Posts about Adequate Public Facilities

After 25 years, Montgomery's APFO has not delivered the traffic relief it promised. Over the years, it has been revised again and again to fix the most obvious defects. But because the underlying error is never corrected, it keeps getting more complicated—to the point that now almost no one can understand it.

The law is now up for renewal once again, and the Planning Board will hold a hearing today. A 179-page staff report proposes dropping the development moratoriums. Instead, staff recommend taxing developers to build more roads in high-traffic areas and run buses more frequently.

Band-aids don't cure the disease

Such tinkering does not fix the fundamental flaw in the concept of APFOs. It's like keeping the leeches and putting band-aids on the bite marks.

The Montgomery planners started out, the first page of their report tells us, by asking how more "needed transportation infrastructure" can be built. In the back is a long list of "needed" roads, copied out of plans drawn up years ago. That puts the cart before the horse—what is a transportation planner's job, if not to figure out what transportation infrastructure is really needed?

That's also not the question concurrency promised to answer. The concept was sold to the public as an answer to "How do we get rid of traffic jams?" That is surely a better question than "how can we build more roads," though still not the right question to ask.

There's only one way to actually reduce congestion: price it, with a congestion charge. Cities like London and Stockholm charge a daily fee to each car that drives into the congested district during times of heavy traffic. (People who live inside the congested zone are usually exempt.) Montgomery could ensure its roads flow smoothly by assessing a fee on drivers who enter any of its 33 "policy areas" which fail the annual traffic test.

But this is not the cure for what ails Montgomery County. Congestion charges make sense in places where the fee is voluntary, because you don't need a car to get around. That's not the case in the cul-de-sac subdivisions of American suburbs, where you are stuck at home if you can't afford to drive.

Smooth flowing traffic is not the goal; mobility and livability is

Instead of asking how to get rid of traffic, we should really be asking, "How can we make it easier to get where we need to go to live our lives?" After a century of sprawl, it is clear that this question has no answer in suburbs that were designed for automobile-dependence. Only where people can accomplish their everyday needs without being forced to drive can people be free of traffic. That requires mixed land uses, closely spaced grid streets, rail transit, and roadways shared by drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians.

Today's suburbanites are trapped in a vicious circle. Development requires more roads and the roads create more sprawl. Each time around, the highways get more expensive to build and the traffic is worse. Transit requires ever larger subsidies to compete with subsidized car trips to low-density destinations. And APFOs only dig us in deeper.

There is no way out of this morass until we recognize that the old suburban model has failed. Montgomery County understood the need for a new direction when it adopted the visionary White Flint master plan two years ago. To make that plan work, planners had to junk their old APFO mindset in one section of the county. All leaders should take that lesson to heart, not just in Montgomery, but in suburbs everywhere.

Prince George's County has consistently had more pedestrian fatalities than any other jurisdiction in the region or in the state of Maryland. Between 1999 and 2010, Prince George's suffered an average of 25 fatalities per year, far eclipsing the 16 deaths on average in Maryland's second worst county, Baltimore County. Prince George's even has more pedestrian fatalities than the District of Columbia, which has far more pedestrians.

Prince George's planners won't address this problem without a law specifically allowing them to. This proposed bill would give the Planning Board the authority they need.

Councilmembers Mel Franklin (District 9) and Eric Olson (District 3) are leaders on pedestrian safety issues, and proposed CB-2 to help foster more walkable development and improves safety and access.

The bill asks county planners to determine adequate walk and bike facilities for new developments, similar to the current provisions for roads. If the area lacks needed infrastructure, the developer may be required to construct the most critical missing sidewalk or bicycle links.

The bill caps the cost for the developer at a modest 35¢ per square foot of commercial development, and $300 per housing unit. It also only imposes these new rules for developments in the county's designated urban centers and corridors, which are the most conducive to walking and bicycling.

This bill is a reasonable approach to a real problem. It works with developers to produce a better final product, and to reduce the costs of traffic.

Everyone benefits when more people walk and bike instead of drive. The developer can pay for less expensive transportation infrastructure, residents and businesses enjoy better and safer access to nearby destinations, and surrounding communities experience less automobile traffic.

The County Council will conduct a public hearing on the bill on April 24, at 1:30 pm at the County Administration Building in Upper Marlboro. If you live or work in Prince George's County, contact the County Council or speak at the hearing, and urge them to support this bill.

Click here to send the Prince George's County Council an email in support of CB-2.

