numbers (about half of respondents regionwide) oppose growth in rural areas. Yet the big-ticket transportation priorities of both states would push rural growth over strengthening today's job centers.

Smart growth is what the region wants. We should focus on transit, expanding walkable neighborhoods and building more, and putting new housing and jobs in existing dense areas and near underutilized transit stations. That's the only way to add more people to the region and help everyone get to and from work without the massive highway expansions which many people don't want and very few want to pay for.

Correction: I listed some of the numbers as reflecting public support for widening existing highways that are actually the levels of support for new highways. The post has been updated.

Recently, something new suddenly appeared in the plan: MDOT's very expensive idea to spend $3.4 billion to widen I-270 and create more traffic in Montgomery County and more sprawl in Frederick County. We debated the wisdom of this project last year, and the Montgomery County Council scaled it back a bit, but MDOT had stacked the deck to basically force them to choose among highway widening options.

Technically, the TPB is supposed to conduct a public input process to formulate this plan, but in reality they simply "staple" together the requests from DDOT, MDOT, and VDOT. There is a brief public comment period which has now come and gone, but the TPB buried the announcement of this item in fine print, meaning almost nobody knew it was under debate until this very late date.

There are a lot of other projects that would be nice to build, too. There's the Purple Line. The Corridor Cities Transitway. Marc Elrich's Bus Rapid Transit ideas. Governor O'Malley published a plan to expand MARC service in the 270 corridor and the Baltimore-Washington corridor.

However, the common refrain for many of these projects is: they're very expensive, and we can't afford them right now. They are expensive, but so is the 270 widening. It's even more expensive. Yet somehow that one pops into the long-range plans while the others don't.

Ultimately, Maryland has no money. They bonded the next few decades' worth of federal revenues for the ICC. Eventually, they will be able to scrape together some more. By putting this project into the plan, it biases the future decisions about this money toward building it, even though residents of the region never got to discuss if they'd rather have this project or MARC, plus the Corridor Cities Transitway, plus a Red Line extension, plus streetcars, plus even more.

Why doesn't the plan call for MARC? What about other transit improvements around 270? Or building the Purple Line with federal transportation formula money, the guaranteed money that would be used for the highway but which Maryland could use for transit instead, instead of waiting for a very competitive and uncertain New Starts grant?

This is the process by which state "highway departments," those folks in the transportation bureaucracy who still see their mandate as finishing old 1960s highway plans, get the highway projects done despite public support for transit over roads.

First, they put them into a long-range plan despite the fact that there is no money. Then, over time, people start to argue that the project "has been on the books forever" and we just have to complete it. Since it costs so much, there isn't room to fit any other really big projects in there for a long time. Eventually, it happens, and suddenly another really big, really unaffordable road project appears in the long-range plan.

TPB director Ron Kirby and Maryland transportation secretary Beverley Swaim-Staley say including this doesn't commit the state to building it, but does designate it "something we want to do." Meanwhile, all the other, better transportation ideas apparently aren't "something we want to do."

The TPB shouldn't be making decisions today about what major projects to build in 2030, at least not without a real public input process instead of the sham one they use today. If the board is going to put expensive transportation projects into the plan, there should be some long-term transit expansions, not just whatever big highway MDOT wants to build today. In the meantime, the TPB should take this project out of the plan and open up a more genuine comment period on what long-term projects Maryland residents would really like to see.

I've listed the downcounty races first, followed by the other districts.

District 16 (Glen Echo, Bethesda, Rockville Pike) has the western end of the Purple Line, significant bus ridership, a number of Metro stations and the county's most walkable downtown.

Senator Brian Frosh has been a leader on transportation issues, including circulating the letter supporting a transit alternative to widening I-270.

ACT is displeased with delegate Bill Frick's lack of absolute firmness on the Purple Line, and he specifically said he supports the 270 widening. However, he did sign the Purple Line Now pledge, and took the time to send a letter to the National Park Service after reading about a Rock Creek Park issue here on Greater Greater Washington. We feel he deserves another term, as does fellow incumbent Susan Lee.

Kyle Lierman and Scott Goldberg are among the many challengers vying for the one open seat or one of the incumbents'. Mr. Lierman's strength mostly comes from family political connections, but he wants to champion the Purple Line, get more funding to Metro, and raise the gas tax.

Mr. Goldberg, whom Cavan interviewed, also strongly supports the Purple Line, definitely understands induced demand, and wants the state to do better to minimize car-dependent sprawl. Either would make an excellent representative for the area.

