Archive for May, 2011
White Flint II – What is the Big Idea?
Planners are making good progress on community planning work this spring. We transmitted the Planning Board draft of the Wheaton Sector Plan and an amendment to the Clarksburg plan focused on retail staging. Coming soon are Takoma Langley and Kensington, and, later this year, Burtonsville. And if our budget request is funded, Chevy Chase Lake will follow, then the start of several new plans over the next year including Glenmont, Gaithersburg East/the Montgomery Village Sector Plan and White Flint II.
I have been questioning staff as we embark on new planning efforts, asking, What is our Big Idea? What will this planning effort achieve? And, because we cannot ask these questions in a vacuum, What would we want to achieve without constraints versus with constraints?
My last post, “Federal Highways,” outlined the Montrose Parkway underpass (or overpass, depending upon which way you are traveling). The graphic below superimposes one of the sketch plans we received for a several-block area in the heart of White Flint over the area occupied by the Montrose underpass. It is apparent how much land the underpass “sterilized” for future growth, housing, revenue and more importantly, the real impact it has on the possibilities for the White Flint II area.
This graphic highlights how much land the Montrose Underpass occupies relative to the recently approved Federal Reality application for their Mid-Pike Plaza property immediately south of the road. It is visually obvious how much land is consumed vs. what this area could have achieved.
The White Flint II Sector Plan has as a major constraint that will dictate what can be achieved. That constraint is the barrier the underpass has created. It is, in effect, White Flint’s Berlin Wall.
I visited the Berlin wall in November 1989 immediately as the one small section opened. Even with Christmas approaching at that time of year, on the other side of the wall it was very dark and void of activity. Not a whole lot different that the image of 355 (below) as it takes up over a ¼ mile of landscape that nobody will want to walk. Will we think twice about the Montrose Underpass after 30 years? photo by Dennis Moretto.
Ten or 15 years from now, as White Flint hits its stride, there will be plenty of destinations drawing people into the area. Some will take transit, but most will drive. They will seek out parking and walk along new pedestrian-friendly streets lined with windows and activity. Many will work and live in this emerging community.
Will those same people look north to the White Flint II area and say, “Hey, let’s go shop or eat over there?” And if they are making this decision, will they walk? No way. It will be a barrier just like the photo above. As the new streets and activities emerge in White Flint, they will not extend the grid across the underpass.
Would you really drive one-quarter or one-half mile north and find a new parking spot in White Flint II to shop or eat? It’s unlikely you’d find something there that will not already be in White Flint. And this is the challenge of White Flint II. What can it become? What can happen there that will make it distinct from White Flint?
This question would be different if the Montrose / 355 intersection had remained at grade. The street grid could have extended north to south. The building infrastructure could have created a seamless transition across the intersection, not much different than say Georgia and Colesville Road in Silver Spring. People could and would walk across the area into White Flint II because the transition would be lined with active uses day and evening.
The Montrose Underpass simply reinforces the view that Rockville Pike is a runway to get through White Flint vs. moving through the area as a destination itself. Keep in mind that for a driver in a car to make eye contact with a pedestrian, they have to be travelling at about 23 mph (30 kph). So as long as we keep building our roads as expressways, we prevent the opportunity for “engaged” streets where a number of activities coexist safely.
So as we prepare to look at the White Flint II area, we have to take a hard look at what is possible. We have White Flint becoming known as NoBe (North of Bethesda), we have Rockville to the north, with White Flint II mostly in the middle. Will it be SORo (South of Rockville) or can it establish it’s own identity? Can we expect the same demand for high-rise construction in White Flint II as in WF I? Will traffic modeling reveal that White Flint I occupies the bulk of the available and projected road capacity?
Or should we expect more like Twinbrook Station, a recent successful project north and east of White Flint at lower densities with a residential focus? Should this be the future of White Flint II, with splashes of retailing that are more convenience-focused than destination oriented? Will there still be a market for destination retail like the Container Store north of Montrose?
White Flint I and White Flint II sector plan areas
Several property owners own land both north and south of Montrose. How they lease south of the road in White Flint I – whether to big box retailers or smaller retail – will have a big impact on what happens to the north in White Flint II. That model does not fit into the urban character of White Flint. Property owners will lease according to the market, and will avoid investments that compete with other uses in the area. This will not only impact the retail market but the residential market as well.
If White Flint I is to be higher density condo and rental, there may not be enough market share for both areas in the next 15 years. Perhaps White Flint II will be about managing expectations, meaning it may take awhile for the collective vision to emerge. This is the approach that we are investigating for the Long Branch neighborhood, where the near and long term goals are differentiated by the actions we can take to create incremental change.
Maybe 20 years from now the Montrose underpass may be MoCo’s elevated expressway. The mistake realized decades later in places like Seattle, Toronto and San Francisco, where lots of money was invested to reverse the damage and open up new opportunities for creating better environments for people, not autos.
Several years ago, a portion of the one elevated expressway that reached downtown Toronto was torn down, about 1.5 miles of it. Support is now building to take down the rest. This is one of the locations around the world where the benefits of tearing down 1950/’60s era transportation infrastructure has and will open up new economic opportunities that also meld well with the greening of urban areas.
