Smart Growth and Transportation: Issues and Lessons Learned (2005)

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How How Can Transportation Agencies Support Smart Growth? What Tools Are Available? 63805_127_164 4/7/05 2:53 AM Page 133

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1 3 5 Introduction Effie Stallsmith, Office of Planning, Federal Transit Administration I’ve been working in the area of transit-orienteddevelopment and joint development for the past 13years, and I can remember when the words “tran- sit-oriented development” and “joint development” were like a foreign language to most planners across the United States. In 1997, thanks to the state of Maryland, I became involved in smart growth. I had been a project manager for a number of land use and transportation planning projects. I immediately saw the connection between transit and this new concept called “smart growth.” Needless to say, the Federal Transit Administration felt it had a role to play in this. Being involved in smart growth efforts has solidified our commitment, along with that of the Federal Highway Administration, to providing information, technical assistance, and training to our state and local customers. These are available through programs such as our capital and planning programs that support transit- oriented and joint development and the Transportation and Community and System Preservation pilot program, as well as programs to support building road capacity needed for the safe movement of people and goods. The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) as a whole continues to disseminate noteworthy and suc- cessful practices and assist communities in exchanging their experiences. DOT supports continuing applied research in such areas as value pricing, modeling, and land use. To sum it all up, I would like to quote Secretary Mineta, who wrote in a recent smart growth article for On Common Ground magazine: “To pro- mote smart growth, the federal government can use its resources such as existing funding programs, technical assistance and information to help ensure that infra- structure works with local development patterns and simultaneously encourages compact, multiuse develop- ments.” If you have not seen his article on smart growth, it is in Realtor Magazine, published by the National Association of Realtors. To set the tone for this session, let’s take a quick look at the past 2 days. You’ve heard a lot about smart growth and transporta- tion, why it is a transportation issue, the land use trans- portation nexus, and what a smart growth transportation system looks like—from enhancing the smart growth pedestrian environment to providing the appropriate transit and major roadway capacity. You’ve had discussions on the issues and challenges within your immediate regions and states, from politi- cal to financial to efficiency and safety. You’ve heard from Governor Glendening of Maryland and his com- mitment to smart growth and the work that is still ahead. We have addressed the issues that suburbs and exur- ban areas are experiencing—how they look different from the systems that serve our urban environments, what the institutional considerations are, how they can be and have been incorporated into state and metropol- itan planning and programming processes, how they are communicated to the public, and how they can be funded. Finally, let’s look at what tools are available to trans- portation agencies to support smart growth. In this ses- sion, we hope to help you learn about practical tools to plan and design transportation facilities and services; 63805_127_164 4/7/05 2:53 AM Page 135

what agencies can achieve with those tools; and how, by applying them, transportation agencies can support smart growth and discourage sprawl. Our first panelist is Sam Seskin, a principal profes- sional associate of Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas, Inc., in Portland, Oregon. Sam consults widely on relationships between transportation and land use for local and state governments. He was the consultant project manager for the award-winning Land Use, Transportation, and Air Quality Connection project. He has been a contributing author of such TRB publications as Transit and Urban Form, Volumes 1 and 2; The Costs of Sprawl—Revisited; and Costs of Sprawl—2000 and to the update of the 1997 AASHTO Redbook. Sam will talk about how transportation agencies can improve their projects by doing one or more of the following: incorporating context-sensitive design (CSD), accommodating multiple modes, improv- ing the pedestrian environment, integrating new urban- ist principles, locating in brownfield or infill sites, enhancing main streets, integrating the adjacent urban land uses, and reclaiming and reusing urban land. Then we will hear from Tracey Winfree. Tracey is from the city of Boulder, Colorado, and she has worked with the GO Boulder project, which has continually created new programs and projects that encourage peo- ple to use alternative transportation. Tracey has been a key player in designing and implementing such success- ful programs as the University of Colorado’s student bus pass program; an unlimited use bus pass called ECO that employers purchase for their employees; and the Hop shuttle service, the Skip shuttle service, and under Tracey’s leadership, the Jump, Leap, Bound, Stampede, and a new one coming, Dash. Transit pro- grams have enjoyed a modal shift away from single- occupant car use among Boulder residents. With a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Princeton and select advanced degree courses in regional and urban planning and business administration, Tracey has now become the Transportation Director for the city of Boulder. Tracey’s presentation is going to feature Boulder’s multimodal system, the leadership direction, how the system connects with land use, and the impor- tant role partnerships have played in making all of this successful. Then we will hear from Jim Lewis, who is the Manager of the Bureau of Statewide Planning in the New Jersey Department of Transportation. He was recently appointed Acting Director, Division of Systems Planning and Research. Jim’s responsibilities include preparing the state’s long-range transportation plan, providing the liaison to the state’s three metropolitan planning organizations, managing the planning ele- ments of the state’s access code, and coordinating the department’s implementation of the state development and redevelopment plan—New Jersey’s growth man- agement plan. In this last capacity, Jim represents the Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Transportation on the State Planning Commission. He has a master’s of city and regional planning from Rutgers University, and he is a Licensed Professional Planner in New Jersey. Jim is going to discuss several projects in New Jersey that show how highway projects have been changed to better support community rede- velopment goals, how access has been managed for new highway construction or relocation, how CSD has been used to support smart growth, and how bicycle and pedestrian accommodations have been incorporated into these highway designs to make a better New Jersey transportation system. Last but not least, we will hear from Catherine Rice of the Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA). She will lead us through our breakout session. Cathy is a Special Assistant to the Deputy Administrator for Planning and Engineering at SHA. She is a Licensed Professional Organizer with degrees in civil engineering and urban planning. She has 19 years of experience in a variety of transportation planning and design activities, including leading the implementation of Maryland’s smart growth policies within SHA. Cathy will be setting up and leading us through the last part of our session today, which concerns the potential transportation solu- tions you will come up with for dealing with smart growth issues on Maryland’s 210 corridor. 1 3 6 SMART GROWTH AND TRANSPORTATION: ISSUES AND LESSONS LEARNED 63805_127_164 4/7/05 2:53 AM Page 136