District 18 (Chevy Chase, Kensington, Wheaton) contains the Town of Chevy Chase and Columbia Country Club, Ground Zero for the Purple Line battle. The political race for Delegate has not disappointed, boiling down largely to a referendum on the Purple Line.

Incumbent Anna Sol Gutierrez and challengers Vanessa Atterbeary and Dana Beyer are running in support of the light rail Purple Line along the alignment selected by the county and state. A strong vote for them, like for Berliner in Council District 2, would send a clear message that voters want to put this vital regional project ahead of local neighborhood obstruction.

Cavan discussed the Purple Line, Smart Growth in Wheaton, budget processes, and more with Ms. Gutierrez, Ms. Beyer and Ms. Atterbeary earlier this summer.

The other two incumbents are Al Carr and Jeff Waldstreicher. Mr. Carr has been a friend to the environment, cycling and transit with the exception of his Purple Line stance. He introduced bills for the bag fee and reforming "accident" language. While we hate to focus exclusively on single issues (and haven't in other races, like Mr. Frick in District 16), the Purple Line is the key place the state government will influence the future of this area in the immediate term, and having a supportive local delegation is important.

Senator Rich Madeleno has not been good on the Purple Line, but has been good on transit funding from the state in general, and is likely to be a key player in advocacy for transportation funding. He's also unopposed.

The controversy over the Purple Line in District 18 is nowhere to be found in District 20 (Silver Spring, Takoma Park, White Oak), where the sitting delegation absolutely supports the Purple Line and is otherwise terrific on practically every single issue.

Senator Jamie Raskin and Delegates Sheila Hixson, Tom Hucker and Heather Mizeur deserve a speedy return to Annapolis. Among many other things, Mr. Raskin was the Senate introducer of the bag fee and Ms. Hixson organized the I-270 transit alternative letter.

District 14 (Burtonsville, Brookeville, Damascus) is one of the more rural districts in the county, with no Metro stations. However, the Intercounty Connector will run through the district's southeastern portion.

Delegate Karen Montgomery deserves to win in her challenge against incumbent Senator Rona Kramer. Ms. Kramer supported the ICC, while Ms. Montgomery opposed it. Ms. Kramer's family includes developers who build sprawling strip malls, and on policy her actions align with theirs. Outside of GGW issues, Ms. Kramer has also taken some very unusual stands for her party, like opposing a progressive income tax.

For Delegate, we support incumbent Anne Kaiser and open-seat candidates Eric Luedke and Craig Zucker. Luedke is even a blogger, having written periodically for Maryland Politics Watch.

District 15 (Poolesville, Barnesville, Clarksburg) is the other rural district. There are no Metro stations and a relatively low proportion of transit use, though MARC's Brunswick line has many stations in this district.

Senator Rob Garagiola and Delegates Kathleen Dumais and Brian Feldman have been reliable supporters of transit funding including Metro and MARC, though in many cases also road construction as well. Mr. Garagiola authored the bill creating a commission to find a new source of transportation funding which Maryland desperately needs.

Aruna Miller and Lara Wibeto are the leading candidates for the third open seat. Ms. Miller is a transportation engineer for Montgomery County DOT, and some who've tangled with them on road design issues have some complaints about working with her. Otherwise, there does not seem to be a strong difference in their answers on the ACT questionnaire.

District 17 (Garrett Park, Rockville, Gaithersburg) has a high-profile contest between incumbent Senator Jennie Forehand and challenger Cheryl Kagan. Advocates on most issues, including on transit and smart growth, have been hard pressed to find any substantive difference between the two. Forehand spoke up strongly for highway widening during the 270 battle, but Kagan isn't really any better.

The delegate seats are all uncontested. James Gilchrist deserves special kudos for periodically taking the bus from Rockville to Annapolis to attend legislative sessions. Kumar Barve was one of two delegates not to sign the "Fair Share for Metro" letter, and signed the pro-highway 270 letter but not the pro-transit alternative.

District 19 (Glenmont, Aspen Hill, some of Olney) is a fairly static part of the County's middle, almost entirely built out with single family suburban homes (including my in-laws') and not changing very much very quickly for better or worse, except for the ICC running through the middle.

Delegate Roger Manno is trying to take the Senate seat from Mike Lennett. On transportation, both have been good, but Mr. Manno does more legwork to make things happen. Advocates say when they visit Annapolis, Lennett might be on their side, but Mr. Manno greets them and asks how he can help. Mr. Manno was the one to circulate the Metro funding letter on the floor. On that basis, Mr. Manno deserves a vote.

