Montgomery County's highway robbery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Montgomery County willing to mortgage Upcounty's future to nix M-83 Highway

More than half a decade ago, the Montgomery County Council again nixed plans to build the M-83 Midcounty Highway Extended that has long been in the County's master plan. The highway was one of two major infrastructure projects that were essential to the major growth proposed for the Upcounty area, and Clarksburg in particular. When Clarksburg was allowed to grow more than 800% in population earlier this century, its new residents were promised the M-83 Highway, and a Corridor Cities Transitway light rail system that would connect the proposed new growth centers between Rockville and Clarksburg to the Shady Grove Metro station. In the end, however, all of the growth was allowed to occur, and developers reaped their massive profits - but the promised highway and light rail were never built. That display of naked greed by our developer-controlled County Council wasn't enough - now the Council and Planning Board want to remove the M-83 from the master plan altogether, so it can never be built.

Such a move would be a dereliction of duty by the public officials charged with ensuring adequate infrastructure to maintain a functioning transportation system. Montgomery County doesn't have that even today. Imagine what traffic will be like in another decade with leaders who continue to block completion of our master plan highway system.

As a quick review of the correspondence received by the Planning Board ahead of two public meetings and a November public hearing on changes to the master plan reveals, it isn't residents who are asking for the M-83 to be removed from the plan. In fact, the only letter from an actual Upcounty resident on the question is asking the Planning Board to keep the M-83 in the plan. Those who are asking to have the highway removed are the same handful of tiny groups who have tried to block construction of the highway at every turn. M-83 wasn't even up for discussion, until these groups met privately with Montgomery County Planning Department officials earlier this year.

Our anti-highway, war-on-cars Planning Board is all too eager to indulge this ultra-minority request. Shockingly, so is the "leadership" of the Montgomery County Department of Transportation. The same MCDOT that once determined that Alternative 9a - the master plan alignment of M-83 - should be constructed, until the Council politically interfered with the department, overruling sound traffic engineering practices with radical ideology.

Montgomery County officials continue to rule against the wishes of their own Upcounty constituents. You know, the folks who pay their salaries, and keep the lights on at the County Council and Planning Department. 

You would think the Planning Department and County Council would at least feel a stinging sense of shame at their disastrous record on growth in the Upcounty.

Think again.

Longtime residents will well remember the talking points planners and Councilmembers alike sold us as they rammed through sector plans for new growth centers like "Science City," Watkins Mill, Damascus, and Clarksburg. There would be job centers right in these areas, so many new residents wouldn't have to drive down I-270 to Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia! There would be vibrant town centers in Clarksburg and Watkins Mill! There would be a library in Clarksburg! There would be an M-83 Highway between Montgomery Village Avenue and Ridge Road, which - given that we knew the vast majority of new Upcounty residents would commute by car - would divert much of the new Clarksburg, Germantown, and Damascus traffic from I-270, MD 355, and little old Brink Road onto a modern parkway that also would include a major new bicycle link! And for those who could be convinced to board a convenient rail transit alternative, there would be a Corridor Cities light rail system!

None of it ever happened. Not one bit of it.

And no politician paid the price. Even in the myriad of scandals surrounding Clarksburg alone, the Council and Planning Department let Derick Berlage be the lone fall guy. Now, after collecting twenty years' worth of fat checks from their developer sugar daddies, they want to kick Upcounty residents where it hurts one more time, really hard.

They'll probably get away with it. Again. The Council is pretty open about the fact that there simply aren't enough votes in the Upcounty to pose a risk to the holders of the At-Large Council seats in the next election year. And the individual Upcounty Council districts have been severely gerrymandered, to ensure that the residents of the various growth areas like Clarksburg, Damascus, and Germantown can't unite to knock out any one Councilmember come election time. They have repeatedly thumbed their nose at Upcounty residents, and privately call County taxpayers "suckers" and "losers."

