LOS Mentality - Greater Greater Washington

With fat lanes, traffic engineers kill in the name of safety

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 12:28:00 EDT

DC resident Jeff Speck wrote Suburban Nation, the best-selling book about city planning since Jane Jacobs. Greater Greater Washington is pleased to present 3 weekly excerpts from his new book, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time.

Contrary to perceptions, the greatest threat to pedestrian safety is not crime, but the very real danger of automobiles moving quickly. Yet most traffic engineers, often in the name of safety, continually redesign city streets to support higher-speed driving.

Photo by the author.

This approach is so counterintuitive that it strains credulity: Engineers design streets for speeds well above the posted limit, so that speeding drivers will be safe—a practice that, of course, causes the very speeding it hopes to protect against.

Even my old South Beach neighborhood, known for its walkability, was not immune to this sort of thinking.

If you have seen the remake of La Cage Aux Folles, you might remember the lively streetscape of Espanola Way, where Robin Williams buys an elaborate birthday cake for his partner. Follow that street two blocks west, and you will find that already-narrow sidewalks have been cut in half in order to widen a roadway that functioned perfectly well before. Why? Because the standards had changed—from walkable to not.

I have never heard a proper explanation for the creeping expansion of America's street standards. All I know is that it is very real, and that it has a profound impact on the work that city planners do every day.

In the late nineties, I was working on the design of Mount Laurel, a new town outside of Birmingham, Alabama, that was modeled on that city's most successful prewar neighborhoods. We had measured the streets of Homewood, Mountain Brook, and the city's other best addresses, and planned our thoroughfares with the same dimensions. We were then told that our streets did not meet the standard, and our engineering firm was unwilling to stamp the drawings for fear of legal liability.

I remember one particular afternoon, when we convinced the County Engineer to tour these great neighborhoods with us in our van. Perhaps anticipating our consternation, he gripped the door handle with white knuckles and shouted "We're gonna die!" as we motored calmly around the narrow, leafy streets of Mountain Brook. I'm pretty sure he was joking, but his ultimate pronouncement was clear: we had to re-engineer our streets with a higher design speed.

This logic—that higher design speeds make for safer streets—coupled with the typical city engineer's desire for unimpeded traffic—has caused many American cities to rebuild their streets with lanes that are 12, 13, and sometimes even 14 feet wide. Now, cars are only 6 feet wide—a Ford Excursion is 6'-6''—and most Main Streets were historically made of 10-foot lanes. That dimension persists on many of the best, such as ritzy Worth Avenue in Palm Beach, Florida. Yet, many cities I visit have their fair share of 13-footers, and that is where much of the speeding occurs.

For me writing this, and you reading it, it is undoubtedly clear that building wider lanes would cause drivers to speed. After all, if highways have 12-foot lanes, and we are comfortable negotiating them at seventy miles per hour, wouldn't we feel the same way on a city street of the same dimension? Yet, in the bizarre parallel universe of the traffic engineer, no such relationship exists. Motorists will drive at the speed limit, or slightly above, no matter what sort of drag strip we lay in their path.

As with induced demand, the engineers have once again failed to comprehend that the way they design streets will have any impact on the way that people use them. By their logic, just as more lanes can't cause more driving, high-speed lanes can't cause high speeds. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to the second great misunderstanding that lies at the root of most urban degradation today. Widening a city's streets in the name of safety is like distributing handguns to deter gun violence.

Just in case you think I am making this up, let's turn to the calm analysis of Reid Ewing and Eric Dumbaugh, professors at the University of Maryland and Texas A & M, respectively. In their 2009 study, "The Built Environment and Traffic Safety: A Review of Empirical Evidence," they assess the situation this way.

Considered broadly, the fundamental shortcoming of conventional traffic safety theory is that it fails to account for the moderating role of human behavior on crash incidence. Decisions to ... widen specific roadways to make them more forgiving are based on the assumption that in so doing, human behavior will remain unchanged. And it is precisely this assumption—that human behavior can be treated as a constant, regardless of design—that accounts for the failure of conventional safety practice.

How costly is this failure? In another study, presented at the 80th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Rutgers professor Robert Noland calculated that increased lane widths could be blamed for approximately 900 additional traffic fatalities per year.

We can only hope that these studies eventually have an impact on thoroughfare engineering as it is currently practiced in the typical American city. Currently, engineers still deny their stamp of approval to streets configured without "adequately" high design speeds. "We're afraid of being sued," they say.

Some day, I might get up the nerve to respond as follows: "Afraid? You should be. Now that we've publicly presented to you that narrower roads save lives, we are going to sue you when people die on your fat streets."

There is some good news. Thanks to the labors of the Congress for New Urbanism, a nonprofit focused on making more livable cities, we have made a start in changing the standards. The CNU teamed up with the Institute of Traffic Engineers to create a new manual, "Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares," that recommends street lanes of 10 and 11 feet wide. With the imprimatur of the ITE, this book can now be waved at planning meetings in support of more reasonable standards. I just wish that "11" wasn't in there.