1 3 7 Examples of Smart Transportation Projects Sam Seskin, Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas, Inc. What does a smart transportation project looklike? I participated some time ago in a TRB-sponsored online chat room about new par- adigms in public transportation. There were a lot of people going back and forth about where the profes- sion is headed in the area of public transportation. The answer, not surprisingly, was transit-oriented development. As one of the members of the planning committee for this session, I participated in a discus- sion about what we wanted to do at this point in the program. The challenge was to identify and present best practices in the form of specific projects and pro- grams, to try to bring to a culmination all the things you’ve heard in the past several days. I volunteered for this duty to try to figure out what a smart transportation project looks like. For me, the challenge was to move beyond the paradigm of transit- oriented development, which still has a lot of room to be implemented but represents only one aspect of smart transportation projects. In this presentation I will illustrate examples of the things that Effie listed. These topics all relate to one another, and individual projects often have elements that relate to many of these things. I’ve shown my own taxonomy (see box). These are examples of what smart transportation projects do today. Without a doubt, the profession’s projects have changed in a generation. One way to demonstrate that is to start the process by talk- ing about CSD. I am really thinking of CSD primarily in terms of aesthetics. It isn’t, by any means, the limit of what the term means, but I think it is a good way to start off this presentation. The first project we will look at is US-93 in Montana, which goes through an Indian reservation (Figure 1). Historically, the engineering profession drew a straight line right across the desert and whatever was in the way didn’t matter, you just graded it and built it. In the opinion of the planners and engineers, this had to be corrected. US-93 is a 55-mile road. It bisected the Flathead Indian Reservation and needed widening to four lanes, but the controversy over its original design was paralyzing the process. The plan needed to be revised to protect and enhance the tribe’s cultural and environmental values, and rerouting around important habitats such as the one that was previously destroyed was necessary. The new plan installed wildlife crossings, selective passings and widenings, interpretive opportu- nities, and paths and conservation easements, all of which set a high standard for projects across the West. This project won a merit award from the American Society of Landscape Architects. Construction is expected to start in 2003. Taxonomy of a Smart Transportation Project • Incorporates CSD. • Accommodates multiple modes. • Improves pedestrian environments. • Integrates “new urbanist” principles. • Located in brownfield or infill sites. • Enhances main streets. • Integrated with adjacent urban land uses. • Reclaims urban land. 63805_127_164 4/7/05 2:53 AM Page 137

Another project in the West is the Pima Freeway in Scottsdale, Arizona (Figure 2). Like the last one, this is basically a highway project. The question here is aes- thetics. Residents wanted a new freeway, but they also wanted it to be an attractive gateway to their city. They were concerned about aesthetics and noise, and if you are from the Phoenix–Scottsdale area, you know a great many of the highways are visually much more interest- ing than they were a generation ago. In addition, the project included bike and pedestrian paths, stone walls, privacy walls, and landscaping. Southwestern designs were combined with decorative handrails incorporated into bridges and walls. The project, a cooperative effort between the city and the Arizona Department of Transportation, was completed in 1997. It won an out- standing award for engineering excellence. The Lexington Road in central Kentucky (Figure 3) is an area noted for its scenic beauty. This project is a reconstruction of a 12-mile historic highway linking Lexington to another community, Maysville, and trav- eling through horse farms, agricultural areas, forested areas, and historic areas. The proposed widening of this facility had been opposed since 1969 and had been tied up in court for decades. The problems with the facility were evident. They included lack of shoulders and emergency lanes, narrow lanes, and poor sight dis- tances. A multiagency process began with significant public outreach in the 1990s, and the result has been a well-received project with an attractively designed two- lane roadway with medians, grassy shoulders, protected viewsheds, and a variety of other scenic amenities that met the community’s needs. Figure 4 shows an urban project in Clifton, New Jersey, the last link in a state-constructed freeway facil- ity, Route 21. The last 2-mile section went through an urban historic area and posed interesting challenges in many respects. The freeway noise walls mirror the architectural features of local neighborhoods and industrial buildings that give this community its char- acter. The park structures indicate the rooflines of the sheds and the former mills and clothing manufacturers that were located on the site, and the river stones in the lower level represent the Passaic River, the mills’ power source. This facility opened in December 2000. Next we have a whole genre of animal underpasses and overpasses. I recall living in Massachusetts in a community in which, at a certain date in March, all traffic was stopped on a local road in the dead of night so that some amphibians could cross the road from the wetland up to a slightly higher elevation so they could carry on their existence on dry land. No one knew exactly when this would happen. All of a sudden, when 1 3 8 SMART GROWTH AND TRANSPORTATION: ISSUES AND LESSONS LEARNED FIGURE 1 US-93, Flathead Indian Reservation, western Montana. FIGURE 2 Pima Freeway, Scottsdale, Arizona. FIGURE 3 Paris–Lexington Road, Bluegrass region, central Kentucky. FIGURE 4 Route 21 freeway, Clifton, New Jersey. 63805_127_164 4/7/05 2:53 AM Page 138

the night came, the policemen were posted on the street and traffic stopped for the night. Since then, many communities have developed and designed animal underpasses and overpasses. There are examples in Florida, Arizona, Massachusetts, and throughout the United States. Many of these have won environmental protection awards from the Federal Highway Administration and other agencies. They help animals of all sizes to get under or over the roads in question. We have taken multimodalism to a new dimension. Figure 5 shows a parking facility in Santa Barbara, California. The cultural heritage of Santa Barbara is from the Spanish colonial days, and urban design codes for the city mandate this kind of treatment for all build- ings. This parking garage has arches, balconies, and a rooftop parapet reflecting traditional architectural forms. It won local and state awards. It represents an interesting way to deal with transportation features, not for movement but for storage of vehicles, and it takes local design and aesthetics into consideration. Let’s talk about some facilities that accommodate mul- tiple modes. One of the signature projects of this decade was the deconstruction of the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco and its replacement with a popular Bay- front boulevard that passes the new baseball stadium. Figure 6 shows a boulevard with wide landscaped side- walks, bike lanes, and six lanes of vehicular traffic divided by a landscaped transit median. Trolleys operate in the median connecting the north and south ends of the water- front with the rest of the city and with other forms of rapid transit—ferries, buses, and the like. Adjacent to this facility there have been extensive development and rede- velopment of public parks and piers; multiple land uses; residential, office, and mixed-use development; and a variety of tourist attractions, like PacBell Park, one of the great new stadiums in the United States. On a much smaller scale, the same basic concept played out in a transit center in the small community of Robbinsdale, Minnesota (Figure 7), one of a series of ini- tiatives to rebuild a historic downtown in this suburb of Minneapolis–St. Paul. The transit center project included rerouting a main street and constructing heated and lighted shelters for buses and pedestrian links. Adjacent to the center have been extensive new development and redevelopment of mixed-use retail and apartments, a farmers market, and a music pavilion. There are also complementary transportation projects, including traffic calming. Let’s turn to the pedestrian environment. Figure 8 shows a project from my home city of Portland, Oregon, the Eastbank Esplanade. This is a 1.5-mile facility on the east bank of the Willamette River, paral- lel to an Interstate freeway, I-5, the major north–south freeway on the Pacific Coast of the United States. The project connects neighborhoods and provides connec- tions across the river at the various bridges. It is basi- cally a pedestrian and bicycle corridor offering great views of downtown. Many people, including me, were cynical when this was built. I always thought it would be the epicenter of drug dealing for the whole city of Portland, since you can wander down there and be unnoticed. But we skeptics have been proved wrong, and it has been a phenomenally popular way to circu- late around our riverfront and experience the city from a point of view that would otherwise be impossible. Figure 9 shows an unusual amenity for pedestrians located in Tacoma, Washington. This facility opened in 1 3 9HOW CAN TRANSPORTATION AGENCIES SUPPORT SMART GROWTH? FIGURE 5 Parking garage, Santa Barbara, California. FIGURE 6 Embarcadero, San Francisco, California. FIGURE 7 Robbinsdale Transit Center, Robbinsdale, Minnesota. 63805_127_164 4/7/05 2:53 AM Page 139

