Rethink College Park

Warning: This is quite possibly the longest, most detail-oriented post we’ve ever written. It is intended primarily for the the transportation study consultant team and various policymakers at the city and especially county level. It is not for the faint of heart.

These are RTCP’s official comments on the Draft Route 1 Transportation Study presented on May 30th at CP City Hall. Essentially this study builds on past smart growth studies of the corridor and makes recommendations as to how the City and County can implement transportation policies that will help College Park achieve its vision of a mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented community. It would be a huge mistake to view this report in a vacuum. It’s part of a larger multi-year effort to completely overhaul the Route 1 Corridor in College Park. The best way we can think to talk about this report is to summarize and explain clearly each major suggestion (avoid nitty gritty details and talk in generalities) contained with it and then follow each with our specific comments and/or concerns. At the end we note overarching problems with the study and make recommendations for improvement that we strongly urge should be included in the final version of the report.

1) Implement a Transportation Demand Management (TDM) District

A TDM district is basically a governing and funding mechanism for reducing parking demand and vehicle trips along Route 1. A TDM can pursue anything from shared parking structures to increased investment in transit, coordinated car sharing programs, and improved pedestrian facilities. It generally gets its funding from parking fees, development impact fees, special taxing districts, and/or government contributions. It would be managed as a non-profit, public-private partnership (which the study suggests could be created) between the County, College Park, UM, and local businesses. Perhaps the greatest advantage of a TDM is that it provides an avenue for developers to address traffic concerns through trip reduction plans rather than instituting roadway and intersection changes (as they do presently) that almost always further degrade the pedestrian environment.

We agree that a TDM district could be a viable mechanism for achieving a livable, walkable College Park. It should only be pursued in a clear and transparent manner which provides consistency and predictability for the development community. Overly complicated/vague regulations will only act to dampen the development environment in the city and lead to the defacto situation where developers are more comfortable with roadway “improvements” than legitimately engaging in the TDM program. If a TDM district is not pursued, we would at least like to see parking maximums on new developments be instituted and parking minimums eliminated. Developers should get credits for reducing parking (and thus car trips) especially when it comes to student housing projects. These and other such credits should be available by-right within the TDM framework or as part of the sector plan if a TDM district is not pursued.

2) Overhaul Transit and Shuttle Service

The study’s main transit suggestions are that bus routes should be consolidated, coordinated, and clarified and that “super stops” should be built where several routes converge. Such “super stops” would include the utmost in rider amenities: seating, electronic bus schedules, etc. Such stops can “define major activity centers along the corridor” and the consultants allude to putting these stop in retail centers and development “nodes” proposed in past studies. They call for “branding” of the bus routes (run by different agencies) to improve visibility of transit in general and increase understanding of routes already in place and operated among several different agencies. Finally, they suggest a U-Pass program be instituted where UM students, faculty, and staff pay an upfront fee to ride all local busses for free.

Most of the transit suggestions are fairly obvious and they are more a matter of political will, collaboration (between agencies with no formal existing relationship), and funding than a failure to recognize the problem. WMATA service reliability and route advertisement are atrocious compared to Shuttle-UM and WMATA could take a lot of lessons from UM’s Dept. of Transportation Services. We do take some issue with the U-Pass program because we feel that a poor understanding of WMATA and “the Bus” routes contribute much more heavily to lack of student riders than the nominal fees it takes to ride these services on a daily basis. Instituting a U-Pass program would be analogous to throwing students’ money out the window if it weren’t also coupled with a bus branding strategy. According to UMD VP of Administrative affairs, the University’s student activity fee committee basically concured with our opinion when they handedly rejected the first proposal for such a U-Pass program at the end of last semester.

3) Rethink Parking Policy

This suggestion was basically already covered in the TDM section above. The idea is to allow developers flexibility in how much parking they build. This is particularly important given the odd lot sizes in the corridor and the large amount of space garages often take up (to the detriment of vibrant street activity). Parking induces auto dependence and auto-ownership is highly correlated with trip generation.

4) Improve Bicycle Facilities

We essentially covered this issue the other day. Unfortunately the purview of this study is only Route 1, when in reality biking in CP needs to be looked at (and is being looked at) in a much more comprehensive manner. More connections, more intuitive trails, and more signage are all essential to building a bicycle constituency. It all comes down to more money. Despite the best efforts of many, these ideals are a long way off.

5) & 6) Improve Pedestrian Facilities and Route 1 Reconstruction

The study provides a number of technical suggestions to modify the existing SHA Route 1 Reconstruction Plan to make it more in line with a “Complete Street” strategy. All suggestions should be considered by the SHA project team and most if not all of them should probably be pursued if the City and County are serious about changing Route 1 from a rural thoroughfare to a true urban boulevard.

OVERALL ISSUES THAT NEED TO BE ADDRESSED FOR THE FINAL REPORT

- Student housing and its tendancy to contribute to a net reduction in trips. There is a possible opportunity apply by-right reductions in parking requirements to student housing projects within the condensed fee waiver zone. Similar actions in other college towns like Ithaca, NY (elimination of parking requirements on student housing) have proven enormously effective at reducing congestion and meeting student housing demand.

- The issue of long term vs. short term parking

- How the University can work more collaboratively with the city in TDM-type solutions

- In its 86 pages, the study only legitimately uses the word “university” about 30 times. Much more needs to be done to examine specific case studies dealing with University TDM strategies and how Universities can work with local communities to capitalize on the uniqure smart growth opportunities that college towns present. The gross misstatement of the breakdown of the campus population and the on vs. off campus split only further shows that this study is more a generalized prescription for transportation solutions rather than a College Park-specific set of recommendations.

- The consultants need to closely examine the link between student housing, transit ridership, and Smart Growth.

- The consultants need to examine parking issues at the soon to be approved Mazza Grandmarc (almost a 1:1 parking ratio of tenants to spaces) and transit ridership (thorough detailed ridership counts are taken by Shuttle UM constantly) at University Town Center and make references to both in the study.

ERRORS IN THE REPORT (A couple indicate little to no coordination with the City of College Park during the drafting of the report)

- The study suggests a stoplight at Hollywood Rd when one is already planned for the Mazza Grandmarc project (also the report wrongly calls this project the “Mazza Commons”)
- The city will definitely take issue with the University View analysis on p. 37 because the complex is not complete. See: READ MORE.
- The existence of the $2.5 million connector road study needs to be addressed on p. 73. READ MORE.
- Should mention that the Purple Line (no longer officially called the Bi-County Transitway) could be included in the U-Pass program (University of Utah and U of Washington do this with their light rail) and that the Purple Line would consolidate several bus routes (RE: the map displayed at the meeting which shows several bus route going along Paint Branch Parkway)
- On p.4 the report suggests that mixed-use development should not have parking in front. We gather that no new development is proposing parking in front or at street level for the most part….
- p.28 the University has abandoned studying the shuttle circulator service proposed in their master plan. The appropriate phrasing would be “reconsider”.
- p.57 a double left turn lane has already been installed at Cherry Hill Rd (northbound Route 1).