Last week, planning staff at the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission recommended bus rapid transit for the Corridor Cities Transitway. Such a system would be designed to move transit vehicles past traffic congestion on dedicated lanes between Shady Grove and Clarksburg.
Following recommendations rolled out in the draft Gaithersburg West Master Plan, planners have endorsed a route for the CCT that follows a long-established alignment from the Metro station through Gaithersburg, Middlebrook and Germantown on its way to Clarksburg. However, planners recommend a change to the previously planned route through the Life Sciences Center near Gaithersburg. The recommended alternative will cost around $450 million, and the transitway will carry up to 27,000 people daily by 2030.
The staff recommendations now go to the Planning Board. You can have your say by testifying at the public hearing or submitting written testimony to the Planning Board.
My committee, the Transportation, Infrastructure, Energy and Environment Committee, will take up the Planning Board’s recommendation on July 13. Once the full Council has looked at the my committee’s recommendations we will forward our formal position to the state.
These are important decisions that will affect the entire county and the Upcounty in particular, so please let me know what you think.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Planning Staff's Recommendations on the CCT
Posted by
Councilmember Nancy Floreen
Labels:
CCT,
planning board,
transit,
transportation
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3 comments:
Nancy -- For what it is worth, I favor light rail for CCT. This area of our county is growing and I beleive that bus rapid transit will underserve the area. John Daniel
If the following is reasonably accurate for building roads the CCT should remain LRT as originally planned and endorsed by most politicians and residents.
I-95 just North of Baltimore is putting in approx 5 miles of HOT lanes and rebuilding (not new and no land acquired) this project when started was estimated at approx $790million. Current price is over 1.2Billion and rising and the project is maybe 2/3 completed. That is over $200 million dollars a mile for a rehab/rebuild of an existing roadway.
Here is another: the rebuild/reconfiguration of the I-695/I-97 interchange cost more than the first 27 mile segment of the Baltimore Central Light Rail project.....
But motor heads think that kind of spending is OK and they just keep on spending for more pavement.
LRT is a long term investment in valuable transit and becomes a county asset. BRT is just more pavement. The vast preponderance of new starts in the US is LRT and not BRT. Planning for BRT on the CCT is a huge mistake and giving MC short shrift in transit. And the CCT as LRT should plan to reach
Frederick and not stop at Clarksburg. MC is not a third world country. Is BRT the best the planners can do? If so, they should all be summarily dismissed. MC has more than enough buses now, and they do a lousy job of
getting motorists out of their cars. Only the desperate ride buses.
How did you get to work today?
George Barsky
Germantown
It is important to remember how all of the planned roads, highways and transit work together in the overall plan. To see how it works, see Park and Planning's transportation division at http://www.montgomeryplanning.org/transportation/.
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