2002. It is a new pedestrian connection linking down- town Tacoma, the city’s waterfront, and several munici- pal attractions. The pedestrian bridge spans an Interstate highway and directly connects the Washington State Historical Museum and a new Museum of Glass, which has been one of the local signature crafts in Tacoma and the vicinity. The walkway is filled with Dale Chihuly glass pieces and stained-glass windows, creating a very exciting urban environment and making the connection visually and symbolically between the art museum and other features in the community. On a much different scale and on the other side of the country, in Toms River, New Jersey, two streets form a southern bypass of the city. They had poor geometry and heavy traffic volumes, which resulted in numerous acci- dents. A project was done to improve the geometry and at the same time to use CSD to protect the visual and historic assets of the community. On the section of road shown in Figure 10, the pedestrian environment was integrated into an arboretum, creating a much more exciting and satisfying pedestrian experience than had been possible previously. Since children are auto-free, it is important that the pedestrian environment work for them. Figure 11 illus- trates a project in Marin County, California, part of a national program to promote walking, biking, and non- motorized means of getting to schools, which improves the health and safety of the students and reduces traffic on neighborhood streets. The Safe Routes to Schools Program in Marin County is a community-based solu- tion, which includes identifying safe routes to school for all students who live within 1 mile of schools. The pro- gram includes not only improvements to physical facili- ties but also education for parents and students and better traffic enforcement. It also involves a variety of promotional events and prizes. Proponents of the proj- ect say that the proportion of students who walk to school increased from 21 to 38 percent in its second year as a result of this comprehensive program. In another small-scale project, in the city of Mount Rainier, Maryland, a roundabout was constructed to improve traffic for cars and buses while enhancing the pedestrian environment at an intersection on US-1. It is the central focus for a major revitalization effort in the city to create a town center. The construction of the roundabout provided several transportation and aes- thetic elements for the revitalization plan. Let’s talk about incorporating new urbanist princi- ples. Here one has to begin with the whole variety of traffic-calming techniques, which, in the last genera- 1 4 0 SMART GROWTH AND TRANSPORTATION: ISSUES AND LESSONS LEARNED FIGURE 8 Eastbank Esplanade, Portland, Oregon. FIGURE 9 Chihuly Bridge of Glass, Tacoma, Washington. FIGURE 10 East Water Street/Dock Street, Toms River, New Jersey. FIGURE 11 Safe Routes to School Program, Marin County, California. 63805_127_164 4/7/05 2:53 AM Page 140

tion, have happily become much more common on streets and roads across the United States. Both full and partial street closures can control traffic volumes. Diverters, medians, and forced turn islands are designed to dampen traffic volumes on neighborhood streets. Vertical speed controls can include speed humps and speed tables to slow traffic, as well as changes in road texture, striping, and signage. A raised crosswalk at an intersection can accomplish the same thing. Horizontal speed controls include roundabouts, signage, and the enhanced visibility associated with certain landscaping improvements. Chicanes are slight lateral shifts in traf- fic; bulb-outs, chokers, and neck-downs are also tech- niques that can be used to slow traffic speeds in communities. Those are all project-level or street-level improvements. One can clearly go up to the next scale in the imple- mentation of new urbanism, and I’ll illustrate here a rural and a new urbanist community (Figure 12). Twin Creeks is in a high desert environment in southern Oregon. We don’t emphasize the transit orientation here because there isn’t much transit in this part of Oregon, but a well-planned community consistent with new urbanist principles is an unusual thing to find in this part of the state. Also in the Pacific Northwest, Issaquah Highlands is a planned community of about 2,000 acres 17 miles west of Seattle. It is associated with a new interchange on I-90, the principal east–west Interstate highway in the Puget Sound region. This is already becoming a new pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use community, including retail, entertainment, and various employment and residential uses. Features include tra- ditional new urbanist designs of grids of narrow tree- lined streets and wide sidewalks. The town center will be adjacent to a new Microsoft campus where 15,000 people will eventually be employed. The location of smart transportation projects is crit- ical, and brownfield and infill sites are an important dimension of that. In Portland there is a district north of downtown called the Pearl District, in which a com- bination of private and public investment integrated transportation and land use to create a new neighbor- hood essentially where one never existed before. An arterial ramp that had once dominated an industrial landscape was demolished and replaced with both ren- ovated and new apartment and condominium develop- ments, as well as a light rail car that runs by lofts near an old sign (or a new sign with an old idea)—Go by Streetcar. That sign is the signature for this particular development. It clearly marks, in the minds of the peo- ple who live there as well as the people who promote and develop the district, the importance of this kind of transportation investment as part of a package to enhance and reuse this area. Another great signature project of our decade is the Atlantic Station project in midtown Atlanta, Georgia, a 130-acre mixed-use redevelopment of a former steel plant (Figure 13). The essential component of this pro- ject is the construction of a bridge that would cross an Interstate highway adjacent to the site and link the sur- rounding community with the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority rapid transit station. The bridge will improve access for all modes of transportation, motorized and nonmotorized, and the site design serves as an excellent example of a new urbanist development already under construction. The trend to turn arterials into places used solely by high-speed vehicles is reversing in our generation. Martin Luther King Boulevard in North Portland is one example. This traditionally busy, cluttered arterial street was “improved” by the introduction of median barriers and the prohibition of left turns 20 to 30 years ago to the point where all the local businesses were adversely affected. Today, at some expense, it has been improved again by taking out all those barriers to pedestrians, which coincided with renewed interest on the part of residents in the neighborhood involved. The improvements are shown in Figure 14. We have gone back to the main street, after moving too far down the path of focusing only on one mode of transportation. 1 4 1HOW CAN TRANSPORTATION AGENCIES SUPPORT SMART GROWTH? FIGURE 12 Twin Creeks transit-oriented development, Central Point, Oregon. FIGURE 13 Atlantic Station, Atlanta, Georgia. 63805_127_164 4/7/05 2:53 AM Page 141