Another cause for hope is the growing "20's Plenty for Us" movement that, having taken the United Kingdom by storm, is just beginning to win followers in the US. Recognizing that only 5 percent of pedestrian collisions at 20 miles per hour result in death, vs. 85 percent at 40 mph, the British have introduced 20 mph speed limits in many of their cities.

There are currently more than 87 "Twenty's Plenty" campaigns in the UK, and about 25 British jurisdictions, with a combined population of over six million, have committed to a 20 mph speed limit in residential areas. In June, 2011, the European Union Transport Committee recommended such a rule for the entire continent. It is easy to imagine 20 mph becoming a standard throughout Europe in the near future.

On this side of the pond, Hoboken, New Jersey, may be the first city to have instituted a "Twenty is Plenty" campaign. Unfortunately, in true Jersey fashion, the 20 is just a suggestion, while higher official speed limits remain in place. As I write this, New York City is pioneering some legitimate 20 mph zones.

These developments are important—but not as an end in themselves. As any London pedestrian will tell you, a 20-mph sign does not a 20-mph driver make. Most motorists drive the speed at which they feel comfortable, which is the speed to which the road has been engineered. "20's Plenty" is most useful as a first step to slower design speeds. Once 20-mph zones proliferate, we may finally be able to convince the engineers to design 20-mph streets.

Speck's book comes out on November 13. You can pre-order it on Amazon. For more from the book, see also our first excerpt.

40 comments

Successful speed cameras require fair speed limits (May 21, 2012)
Speed limits don't match road designs (Mar 23, 2009)
Lower speed limits, wider lanes won't fix the GW Parkway (Jul 2, 2008)
Support two-way 15th Street today (Jun 19, 2008)
DDOT may restore two-way traffic on 15th Street (Jan 10, 2008)

Traffic tests confound Montgomery council

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 11:46:00 EDT

by Ben Ross

Montgomery County has tried several times to find a working "adequate public facilities ordinance," rules that aim to ensure new buildings don't jam up roads. They've never succeeded, and a new version won't either.

Photo by Google Earth.

At a County Council meeting Monday, legislators struggled with another proposed revamp of the law, which the county DOT originated and the Planning Board endorsed with some changes. This version would junk rules the county adopted 5 years ago, which supplanted a law from 2003, which replaced yet another system of regulation that preceded it.

None of these rules got rid of traffic jams because all share the same fundamental flaw. They measure how fast cars move, rather than whether people can get where they want to go. If the supermarket is 10 miles away, and it takes 15 minutes to drive there, you pass the test. If the supermarket is 1 mile away, and it takes 5 minutes to drive there, you flunk.

There are 2 ways to get new construction approved under this sort of test. One is to locate the building far from everything else. The other is to build new highways or widen old ones. This is a recipe for more sprawl, more asphalt, and more driving. Rather than relieving traffic congestion, it makes more of it.

The proposal now before the Council, called Transportation Policy Area Review or "TPAR," doubles down on this failed strategy. It would create a new pot of money, collected from developers who build in areas with congested roads, under the control of the county's car-centric, highway-loving Transportation Department. In addition, the proposal would still require developers to widen nearby roads if intersections back up.

Edgar Gonzalez, the department's number two, told Councilmember Hans Riemer that passing the legislation would commit the county to a long list of controversial road projects, especially the hotly-disputed Midcounty Highway extension. The legislators were divided Monday over whether they should tie their hands in this way.

Riemer and George Leventhal argued that the County Council should retain flexibility in making spending decisions. Nancy Floreen, on the other hand, insisted that money from the road congestion tax should only be spent to move cars. She pointed to a bicycle bridge over Veirs Mill Road, funded under the current law, as a misuse of funds.

Marc Elrich, who has long considered "free-flowing" automobile traffic a paramount objective, initially agreed, saying he was "sort of where Nancy is on certainty of where money is spent." Elrich later backtracked somewhat, saying that improved transit could be a better way to keep cars moving than new highways, but he reiterated his belief that sidewalks and bus shelters should not substitute for road-building.

A companion tax on developers that would fund added Ride-On bus service is also before the council. Sharp questioning from Roger Berliner established that this tax would not, as claimed, put autos and transit on an equal footing.

Gonzalez and Planning Board chair Françoise Carrier conceded that the level of transit service the proposal defines as "adequate"—a bus every 20 minutes in rush hour and every half hour the rest of the day—is nowhere near good enough to compete with driving. It is simply what is achievable without straining the county budget.

The debate over who should determine spending priorities comes just months after the Council overruled the Transportation Department and deferred 3 highway projects to pay for a new Bethesda Metro entrance and a bike trail. Since then, the county bureaucracy has done little to gain public confidence. The debacles of the Silver Spring Transit Center and the Woodmont Avenue road closing in Bethesda suggest that now is not the time for legislators to lessen their oversight.