Getting away with murder doesn't make it right, however. The Planning Department, Planning Board, and County Council will continue to augment and solidify their legacy of shame, failure, embarrassment, reckless irresponsibility, and dereliction of duty. They'll continue to let a handful of special interests, and their developer sugar daddies, block economic growth and progress at every turn. 

We've seen the results of the failure to build the M-83 Highway, the new Potomac River crossing of I-370 to the Dulles area in Virginia, the Rockville Freeway, the Northwest Freeway, the North-Central Freeway, and the Northern Parkway in Montgomery County. Residents sitting in traffic. Higher shipping prices. Job creation and business growth numbers at or near the bottom in the D.C. region. And a failure to attract a single new major corporate headquarters in over a quarter century.

Heckuva job, Brownie!!

Sneak peek: Watkins Mill interchange highway signs (Photos)

Well, look what I found up the road in Gaithersburg. The interstate-standard highway signs for the Watkins Mill interchange at I-270. Aside from Watkins Mill Road, the signs direct drivers to Montgomery Village, Seneca Creek State Park, NIST and the MARC station. Not shown, thanks to the Montgomery County Council defiantly refusing to build the master plan M-83 Highway, are directions to Germantown, Clarksburg and Damascus.

MONTGOMERY COUNTY BRT: THERE YOU GO AGAIN

The Washington Post PR campaign on behalf of the Montgomery County Bus Rapid Transit boondoggle continued in Sunday's Metro section.

To his credit, columnist Robert McCartney was critical of many aspects of the proposed 98-mile BRT system. He sums up his current position on the initiative as "abundant skepticism."

Still, there were some inaccurate statements presented, and the repetition of these falsehoods is obviously designed to make an impression on readers. So let's provide the facts once again.

McCartney quoted some of his own laudatory, pro-BRT language from 18 months ago, when he cheered the Emperor's New Bus as an "original, bold, visionary plan to solve gridlock in Montgomery County."

Okay. Even the 160-mile version of BRT that he was referring to was never going to solve gridlock. In fact, it was going to make it worse. Roads like Rockville Pike are already operating over capacity. The county itself is telling us roads will be an additional 70% over capacity in the future. But taking away car lanes for BRT would reduce the capacity of Rockville Pike by 33%, making gridlock 103% worse than it is today. So much for "solving gridlock."

McCartney continued by repeating the familiar falsehood we've heard so often in the last few weeks:

"BRT...has one big argument in its favor: It's the only way in the foreseeable future to add ways for people to get around much of Montgomery."

Survey says...! BRRRRRRNNNNTTTT!!!

Readers of this blog already have a greater foreseeableness than Mr. McCartney, because you know that we can also choose to build the Rockville Freeway, a new Potomac River crossing, M-83 Midcounty Highway Extended, and Northern Parkway. Those long-planned but never-built roads would reduce congestion on Rockville Pike, Georgia Avenue, Connecticut Avenue, Randolph Road, I-270, I-495, and Route 29, just to name a few. And every single one of those projects would cost less than BRT individually. The Rockville Freeway, for example, would carry more commuters per day than the entire BRT system - for far less money!

When you read Ike Leggett say "I don't think commuters are going to have much of an option other than to consider some form of BRT to obtain traffic relief," you now know that is simply not true.

In fact, when I brought up the Rockville Freeway at a town hall meeting, the county executive agreed that it was a needed road, and would provide "connectivity" required by existing and planned development in Montgomery and Howard counties. His concern was that there would be no money to pay for it. Fortunately, the funding options for the highways I mentioned are vastly greater than those for BRT, a bus system that can ultimately be funded only by you, the taxpayer. That's because an inefficient system of riderless buses qualifies for zero federal funds. The federal government has a stringent emphasis on how many people your project is going to move. Bang for the buck, you might say. And these unbuilt freeways each beat BRT's people-moving capability hands-down.

Now that's a "bold plan."