Maryland fights for Blue Line Loop at regional meeting

More detailed study ahead for toll lanes and WMATA Metrorail on Wilson Bridge

It was a tough day yesterday for me, so thanks for your patience and tolerance to my posting an abbreviated update on last week’s story on Tuesday.

Holy cow! Over 900 D.C.-area residents contacted our metropolitan planning organization last week (MPO; ours is called the Transportation Planning Board, or TPB) regarding the body’s Wilson Bridge toll lane decision. That is a huge turnout — 885 emails, of which 593 opposed the use of bridge space for private vehicles instead of transit over the bridge.

During last week’s TPB meeting, representatives from Prince George’s County successfully pushed a significant amendment to the resolution that would have added the Wilson Bridge project to a regional master planning document. That amendment was joined by two others from Maryland representatives. Those additional changes specified that VDOT must work with WMATA and MDOT this year on the numerous design/feasibility and financial concerns of the first’s gambit that would add toll lanes in space reserved for transit. These changes also specified in writing that a majority of the region’s transportation representatives agree that heavy rail transit (i.e. Metrorail) should run on the bridge in the future. Before these changes, the proposed resolution was much less specific about the eventuality of Metrorail transit or even additional near-term bus services, beyond VDOT’s theoretical promises.

One of TPB’s Congressional mandates is to study regional air quality – a charge that originated during the 50-years-ago era of the Clean Air Act and has become more about greenhouse gas tracking and planning coordination. Their umbrella group, the Metro Washington Coalition of Governments also does intersectional master planning and regional coordination of land use, emergency response, and more.

Transportation projects like the Wilson Bridge toll lanes have a significant effect on our regional climate change goals. Those road projects, which for most of America’s history have widened roads and made it easier to drive, are a zero-sum spending decision of limited capital budget dollars: elected and appointed officials deciding to spend money on car things before and above transit and bike/walk things. In the case of the Wilson Bridge and most surface transportation projects, there’s also zero-sum of public space right-of-way – space between curbs and space on bridge deck areas. As several of the TPB representatives mentioned during their meeting, they often agree to do road stuff and transit stuff, but the road stuff often gets design and construction money more quickly, more directly, and in more significant financial sums.

Our TPB will now study two regional air quality outcomes: one that includes the toll lanes on the Wilson Bridge and one that does not. The amended resolution from their vote last week will bind the transportation agencies to flesh out engineering constraints and potential operational partnerships. This sets up a future TPB vote that would include the Wilson Bridge toll lane project or not, with more info from the air quality study and on the tradeoffs with transit. Stay tuned for those details.

I’ll close with two things:

1. Regular DMV residents made a huge impact on this vote, and the sequence of events proves that anyone who reads this, anyone who lives in our region—for even a few years—can and should raise their voices. I’ll keep working hard to identify and make it easy to participate in these civic processes.

2. Transportation officials and elected representatives in Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties walked the talk on this vote. Southern Prince George’s is often overlooked because it’s less populated and more rural, but it has enormous potential for transit-oriented smart growth with affordable housing; its leaders are fighting for that vision. Montgomery County’s TPB representative Marc Korman is more well known as a smart-growth, transit-oriented champion, but his amendment specifying the regional intent of Metrorail on Wilson Bridge was a nice touch.

Notable and Timely Public Meetings

• Video recording of my testimony to D.C. Council supporting nomination of Sharon Kershbaum during the 6/20/24 T&E Committee hearing.

DISCLAIMER: All opinions and analyses in this newsletter are those of solely Gordon Chaffin and do not represent his employer or community groups with which he’s affiliated.