Among the delegates, incumbent Ben Kramer is similar to his sister Rona Kramer, including being very pro-road. Advoactes who've talked with the various candidates had good impressions of Sam Arora and Jay Hutchins on style and substance. Mr. Hutchins had excellent answers on the ACT questionnaire, and we like Mr. Arora's issues page. Disclosure: Mr. Arora and I have mutual friends.

District 39 (Montgomery Village, North Potomac, Darnestown) is the suburban area around the City of Gaithersburg, shaped as it is because state law requires district boundaries to respect incorporated city boundaries. It includes the Great Seneca Science Corridor (formerly Gaithersburg West), but the state legislature had little involvement with this issue. If built, the Corridor Cities Transitway will travel through a significant part of this district's western half.

Saqib Ali is trying to unseat incumbent Seantor Nancy King. Most of the differences are stylistic, especially Mr. Ali's much younger age and perceived greater vigor. But advocates who work with the legislature also say Mr. Ali does more grandstanding than actual legislating, and his bills don't advance because he doesn't work them hard enough. His vigor could be more Twitter-based than actual achievement-oriented.

However, Mr. Ali was willing to take a clear stand against widening I-270. He actually publicly renounced the pro-widening letter he himself signed, saying he hadn't seen the 270 part, which was below the pro-Corridor Cities Transitway section of the letter. Maybe it would have been better if he'd read the letter first, but we applaud this action.

Incumbents Charles Barkley and Kirill Reznik have reliably supported transit issues including Metro funding, the Purple Line, and the CCT, including transit alternatives over widening I-270. They deserve reelection. The most viable candidates vying to succeed Mr. Ali are Shane Robinson and Bob Hydorn, whose positions on these issues differ little.

Marc Elrich has been a strong proponent of a Bus Rapid Transit network, pushing the idea tirelessly and making it a signature issue. However, he's also the strongest defender of traffic-based tests that in effect hinder walkable development.

Nancy Floreen pushed through the White Flint plan, one of Montgomery's biggest opportunities for meaningful transit-oriented development, and opposes the traffic-based tests that Elrich likes. On the other hand, she also opposes most rules that would limit development in rural areas far from transit. She generally advocates building in the county and is less discerning about what or where.

George Leventhal has been a leader in the fight for the Purple Line, and for transit in general in the county. Yet he also strongly supported widening I-270, and basically favors any transportation project of any kind in any location. Duchy Trachtenberg has been good on the environment and transit issues as well and not a road booster, but hasn't shown as much leadership on growth and transportation issues generally.

I'd recommend Montgomery residents (like my in-laws) vote for Mr. Riemer and decide among the other candidates based on the other issues, like schools, budgets, labor relations and many more. If you're not sure of some of the candidates, it's also fine to vote for only two or three. Leaving a blank or two on the ballot makes the votes you do cast count even more, as the top four total vote-getters win the seats.

Two district seats are also contested, which happen to be the two that had Montgomery's greatest development debates in the last few years. District 1 includes Chevy Chase, Bethesda and Potomac, and has significant numbers of residents who oppose the Purple Line and/or White Flint. Roger Berliner, the incumbent, has championed both projects a good future for his area despite the short-term political risk. Meanwhile, his challenger, Ilaya Hopkins, has chosen to throw her lot in with the antis. Mr. Berliner should be reelected to prove that anti sentiment doesn't drive Montgomery politics.

In District 2, the suburban and rural northern part of the County, former Planning Board Chair Royce Hanson is the best choice for the open seat. He's been a strong proponent of Smart Growth on the Planning Board, and was largely responsible for the Agricultural Reserve, the large belt of (mostly) protected land at the County's edge, much of which is in that district. His support for the sprawl development at Gaithersburg West was more of a disappointment, but his multi-decade track record warrants your vote.

The other district members, Phil Andrews, Nancy Navarro, and Valerie Ervin, do not have primary challengers.

They might also end up complaining about traffic jams. According to the report by MdTA's consultant for toll rates, maximizing revenue on I-270, as they are on the ICC, depends on "operational failure"—traffic jams. In short, despite officials' pronouncements that this project will relieve congestion, most likely the road will end up with jammed free lanes and free-flowing yet expensive HOT lanes which local politicians will again denounce as inequitable "Lexus lanes" or "highway robbery."

