Northwood News ♦ June 2016

Better Transit Now for Route 29 or a BRT Much Later for a Lot More Money and Less Service?

By Jim Zepp

Despite commitments to citizen participation by the County government, on March 2nd the County Executive announced a unilateral decision to implement a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) on Route 29 within four years. This was without having done any of the planning such as alternatives analysis, design, or engineering studies as well as the citizen participation activities normally conducted with large public works. An example of the care with which this proposal was prepared: the map initially released for the planned Route 29 BRT route did not accurately show the actual roads to be followed.

Most incredibly, eight weeks following the two-paragraph announcement that lacked critical details of what this project concept might involve, the County Department of Transportation applied for a $33.6 million Federal construction grant that would commit the County to a $77 million overall project cost. Given the rush to judgment without having done any of the planning work that is considered the professional norm for such projects, the only conclusion is that the County government is determined to exceed the delays and cost overruns of the Silver Spring Transit Center with an even bigger embarrassment, the BRT.

The current proposed 14-mile, 12-stop BRT configuration for Route 29 includes multiple forms of travel for the 100-passenger BRT vehicles along different portions of the roadway. Of course, these may be subject to change since these are only based on conceptual assumptions about the roadways and traffic flows.

For the Burtonsville to Cherry Hill Road segment, which is half of the route, the BRT vehicles would travel on the highway and use the shoulder to bypass congestion points, much as express buses currently do.
For the Cherry Hill Road to Stewart Lane segment, the BRT vehicles would travel in mixed traffic.
For the Stewart Lane to University Boulevard segment, an HOV lane would be created for other traffic.
For the Stewart Lane to Hillwood Drive segment, the BRT vehicles would detour into the White Oak Shopping Center and follow Lockwood Drive to rejoin Route 29. Nothing has been stated about the mode of travel in this segment. This has the second highest current bus ridership, but will only have three stops versus the 16 existing stops for the combined Stewart Lane to University Boulevard segment.
For the University Boulevard to the Silver Spring Transit Center segment, the BRT vehicles would travel in mixed traffic. This segment currently has the highest bus ridership, but may only have two or three BRT stops and only one will be outside of Downtown Silver Spring, versus 13 existing bus stops.

The Proposed BRT Road Configuration for U.S. Route 29

Unfortunately, the County Council has become an enabler of this folly in that it has not objected to the disregard of its own mandate for meaningful citizen involvement in the planning of the BRT corridors. Furthermore, the Council is likely to approve a $6.5 million supplement to continue the non-planning activities that have been pursued so far.

Rather than doing actual planning work, the County government has decided that taxpayer money is better spent marketing the project to citizens. Consequently, studies were ordered to justify the decisions already made, mailers supporting the project have been sent with property tax bills, elaborate displays advocating the project were setup at the County Fair, and robo-calls to residents have been done to persuade them that the BRT is the solution to our traffic problems.

A More Affordable and Immediate Alternative Exists

While there are several alternatives for improving transit services and addressing traffic along Route 29, the focus has been on building the BRT regardless of other options. However, a more immediate and affordable and less disruptive alternative is the addition of a MetroExtra limited-stop express service on Route 29 similar to the K9 Route on New Hampshire Ave. The MetroExtra buses stop about every ¼ mile vs. every block or two for local buses and the one mile or more that a BRT does. This is sufficient for the MetroExtra buses to travel faster in mixed traffic. The K9 has proven successful in increasing ridership with minimal additional costs and none directly to the County.

WMATA conducted its own two year study in 2014-2015 of the Route 29 Corridor and concluded that the MetroExtra service was most immediately appropriate for the White Oak to the Silver Spring Transit Center segment, but lacked the $700,000 funding to implement this service.

While other options for improving transit services and reducing traffic congestion are available and have been previously suggested, I won’t go into those alternatives in this article, but anyone interested can refer to articles in earlier issues of thia newsletter.

Separate But Unequal Treatment

Evidence that the MetroExtra bus service is an acceptable alternative to BRT is that the County Executive announced that Rockville Pike and Viers Mill Road will get new MetroExtra service in the same pronouncement that Route 29 would be rushed into a BRT route instead. However, the MetroExtra service can be implemented in nine months, while the BRT will still take four years at least even with bypassing important planning steps.

Once again, the east side of the County receives treatment that the rest of the County is not subjected to. The State Highway Administration in its recent study of possible improvements on Georgia Avenue at the Beltway Interchange ruled out BRT as being too disruptive for other traffic and having too many negative impacts on the adjacent businesses and communities. But apparently Four Corners and the Route 29 corridor do not rate similar considerations before launching a major project that has not been sufficiently studied in these regards.

Insufficient Demand to Support BRT Service

Most disturbing is that the County officials are disregarding findings by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) that the County’s roads do not have sufficient ridership to justify the high capacity, high frequency service (100 passenger buses, every 5 to 10 minutes all day and evenings) offered by a BRT system. The estimated ridership on Route 29 is only two-thirds that of the lowest performing BRT route in the world. Consequently, the likely outcome of spending millions of taxpayer money is an underutilized transit service and an adverse public reaction to other transit improvements.

