Montgomery County's highway robbery

The Montgomery County Planning Board is on the verge of sending the County Council a draft of the latest Master Plan of Highways and Transitways (soon to be called the Master Plan of Walkways and Bikeways, if planners get any more woke) that will do many terrible things, chief among which is permanently removing any chance of building the long-delayed M-83 MidCounty Highway Extended from Montgomery Village Avenue to Clarksburg. If approved by the Board at its meeting this Thursday, April 10, and the Council at a later date, it will be the realization of a long-held fever dream by the War-on-Cars folks who suffer from Highway Derangement Syndrome, virtually all of whom have motored to their Kill M-83 meetings in the very cars they claim you need to get out of. It will also be a theft and reckless disposal of one of the most valuable public holdings government can possess: a transportation right-of-way.

Passage of this Master Plan will drive the stake through the heart of M-83, and confirm that once again County officials were lying through their teeth when they promised all stakeholders and residents of the Upcounty that they would deliver the infrastructure needed to support the massive housing development they had proposed for rural Clarksburg and Damascus. As we all know, all of the new housing was approved and constructed. But none of the supporting elements were. 

No M-83 Highway. No Corridor Cities Transitway light rail. And no high-wage jobs. All of these items were mandatory, but the Council didn't deliver a single one.

Now the Council is poised to throw away something that, frankly, is not theirs to discard. The highway project, and its right-of-way, belong to the taxpayers of Montgomery County. Planners are giddy to note in the Master Plan materials online that the County may not only remove the highway from the plan, but give the land away for free to the Councilmembers' developer sugar daddies. They've done this many times before, giving away public rights-of-way to developers via a "Declaration of No Further Need" abandonment.

A right-of-way is simply too valuable to waste. The Council is free to go down in history as the deranged and corrupt elected officials responsible for worsening traffic congestion, increased emissions from cars idling in traffic jams, and increased response times for police and fire calls by canceling an essential highway. It won't be the first time, as the Council already canceled the equally-long-planned new Potomac River crossing, the Northwest Freeway, the North Central Freeway, the Rockville Freeway, the Montrose Parkway East, and the Northern Parkway.

But a right-of-way is not theirs to give away. They have a responsibility to preserve it in total. No one can predict the needs of the future. Whether it is a road, or a railway, or some form of transportation or use we haven't even imagined yet, these are the scenarios for which smart governments obtain rights-of-way at great cost. Believe it or not, Montgomery County long ago had smart government.

This Master Plan draft represents a double betrayal of the public trust, first and foremost the trust of residents in Clarksburg, Damascus, and Goshen. People bought houses in Clarksburg and Damascus with the expectation of the M-83 and CCT providing viable options for commuting to the Shady Grove Metro station and beyond. Only to find the Planning Board and County Council pulling the rug out from under them after they had taken on their mortgage, and paid all the hefty fees and taxes to the County. But it is also the latest betrayal by the Council of one of its chief charges, stewardship of County assets and resources, which include planned highways and expensively-obtained rights-of-way. Canceling the M-83 is, quite simply, highway robbery.

Leggett nominates acting MCDOT director for permanent job

Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett has nominated acting Montgomery County Department of Transportation Director Al Roshdieh to take the job on a permanent basis.

Transit and cycling activists have criticized the MCDOT for being too automobile-oriented. They have pushed Leggett to appoint someone who will treat all transportation modes equally.

Roshdieh has bent over backwards to show he is that person, starting not long after being named acting director. He has at times used the language of those engaged in the "War on Cars" in the DC region. Note that such language is different from simply giving equal attention to pedestrians and cyclists, which I think almost everyone is in favor of. Rather, it is the language of going further, and intentionally increasing the pain points for automobile commuters by further increasing congestion, or canceling critical highway projects.

One great example of Roshdieh's talking points is this interview distributed by MCDOT. The emphasis is all on the tired, false promise of "getting people out of their cars." Roshdieh not only stated that new roads were not a solution, but added the false assertion that there wasn't room for any more highways in the County, a four-Pinocchio whopper I demolished in a rebuttal. 

He went on to add this gem: "[I]t is clear that our country has undergone a significant shift away from a traditional model of single occupancy vehicles commuting from the suburbs to a central city. The Washington D.C. region reflects this shift."

This was utterly false at the time - and today, as the vast majority of labor headed from the suburbs into that "central city" where all the jobs are this morning, the District and Northern Virginia. But with the latest studies this year showing that driving, automobile sales and single-occupant auto commuting by millennials in the DC area are all trending upwards, Roshdieh's 2014 forecast is downright Harold Camping-esque.