With the ICC, opponents repeatedly warned residents and leaders that this "sticker shock" was likely. Their claims fell on deaf ears, but now are turning out to be spot on. How many members of the Montgomery Council will suddenly discover problems with the I-270 HOT lanes once it's too late? Their best hope is that it will take so long to build the road that they won't be around any more.

Frequent candidate Robin Ficker has joined in the ICC toll whining. He wants Maryland to divert some of its statewide sales tax and upcoming slot gambling revenue to make the ICC free. Michael Dresser notes that the sales tax pays for other services that benefit more Maryland residents, like education, and Montgomery isn't welcoming any slots within its boundaries.

But if Ficker is so eager to use sales tax and slots money for transportation, why not advocate using some of the money to make Metro and the Baltimore transit systems free? Or, better yet, use it to improve MARC? Why do leaders, including anti-tax crusaders like Ficker, want public money to keep driving free but don't bat an eyelash at the rising costs of transit?

Q: How will you pay for this project?
A: We don't know. The federal money Maryland will get in the future isn't enough to pay for this project. We'll need other sources, but don't know what or how much.

Q: How much of the money will be "discretionary" funds that the state could use for other purposes instead, if it chose?
A: We don't know yet.

Q: Can federal highway money be "flexed" to transit projects instead? What about transit on a highway?
A: Except for a few small exceptions, yes. Some categories require approval from USDOT, some don't.

Q: We think the currently proposed transportation bill in Congress allows states to keep flexing funds to transit. Is that right?
A: We don't want to answer any questions about bills that aren't law yet.

Q: Can the state use federal "highway trust fund" money for transit instead of highways if it wants?
A: Not as the programs operate now. FHWA "highway trust fund" money can't go to transit; you have to use FTA money for that. Congress has to allow that money to go to transit if it wants to let states choose between the two.

Q: How much will the state pay in interest on the bonds it will have to sell for this project?
A: We don't know how much money would be in bonds, so we can't say. However, the state has already hit its debt ceiling with the bonds it sold for the ICC, and can't sell more under current state law.

Q: What do you think about ACT's transit alternative?
A: We don't have time to analyze it, but it doesn't benefit the truckers driving on I-270 which is one of the groups that the freeway project will aid.

Q: How long will it take to study this?
A: We already looked at an all-transit alternative, but took it out because it didn't really decrease VMT on I-270. If we looked at this alternative, we'd have to start the EIS over.

Q: How long will it take to study the effect of the Gaithersburg West and Germantown plans?
A: Not very long. We just plug them into the model and hit go. We already looked at this in a preliminary way and it will increase traffic on I-270 somewhat.

Q: Do you want to add lanes on I-270 south of Shady Grove?
A: We're working on that study now.

Q: What is the cost of bus service on I-270 and how much service would we get? How does that compare to the MARC improvement?
A: Buses will run every 15 minutes and carry about 2,900-3,400 people per day for a cost of $6-9 million. Improving MARC would cost $531 million and quadruple capacity to 26,000 people per day, but our model estimates about 15,500 riders. MARC reaches farther than this project, all the way to West Virginia.

Q: Your EIS says that there will be less pollution with the new lanes than without. Did that account for induced demand?
A: Our model doesn't figure there will be very much induced demand.

Q: Can you add an option for two reversible lanes, as some have suggested?
A: Sure, but we have to pick a preferred alternative from among the existing options first, and can then look at this.

Q: It looks like, since most of the traffic is in the peak direction, two reversible lanes are just as good as four new lanes with two in each direction. Is that right?
A: Yeah, it looks like you're right, but we have to rerun the numbers using new forecasts.

Read the actual answers here.

Sure, more people drive today than take transit along those routes. In fact, virtually nobody takes transit between Tysons Corner and Bethesda for the simple reason that there isn't any. But transportation expansion, whether roads or transit, will primarily serve new commuters, not the existing ones. If no new jobs or housing were coming to our region, we wouldn't be worried about HOT lanes, Purple Lines, or anything else. The current roads and rails move the people who move today. The new infrastructure we build will govern the locations and modes of new commuter growth. If we choose transit, we'll get new transit riders.

Besides, why don't we "have to do something" about Metro crowding? The Metro system is very crowded during rush hours, particularly along the Red and Orange Lines in the Favored Quarter. The Beltway is very crowded around there, too, as are I-66 and I-270. Yet for some reason, leaders talk about "having" to add more car capacity, but not about how we absolutely need to put in more tracks on the Metro or build transit across the Potomac. Why?

