Posts about Adequate Public Facilities

Both Georgia and Randolph are part of all versions of the county's BRT proposal. But the underpass will get in the way of the future bus network. Buses on Randolph, unable to use a tunnel that gives them no place to stop, will have to slow down for a traffic light that cars can bypass.

To avoid the buses stopping in the turn lanes, the stops will have to be located on the far side of the light. Riders connecting to the other BRT line will have to double back on foot and wait for the light a second time.

Yet the county, which has already thrown $14 million of its own money at this project, urges the state to plow ahead with the underpass. It has not asked for a redesign to accommodate BRT. And, through its adequate public facilities ordinance, it blocked transit-oriented development around the Metro station until the underpass got funding.

Just this week, the County Council reaffirmed the adequate public facilities ordinance. It toned down some of the worst features, but the basic principle remains in place: it assumes that if only the county built the right road infrastructure, all traffic would flow freely. Almost a century of road building has proven that's not the case, but that truth hasn't yet penetrated into the policy.

Indeed, the two elected officials who initiated the county's turn toward BRT, Councilmember Marc Elrich and County Executive Ike Leggett, are also the strongest partisans for what Elrich calls "free-flowing highways." That's a contradiction, because if highways actually could flow freely, buses would move at full speed, and Bus Rapid Transit wouldn't be necessary.

In recent decades, the county has accomplished much while building rail transit and new roads at the same time. The Red Line has been a stunning success, and the Purple Line promises to match it. But rail lines are expensive and transportation budgets are getting ever tighter. Montgomery's leaders have chosen to de-emphasize further expansion of rail beyond the Purple Line.

The county switched its preference for the Corridor Cities Transitway from rail to bus and has found no room among its transportation priorities for the state's plan for all-day service on MARC. Many see the BRT network as a way for transit to keep growing in an era of fiscal stringency.

BRT simply won't work if we pretend that we're still in the 1950s and keep trying to move more cars at higher speeds (a strategy that is doomed to failure in any case). It requires rebuilding roads and neighborhoods for a more livable urban future, where people rank ahead of automobiles. Striving after two contradictory goals on the same roadways is a recipe for failure.

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.

The goals of the bills [are] ... to make the process more streamlined and thus extremely attractive to bring private investment to redevelop the County's 15 metro rail (and future MTA rail) stations and encourage smarter, more sustainable growth. Currently, the direction of the private sector is to pursue more sprawl pattern development in our County for the foreseeable future.

Well-intentioned and endless talk about TOD will not make it happen. Policies that actually stimulate market forces and private investment towards transit oriented development are necessary to attract development to more established areas of the County that have been ignored for decades.

In an action alert, the Coalition for Smarter Growth said it agrees that the deregulation proposed by the two bills would likely spur development around transit station areas. But it also believes that the rules would encourage shoddy, suburban-style, non-pedestrian- and non-transit-oriented development.

"Right now, it's more difficult to develop near a transit station than far away from one. That's a problem, but these bills are the wrong way to solve that problem," the action alert reads.

Former council member Tom Dernoga, meanwhile, criticized the rapid process. "Blind-siding the public (and apparently some of your colleagues) with a late-filed bill is not going to advance important land-use issues in a manner that the public will accept. At a minimum, a study group should address the underlying issue," he wrote in an email to Franklin which Greater Greater Washington has obtained. "Any valid policy bases are obscured by the manner in which they are being pursued."

The bills were originally scheduled for a "fast track" markup session at today's Planning, Zoning, and Economic Development Committee meeting, chaired by Franklin. In response to rapid public criticism, Franklin pulled the bills from the agenda and promised to revise them.

Scott Peterson, spokesperson for County Executive Rushern Baker, stated that the county executive is still reviewing the bills and had not yet developed a position on them.

The existing form-based code shows an alternative to CB-79

CB-79 would exempt projects built near transit stations from the county's detailed site plan, conceptual site plan, and comprehensive design plan review processes, and allow them to skip directly to the permitting phase. Besides giving residents a voice, these development review processes are also the main way that elected officials and planning departments of the various cities and towns weigh in on new development projects. Laurel is the only municipality that is able to control its own zoning.

Exempting transit station area development projects from public hearings before the county's Planning Board may also violate state law, specifically the Regional District Act. This act sets up a public hearing process before the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC) and then the council. CB-79's exemption of certain development projects from this process could therefore be an unlawful end-run around state-sanctioned public processes.