The County’s own justification for the $33.6 million in Federal grant funds also reflect an insufficient ridership demand. The Federal Transit Administration (FTA)’s minimum demand standard is 800 passengers per peak hour. The County’s grant application shows an estimated peak ridership as shown in the table below.

Estimated Transit Ridership

(all bus services and routes)
Route 29 Segment	AM Peak Hour Southbound	PM Peak Hour Northbound	ALL Day (both directions)
New Hampshire to University Boulevard	560	590	1,800
University Boulevard to Georgia Ave.	830	850	4,400
Entire Corridor	2,800	2,900	12,000

However, this assumes that all riders who use any bus touching on Route 29 will automatically move to riding the BRT. To this end, the County is recommending the termination of all WMATA and Ride On bus service on Route 29, except for the Z6, which serves Olney on weekdays. It is unlikely that 100% of riders will be willing to switch to the BRT since it is an industry norm that the maximum distance riders will travel to catch a bus is ¼ mile and the BRT stops will be a mile or more apart, not counting the additional distance from riders’ homes or other origin/destination points.

Percentage Change in Public Transit Ridership (2008 Baseline)

Furthermore, transit ridership has been generally declining, both for rail and rail services in the D.C. Region since 2008. Although some of this trend may be due to MetroRail’s ongoing service problems, the situation is true for most transit services nationally. The chart above shows data for New York City separate from the rest of the country because it is considered an anomaly that distorts national statistics.

Support Transit — End Free Parking

A recent study conducted at George Mason University analyzed the impact of different commuter benefits on travel mode choices. The conclusion was that all of the other incentives for transit or other non-auto use combined cannot compete with the offer of free parking. The convenience of driving simply is more attractive for most commuters.

However, this presents another unexplored opportunity for the County Government to pursue its avowed commitment to encourage transit usage. As the largest employer in the County, the cessation of free parking by local government agencies would be an immediate action that they can take and would be a new revenue opportunity for a cash-strapped government by charging for parking at its facilities:

Governmental Unit	Employees
County Government	11,112
MC Public Schools	25,703
Community College	3,656

Citizens Decide Bus Color, Maybe

In his first inaugural address as County Executive, Mr. Leggett made the following promise:

I will make every effort to establish a highly inclusionary, transparent form of government. Those affected by our decisions must be involved from the very beginning, not when assumptions about projects have hardened into stone, and the train has all but left the proverbial station. — County Executive Isiah Leggett, 4 Dec. 2006

When the County Council adopted Countywide Transit Corridors Functional Master Plan in December 2013, it noted the following regarding status of the planned BRT routes and the importance of participation by the affected communities and businesses:

More detailed analysis is required to determine the final treatment and typical section, the slope impacts required to build that typical section, and the number of travel lanes and turn lanes required to provide an adequate level of traffic service. The final rights-of-way required for the recommended transit corridors must be determined during facility planning and design for individual corridors, at which time the cost of cconstruction must also be determined. A vital facet of facility planning is to receive input and feedback from affected property owners, civic and business groups, and transit riders and road users, including public forums and workshops, electronic newsletters, and other forms of outreach. No County funding for transit corridor implementation nor additional rights-of-way, as proposed in this Plan or in subsequent studies, will be considered until the Council is satisfied that this fundamental public engagement requirement has been fulfilled and a Council public hearing solely for each corridor or combination of connected corridors is held. Accordingly, a citizens advisory group comprised of residents, business owners, and other relevant stakeholders must be created for each corridor which enters into facility planning to make recommendations to the County on the design, construction and proposed station locations for the transit corridor. (Emphasis added.) — Page 16, Countywide Transit Corridors Functional Master Plan

Now, despite previous statements to the contrary, County officials are claiming that the Corridor Advisory Committees (CACs) are only to advise on the location of the BRT stops. However, since these have already been identified and the BRT’s travel speed is affected by having as few and far between stops as possible, the CACs influence in these decisions will be minimal.

CAC influence over bus color choices may be limited as well since this will be a Countywide branding exercise that will probably be decided by consultants and public officials.

Summary Comparison

To conclude, favoring the BRT over an alternative such as the WMATA MetroExtra service will probably mean impacts on residents and users of Route 29 as shown in the table below. ■

	BRT	WMATA MetroExtra Express Bus
Capital Costs	$82,549,102	$700,000
Operating & Maintenance Costs for Mont. County	$114,412,812	$0
Implementation Time	4 years	9 months
Transit Access	Stops 1 mile or more apart	Stops 1 to 2 blocks apart
Transit Impacts	Elimination of other local WMATA and Ride On bus service	Existing local WMATA and Ride On bus service retained
Service Frequency	Every 5 minutes during rush hour, every 10 minutes other hours	Varies based on individual route schedules and rider destinations
Community Impacts	Elimination of left turns at unsignalized intersections	Existing roadway configurations unchanged
Congestion Impacts	Increased congestion due to lack of parallel streets to absorb displaced traffic from removal of lanes for BRT	Decreased congestion due to increased transit capacity while maintaining existing traffic capacity