When our region adds auto capacity in one place, it creates bottlenecks in another place. Growth in western Fairfax is creating bottlenecks on I-66 through Arlington. The HOT lanes will create a bottleneck at the American Legion Bridge. When the automatic reaction of officials is simply to plan another capacity increase down the line, we start a chain reaction that never ends.

The ICC was "necessary" to get people from Prince George's County to jobs along 270. Then, now that there was going to be a freeway to the Gaithersburg West area, it's "critical" to upzone that for even more jobs. Next, since there was going to be so much job growth there, it becomes essential to widen I-270 to the north. Once there are lanes there and in Virginia, we "have to" add more across the Potomac.

Where does it stop? Loudoun County is now planning even more freeways and expressways up to 10 lanes wide crisscrossing their county, so they can fill in every acre with single-family houses. Where will everyone work? Before long, we'll not only "have to" widen I-66 again and again, but build another freeway crossing through Potomac between the ICC and Dulles—the "western bypass" that road boosters in Virginia have never stopped pushing. Or how about two western bypasses?

Montgomery voters strongly oppose a freeway through Potomac, but they oppose new lanes on the Beltway as well, and leaders are saying we "have to" build it anyway. Maybe this generation of elected officials has no interest in that, but what will happen when the 12- and 14-lane I-270 and Beltway are hopelessly congested?

Leaders are supposed to lead. They are the ones who should be looking to the future and working toward the best vision of the future. A region with three Beltways, with as much development north and west of Dulles Airport as south and east, where Frederick is part of the region's core and middle suburbs are in West Virginia, isn't where we should go. There's plenty of room for economic growth around Metro, inside the Beltway, at Tysons, Route 7 and Springfield in Fairfax, Shady Grove, White Flint, Silver Spring, Wheaton and White Oak in Montgomery, and at every Prince George's Metro station. Leaders in Maryland and Virginia just need to stop saying "we have to" build more freeways and big office parks at the edge of the region, and instead encourage infill development and expand our great transit infrastructure.

Two-hour commutes are common, and families where both parents work, often in places many tens of miles apart, are fed up with all the driving. The more freeways we build, the worse traffic becomes. Transit, transit-oriented development, and Smart Growth have become phrases that almost every planner and politican utters, no matter what their plan.

There are people, however, who spent decades lobbying for the endless extension of 1950s suburbia, who simply don't recognize that there can be any other way. To them, economic prosperity means more of the same.

Rich Parsons is one of these people. He used to head the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce, and headed government relations for the Greater Washington Board of Trade. He's now lobbying hard for the $4 billion "Sprawlway" project to widen I-270, and wrote to Montgomery County state Senators, trying to stop them from signing on to Brian Frosh's letter recommending Maryland study a transit alternative.

From his exasperated letters, it's apparent that he just can't conceive why anyone wouldn't want more roads leading to more distant houses and more strip malls covering more of the state of Maryland. Further, he apparently can't believe that economic vitality could actually come from a different pattern of growth.

Parsons' central argument boils down to this: Since we've always grown by highways and sprawl, we have no choice but to continue. Most people drive today in the area; therefore, we need to keep developing so that new people drive.

[Frosh] is incorrect in asserting that the expansion of I-270 is anything new in this corridor study. ... In fact, widening I-270 north of Shady Grove Road is already part of Montgomery County's officially adopted 10-year transportation plan (and has been for many years, since around 2002, I believe). ... Besides, last time I looked at the current MARC ridership, it was underperforming estimates and the current rush hour service was underutilized.

He's saying that Maryland should build the project because it's on some map from a long time ago. Since planners a decade ago were thinking about freeways, so must we. And since not many people use MARC, we shouldn't fix it. Actually, not many people take MARC because it's not very good. Trains don't run often, and only one way in the peak direction. That's a good reason to improve it, but Parsons uses this as an argument to build more freeway lanes instead.

What about the freight rail that shares tracks with passenger rail?

There continue to be significant issues with competing freight traffic on the CSX lines (which may require adding a third track through a big part of the County, taking out homes and businesses in places like Kensington, Garrett Park Silver Spring, Rockville and Gaithersburg). ... Adding managed toll lanes between lower I-270 and the Western end of the Beltway at the American Legion Bridge (to connect with Virginia's HOT lanes already in construction) ... ought to be among your top priorities over the next decade.

This is another odd combination of opinions. We can't widen railroad rights-of-way, but it's absolutely essential to widen freeway rights-of-way?