Fortunately, there's an alternative already ready to go. More than 2½ years ago, the county created a form-based code called Subtitle 27A. One of its specified purposes, according to M-NCPPC, was "to streamline and standardize regulations and processes, and [incentivize] development in and around the county's most important transit resources."

Subtitle 27A would apply only in Metro station areas and other urbanized areas designated by the county's general plan as "centers" and "corridors." M-NCPPC, the community, and the County Council would develop a "regulating plan" for each station area through a public process.

That plan sets clear rules for the types of buildings and their form in particular blocks. It defines the height and scale of buildings, where they can be placed in relation to the street, the portion of a lot that can be built on, the types of building materials that can be used, etc. The plan also details the streetscape specifications for every street in the area—everything from roadway, lane, and sidewalk width to planting requirements for street trees.

Once a regulating plan is in place for a particular station area, there is little need for an extensive development review process, since developers and the community all know the rules ahead of time. Accordingly, under Subtitle 27A, development plans move directly to the permitting process.

M-NCPPC reviews the plans to be sure they conform with the regulating plan, and if they comply, the project gets its permit, subject to any appeals. M-NCPPC has the authority to make limited adjustments to particular regulating plan standards, but no other adjustments are permitted unless the regulating plan itself is amended through a public comprehensive planning process.

Thus, the form-based zoning regulations in Subtitle 27A accomplish the goals of CB-79, while still ensuring quality urban-form TOD in transit station areas and preserving the public's right to a fair hearing. Unfortunately, however, the county has yet to begin the public planning process to implement Subtitle 27A in any of the county's urban centers and corridor areas, including Metro and MARC station areas.

Problematic traffic tests could disappear or become more multi-modal

Under existing subdivision rules, a developer must conduct a traffic study to determine whether the existing roads can handle increased automobile traffic from the development. If not, the developer must pay for road improvements, such as new lanes or traffic signals, and/or wait for government agencies to build them before proceeding.

Any mixed-use development with housing, shopping, and employment centers would generate more auto trips in the immediate vicinity. Under the current rules, developers would therefore have to pay for more road infrastructure. Not only does this increase the cost of development, but the increased road capacity could also ironically make the neighborhood more hostile to pedestrians and bicyclists, thereby hindering further transit-oriented development.

These traffic analyses do not account for the automobile trips that are saved by locating dense mixed-used developments near transit centers. Often the trips it decreases are elsewhere in the county, because residents who live in mixed-use developments typically live closer to work, shopping, and other destinations, and are therefore able to walk, bike, or take public transit for many routine trips.

CB-80 would exempt all projects near transit stations from current rules requiring traffic studies and increased road capacity. This might make higher-density mixed-use TOD easier to build. Right now, strip malls that bring off-peak traffic have an easier time passing the traffic tests than mixed-use residential or commercial. Therefore, without the rules, developers could propose more walkable, transit-oriented projects that they don't think could gain approval today.

On the other hand, many worry that developers would simply build suburban-style, single-use, automobile-oriented development instead. That is what they are most accustomed to building in Prince George's, and surrounding areas are still primarily car-dependent. Without the traffic tests, a project like garden apartments could bring many auto trips to a transit station area, frustrating future development of urban, walkable communities.

Land near some stations like New Carrollton may be too valuable for this to happen, but at many other stations it is more likely. Plus, exempting everything within a half-mile could mean a project 0.45 miles from a station, even across a freeway, would face no traffic tests even if the intervening space is not very walkable.

Apart from the question of the type of development, many people who live near transit facilities would tolerate some increase in traffic, but only if transportation capacity increased. Because the existing rules always encourage more roads, CB-80 seems to imply that the choice is either more roads or no increase in capacity.

But there is another possibility: the county could create traffic generation standards that factor in all of the transportation methods typically associated with TODs. The Transportation Research Board has created comprehensive guidance on how to develop a multi-modal level of service (LOS) analysis tool. These standards would ensure that the right transportation facilities such as bike lanes, wide sidewalks, crosswalks, and pedestrian signals are in place to reduce single-occupancy vehicle trips.

It's great that County Council members want to encourage smart growth around transit stations. However, abandoning all development review and regulation in urban areas is not likely to result in compact, walkable mixed-used TOD. Instead of fast-tracking these bills, the council should take the time necessary to engage in a dialogue with all stakeholders on these important issues.

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.