12 comments

For Montgomery County Council (Aug 31, 2010)
Montgomery councilmembers: Get moving on bus priority (Apr 22, 2011)
Montgomery DOT rolls out another cars-first traffic test (Apr 28, 2010)
Montgomery builds BRT-hostile roads as it plans BRT (Nov 15, 2012)
The only thing we have to fear is fear of traffic (Jan 13, 2010)

Greenbelt sector plan defeats its own walkability goals

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 13:41:00 EDT

by Matt Johnson

What do you get if a planner writes the first part of a plan, and then a highway engineer writes the second part without bothering to read the first? You get something that looks like the preliminary draft of the Greenbelt Metro/193 Sector Plan.

Photo from the plan.

Whether the two parts have disparate authors who consulted or not, the result is a contradictory plan. The plan, from the Prince George's County planning department, sets out some very progressive goals, including building walkable, mixed-use nodes in several locations. But the transportation recommendations then defeat the plan's own aims.

At the public meetings, planners talked about using road diets to reduce the barrier effect of some high-traffic arteries. Instead of employing that useful tool, the draft plan does the opposite, and recommends widening several roads in a way that will deepen the problem in the area.

One of the targets for redevelopment in this area is the Greenbelt Metro station site. Currently a sea of almost 4,000 parking spaces, it's a prime site for transit-oriented, mixed-use development. The transit hub is home not only to the Metro, but also to MARC trains and several bus lines. The plan also leaves open the possibility for the site to develop for a GSA tenant like the FBI.

The plan also targets Beltway Plaza and the Greenway Shopping Center for redevelopment. Both of these auto-oriented retail centers are along Greenbelt Road, a major suburban arterial corridor. This wide roadway forms a barrier separating neighborhoods.

Conceptual proposal for redeveloping Beltway Plaza. Image from the plan.

The plan notes that major roadways like Greenbelt Road have created "significant barriers to connectivity and pedestrian and bicycle safety, effectively separating the sector plan area into isolated sections." Greenbelt has been split into several pods over the years by freeways like the Capital Beltway, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, and Kenilworth Avenue, and citizens spoke out about the divisions these roadways have created.

Image from the plan.

As a result, the plan seeks to address the problems created by decades of investment in auto infrastructure and years of underinvestment in alternative modes.

"The sector plan area is characterized by major highway intersections and freeway interchanges that directly and negatively impact pedestrian and bicycle mobility and access."

The plan proposes to transform the area to "maximize pedestrian and bicycle accessibility, mobility, and safety." It calls for completing a continuous network of sidewalks, bikeways, and trails; for reconfiguring Greenbelt Road to include dedicated bike facilities and wide sidewalks; for coordinating transit services to increase ridership; and to enhance safety for all users.

All of those improvements are terrific ideas, and they've been needed for years. Unfortunately, it sounds like the plan isn't really serious about these improvements.

Plan counteracts its own solutions

Seeming to have forgotten about all the problems created by bigger and wider roads, the plan calls for widening several arteries in the sector plan area. Most notably, the plan calls for adding a lane in each direction to Greenbelt Road in front of Beltway Plaza and Greenway Center. It supports widening Kenilworth Avenue and the Capital Beltway. The county also proposes widening a 2-lane section of Hanover Parkway to 4 lanes.

The plan still includes a proposal to spend several million dollars reconfiguring the Greenbelt Road/Kenilworth Avenue interchange into a "diverging diamond," which will be even less friendly for non-motorized users.

It's especially ironic that these elements are in the plan, since at the community meetings planners talked about the exact opposite: road diets.

And in this case, road diets are probably warranted. A traffic study conducted as part of the planning process found that none of the roadways in the sector plan area was failing. Neither were any of the intersections.

So, despite a lack of congestion; despite talk of road diets; despite wanting to increase walking and bicycling; despite all of that, the plan still calls for widening roads.

It's almost as if, having decried the unintended consequences of the transportation policies of 1975, the plan says: there's nothing wrong with solving those problems with the same solutions.

Widenings confound positive changes

Word cloud showing community desires. Image from the plan.

What's most baffling about these highway widenings is that they'll not only counteract the solutions proposed make walking a true option in this corridor, but they'll also make the mixed-use vision less likely to come to fruition.

A walkable node at Beltway Plaza is all well and good. But how well will it be connected to Berwyn Heights on the south if it's separated by a 10-lane road? Putting bike lanes on Greenbelt Road sounds nice. But how safe will it be to bike alongside 10 lanes of traffic? Completing the sidewalk network is long overdue. But how pleasant will it be to walk alongside one of the widest arterials in the region?

Speeding trips through Greenbelt will also encourage more suburbanization in the less-developed sections of the county. That will take office and retail demand away from the parts of the county where the infrastructure already exists to serve it.

No, the plan will not enable the future it envisions, because it still clings to the infrastructure changes that created the divided, pedestrian-hostile environment it seeks to fix.