The goal of the Route 235 project in Maryland was to create an attractive boulevard and main street by providing safer access to businesses and enhancing environmental features (Figure 15). This road serves as the primary access point to the town of Lexington Park and the St. Mary’s County peninsula. The project widens into a suburban arterial, adding a travel lane in each direction, but accommodates multiple modes. Mockingbird Station is an example of integrating transportation with adjacent land uses in a dramatic, visual fashion (Figure 16). This Dallas project is a mixed-use development built in the suburbs next to the newly opened light rail line. It is built on a 7-acre aban- doned Western Electric brownfield site. It is fully inte- grated with transit through the use of the pedestrian bridge, which is very much a part of the image of the project from the point of view of residents and devel- opers alike. The pedestrian bridge is considered the front door to this project, connecting amenities within the site to areas around it. Another great signature project is Hollywood/ Highland in Los Angeles, where a transit-oriented com- munity constructed above the Metro Red Line subway station has links to Grauman’s Chinese Theater, an extensive array of land uses, and 1.3 million square feet of retail, theaters, restaurants, and hotels (Figure 17). It is substantially more dense than the previous uses and directly linked to transit. In Los Angeles, this is pretty new. There has been a corresponding increase in the use of public transportation, particularly on the Red Line. Keeping the same theme but going in a very different direction is I-97 in Maryland (Figure 18). This project is notable in a sense for what it did not do rather than for what it did. It did not provide interchanges in parts of the state and the corridor where urban development was not consistent with state and local plans. 1 4 2 SMART GROWTH AND TRANSPORTATION: ISSUES AND LESSONS LEARNED FIGURE 14 Martin Luther King Boulevard, Portland, Oregon: (a) then; (b) now. FIGURE 15 Maryland Route 235, St. Mary’s County, Maryland. FIGURE 16 Mockingbird Station, Dallas, Texas. FIGURE 17 Hollywood/Highland project, Los Angeles, California. FIGURE 18 I-97 (I-695 to US-50), Anne Arundel County, Maryland. 63805_127_164 4/7/05 2:53 AM Page 142

Development has successfully been steered toward other areas targeted for growth. Finally, several facilities reclaim urban land in excit- ing ways. In Cincinnati, Fort Washington Way was originally built in the early 1960s to provide access to the central business district and later became part of the Interstate system. Over time, it became congested, unsafe, and physically deteriorated since there were a great many structures involved. A major reconstruction and realignment freed up a substantial amount of urban land for two new stadiums, a riverfront park, and a museum facility planned for the area (Figure 19). It accommodates both transit and highways, and founda- tions were built for decks, which will eventually be con- structed over several of the urban blocks, creating still more urban land. The granddaddy of these projects is the Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel in Boston, Massachusetts, which removed six lanes of elevated freeway through the central business district and put them underground in an 8- to 10-lane facility, freeing 30 acres of land, 10 acres of which will be developed with up to six-story buildings. The remainder will be parks and open space. In the short term this causes huge dislocations in the city, but in the long term it will pay all the dividends that a project like that should pay. A final example, in Hartford, Connecticut, uses the same basic idea. Part of the plan to revitalize Hartford’s central business district faced the challenge of an Interstate on a river by taking down a viaduct of I-91, creating a landscaped deck over the new facility, and then opening up the waterfront to city residents once again (Figure 20). You have seen here a variety of smart transportation projects. Those who began this presentation hating highways probably still hate them. Those who don’t like transit projects probably still don’t like them. Many of you have undergone a conversion experience. I think we can see how the practice has changed materially in a generation and how the ways that we handle, design, plan, implement, and construct transportation projects have dramatically changed. 1 4 3HOW CAN TRANSPORTATION AGENCIES SUPPORT SMART GROWTH? FIGURE 19 Fort Washington Way, Cincinnati, Ohio: (a) before; (b) after. FIGURE 20 Riverfront Plaza and Founders Bridge, Hartford, Connecticut: (a) before; (b) after; (c) after. 63805_127_164 4/7/05 2:53 AM Page 143

1 4 4 The Many Transit “Connections” in Boulder, Colorado Tracey Winfree, City of Boulder My focus will be on transit connections, but“connections” can have lots of differentmeanings. It can mean how transit connects with other transit; how it connects to land use; and how you connect with your partners, your regional agencies and your neighbors out in the region. I’ll dis- cuss several themes: the importance of multimodalism, the leadership it takes to accomplish certain projects, our own local discovery of the importance of land use coordination, and the partnerships we have needed to get things done. Our population is approaching 100,000, but we are about 145,000 during the day. While we are a suburb about 25 miles northwest of Denver, we are sort of a subregional center in our own right, in part because we are home to the University of Colorado, which has more than 26,000 students and 7,000 faculty and staff. We also have federal laboratories, high-tech industry, and so on. In Boulder, one of our ethics is the value of preserv- ing the natural setting. One of the major reasons people move to this area is that it is just a beautiful place. We have some important guiding principles for transportation. Our goal is to hold traffic at 1994 lev- els. We want to provide for increased mobility, and we’ll primarily be doing that through a multimodal sys- tem. One of the core parts of that multimodal system is a transit grid system with a core area shuttle. Some people ask whether land use or transportation comes first. What is really the driving force? Our expe- rience locally is that they both come first. They take turns going first. It is an iterative process. We will have some discoveries in the transportation area that will inform our land use and vice versa. This cycle goes in both directions. I will talk a little bit more specifically about trans- portation and multimodalism. We have certain pedes- trian objectives in our transportation master plan. We have carved the city up into 29 areas (Figure 1), and we are going into each area to complete missing links, to install access ramps at corners and at crossings. We are creating a lot of pedestrian crossings and installing other amenities such as benches and shelters. In the bicycle program, we actually started with the regional transportation district, which is the six-county FIGURE 1 Mapping out pedestrian objectives. Seven out of 29 areas and 32+ miles of sidewalk repairs have been completed; 3,408 access ramps, 47 transit shelters, and 116 benches have been installed. 63805_127_164 4/7/05 2:53 AM Page 144