MARC, by the way, believes they can improve service while coexisting with the freight railroads. They have a plan for expansion that's only waiting for funds, not tracks. Plus, because trains run fewer vehicles that carry more people than cars, more capacity could come from adding passing tracks in key areas instead of the whole way.

On the other hand, the Montgomery Planning Board's recommended Sprawlway alternative would displace 251 families, and adding more lanes from Rockville down to the Beltway and over to the American Legion Bridge would surely condemn many more.

Parsons' letter also contains some assertions which are either false, or based on information which nobody possesses except him. For example,

The highway portion of this project is likely to be paid for largely with the added toll revenues that the new managed toll lanes will generate. This is "new money" that would not be there if the lanes are not added. In the case of the ICC, tolls provided well more than half the total project cost and 270 could be even more.

The SHA's analysis doesn't bear out Parsons' claims. Based on the data so far, the toll lanes won't move appreciably faster than the non-toll lanes, meaning the toll will have to be very low to entice anyone into the toll lanes. Ben Ross argued that the tolls won't even recoup the cost of collecting the tolls.

Perhaps ACT's data is wrong. If so, SHA needs to release some actual revenue estimates. The Montgomery County Council sent them a letter before the recess asking for this information, along with other questions. When SHA responds, we can better judge whether this project will actually pay for itself as Parsons claims.

The cost alone should not be any reason to kill this project. The dramatic traffic relief it provides—61% reduction in congestion, 60% reduction in travel times, and up to 84% improvement in peak-hour speeds ... are among the other reasons we cannot afford to kill it.

Parsons must not have read the 1999 article in the Washington Post, which pointed out the effects of the last I-270 widening. People said the same about congestion then, and the road filled right up with new drivers from new developments in Germantown, Clarksburg, and Frederick County.

This project isn't for the existing residents, or the existing truck traffic to Ohio which Parsons argues is so important. No, this project is for the new residents, the ones who will fill up the lanes after they're built. The question is not what existing people need, because new infrastructure won't generate more economic growth from them or relieve their congestion. New infrastructure will bring in new residents and new jobs.

The only question is where those residents and jobs should be. Parsons doesn't give any good reason why they should live on I-270 in Frederick County and drive through Montgomery to DC, except that it's the logical extension of the public policy of the past. That's not a good reason.

There's a lot of room around Shady Grove and Glenmont Metro stations. Montgomery County wants to create a dense urban neighborhood at White Flint. Silver Spring still has numerous lots still undeveloped, and coffee-shop owners dying for the new residents and businesses to patronize them. There's a big bioscience research facility at White Oak with plenty of room for more jobs, and the County has already looked into a Purple Line spur to reach it.

And none of this considers Prince George's County, with its many underutilized Metro stations, Baltimore, or the rest of the state. Maryland Politics Watch has been hammering at the idea that Montgomery County, and the I-270 corridor in particular, is the economic engine of the state.

But this also reflects the past infrastructure investment decisions. There are more jobs on 270 because East County fought new jobs for many years. There is more housing than jobs on the east side; if Maryland put some investment into that area, it could become more of an economic engine. So could Prince George's County and Baltimore.

This project definitely would detract from infrastructure investment and job growth in other areas. Parsons even reveals that he'd like the state to dump multiple years' worth of transportation funding into this project. He writes, "I would expect the project would be broken up into smaller segments that would be manageable within any given capital budget cycle for whatever public funding may be needed." To him, that's actually an argument for the project. It's not too expensive to build, as long as the state dedicates a period of time—say, a decade—during which they don't do anything else.

Parsons further argues that it's not appropriate for elected officials to weigh in on the best ways to spend $4 billion of public money. Doing so would be "blatant political interference in the study process," as happened with the ICC, delaying it 20 years. That assumes, of course, that the ICC was appropriate to build. Parsons thinks so, we know, but most of the Maryland state legislature now wishes there had been a little more political interference.

Why take so much ink to rebut Parsons' letters? Because changing the way we look at public policy is hard and takes time. Just look at President Obama's major initiatives, which are slogging through a very difficult process in Congress. We've thought about energy and health care in a particular way for decades if not longer, and there are many people committed to the status quo.

Likewise, once-influential business leaders come out of the woodwork to fight for more sprawl because they see it as the only way, as a choice between more of it or stagnation. That's a false choice. Senators Jennie Forehand, Rob Garagiola, Nancy King, Rona Kramer, Mike Lennett, Richard Madaleno, and Jamie Raskin are smart enough to see through Parsons' "the only way is the highway" rhetoric that is more appropriate to 1939 GM executives than Maryland's leaders of 2009.