It's not too late for Prince George's to build the foundation for a more walkable and sustainable Greenbelt. But the Planning Board and County Council need to urge changes to the plan. Without the uncalled-for widening of the roadways in the area, the plan has a chance of creating the mixed-use nodes and increasing walking, biking, and transit use in the planning area.

The Prince George's County Planning Board and County Council will be holding a joint session public hearing at 7 pm Tuesday in Upper Marlboro. If you're a resident of Prince George's, write the Council or come to testify. Tell them that positive change requires taking a different approach than ones past.

15 comments

"Diverging diamond" doesn't help make a walkable corridor (Apr 30, 2012)
Don't cut new Tysons Corner in two (Jan 26, 2012)
Prince George's transportation plan, part 1: More sidewalks, more roads (Jan 30, 2009)
Metro Board will take up Greenbelt restructuring (Sep 28, 2010)
Feds, Maryland examine widening Balt.-Wash. Parkway (Feb 22, 2012)

Breakfast tweets: Less is more

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 08:54:00 EDT

by David Alpert

Today, we're trying an experimental format for the links: Twitter style.

Photo by xtopalopaquetl on Flickr.

US DOT: Lowest traffic fatalities in 60 years (Transportation Nation, @marctomik)
"We don't want to come off as NIMBYs." But Arlington residents don't want a homeless shelter in their backyard (Post, @_jpscott)
The London Tube's central Zone 1 is very pricey, so a map shows how to get off outside and take bike share (Ollie O'Brien)
What are public/private partnerships PPPs? Where are they in the US and internationally? (Brookings, @bogrosemary)
What to get for the cargobike lover who has everything (& kids)? (Bike Noun Verb, @KidicalMassDC, @IMGoph)
On Friday, @beyonddc exposed the folly of highway "Level of Service." Now @e_jaffe takes on local street LOS (Atlantic Cities, @vebah)
An experiemental system can disable drivers' phones in the car without affecting passengers' phones (Daily Mail, Steve S.)
Lance's feelings about bike lanes in cartoon form (The Onion, @JoelLawsonDC)

Our current Breakfast Link editors are looking to move on from curating the links each day. Meanwhile, many of our contributors now use Twitter, and can submit or curate items through that service.

We decided to try creating a links post collaboratively, by building the post from tweets contributors and readers sent in to a new Twitter account, @GGWashTips, plus some from our regular tip queue. This is the result.

Have a tip for the tweets? Tweet it to @GGWashTips.

Want to edit the Breakfast Links in either the old style or this one? Email us at info@ggwash.org.

36 comments

Submit tips here (Mar 17, 2009)
Breakfast non-links: Have a great weekend (Sep 4, 2009)
Metro tweets welcome, could be even more useful (Jul 15, 2010)
Arlington County installs new bike signal on Custis Trail (May 21, 2011)
On the calendar: Biking west, retail/zoning north, buses east (Mar 2, 2011)

For highways, getting a 'D' isn't so bad

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 15:25:00 EDT

by Dan Malouff

Listen to any discussion of highway congestion and you will inevitably hear about Level of Service (LOS), which assigns a letter grade to the congestion level of road segments. Letter grades start with 'A' for free flow and run down to 'F' for "failing" (congested) roads. Simple enough.

Photo by BeyondDC on Flickr.

Simple enough, except that it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and is completely counter-intuitive.

The problem is that people hear about roads with grades of C, D, or E and think that means they are badly congested roads, because Cs, Ds and Es are bad grades in school. Traffic engineers often refer to streets with LOS D or E as "nearly failing," which sounds bad to anyone who speaks English.

But that isn't how it actually works. Any LOS above F is good. A road with an LOS of E is still moving very well.

Take a look at this year's Metropolitan Washington Aerial Traffic Congestion Survey. Download the pdf and go to its 11th page, where LOS speeds are defined. This is what you will find:

LOS A, B, and C are all free flow conditions. LOS D equates to highways moving at 65 miles per hour. LOS E is 55 mph. A highway can receive a score of LOS F - failing - and still be moving at somewhere around 40 mph.

So for the record, a highway scoring LOS D is moving faster than the legal speed limit on most highways in our region. How completely ridiculous.

Don't ever let anyone tell you Ds and Es are bad grades for highways. They aren't.

19 comments

They're smart up in Boston (May 20, 2005)
Loudoun blindly pushing massive, senseless road widenings (May 19, 2010)
Silverman demagoguing on Whitehurst (Sep 2, 2008)
Lt. Gov. Brown open to new ideas, needs to hear them (Aug 3, 2009)
Rogoff: Federal oversight mustn't push riders onto highways (Apr 21, 2010)

Better models in San Diego

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 15:54:00 EDT

by David Alpert

We, and many other urbanists, constantly criticize conventional traffic modeling, which generally assumes more car trips than in reality for mixed-use and walkable areas. EPA commissioned development of a better model, and San Diego's Association of Governments has officially adopted it. Will our COG/TPB follow? (Kaid Benfield/Switchboard via Streetsblog)

Comment

Crossing Route 7 will mean long waits in Tysons

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 09:59:00 EDT

by David Alpert

VDOT is widening Route 7 in Tysons Corner to fit in the Silver Line. New signals will require pedestrians to use two full light cycles to cross the road. This is making pedestrian conditions worse just as Fairfax is trying to transform Tysons into a more walkable place.