transit provider. Now there are bike racks on all of the buses in the entire six-county area. We do other pro- grams such as underpasses and bicycle system improve- ments, including multiuse paths and bike lanes on the street. I’m going to spend a little bit of time talking about our transit story. The transit system that the Regional Transit District (RTD) started with consisted of classic 40-foot diesel, dark-window buses. We have a story to tell in Boulder about creating a community transit net- work with much smaller buses, cleaner burning and lower to the ground, with wide doors. These buses have a distinctive character. Back in the early 1990s, the Hop service really broke the mold for us. The Hop services three main activity centers: the university, downtown offices and retail cen- ters, and a retail mall. Our community said, “We’re not really sure about this transit system. We don’t see a lot of people riding it. We haven’t really paid attention to it before. Why don’t we go out and talk to the public about how it could be done differently.” So we did. We got together with the citizens and we asked, “What does a service need to look and act like for you to use it?” They told us, and out of the very first round of Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act fund- ing, we got funding to try this service the way the com- munity asked us to. It is a core area shuttle that links three main activity centers. Our original ridership goal was 2,000 riders per day (Figure 2). We surpassed that in the 6th week of service. By the 4th month of service, we were carrying 4,000 passengers per day. This was beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, and we were having real capacity problems just after 4 months of service. Then RTD was interested in trying another test. We took one of RTD’s older established services, Route 202. It was the classic 40-foot bus, white, stripes down the side, one frequency in the peak hour and another in the off peak. Together, we created a new model of service that replaced the 202: the Skip service. Once again we saw a remarkable ridership response (Figure 3). On the basis of these successes, there is a whole network of core area shuttles within a high-frequency grid. In addition to the Hop, the Skip runs north–south on Broadway, the Leap runs east–west on Pearl, the Bound runs north–south on 30th, and the Jump runs east–west on Arapahoe. What is different about this community transit net- work that people have asked us to provide? They said it has to be schedule-free. Every single service I just dis- cussed is 10 minutes or better between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. Not only can you rely on one of those services, the Broadway service comes within 5 minutes once you get to the stop. You can rely on transferring between these services. It really functions as a network. We converted some of these services to a grid system, although it is not exactly a grid because of our geogra- phy and our streams. But we took a lot of kinks and loops out of these services, so there is a great deal of direct routing. The vehicles are distinctive and inviting. They are a part of the marketing program, which is also important. Since we are a subregional center, once we started to get the confidence and experience of these local ser- vices, we started moving regionally. We established a connection with one of our neighboring communities, Lafayette, called the Jump. Believe it or not, we have a Short Jump that goes on Arapahoe, and we have a Long Jump that goes all the way out to Lafayette. Moving regionally is important to solving our transportation problem. We had citizens from both Boulder and Lafayette sitting around a table together designing this service. Toward the end of the process, I remember one of the citizens saying, “I can’t remember anymore who is from Boulder and who is from Lafayette,” and that was a rewarding statement. The Stampede started last month; it is an east–west service that connects the main campus area with a research park and some other campus activities to the east. The Dash is another regional service that will con- nect us with neighbors Louisville and Lafayette. It is so important to form partnerships. With the Hop, we formed a partnership with the community because we were taking a big risk and we weren’t really sure what to do. We asked them to help us figure out what to do so we would be in this together. We then joined with RTD for the Skip service. Now we are joining with the University of Colorado and our neighboring communities, in addition to RTD. 1 4 5HOW CAN TRANSPORTATION AGENCIES SUPPORT SMART GROWTH? 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 Da ily R id er sh ip 1st Day 6th Week 3rd Month 4th Month FIGURE 2 Early Hop results. 124,511 55,228 147,427 62,322 124,710 55,534 116,777 55,680 0 20,000 40,000 60,000 80,000 100,000 120,000 140,000 160,000 M on th ly Bo ar di ng s Sept Oct Nov Dec Skip Rte. 202 FIGURE 3 Ridership: Skip (1997) versus Route 202 (1996). 63805_127_164 4/7/05 2:54 AM Page 145

It is important to remember to ask people what they want, go out into the community, understand your travel market, and give them what they ask for. It is almost like what Coca-Cola or Kellogg’s might do. They ask their customers, “How crunchy do you want it? Do you want it to be soggy? How many raisins do you want?” We are doing the same kind of thing, but our product is transit. We have found that this transfers to other transportation planning efforts. We do the market research to find out what people want. We give that back to them, and we tell them that we gave it to them. We don’t want to keep it a secret. Then, we always measure and continue to improve. We think those are important elements. You’ve heard during this conference about getting out to community groups and including all the stake- holders. You need to include everybody—students, elderly, employers, employees. With every one of these new services, we didn’t assume, “We designed the Hop right, so now we will just do the rest of them like the Hop.” For every one of these services we got a new group of stakeholders together and designed the route and the frequency and the hours of service, even the ser- vice image. The ridership results show that the 202 was the most productive route in Boulder, and it has more than doubled in ridership since becoming in effect the Skip. Ridership for the Hop, the Jump, and the Bound has doubled over that of the predecessor services. We don’t have the absolute numbers that we have with the Skip and the Hop, but it takes 12 buses to run the Skip service. It takes eight buses to run the Hop ser- vice. It takes five buses to run the Bound service. So there is good productivity. I’ve talked about the supply side, but the demand side is really important. The marketing and even the images that you give to your transit service, what you have on the streets, are important. The citizens told us that they wanted the service to be really fun and lively but also to have a serious commuter impression. They wanted funky commuters, so we created “caffeinated commuter” graphics (Figure 4). Each service has those kinds of stories behind it. Also important, beyond the marketing and the image, are the pass programs. We have been working hard for the past 10 to 12 years to develop the University of Colorado student pass program. The faculty and staff participate in the ECO pass program, which is basically the employer version of the campus pass, except the employer buys the pass for all the employees. We are up to 60,000 passes in our community. With a daytime population of 135,000 people, that is a significant num- ber. The combination of these pass programs and the service quality gets people on the bus. I will highlight our neighborhood pass program. Through our development review process, we have new residential developments include bus passes in their home owners’ association fees. The developer sponsors it for the first 2 years, and then it is established in the home owners’ association fees. It is a great way to get demand for transit in your residential development. Other communities across the country provide neigh- borhood pass programs, so it is not just crazy old Boulder doing this. What have we discovered in this iterative process of taking what we learn in transportation to land use and vice versa? There are more barriers as we move east— old Boulder lies along the western side of the city, while post-1950s Boulder is on the eastern part. Pedestrian and bicycle connections are much easier in the west than in the east. It has been important for us to recog- nize pedestrian and bicycle barriers and to begin to break them down. Also, buses get stuck in the same traffic as everybody else. We are going to work on that in terms of transit priority in the system and in our infrastructure design. There are different land use patterns in western ver- sus eastern Boulder, and our land use map is starting to change to make improvements to this eastern part of Boulder. Design is very important, too. So our high- frequency transit corridors are what we now call our multimodal corridors. We still need to go through a series of steps, but we are modifying our land use around these multimodal corridors such that greater density and more mixed use would occur along these corridors, and development will be required to do more bicycle parking and ECO passes. We are also doing transportation network plans around these multimodal corridors. The transportation network plan accompanies your classic corridor design effort, but it doesn’t stop sidewalk-to-sidewalk. It casts a broader net. We are looking at how people get around parallel to as well as within and across the corridor. We 1 4 6 SMART GROWTH AND TRANSPORTATION: ISSUES AND LESSONS LEARNED FIGURE 4 “Caffeinated commuter” graphics. 63805_127_164 4/7/05 2:54 AM Page 146