During Roshdieh's tenure, Leggett irresponsibly tabled the long-delayed Midcounty Highway Extended (M-83 Highway) upcounty, despite a costly design study and public input process in 2013. Roshdieh did not go to bat publicly for the project, on which the approval of massive development in Clarksburg and Damascus was to hinge. Instead, the development was all approved, but the road to support it was never built.

Clarksburg grew 800% over the last decade; Damascus is in the process of - at least - tripling in size. In fact, the Planning Board just approved a low-income apartment complex in "downtown" rural Damascus (Woodfield Commons), and estimated that those 168+ residents would take only 30 automobile trips out in the morning (to great comedic effect). This was rammed through over the objection of 100% of residents who testified and gave any form of public input to the Board. 100%!

A right-of-way already exists for the M-83, while the alternative suggested by the County has been to condemn homes and destroy rural roads in the Goshen area, routing highway-volume traffic through a rural residential area. Despite understandable majority resident support for the M-83 upcounty, County elected officials have chosen to thumb their nose at their constituents, and have refused to build the road.

Transportation updates from MCDOT have also emphasized the work being done on alternate modes of transportation countywide. In fact, their most recent Go Montgomery newsletter was entirely about transit, despite the fact that the vast majority of residents are automobile commuters.

Roshdieh has said all the right things, so it will be interesting to see if he isn't extreme enough for the radical anti-car majority on the County Council. Some MCDOT employees have told me, off the record, that they are frustrated with the political restrictions on highway projects. Not only have many road projects been delayed or canceled, but the ones that do get built are modified in scope or alignment, which reduces the congestion relief they can provide. These are highly-skilled professionals, and it is frustrating when you know what needs to be done to improve transportation, but the political leaders won't let you do it. Then when the half-measures don't produce solid results, you get the blame from angry drivers. It's a vicious cycle we need to end.

I personally am very frustrated with the new approach by MCDOT. I've spoken with the Goshen residents whose homes are threatened by the M-83 alternatives. I've spoken with the Clarksburg and Damascus residents who took out mortgages believing commuting relief was on its way via the master plan highway they were promised by County leaders. And I've witnessed ongoing efforts by the County Planning Department, Planning Board Chair Casey Anderson, and developer-funded "smart growth" organizations to stop the grade-separated Montrose Parkway East, despite the fact that it is the transportation keystone for the White Flint Sector Plan. So many corners were cut in that plan; so much congestion will result from it - and you're saying you're going to axe the one concession to reason that was made in the plan regarding transportation? Nuts!

The MCDOT director we need is one who will put data and results ahead of politics.

Photo courtesy MCDOT

MONTGOMERY COUNTY TRANSPORTATION FORUM TONIGHT AT 7 PM IN SILVER SPRING

A transportation forum featuring candidates for the Montgomery County Council will be held tonight (May 29), at 7:00 PM, at the Silver Spring Civic Building (there is public garage parking directly across Ellsworth Drive from the building).

The topics covered are inspected to include transit, the Purple Line, the county's proposed Bus Rapid Transit system, and the M-83 Midcounty Highway Extended.

Martin Di Caro of WAMU FM will be the moderator. The debate is sponsored by the Coalition for Smarter Growth, Purple Line Now, Action Committee for Transit, Montgomery County Sierra Club, Montgomery Countryside Alliance, Washington Area Bicyclist Association, and the TAME Coalition.

Silver Spring Civic Building

1 Veterans Place

IS VDOT CHIEF

TALKING ABOUT

MONTGOMERY COUNTY?

A new rule passed by the Virginia legislature will stop a problem that has afflicted Montgomery County for the last 40 years: allowing development, but not building the roads to support it.

If Virginia counties try to do that, they will now lose state transportation funds. We need a law like this in Maryland.

The Examiner article on the law cited Virginia Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton's exasperation over developer-beholden county officials' nasty habit of "nixing roads they had previously planned to build."

"'Our big issue is we've seen in many instances the localities approve growth plans, then remove the transportation facilities (a.k.a. roads) for various reasons,' Connaughton said. 'So we get the growth but we don't get the transportation, and then the state is the one left trying to foot the bill, as well as put up with the grief of the citizens.'"

Sound familiar?

The most notorious example of this is in Clarksburg. When plans were made to develop that rural area of the county, a new highway known as M-83 (Midcounty Highway Extended) was a central part of the plan. In fact, it was placed in the Master Plan.

The county council went ahead and eagerly approved all of the real estate development, and collected the hefty donation checks from developers for their massive campaign accounts. But they never built the M-83, leading to traffic jams on 355 and 270 that worsen every year.

The M-83 money was instead spent on goodies for the special interests and developers.

What other roads deemed absolutely necessary by wiser planners in the old days were cancelled?

The Outer Beltway, Rockville Freeway, Northwest Freeway, Northern Parkway, North Central Freeway, Palisades Freeway... just to name a few, and ones that were partly or entirely within the county borders.