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.

It's especially maddening because of the way school boundaries are drawn. The most overcrowded schools happen to also cover most of Gaithersburg's smart growth receiving areas, including its most walkable and transit-connected downtown and new urbanist districts.

For the most part it isn't the smart growth developments that are overcrowding the schools (they tend to attract smaller families), but because they're within the same school boundary as other neighborhoods that do produce a lot of kids, residential development is outlawed in precisely the areas where it's most appropriate.

And the really bad news is that the moratorium isn't effective at saving schools. Because Gaitheresburg is a geographically small jurisdiction within a larger, growing region, the school capacity test merely pushes growth out to other jurisdictions that have even less capacity, and less ability to plan.

In fact, the moratorium is doubly damaging because of the type of growth it is pushing away. By including these smart growth receiving zones in the moratorium, Gaithersburg is pushing out high-density urban developments that don't produce many students, but are very effective at reducing sprawl and growth in congestion.

The school capacity test makes sense in a vacuum, but not when all the issues of urban development are considered together. It's counterproductive, and should be changed.

The good news is that the Gaithersburg City Council, which does seem to sincerely want to do the right thing, realizes there's a problem and is considering corrective measures. According to a Patch article, the council is looking to add flexibility and leniency to the ordinance. Proposed modifications could allow the council to grant exceptions in certain circumstances, or could allow neighboring schools to share capacity if one is over its limit but another nearby school is not. These are good suggestions.

The city might also consider designating official smart growth receiving zones that are automatically exempted from the ordinance altogether. That would allow the right sort of growth to take place in the right places, while still controlling the sort of growth that is a problem for school capacity.

Gaithersburg deserves credit for acknowledging a difficult problem and moving to solve it. Other jurisdictions with similar ordinances should follow Gaithersburg's example and carefully consider whether or not their growth controls are accomplishing the right goals.

In 2005, Clarksburg residents discovered a string of site plan violations that led to the appointment of an ombudswoman and the resignation of the Planning Board chairman.

Clarksburg Town Center still doesn't have its Town Center retail district, and there's a new working group to help figure out who will pay for the roads and parks in the parts of Clarksburg that have already been built.

Nonetheless, some 14,000 people now live in Clarksburg, and they need services nearby. Daycare is an obvious priority among these services, and so a planned day care center and after school program, at the intersection of MD 355 and West Old Baltimore Road, just north of Germantown, is welcome.

Unfortunately, it might not get built, due to the recent Planning Board decision which effectively prioritizes the needs of future Clarksburg residents for wider roads over the needs of current Clarksburg residents for nearby day care.

The reason for this backward logic is the Local Area Transportation Review (LATR) part of Montgomery County Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance (APFO). The LATR is based on "critical lane volume" (CLV), a measure of the number of vehicles moving through an intersection's through or left-turn lanes in an hour.

The logic of the Planning Board's decision goes like this:

1. The Planning Board has already approved a lot of new housing in the area. (The Planning Board staff report does not name the approved developments, but they probably include Miller & Smith's "Gallery Park" and Winchester Homes's first development at Cabin Branch.)

2. When this housing has been built and people move in, they will drive through the intersection next to the site of the proposed day care.

3. When they drive through the intersection, it will become unacceptably congested.

4. Therefore, if the day care wants to operate at capacity, it needs to "improve" (i.e., widen) the intersection to account for one and a half times the number of car trips the day care will generate. The widening is to consist of three turn lanes: a southbound right-turn lane on MD 355, a northbound left-turn lane on MD 355, and an eastbound right-turn lane on West Old Baltimore Road. And it may cost $360,000.

Ross Flax, the owner of the day care, points out that day care providers are not experts in road construction and that the day care will account for only 20% of the total additional trips the day care, plus the approved but unbuilt developments, will generate. He has therefore offered to put 20% of the costs ($72,000) in escrow to fund later construction.

But the LATR guidelines say that "improvements" must be "permitted and bonded, under construction, or under contract for construction" before building permits can be issued. Therefore, the day care must pay the whole cost, now. Miller & Smith and Winchester Homes will pay their shares back to the day care later, when they begin building.

However, the day care cannot afford the whole $360,000, Flax has told the Gazette. And operating at half capacity, as would be allowed without the turn lanes, may not be economical. As a result, it is "likely" that he won't open the day care at all unless the Planning Board reconsiders the decision.