are using this transportation network plan as a long- term tool for development so that as development comes through, we know what connections to request in the review process. And we know how to add our own investments. A particular corridor similar to this Maryland 210 is 28th Street (Figure 5). It comes up from Denver as Highway 36, goes through Boulder as 28th Street, and heads up to Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park as US-36 again. We are converting that classic, ugly, auto-oriented corridor to a multimodal corridor. This is an example of how we are casting a larger net to look at how we have connections crossing and going parallel to the major nodes. Right now it is three lanes heading south and two or three lanes heading north, very high speed and very intimidating, with no trees. The design for the southern section of 28th Street shows that we are putting in a multiuse path. There will be an underpass and improved crossings with median refuges to get people across the corridor. We actually slipped the regional transit off the corri- dor onto a frontage road. We have pedestrian and bicy- cle connections along here. Transit priority will be built to move the transit right through. Transit continues on the frontage road and pops back onto 28th Street to miss the queue as part of our transit priority system. This bicycle/pedestrian underpass is associated with Boulder Creek; there are some improvements at grade with pedestrian and bicycle crossings. In another area we had some real problems with right-of-way, so we are doing sort of a hybrid boulevard approach. There isn’t enough room for both the main thoroughfare and putting the utility streets off to the side. This three-lane section has two through lanes, with the outside lane only for transit, bicycles, and right-turning cars. Once a car turns off, the transit pulls up and drops people off. The pedestrian has three refuges to get across this intimidating roadway. We will be building this treatment with 28th Street to break down those barriers for the pedestrians and bicyclists and to give priority to transit. Here is an example of an underpass (Figure 6). The University of Colorado is to one side. The Research Park and a lot of housing are on the other side. You can get comfortably to the transit with a multiuse path that runs along that hillside. We will have lighting at night, since people are worried about safety. The important aspect is that this was designed with the community (Figure 7). We used the same stake- holder approach with the 28th Street corridor design. We are aligning it with land use. We are casting that broader net out there to look at the network. We are partnering with the Colorado DOTs and RTDs of the world on this design. We are working on the conver- sion—using transit priority to get transit out of conges- tion. We are looking at creative ways to break barriers to get pedestrians and bicyclists under, over, and along these corridors. 1 4 7HOW CAN TRANSPORTATION AGENCIES SUPPORT SMART GROWTH? FIGURE 5 Transit network and 28th Street. FIGURE 6 Pedestrian underpass. • Design with community! • Align with land use • Transportation network plans • Partner with regional agencies • Convert from auto to multimodal • Create transit priority and stop amenities for current transit and future BRT • Creative connections for pedestrians and bicyclists FIGURE 7 28th Street comparison. 63805_127_164 4/7/05 2:54 AM Page 147

1 4 8 Smart Highway Experience in New Jersey James Lewis, New Jersey Department of Transportation Iwant to talk today about some of the experienceswe have had in the New Jersey Department ofTransportation in trying to achieve smart growth objectives. We like to call this the “smart highway experience.” Let me set New Jersey’s experience in context. We are nestled between two large metropolitan centers, New York City and Philadelphia. We have a series of small urban centers in the state, some of which are rebound- ing now. But we are the state of extensive suburbs. We have first-generation suburbs. We have new suburbs. We have a whole band of suburbs in the central part of the state that some people refer to as the “wealth belt,” and some of my examples are from that area. In our state, home rule operates at the municipal level, at 566 municipalities throughout the state. Each of those municipalities relies heavily on property taxes for local revenues. This contributes to the “rateables chase” [competition for property-tax-paying development], making those changes and development patterns diffi- cult. Sound familiar? In our state, the response dates back to the 1980s. The legislature passed the State Planning Act, which established the State Planning Commission, which prepares and adopts a State Development and Redevelopment Plan (SDRP), which is our growth management plan, or smart growth plan. The SDRP is developed with state agencies, municipali- ties, and counties. These entities use a unique cross- acceptance process to negotiate the two critical operational elements of the plan. There are five planning areas in the state, each of which has a set of investment policies for the state agencies to follow. Along with the planning areas, there are centers. Centers are the focal points for growth within those planning areas. Regardless of planning area, growth should be occurring in those centers. The centers speak to the importance of design. The plan recognizes how important design is in achieving the objectives of an orderly growth pattern. Governor McGreevey came into office earlier in 2002 and established the Smart Growth Policy Council through executive order during the first few weeks of his administration. The council is intended to bring together state agencies in a close-knit forum. The focus is on the partnerships they have to establish to achieve the objectives of the state plan. How can highways help? In New Jersey, we have a fairly skeletal state highway system under our direct jurisdiction. The state highway system includes 2,300 of the 36,000 road miles in the state. Compared with the rest of the coun- try, that is a fairly low percentage of state highway jurisdic- tion. In addition, we provide extensive aid to counties and municipalities. Some is through new formula funds, and some is through selection of projects. We can work with the counties and municipalities to select some of those projects. Our response to the SDRP spanned a number of areas. In the policy area, in our long-range transporta- tion plan, one of our seven goals is to use transporta- tion investment to shape the state’s development patterns so that they are consistent with the SDRP. Likewise, a similar strategy exists in our midterm or 10-year-horizon capital investment strategy. In terms of process, we are working extensively with our three metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs). 63805_127_164 4/7/05 2:54 AM Page 148

New Jersey is blanketed by three MPOs that incorpo- rate the precepts of the SDRP within their planning and project selection processes. We are now heavily involved in CSD techniques. In fact, a number of the examples that I’m going to address are actually, in some ways, precursors to our full involvement with CSD and help to lay the groundwork for CSD. Finally, we have a regulatory approach for smart growth, the access code. State highway access manage- ment legislation created an access code about 10 years ago. The code is structured around the definition of access levels for the state highway system, defining what types of access are allowed on what types of func- tional classes of roads. Another key part of the code is the concept of desirable typical sections. These set the maximum concept for a section of state highway. That shapes the local planning decisions about what kind of access can occur on that section of highway, and it gov- erns how we issue the permits and the guidelines we have to follow in issuing the permits. Within the access code is a technique called access management plans, by which we partner with munici- palities to create a definitive access management plan for a stretch of highway. That is adopted by the municipality through local ordinance. After 10 years of experience with the access code, my office is embarking on a major study. The goal is to improve the consistency between access code operations and the SDRP and to use the access code to promote smart growth goals. We are currently executing several projects that are the result of extensive coordination and collaboration with host communities. The first one is a bypass around Hightstown, which is a small, formerly rural market town in central New Jersey. Hightstown is adjacent to a New Jersey turnpike interchange. It is on an east–west highway and sees large amounts of regional traffic flow. The bypass was long sought after to alleviate conges- tion in the town. The key element of the bypass was the strictly controlled access. It has only one interchange, to provide regional traffic movements. The bypass has been in operation for about 2 years. It provides a bypass about 3.5 miles around the town, and it has relieved some of the through-traffic conges- tion in Hightstown. It has permitted the complementary strategies of streetscape improvements along the exist- ing state highway and a county road to allow Hightstown to evolve to its new niche in the regional landscape. The Washington Town Center is probably one of the most widely known smart growth projects in New Jersey. It is just east of Trenton, the state capital, in the central part of the state. Crossing the middle is Route 33, a state highway. The center was developed by local planners in a rural township to the east of Trenton. While most of the centers already exist, the SDRP fea- tures a provision for the creation of new centers. The Washington Town Center is the only one in New Jersey that has been planned and designed and is currently in construction. Route 33 had been included as Main Street. This pre- sented problems. Through a series of discussions, we came up with the alternative of providing a bypass that would accommodate some of the future travel flows on Main Street. The key element of this bypass was the access management plan approach, which preserves and protects the future capacity of the bypass road and limits the growth along it. Another example of successful access management planning is in a rural area along Route 34 in Colts Neck, toward the New Jersey shore (Figure 1). We performed a corridor study along this stretch of highway that focused on operational difficulties at certain key inter- sections. Conversations with the municipal planners uncovered a number of concerns about future develop- ment in the area adjacent to the highway. We also dis- cussed the concept of access management plans and encouraged them to pursue that option. With our assis- tance, they spent about 1 year reviewing the master land use plan until they were ready to talk. Those discussions led to the development of an access management plan for this stretch of roadway. The provision of local circulator roads adjacent to the state highway preserved some of that capacity for the state highway and regional traffic movements and provided more clustered zoning for their commercial development along this road. Route 29 in Trenton is a project that completed the last missing link; it connected the downtown area of the state capital to Trenton’s freeway network. This road- way had previously been designed as a grade-separated freeway. While it was somewhat desirable to the city and the local residents because of the traffic volumes in these neighborhoods, they were also fearful about what that freeway design would do to their waterfront access, among other things. We engaged in an intensive set of design charrettes. The roadway was redesigned on the basis of the urban boulevard concept. What was planned as an interchange in that area was brought down to at-grade roadwork. 1 4 9HOW CAN TRANSPORTATION AGENCIES SUPPORT SMART GROWTH? FIGURE 1 Route 34 access management plan. 63805_127_164 4/7/05 2:54 AM Page 149

