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Master Plans and Transportation Planning

Testimony to the Montgomery County Planning Board

Submitted by ACT Vice President Ben Ross, January 12, 2012

The Action Committee for Transit wishes to respond to the excellent memo [about the purpose of the county's proposed bus rapid transit network] prepared by Larry Cole for the January 12 meeting of the Planning Board.

A key question raised by this memo is about the long term future:

“What design year should we be using? The report that Parsons Brinkerhoff prepared for the County was compiled using 2040 ridership forecasts. If we go beyond this design year, what design year should be used and how should judgments be made as to what network is appropriate? Are future BRT patrons generated by:

This question has a very clear answer. Transportation planning for horizons longer than approximately five years should not be based on master plans. When master plans are used to predict future land use over longer time periods, the predictions are wrong.

Master plans do not predict the future because they are political documents, not academic exercises. The politics that determines master plans in built-up areas is different from the politics that determines master plans in areas not yet developed.

In built-up areas, there is usually political conflict between developers who want more development and neighboring homeowners who want less. The developers know they cannot get everything they want; their priority is to get approval for what there is already market demand for - what is likely to be built within the next 10 to 15 years. Development beyond that time can be approved later, the next time the master plan is revised. In the face of public controversy, politicians - even those who support development - have no incentive to vote for things that developers are not pushing for. The anti-development forces are appeased by eliminating from the plans buildings that will not be built in the immediate future.

Two examples of this phenomenon: (1) Battery Lane was excluded from the Woodmont Triangle Sector Plan. Planning Board staff justified this exclusion by saying the area was not yet ripe for redevelopment. (2) The Shady Grove Master Plan placed no residential development on the Reed Brothers Dodge site because the owner planned to continue using the property for his car dealership. When Dodge went out of business just a few years later, he was out of luck (or would have been if Rockville was not adjacent).

Development on undeveloped land, on the other hand, has fewer opponents. As a result, master plans authorize development that goes far beyond current market demand. A good example is the Science City plan, which (both supporters and opponents agree) authorizes far more building than is likely to happen within even 20 or 30 years.

Because of these differing political dynamics, "projected build-out of current Master Plans" typically corresponds to the next five years of development in built-up areas (ten years when the plan is approved, but the average plan is five years old) and the next 30 or 40 years at the exurban fringe. Consequently, growth projections based on master plans greatly overestimate sprawl development and underestimate infill.

The planning of major transportation investments should not rely on master plans to project future land use. Rather, estimates should be based on demographic trends, taking into account the strong shift in preferences toward city living that has occurred in recent years.