Photo by magandafille on Flickr.

According to Dr. Gridlock,

Because of the widening, pedestrians only have time to cross half of Route 7 during a green traffic signal cycle. The new traffic signal requires that pedestrians stop on the median, press the signal button and wait for the light to cross to the other side.

As tipster B. points out, traffic engineers would rate an intersection as "failing" if, 24 hours a day, traffic conditions required cars to wait 2 whole light cycles to cross the road. Yet VDOT is deeming that pedestrian "level of service" to be adequate.

Instead of widening the major existing arterials, officials should focus on getting the street grid built so Route 7 could still fit the Silver Line without being wider. Parallel streets create traffic capacity without forcing enormous widenings. Routes 7 and 123, right under the Metro stations, will become the centers of the future walkable areas, but are already too wide to really be optimal mixed-use boulevards.

Fairfax is trying to retrofit a suburban "edge city" into an urban place at a scale never before attempted. The scale of the existing auto-centric infrastructure, such as the wide arteries and large interchanges, is the biggest obstacle. It's important the Tysons plan succeed. Virginia shouldn't make the task even harder by making the existing hurdles to walkability even higher.

Update: In the original post, it wasn't clear whether Route 7 was getting wider to fit more lanes or to fit the Silver Line. It's just adding the Silver Line, not more lanes, but the wider footprint makes it worse for pedestrians. Parallel streets could allow fewer lanes on 7 itself while maintaining the overall traffic capacity.

13 comments

Crossing the street often unsafe in Fairfax (Nov 12, 2009)
Transforming Tysons with four unique districts (Sep 12, 2008)
Less pretty, more functional please (Oct 20, 2009)
Gaithersbungle, part 4: Why emulate Tysons' existing road network? (Jul 14, 2009)
Tysons planners: Making a city is hard, so never mind (Sep 15, 2009)

Loudoun blindly pushing massive, senseless road widenings

Wed, 19 May 2010 14:17:00 EDT

by David Alpert

Loudoun County is pushing a plan to widen huge numbers of roads across the county, but residents are fighting back.

Keep most Loudoun roads more like this. Photo by Heather Elias.

The plan is something right out of Robert Moses' 1950s designs: Draw bigger and wider roads everywhere, at even spacing, and design completely around the needs of cars to the exclusion of people.

My grandparents used to live in South Florida (like so many others), where the entire landscape is filled with a grid of six-lane highways surrounding country clubs and housing subdivisions.

It's not a pleasant urban form, and is certainly not walkable or bikeable. It's not what Loudoun should aspire to look like.

Sadly, that's exactly what this plan envisions for Loudoun. Ashburn would become crisscrossed with six-lane expressways, between several freeways. The plan also calls for massive circumferential car capacity between Loudoun and Prince William County, despite the fact that current congestion is east-west, not north-south.

Eastern Loudoun roads in the Countywide Transportation Plan.
Teal roads will become 6 lanes, brown 8, red 10. Freeways are in yellow.

Loudoun planners, like so many others, just plugged their county into traffic modeling programs and out popped a set of road widenings. The basis of this is model is the MWCOG TPB model, which is widely criticized for having numerous flaws. It works only moderately poorly on a regionwide level, but when narrowed down to a smaller area, its flaws get magnified.

Skeptical residents hired Smart Mobility to evaluate the plan. They write,

The approach used in the CTP is one that has led our nation to spend exorbitantly on roadway construction, with the primary results being costly road improvements, induced traffic, and persistent congestion. The plan states that this approach is "industry accepted." This may have been true twenty years ago, but the CTP approach does not represent the current practice for multimodal transportation planning.
Transportation planners and engineers generally agree that this type of conventional application of a travel demand model is not appropriate for regions that are seeking to reduce traffic congestion by implementing compact, mixed land uses and street networks that provide options and ease traffic.

Smart Mobility found that the model is only about 74% accurate, and overstates the north-south travel demand by 33%. The model also assumes gas prices will remain low, which is unlikely.

In addition, Loudoun County interpreted the model in an entirely car-centric way. When roads showed up as congested in the future, they assumed the solution was to widen them. This flies in the face of the county's own Comprehensive Plan, which calls for reducing traffic through more compact and walkable development, not increasing it by paving more and more of the county.

[T]he draft CTP states that "the computer modeling exercise for the CTP only considers road segments," so it should be no surprise that the only solutions that arose from this modeling exercise was to widen road segments—with a total cost of $1.64 billion dollars.
In the real world, traffic capacity is constrained at intersections, and not on roadway segments. This is somewhat acknowledged in some of planning documents, which identify "choke points" on the region's road network (see figure below). There are a wide variety of solutions to intersection congestion beyond simply adding lanes to roadways. In fact, adding lanes to roadways can make downstream congestion much worse.
Other solutions, such as increased street connectivity that allows drivers to avoid bottlenecks and provides alternative routes for short trip, or compact mixed use development that reduces trip lengths or allows some trips to be made by walking or biking, were not considered in the CTP analysis.