The original concept included the possibility of future development in these areas of the intersection to connect the existing residential neighborhoods and commercial uses along the street to the new waterfront uses. Development includes a new minor league ballpark along the waterfront, housing on the opposite side, and offices, with more in the planning stage. The project has been successful because it started to stimulate greater interest in redevelopment opportunities in this area. It has also led to the promotion of pedestrian uses. The other main element of this project is the design of a covered deck over part of the freeway to provide greater access to the waterfront. There are ramps down to the waterfront and a walkway all along the river- front that connects to the parks and other recreational facilities in that area. The park project is now in the design stages. Route 30 is the main entrance into Camden. This highway was once lined with typical ugly strip develop- ment (Figure 2). We had the opportunity a number of years ago to leverage some state funds along with some toll authority funds, and it led to the creation of park- lands along the roadway. It was the extension of a county park. To the left of the park area is the Cooper River. Just below this area is an extensive county park. This is an example of open space preservation fairly close to an urban area. The Navesink River Bridge on Route 35 was one of the precursors to our rapid acceptance of CSD (Figure 3). This project was already in the works. It was in the final stages of design with a rather ordinary bridge design adjacent to the town of Redbank in Monmouth County in eastern New Jersey. That town center, desig- nated a regional center under the SDRP, was undergoing quite a bit of redevelopment and reconfiguration in the downtown and some other neighborhoods. They took a great deal of interest in how this bridge would look. They didn’t like the ordinary bridge design, so they worked with us through a series of design discussions, and we ended up adding a considerable amount of archi- tectural detail to the bridge. The design allowed it to fit more naturally into the historic character of the area. Sidewalks were added on both sides of the bridge. They were very insistent on connecting downtown Redbank’s northern residential areas with a township just north of the bridge. The project was built much as they envisioned it, and it was very successful. It really changed a lot of our engineers’ minds about CSD. Route 71 becomes Main Street in Avon, a coastal shore community. They wanted to take this existing four-lane section of roadway and reconfigure it to make it much more pedestrian-friendly because it is their main shopping street. After working with us to look at this stretch of highway in conjunction with the adjacent stretches of Route 71 in the adjacent towns, we devel- oped a redesign that reduced the lanes from four to two—one in each direction, providing some left-turn movements and bump-outs. This project is going to design this year and is moving toward implementation (Figure 4). The Westfield Circle, in northern New Jersey, was a troublesome intersection that we have been dealing with for a number of years. The original or existing intersection was a traffic rotary that was not working. We came up with a new version of the traffic rotary that was much more pedestrian-friendly (Figure 5). It slowed traffic more effectively and accommodated the volumes with some improvements from the existing design. This project is now moving toward design and completion. 1 5 0 SMART GROWTH AND TRANSPORTATION: ISSUES AND LESSONS LEARNED FIGURE 2 Route 30, Camden—Admiral Wilson Boulevard. FIGURE 3 Navesink River Bridge, Route 35. FIGURE 4 Main Street streetscape, Route 71, Avon: proposed improvements. 63805_127_164 4/7/05 2:54 AM Page 150

Figure 6 shows the North Brunswick example. You can do things rather quickly. This part of Route 1 is in the central part of the state. There were residential units, apartments, and houses on one side of the road and commercial uses on the other side. People were crossing the highway and the Jersey barrier anywhere they wanted. Unfortunately, there were some pedestrian fatalities. Through one of our planning design consul- tants, we decided to put some sidewalks along the road and a fence on the center barrier to redirect the pedes- trian linkages to a nearby signalized intersection. This whole project was completed in 1 year, start to finish. Even with the most mundane of principal arterials, you can make some kind of smart improvements. One old project still stands out as a good model of what can be done for smart growth. Market Street in downtown Trenton provided one of the direct access routes to the train station in Trenton. It was formerly a two-lane road and created a considerable bottleneck in the city. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a simple widening, even though the city was in favor of that, because it cut right through the heart of one of the premier redevel- oping neighborhoods. Through extensive discussions with the local residents, city officials, and other stake- holders, we designed a roadway-widening project that accommodated their concerns by including a pedestrian plaza and some additional parking spaces, which the community loved because of a severe parking constraint on side streets. This project is open and operating along with some other streetscape improvements in the area. This neighborhood has continued to thrive, and it has even increased in prominence in the city. These examples show some of the best practices used in New Jersey to help strengthen and enhance centers consistent with our smart growth plan, the SDRP. We are taking the opportunity to maximize and optimize existing roads as multimodal facilities, and we are col- laborating with the community through extensive plan- ning and CSD efforts. 1 5 1HOW CAN TRANSPORTATION AGENCIES SUPPORT SMART GROWTH? Circle remains with entry deflections introduced Monument island increased FIGURE 5 Route 28, Westfield Circle: revised solution. FIGURE 6 Route 1, North Brunswick. 63805_127_164 4/7/05 2:54 AM Page 151