In short, the Planning Board first approved large housing developments, whose residents must drive everywhere. Then, they approved more large housing developments, whose future residents will also have to drive everywhere. And now they're requiring a day care, which is intended to serve the current residents, to pay for the wider roads all those extra cars will need.

Memo to the Planning Board: There must be a better plan.

This is an all-too-common scene. In a suburban area with low rates of walking, state and local governments design roads for the maximum throughput and speed of motor vehicles with virtually no consideration to pedestrians (or bicyclists). Prince George's County even has an "adequate public facilities" law that requires developers to pay to widen intersections and roads around new developments, but makes no provision for safe pedestrian (or bicycle) facilities.

Therefore, many areas are very unsafe to pedestrians. Along Pennsylvania Avenue and other major routes in many suburban jurisdictions, there are bus stops along the side of the road, but no crosswalks, or even much of any safe space for people to stand out of the way of speeding cars.

When someone gets hit crossing a street to reach stores, neighborhoods, or one of these bus stops, police simply dismiss the issue, saying the pedestrian was not in a crosswalk and is therefore at fault, case closed.

Maryland's road safety chief, Vernon Betkey, Jr., was the one who blamed distracted pedestrians and public policy encouraging outdoor activity for rising road deaths. Maybe this lawsuit will push Betkey and other state leaders to take the design of the state's major roads more seriously.

It's not ideal for public policy to be made through tort law, but if that's what it takes to make states pay attention to pedestrian safety, so be it. It's simply not acceptable to design areas that are massively hostile to pedestrians, provide no alternatives, and then just shrug when pedestrians die because of the poor design.

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.

In this particular case, many people in the community support the plan. And for many Councilmembers, including Floreen, that makes a big difference.

Floreen said (as transcribed by FLOG:

I love the White Flint Plan. Because the community defined what it wanted and said the community character is what matters most. I have come to say that's how you should find out what matters.

I will lie down in the middle of Rockville Pike if you make the intersection at Strathmore any bigger. People can't walk across Strathmore because of the speeds drivers think they're entitled to. ...

We're letting the wrong standards drive us. I can't explain the difference between 30 seconds and 40. People who live within WF want to see some real improvements.

Based on comments, Councilmember Marc Elrich (at-large) seemed most hesitant to change the rules, while Councilmember Roger Berliner (District 1, which include the area) and Duchy Trachtenberg (at-large) support approving the White Flint plan.

The PHED Committee staff report on "transportation" (what we call "mobility") in the White Flint Plan says,

Council staff recommends approving the Sector Plan with an ultimate land use and zoning that reflects the Committee's aggregate review of all the individual properties in the area, but limiting the amount of growth to the 3,000 dwelling units and 2 million square feet of non-residential development in Phase 1.

Translation: only Phase 1 of the White Flint Plan will be allowed to proceed. Phases 2 and 3 will not move forward until cars can go faster on Rockville Pike.

This fight is over 30 seconds. Well, actually 32 seconds. That is the difference between a trip on the existing Rockville Pike ("LOS D"), and the worst case scenario of Rockville Pike 30 years from now ("LOS E"): some traffic models says it will take about 32 seconds longer to drive from Grosvenor to Twinbrook in the year 2030. So when we say the outmoded traffic tests (see post below for a more detailed explanation) that will kill the White Flint Plan are about moving cars through intersections "faster," we're really talking about 30 seconds faster. But in order to get those 30 seconds, Council staff has recommended that the White Flint Plan be delayed, or built only through Phase One (of three).

Now add the second problem: the County Executive, faced with an enormous budget problem, has decided to defund the Transportation Management Districts. In a couple parts of the County, TMDs are the principal implementors of the efforts to move people out of cars and onto transit. They are fully funded, through things like parking meters. We didn't have parking meters in a lot of places until they were put in to fund the TMDs. But the Executive has decided that the need to fund other things in other places is greater than the need to do what the County promised when it set up the TMDs. That was fifteen years ago, after all, so why should the County keep its promises after that long?

This is the same thing the Executive has said it wants to do with White Flint. White Flint is projected to raise billions for the County. To pay for all that needed infrastructure everyone wants to see, the Plan suggests reserving a small amount (less than ten percent) of the new money raised in White Flint; the County Executive said that was unacceptable. The Executive wants the "flexibility" to take money generated in White Flint for other parts of the County. ALL the money. It's a "fairness" issue, they say.