New Gilbert's Corner roundabouts. Image by VDOT.

The new roundabouts at Gilbert's Corner do a better job of alleviating traffic choke points than adding lanes. Development that creates a denser street grid, instead of pushing all traffic onto widely-spaced, heavily-congested arterials, better allows for growth without adding traffic.

Loudoun should follow the Smart Mobility recommendations and throw out its existing model. Instead, the county should identify more targeted road projects that focus on bottlenecks and access to areas slated for more compact growth in the Comprehensive Plan, not long-distance commutes that only exist in such numbers in the imaginary and inaccurate world of the COG/TPB model.

28 comments

Do "we have to do something" about traffic but not transit? (Oct 26, 2009)
Maryland SHA pushing stupid growth on Connecticut Avenue (Jul 20, 2009)
Finally: an express bus from Leesburg to Tysons (Jun 3, 2010)
Montgomery groups attack 270 widening, criticize "false choice" (Jul 20, 2009)
The only thing we have to fear is fear of traffic (Jan 13, 2010)

Francoise car-rier?

Wed, 19 May 2010 08:43:00 EDT

by David Alpert

The Montgomery County Council unanimously selected Francoise Carrier as the new Planning Board chairman. (Post) But she was the only one to give vague non-answers to traffic and transit questions on ACT's questionnaire.

Comment

Montgomery DOT rolls out another cars-first traffic test

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:05:00 EDT

by Barnaby Zall

Fresh from yesterday's interesting Montgomery County Council discussion of the failed car speed tests, I received a leaked copy of the Montgomery County Department of Transportation's proposed replacement.

Rockville Pike. Photo by thisisbossi.

McDOT will announce the new policy this afternoon. The explanatory memo can be found here.

The new Transportation Policy Area Review will replace the existing Policy Area Mobility Review (PAMR) and Local Area Transportation Review (LATR) tests. These tests, which have been widely criticized, focus on how fast cars move through intersections, blocking development and imposing new infrastructure requirements whenever cars slow down.

These tests may have their places, but not in modern pedestrian-friendly plans. The reason is simple: you can't have a pedestrian-friendly community if cars move fast.

The Council wrestled for months to reconcile a pedestrian-friendly White Flint with its existing car speed tests, a struggle which was resolved only when the Council realized that the answer to congestion was not to move cars faster but to get people out of cars. That works in Arlington County, and it should work even in Montgomery County. That, at least, is the premise of the White Flint Plan.

But there's an aphorism that, if all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. That's the problem with the Montgomery County Department of Transportation, which is tasked with the huge job of handling the County's traffic problems. MCDOT sees everything in automobile terms: Rockville Pike, for example, is a big pipe from NIH and Navy Med in Bethesda to Rockville (oh, by the way, White Flint in between isn't anything at all to worry about, except if it slows cars).

That's why, when faced with a nice opportunity for a park or community facility on the unused SHA land at the northern intersection of Montrose Parkway and Rockville Pike, McDoT gave us a ... surface parking lot. In White Flint. Where we're trying to replace those. To protect the environment. And make a pedestrian-friendly community. I'm sure they had a good reason.

And just so with the new TPAR. The product of a high-powered consultant's report, the proposal to be issued today is fascinating more for what it does NOT do than what it does. There are some good parts of the proposal, mostly dealing with the techniques for measuring and analyzing traffic.

But you hit the real problem on the very first page of the Introduction: transit and travel demand management (getting people out of their cars) are to be considered "separately" (emphasis in original) from arterial roadways and bicycle and pedestrian improvements. See page 3. Um... why?

Maybe that comes from treating roads out of context. That's reinforced by the wide and differing areas which are treated as if they were the same. Downtown Bethesda, with its urban character, access to Metro, and full streets, is in the same transit access zone with Cabin John, with its more suburban or rural vocabulary and NO transit access. Really, only roads matter to McDoT, not transit access, and not transit-orientation. (And, a wiser analyst than I pointed out, the new TPAR means that McDoT can build what it wants, when it wants, without a lot of outside control, as long as a road is in a master plan.)

So, there's a lot of good in the new proposal, but at bottom, this is a continuation of the "car is king" philosophy. Understandable in a department of Transportation, but not really where the County is going. This is more rearranging the deck chairs, rather than a holistic approach to solving a variety of mobility issues.

And it totally ignores the big gorilla coming down on us all: carbon limitation laws that will begin strangling road construction in just a few years. Sustainability (read demand management) will become the main driver in the future, not congestion. Soon what comes out of the tailpipe will become more important than how fast we can move that pipe.