1 5 2 Hands-On Case Study Catherine Rice, Maryland State Highway Administration We are looking forward to your working withus on this case study for the Maryland 210corridor. We picked this corridor because we hope it will represent something you can relate to in your area. This is a typical suburban radial corridor (Figure 1). It is south of Washington, D.C., in Prince George’s County, and parallels the Potomac River. To the west of the river is Virginia, and to the south of the project is Charles County, Maryland. The north end of the project is at the Capital Beltway, just at the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. The purpose of this breakout session is for you to help us meet the challenges of smart growth in a suburban corridor by using our transportation tools to address smart growth issues, to see if we can develop this kind of a corridor in a manner consistent with CSD principles. The following are the key issues we need to address: • How do we apply transportation tools to address smart growth issues? • How do we develop the MD-210 project to be consistent with CSD principles? Figure 2 shows the 10-mile corridor from north to south, or from left to right. It is currently a six-lane divided highway with signalized intersections. The mas- ter plan calls for this to be converted to a freeway. Along the corridor are clusters of residential areas, pri- marily single-family houses. There are fewer as you go from north to south. At the north end of the corridor approaching the Capital Beltway there is heavy directional traffic with commuters going into D.C. northbound in the morning and leaving southbound in the evening. Along the first 1.5 miles there are a lot of apartment complexes. There is somewhat of an urban feeling along the roadway itself. Six or seven intersections have strip shopping centers. After the first 6 miles, it gets into some sensitive nat- ural areas, the more rural parts of the project. In a 10- mile span, it goes from an urban area oriented toward Washington, D.C., down to rural open areas. The southern end of the project ends in a small rural town FIGURE 1 MD-210 corridor—vicinity map. 63805_127_164 4/7/05 2:54 AM Page 152

called Accokeek. This part of the project, Piscataway Creek (Figure 3), is also part of the Chesapeake Bay critical area, which is further protected in Maryland beyond the federal protections. One of the first key issues in the project is how we address or meet demand. How do we meet the demand for adequate transportation capacity and new develop- ment? How do we do this in a way that discourages additional development at the south end so that it remains rural? Currently, there are six intersections operating at Level of Service F. The average daily traffic volumes on the main roadway are expected to increase by 40 percent in the next 20 years. Theoretically, with traditional highway design, we could have as many as 10 lanes in some sections of this project if we were only doing highway widening. Figure 4 helps put the project in perspective. The shaded area illustrates Maryland’s designated priority funding areas for the project. Note that there is nothing to the left of the river, because that side lies in Virginia. However, there is no lack of density there. To the right of the river are Maryland’s designated priority funding areas associated with the development around Washington, D.C., and the Capital Beltway. Priority funding areas lie along the Maryland 210 corridor and further north in Prince George’s County. At the south end of the corridor, only 30 percent of the traffic traveling on 210 comes from the local area. Sixty percent are through trips from Charles County. At the north end, about 40 percent of the through trips are from Charles County. Our smart growth principles only call for improve- ments to the corridor in the priority funding areas. We are trying to preserve and protect those unshaded areas from development. However, we are planning for new development. A major development at the north end of the project is the National Harbor, a waterfront entertainment area with hotels, convention centers, shopping, and restaurants. The project will be located on the river overlooking the Woodrow Wilson Bridge and is expected to have 12 million visitors annually—90,000 trips per day in the peak season and much of it off peak. At this point, these visits are assumed to be primarily auto-oriented. New housing developments are under way. Most have direct auto access onto 210. The most recent devel- opments are in the southern section of the corridor. Few properties are still available for development. Currently, all of these properties enjoy direct access onto the high- way, but that access would no longer be available if we were going to complete the conversion to a freeway. Another issue relating to commercial development is maintaining the viability of existing commercial devel- opment. I already gave a few examples of the shopping centers at the intersections. In addition, the one at Old Fort Road South is interesting because there has been quite a bit of redevelopment at the shopping center, but the front building is still vacant. There is a gas station that went out of business and has yet to be replaced. Many of the shopping centers along the corridor are marginal in terms of their economic development now, but they rely heavily on visibility and direct access to the highway in its current configuration. 1 5 3HOW CAN TRANSPORTATION AGENCIES SUPPORT SMART GROWTH? * * * * * * * * * * * FIGURE 2 MD-210 corridor—overview: 10-mile corridor; 6-lane divided highway; 11 signalized intersections; clusters of suburban residential communities; commercial areas at existing intersections. FIGURE 3 MD-210 corridor—Piscataway Creek. FIGURE 4 MD-210 corridor—priority funding areas. Housing is expected to increase by 20 percent in 20 years; 40 to 75 percent of the traffic through the corridor will be from Charles County in 2020. 63805_127_164 4/7/05 2:54 AM Page 153

We cannot look at this whole corridor without addressing the transit and carpool demand and trying to do more to maintain and increase what we have. The Metro stations in Maryland lead into the Maryland 5 corridor. In the long run, this corridor has been identi- fied for future light rail improvements. The website for the National Harbor development posted a question asking whether it is going to have a Metro stop. The response was that Metro follows development, and the National Harbor project has the density and smart growth design that appeals to Metro planners. The north section of 210 is well served by local tran- sit. All of the local transit stops in the corridor are con- centrated in the first 2 miles. There are also many other bus stops along the corridor. The local transit enjoys direct access to the highway, making it more convenient. The local transit routes support access through the residential communities. They serve commuter traffic into D.C. and into the Metro stations. The local buses serve about 500 passengers per day on 7 routes. The express bus service serves about 1,100 passengers per day. The majority come from Charles County. Nine regional park-and-ride lots support the express bus routes and vanpools that run through the corridor. How do we address pedestrian access across the cor- ridor and bicycle access along the corridor? We need to maintain some pedestrian access if we are going to keep the transit running in its current routes. People cross the road to go to the transit stations and to wait at the tran- sit stations and bus stops. They walk along 210 on the shoulder to get to the shopping centers. I think the shopping centers benefit from that feeling of commu- nity; every one of these little intersections is a place where people feel like they can walk across the road, up the road, down the road, to get to a bus stop. We need to consider that in our long-term plans. Bicycle access is promoted along the side roads. Many of the local streets have a sign that says, “Share the Road with Bicycles.” They are currently allowed on the shoulder of 210. Many streams also thread their way through. Henson Creek Park has a hiker/biker trail that runs across 210 and underneath it and connects with many of the neighborhood streets. Preservation of communities is another important value in evaluating the long-term improvements for this project. Certainly, spillover traffic from 210 is an issue. If people can’t get on 210, they will use other roads that go right through the neighborhood. As I pointed out earlier, there are neighborhoods that cross 210. The Oxon Hill neighborhood lies between 210 and the National Harbor. In this neighborhood, 12 million visitors will go through annually to get to the National Harbor. The blue sign says, “Please remem- ber this is a residential area and don’t drive faster than 30 miles an hour.” It is predominantly single-family, but there are a lot of Metro bus stops throughout these roads. For example, in Accokeek, the community is on one side and the library and the shopping center are on the other. On Fort Washington Road, there are two churches on a hill, and a day care center, shopping cen- ter, and neighborhoods are across 210 from there. There are several other examples as you go along the corridor. The Maryland Department of Transportation is con- cerned about each specific section along the project corri- dor and how we are going to make the road fit in with the surrounding community as the character of the project changes from north to south. [Conference attendees gathered in small groups to discuss the Maryland 210 case study. Time limitations prevented the attendees from developing summaries.] 1 5 4 SMART GROWTH AND TRANSPORTATION: ISSUES AND LESSONS LEARNED 63805_127_164 4/7/05 2:54 AM Page 154