One of the biggest problems facing the White Flint Sector Plan is people's fear that the County will not follow-through on its promises. These are two pretty blatant examples of how those fears are justified. In two different, but related areas. Quite simply, infrastructure takes money. Money comes from bonds. Without certainty, no bonds will be sold.

If only Phase 1 is approved, no bonds will be sold to pay for infrastructure. Why would people buy bonds if there is no economic activity to pay for them because Phases 2 and 3 are uncertain? And if the money that is generated in an area under a 15-year-old County agreement can be redirected to areas of "greater need", how could a prospective bondholder be confident that any money generated in White Flint wouldn't be diverted away from repaying the White Flint bonds?

Hence, no White Flint. No County commitment = no money. No money = no White Flint.

This weekend, there have been intense discussions between the Council staff, County executive's office, planning staff, and members of groups which are influential in this debate, culminating in a packed-room conference. The most important thing to come out of all these meetings is that no one seems interested in killing the White Flint Plan.

The problem is that the Council did not, in fact, fix the problem with the old Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance ("growth policy") last fall. Under pressure from a state-mandated deadline, the Council unanimously adopted the same old automobile-oriented tests. The Council staff (and Executive) can't ignore that vote. They have to use those tests, even if everyone realizes they are completely out of place in a transit-oriented, urban-style development such as White Flint.

They, and the Planning staff working with them, are really trying hard to reconcile the irreconcileable. They've been working for over a month to find a solution, and no deus ex machina has appeared. All of these great minds have not come up with a solution that can meld the two theories of car speed and sustainable development.

So the solution will have to come from the Council itself. Will White Flint die to give cars 30 seconds more? Or will the Council recognize that they should probably not use car-oriented tests in a transit-oriented 21st-century Plan?

To put it another way: cars or carbon.

If you have a preference—cars or transit—by all means, tell your Councilmembers about it. I think the Council is well aware of that choice. I'm not sure that pressuring them will add much. That's why I haven't asked people to mass-mail the Council, even though it's been recommended.

We'll re-evaluate after tomorrow's PHED Committee meeting. Then we'll know whether some of the most brilliant minds on the Council (Councilmembers Knapp, Floreen and Elrich, usually assisted by Berliner, who sits in with the Committee on White Flint Plan meetings) can wrestle this problem into a harness that will work for everyone.

The Montgomery County Council recently rejected a Planning Department proposal to relax the County's Adequate Public Facilities law. The proposal would have let traffic models project a LOS of E instead of D as long as transit had LOS B—in other words, you don't have to obsess quite as much over traffic if transit provides an adequate alternative. Yet they turned down the change, and did so unanimously.

Ben Ross of ACT criticized the APFO in a recent Gazette op-ed. Friends of White Flint point out some of the flaws: the White Flint plan adds more parallel roads next to Rockville Pike, creating a grid and moving more cars outside of the Pike; but if it slows down traffic on the Pike even while moving cars in other ways, it fails the AFPO traffic test. That forces County planners to widen intersections while still keeping the intersections pedestrian-friendly as the White Flint plan demands.

This plan still pales in comparison to the size of, say, NoMA, yet the builders of NoMA aren't being forced to widen North Capitol Street to six lanes each way. Even though there is a whole city full of examples just to the south, Montgomery's leaders can't bring themselves to see past the restrictive rules.

Montgomery isn't the only place missing a little vision. In Herndon, the Connection quoted Councilmember Connie Hutchinson preferring a lower-density vision for the town because she wanted streets widened. Plans suggested more housing, but she said, "Our traffic studies will show whether that's feasible."

If more housing isn't feasible in Herndon, how could it have been feasible in Old Town Fairfax when that was built, or Arlington when Rosslyn-Ballston was built, or Washington, DC throughout its history? If the traffic studies say that all of these places with more housing aren't "feasible," then there's got to be something wrong with the study methodology, not with the area itself.

Leaders across the region are grappling with growth. The suburban pattern of development is conservative and seemingly safe, it's extremely expensive in infrastructure, harmful to water quality, tree canopy, and more, and most of all, increasingly less popular than walkable urban patterns.

Most leaders now agree that creating at least some new urban places in areas with existing infrastructure, like White Flint, Prince George's Metro stations, or along the future Silver Line, is desirable. But fear and uncertainty from traffic modeling holds them back. Arlington didn't let it stop them and now they're a model for growth. DC became what it is today because we didn't have those models at the time. It's time for our leaders to trust their eyes instead of their computers and take the leap.