There are lots of things to consider when we start the White Flint II Sector Plan.We hope for engaged conversations with property owners, residents and business operators — all of whom will help guide the possibilities that White Flint II can be.
Federal Highways
Last week, I was invited to Boston by the Federal Highway Administration to talk about livability. Five years ago, would anyone have thought that would be possible?
Think about all the highways we have nationally, where the gas tax goes, and the fact that less than 1 percent of the $30 billion plus spent on highway funding is spent on pedestrians.
It seems like a huge ship we have to turn around.
However, the federal leadership through the EPA, HUD and the DOT, and their joint Sustainable Communities Initiative, has created an energy that will bring a new direction into federal highway spending.
Can we translate that into a shift in local thinking as well?
A 1940s video was forward-thinking about how rapid transit can replace the motor car as well as save taxpayer dollars
When I arrived in Montgomery County in 2008, the White Flint property owners and members of my staff tried to divert $50 million in funding for the Montrose Parkway underpass, the first phase to reconstruct Rockville Pike, to study a future transit line along that street. Our efforts were unsuccessful. While I am sure many love to drive through the underpass, think of the missed opportunity.
I have driven the underpass on several occasions, just to assess the connectivity. Frankly, it is not that great. Connectivity is expedited in one direction – east-west – but getting off the road to head north or south is a pain. A regular at-grade intersection with turn lanes, appropriate signaling, pedestrian infrastructure and plantings would have been wonderful and much more effective for the broader public.
You can forget the pedestrian environment on the overpass. I watched a bike commuter ride across and was struck by how brave he was. With new condos just south of Montrose and major mixed-use development plans on the way in White Flint, the whole Montrose project works against what the new master plan is trying to create. People do not walk over overpasses, they walk where there is something at the edge of the sidewalk that enlivens the space. Current and future residents will have to drive to the shopping north of Montrose if as White Flint develops, they go north of Montrose at all.
The Sam Eig – I-270 interchange consumes as much land as the Woodmont Triangle area in Bethesda. Which environment creates the pedestrian amenities or the tax revenue that benefit the residents of the County? When we think of having so little land, can we consider building our transportation infrastructure in a more efficient manner that better utilizes our finite resource – land?
This graphic illustrates the point about the Montrose underpass. It sterilized huge tracts of land that could have been used to create a vibrant urban intersection with buildings framing the street, people on the sidewalks interacting along the street edge, traffic moving at effective speeds and with room for future surface public transportation.
Not do-able some say? I pass along the best example of a street designed effectively for high traffic high pedestrian activity: the Champs Elysées. Think about it. This street has some of the most expensive shopping in the world. Cars stop along the curb to drop or pick up Europe’s elite to patronize those shops. There is a sidewalk that can best be described as too big, tourist numbers beyond comprehension, views that astound, trees galore, yet the road itself carries more cars per hour than many interstate highways. You can cross the Champs on foot at numerous signalized intersections, yet the traffic still moves, except of course on the last day of the Tour de France.
- The Champs Elysées in Paris. A wonderful pedestrian experience with some of the most expensive shops in the world. While I prefer it the way it was 20 years ago with the parking lanes at the side, it still exhibits everything a busy, very wide street can be vs. the American way of thinking about moving cars and not people.
I am not saying the Montrose underpass should have been the Champs Elysées, but it could have been an at-grade intersection that offered a terrific urban pedestrian experience. That would have also opened up land for development that has been consumed by roadways and created the urban experience White Flint needs while generating a heck of a lot more property tax for the county.
And with the hope of future bus transit in the roadway there will be an opportunity for shifting travel patterns.
A terrific video showing the impact of public transit on removing cars from the street. Consider that this was a 1940s video where the thinking was so relevant to today. Where did it all go wrong? While European and Canadian cities followed the pattern pattern of the video, many American cities went in the opposite direction.
In Montgomery County, we are fortunate that both County and the State leaders are looking in a different direction.
Consider all the initiatives underway.
§ The growth policy the planning department advocated and the council adopted that calls for a part of impact fees to be dedicated to transit
§ Zoning that assigns increased density for places close to basic services like groceries and dry cleaners
§ Master plans like White Flint, the Purple Line plans for Takoma Langley Crossroads, Long Branch and Chevy Chase Lake and the soon to be released Wheaton and Kensington Sector Plans
§ the state has their “ag print” and “green print” initiatives that are leading into the emerging Plan Maryland program which we hope will result in a rethink of the priority funding areas (areas of growth for each county)
§ the state MDOT leadership in funding infrastructure through smart growth is a national model
In participating at the FHWA session, it became obvious that here in Maryland we are leading the nation in not only thinking about change, but in preparing for the future as well. It is a great time to be planning here in MoCo. The Planning Department, the County Council and the state Departments of Planning and Transportation — are in sync at many levels. Together we can shift the thinking from one of “moving cars, to moving people”.
MoCo can turn things around with an efficient rapid transit system that is multi modal, multi dimensional, and reaches places in the county where transit currently does not exist. The work the Council, planning department and other county agencies is leading to alternatives such as the Purple Line and bus rapid transit as well as amending our traffic assessment methods which will lead to a better transportation system where people live closer to work and have more options for connecting to the places they need to be and the things they need to do.