Perhaps this is the wrong place to do that type of overall "quality of life" analysis, but if this TPAR is intended to replace PAMR and LATR, then TPAR will determine our government priorities and spending. Road construction is, and will be important, but the County shouldn't lock into a system which expressly intends to separate transit and demand management from road needs.

This is, again, the same problem the County faced with the White Flint Plan: how do you use these car-oriented tools in a transit-oriented space? The answer is: not very easily.

Wouldn't we be better served, as a County, if we did what the Planning Board tried to do in White Flint: measure a variety of elements which make up "quality of life," rather than just how fast cars move through intersections? Spend as much time on getting drivers out of cars as on moving them through intersections as fast as possible.

5 comments

Will 30 seconds kill White Flint? (Jan 18, 2010)
Montgomery making Conn. Ave. more like a freeway (Nov 3, 2010)
MDOT improving pedestrian safety in the wake of tragedy (Nov 19, 2010)
The only thing we have to fear is fear of traffic (Jan 13, 2010)
Defunding Pike conversion threatens Montgomery's growth (Oct 26, 2010)

Traffic tests like a hydra

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 09:24:00 EDT

by David Alpert

Montgomery Council staff tried to stop White Flint again by re-imposing a traffic test, where if White Flint slowed any traffic down outside White Flint, it couldn't proceed. But the Council deleted it from its agenda following strong opposition. (FLOG)

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Not just one way for Laurel

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:22:00 EDT

by David Alpert

Laurel won't make a road one-way after residents protested the plan, which sounds like it emerged from some very LOS-minded traffic planning. (Gazette)

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Leggett wants direct pedestrian paths except when they'd interfere with traffic

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:57:00 EDT

by David Alpert

Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett's isn't giving up on proposals for an anti-urban skybridge connecting the Silver Spring library to a parking garage.

Book-like facade of the new Silver Spring library.

This past weekend, Leggett unveiled concept sketches for the new library at Wayne Avenue and Fenton Street. It strongly evokes images of "an open book," along with large glass windows said to represent "the openness of government" and limestone similar to that in other Silver Spring buildings. A coffee shop and art gallery will line the ground floor, with artist studios above, followed by three stories of library. Two more floors on top will contain community meeting space and some county offices.

The design also leaves room for a future bridge across Wayne Avenue to the adjacent parking garage. Original plans contained the bridge, but urbanists protested that this costly endeavor would only draw pedestrian traffic off the surface streets, encouraging faster traffic and road designs hostile to those who wish to cross at ground level.

Existing Silver Spring plans prohibited bridges, and the Montgomery County Council voted to sustain that plan, with only Councilmember George Leventhal (at-large) voting for the bridge. Instead, to accommodate persons with disabilities, the library will contain a small amount of handicapped parking on site. Nevertheless, Leggett hasn't given up on the opportunity to put cars above pedestrians by building the bridge, and Duchy Trachtenberg might be wavering on the issue.

In his letter to the County Council this summer (large PDF), Leggett insisted that "accessibility and sustainability" drove his recommendation:

The primary rationale is not one solely of safety; it is primarily one of accessibility and sustainability. The use of the existing underutilized parking garage is a "green" decision which saves the use of materials and taxpayer dollars which would have been otherwise needed to provide new on-site parking for the library. The disadvantage of utilizing the existing garage is the greatly increased travel path to the library for many patrons—including, but not limited to, the elderly and disabled. The bridge is being proposed to address this concern.

It's funny Leggett should mention a "greatly increased travel path." That's exactly what county DOT staff would create with their secret vehicular underpass at the Medical Center Metro that forces pedestrians to walk over 100 feet out of the way, just to facilitate greater car volume in and out of the NIH and future Walter Need National Military Medical Center site. The direct Metro station entrance would have added both accessibility and sustainability, but apparently speeding up cars is more important.

Leggett's and his staff view transportation through the lens of the driver. Sure, Montgomery is a suburban county with a lot of drivers, but it also has fantastic walkable places and some of the best transit of any suburban jurisdiction in the nation. But Leggett sees auto-oriented development as natural and walkable development as dangerous. He views the proper role of streets as carrying as many cars as possible above all, with the needs of pedestrians and transit secondary.

As with Gaithersburg West versus White Flint, Leggett cleverly ties in themes of sustainability, "Smart Growth," and more to justify suburban development patterns and oppose urban ones. His PR staff are remarkably defensive about it, too, saying I "just don't get it." It's Leggett who seems not to get it. He doesn't seem like a stupid man, but is listening too much to traditionalist transportation officials who can rattle off Level of Service letter grades but, despite some terrific examples in their county, don't recognize the value of walkable places designing around people and transit instead of driving above all.

34 comments

Silver Spring library skybridge rejected (Jul 22, 2009)
Urbanism in the public realm: the Silver Spring library (Nov 11, 2008)
Skybridges and voids return in Silver Spring library designs (Nov 6, 2008)
The Wheaton library should be in downtown Wheaton (Apr 20, 2009)
Silver Spring library gets cheaper, better design (Dec 3, 2010)

Is Jack Evans too car-centric?

