Tag: study

SMTA Teams Prepare for "ICC Challenge"

Today the long-awaited Inter County Connector opened to the public, performing exactly as traffic models predicted according to an informal “challenge” SMTA members offered to the media.

In today’s ICC Challenge, SMTA Chair Doug Duncan and several Board members invited local media outlets to join us as we split into teams to travel from Gaithersburg to Laurel, with some taking the new ICC, some traveling south on I-270 to the Beltway then out I-95, and some taking parallel local roads all the way across (Muncaster Mill, Norbeck, Routes 28/198).

The results (travel times in minutes):

  • 270-Beltway-95:  51 Minutes
  • Local roads (28/198 etc.):  45 Minutes
  • ICC (following the 55 mph posted speed exactly):  27 Minutes 

Despite the poor weather, we succeeded in doing something no one has been able to do in most of our lifetimes:  travel from Gaithersburg to Laurel in under a half-hour.  If anything, the differences in our test were understated due to the lower rush hour traffic volumes this holiday week, and because our unscientific “challenge” was run against the heavier east-to-west flows in the morning rush.  The Beltway trip, in particular, would have been well over an hour had we gone the other way (westbound traffic on I-495 was stop-and-go most of the way, while the eastbound traffic our Beltway team experienced was unusually light).   Even with all this, the real-world results still were right in line with projections.

Traffic modeling studies have always shown the ICC would cut travel times in this heavily congested corridor by nearly 50%, and the real world experience we saw today certainly confirms those findings.  It would appear those who claimed the ICC would make no difference have some explaining to do.

As it turns out, we can “build our way” out of congestion, just as we did with the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge, if we are smart about adding the right kind of road and transit capacity where it is needed most, and listen to what the study data show works best when it comes to providing real traffic relief. 

Facts on the ground are powerful things.

The latest rankings by the Texas Transportation Institute place the Washington DC region at the top of the list, among all major metropolitan areas in the United States, in average travel delays.  Last year, we were tied with Chicago for first place, with an average of 70 hours wasted by each of us from sitting in traffic delays.  This year, the amount of time we waste in traffic has grown to a whopping 74 hours a year, nearly two full work weeks.

When you add up all the lost productivity, tons of wasted fuel, and other costs, each of us is wasting more than $1,400 per year, simply due to congestion.   Just for comparision, each of us would pay about $50 extra per year from a 10-cent increase in the gas tax, which could be used to fund a long list of projects that we know will cut travel times and congestion costs as much as 25%.  I would rather spend $50 to save $350, not to mention all that lost time. 

It is hard to see why state and local leaders are not making transportation investments a more urgent priority.  Voters in our region continue to rank traffic congestion as their number-one priority, yet elected officials continue to ignore transportation almost entirely. 

This has to change.  The Maryland legislature needs to act and it needs to act this year.  At least $800 million per year in new transportation funding has been recommended by the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Commission, along with new protections against diverting scarce transportation dollars for other uses.

We know exactly what we need to do to reduce congestion in our region.  It starts with building the new transit and road capacity we need to reduce delays and get people back to work.  All that’s missing is the political will among our elected representatives to make this a priority.  Maryland will not be able to sustain any level of economic recovery unless we take on this issue and invest in our infrastructure now.

One of our key goals at SMTA  is to raise the level of the debate over transportation policy in our region, to focus more on the factual issues, less on politics or ideology.  

This is why we were pleased to participate in the recent survey of regional transportation experts released by the 2030 Group.  A recent article in Patch.com  reported on this effort.  

NewsChannel 8’s “News Talk with Bruce DePuyt” also did a follow-up piece today, with both SMTA and anti-road activists represented, in what turned out to be a lively debate.  The show illustrated areas of agreement and stark differences of opinion between those of us who seek to have multi-billion-dollar investments in transportation guided by solid planning, engineering and factual analysis,  and those who prefer to rely upon blind ideology and wishful thinking. 

Facts are stubborn things, however, and by focussing on the facts we hope to help bring the entire commnity together around a set of solutions that are realistic and can work, regardless of whether they are roads or transit, or something else entirely.   We welcome your continued input on this topic as we move forward. 

Click here for more on the key findings of the 2030 Group’s survey of regional transportation experts on regional transportation priorities.

We will also continue to press for increased investement in all modes of transportation, as no amount of discussion about priorities will accomplish anything without investing the necessary resources to get any of them built.  Maryland legislators, are you listening? 

Today the 2030 Group released a new study that was conducted jointly by SMTA and the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance, to explore how the region sets transportation priorities and what leading experts in the field feel those priorities should be.   The survey was conducted over the past several months through telephone surveys and focus groups with over 40 top transportation professionals from Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

 Summary of the Key Findings:

1.      The nation’s most congested region lacks a well-defined short-list of transportation investments that would have the greatest potential to reduce congestion/improve mobility over the next 20 years.

2.      Among transportation professionals, significant consensus exists as to highway and public transit investments that would be the most productive. 

3.      The top-ten projects are listed in the report, including continued investment in Metro System Maintenance and Operations, New Potomac Bridges, and multi-modal projects to add capacity in several key transportation corridors.

4.      The prioritization process should focus heavily on highway and transit investments that do the most to reduce travel times/delays, reduce congestion, and improve transportation network safety and reliability.

5.      Meeting the region’s transportation challenges requires not only selecting/advancing the right priorities, but a new process that is more regional and professional and less parochial, political and ideologically driven.

The number-one priority identified by regional experts:  Invest in current Metro system operations, core capacity and maintenance.  Multi-modal investments to area highways, bridges and new transit lines to better connect regional activity centers and key economic corridors together throughout the region rounded out most of the remaining  top-10 priorities, along with better land-use policies to encourage more transit-oriented development.

This independent study was sponsored by the 2030 Group, an association of business and community leaders working towards greater regional cooperation on long-term planning and economic issues.

This week the Montgomery County Council was briefed on the summary findings of a new report, due to be released soon, on the feasibility of building a new countywide rapid-transit system, using bus-rapid-transit (BRT) technology. 

The proposed system would divert an estimated 85,000 drivers per day off existing roads, and cost roughly $2.5 billion to build, and another $144 to $173 million annually to operate.    

Look for more detailed coverage here when the entire report is released.  See our News Page for recent coverage in the Gazette.

Decades of under-investment, fiscal neglect and local opposition to suburban Maryland’s transportation priorities have finally gotten us somewhere – number one on the list of most congested metropolitan areas in the US – according to a recent study cited by the Washington Post. The news comes as no surprise.

The latest Texas Transportation Institute Urban Mobility Report ranks the Washington, D.C., region number 1 (tied with Chicago) in peak hour delays, with 70 hours lost per commuter, per year, on average, in our region.

What could you do with an extra 70 hours each year? This is not to mention the tons of extra carbon emissions and over $3,000 wasted per household on extra fuel and wear-and-tear on our vehicles caused by severe congestion.

The TTI survey ranks our region-

• #1 in fuel wasted per peak auto commuter

• #2 in commuter stress

• #2 in cost of delay per peak hour auto commuter ($1,555/year)

To read the entire report, click here.

The survey’s authors hit the nail on the head:

“In the end there’s a need for more capacity.”

–Tim Lomax, Author

Texas Transportation Institute

2010 Urban Mobility Report