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:16:00 EDT

by David Alpert

DC Councilmember Jack Evans (Ward 2) spoke with Mount Vernon Square residents about the K Street Transitway. Si Kailian heard a "suburban mentality," focused primarily on private cars (Evans drives downtown from his home in Georgetown) rather than the other modes which are particularly popular Ward 2, one of DC's densest and closest to jobs. (Life in Mt. Vernon Square, Geoff H.)

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Lt. Gov. Brown open to new ideas, needs to hear them

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 11:05:00 EDT

by Cavan Wilk

On Thursday, July 23rd, I joined other Montgomery County-based bloggers for a conversation with Maryland Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown. Adam Pagnucco of Maryland Politics Watch organized the forum, and MPW contributor Marc Korman also attended. Many thanks to Adam for inviting me. Overall, I found Mr. Brown to be a competent and capable person. He clearly had a lot of experience communicating with people. He was open to new ideas, but still perceives traffic through the "Level of Service" lens and traffic solutions from the standpoint of moving cars.

Maryland State House. Photo by bcostin

Mr. Brown's duties include heading up the BRAC subcabinet. I argued that planning for Bethesda Naval Hospital needs to be completely different than for a place like Fort Meade. Bethesda Naval is adjacent to downtown Bethesda, one of the flagship examples of post-war Smart Growth in the United States. It has its own Metro station. It's nothing like Fort Meade, which is located in a low-density exurban area.

When I asked why the vast majority of the BRAC infrastructure improvement funds are planned to go towards road widenings, Mr. Brown responded, "The intersections that we plan to improve are already at failing Levels of Service. We're using the BRAC funds to improve already failing intersections." I replied, "Level of Service is an antiquated, rigged metric. Cars won't do those new jobs. People will." Antiquated Level of Service metrics generate bad ideas like a new reversible lane on Connecticut Avenue, despite their poor track record in Silver Spring.

Mr. Brown conceptually supports a twin strategy of auto infrasturcture and transit for BRAC. However, I don't think that he fully understands what that means. Most people automatically assume that traffic flow is like water: widen the path and the water flows faster. They, like Mr. Brown, aren't familiar with induced demand, where a new road's very existence actually creates more demand for new roads.

To his credit, he does view additional bus service as a key tool to accommodate BRAC. But once again, he didn't seem to know what that would mean at a detailed level. Most people, including hardcore transit users like myself, dislike riding a bus stuck in heavy automobile traffic. If you want to make a bus more attractive, take it out of mixed automobile traffic by giving it its own right-of-way. Give it a time savings over the private automobile. Mr. Brown's sub-cabinet needs to revise their BRAC-oriented plans. If they're going to add asphalt to our roads and intersections in Montgomery County, they should build bus-only lanes, separated by a curb from the regular lanes.

Mr. Brown supports Representative Chris Van Hollen's efforts to secure funding for improved access to the Medical Center Metro from the eastern side of Rockville Pike. He was not familiar with the various proposals, including the pedestrian tunnel that doesn't connect directly to the Metro station. Mr. Brown said that he had not seen the engineering proposals and didn't really have an opinion, leaving the decisions up to the county and the engineers.

Maryland isn't raising its gas tax anytime soon. Mr. Brown said that both the O'Malley/Brown Administration and the legislature oppose raising any taxes while the state and nation are experiencing current crippling job losses. While it would be a good idea, such a proposal would be politically infeasible at this time, he said.

Wha about I-270? Brown reiterated the Administration's support for both the Baltimore Red Line and the Purple Line. He was also shocked to hear about the $4 billion price tag for the I-270 proposal. This issue does not directly involve his office, but Mr. Brown is now aware of this study and its potentially harmful implications.

Marc asked about MARC, which he rides regularly to commute to Baltimore from Bethesda. The Lt. Governor described long-term plans for MARC such as opening more stations and increasing parking at rural and car-dependent suburban station. He also mentioned that the funding currently isn't in the pipeline. I also praised the state for employing a "fix-it-first" policy to transportation stimulus money. It is a much better use of funds than covering more land in asphalt.

After meeting Lieutenant Governor Brown I came away with a positive impression of the second ranking executive in Maryland. While I was disappointed with some of the details of his sub-cabinet's BRAC plans, I understand that he is not an engineer or an expert in urban planning. I was very impressed with his ability to sit, listen, and absorb new ideas. Meeting with him gives me hope that our county and state can improve our plans so we can absorb all the new BRAC-related jobs in a sustainable manner.

2 comments

Montgomery making Conn. Ave. more like a freeway (Nov 3, 2010)
Beltway widening plans should not be a secret (Jan 19, 2010)
Pedestrian Metro access suddenly turns into grade-separated interchange (Sep 15, 2009)
Maryland SHA pushing stupid growth on Connecticut Avenue (Jul 20, 2009)
Gaithersbungle, part 6: What else $3.8 billion could buy, more specifically (Jul 29, 2009)