Making the Land Use/Transportation Connection in Multi-Modal, Multi-Jurisdictional Transportation Planning: The U.S. 301 Transportation Study in Maryland	.
Douglas R. Porter	Author Info

Abstract

Planners across the nation celebrated the adoption of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) in 1991. They were particularly enthusiastic about the act's encouragement to conduct transportation planning in ways that enhance use of multi-modal options, integrate transportation services with land use patterns, and involve a wide array of stakeholders. The ISTEA provisions are viewed by many planners as an opportunity for for promoting fundamental changes in metropolitan development patterns -- in particular, toward more compact urban development designed to reduce dependency on automobile travel. All of these concerns are reflected in the recently completed planning efforts for the U.S. 301 highway corridor in Maryland, which traverses a five-county sector east and south of Washington, D.C.

Pressures for Change

The spread of American cities into the countryside, fostered by immense investments in highways and cars in the decades following World War II, is a story so familiar that it need not be retold here. Critics have blamed the consequent sprawling, low-density development on the fringes of metropolitan areas for spoiling air and water quality, overunning vast tracts of environmentally sensitive lands and prime farmlands, siphoning growth from central cities, and engendering an isolationist society. Many students of urban growth have decried the continued creation of low-density development patterns dependent on costly expansions of transportation networks, especially highways.

Seeking alternatives to that pattern of car-dependent urban development, critics eagerly have turned to other forms of transportation and land use. At one level, they endorse better use of existing highways: car pools, HOV lanes, congestion pricing, "smart" roads. At a more radical level, they embrace bus and rail transit, walking and biking, and other non-car travel options and, to support those travel modes, urge a basic shift in land use patterns to higher-density, more compact urban development. Not only would this scenario reduce future needs for highway construction, claim proponents, but it would sharply lower consumption of land for urban uses, preserve farmland and natural resources, foster more liveable and socially interactive neighborhoods, and, through reductions in car travel, promote attainment of EPA's air quality standards for metropolitan areas.

These concerns underlie many of the provisions of the ISTEA. One of the key provisions in the act directs transportation planners to consider "the likely effect of transportation policy decisions on land use and development and the consistency of transportation plans and programs with the provisions of all applicable short- and long-term land use and development plans"(Section 134(f)(4)). Another provision calls for more intensive involvement of the variety of stakeholders in the outcomes of transportation planning -- more than the traditional sterile public hearings generally employed by transportation planners to attract "citizen input."

A Frail Linkage

The strong interrelationships between transportation and land use are well recognized. Transportation planners, however, traditionally have treated land use as a necessary but essentially esoteric ingredient in their planning for future metropolitan transportation systems. At the heart of transportation planning lies computerized forecasting models employed by most transportation planning agencies to forecast future travel needs. Land use data such as population, households, and employment for small areas, often called traffic analysis zones, is a fundamental input to the models. The models also require long-range projections of land use to determine future transportation needs.

Regional agencies are quite adept at projecting long-range demographic and economic trends. It is the need for small-area projections that creates problems. Typically, estimates of future land use are derived from local land use plans or land use models. However, local plans more often than not represent wish lists of local officials and frequently overcompensate for market expectations to avoid constraining development opportunities. Plans age quickly and are updated infrequently. In some jurisdictions, adopted plans have little effect on day-to-day policy and project decisions of local officials.

Clearly, local land use plans represent a frail foundation for transportation planning and forecasting. Land use forecasting models, which do for land use what transportation models do for transportation, have often proven complicated and unreliable. Most planning agencies instead depend on staff judgements or Delphi-like, consensus-building procedures among regional and local planners. Generally, scant attention is paid to the market or political realities of achieving scenarios, a tendency reinforced by the incapacity of most regional agencies to effect such changes. Integrating land use with transportation planning, therefore, calls for extraordinary efforts in defining, promoting, and realizing effective linkages.

All of these concerns and issues were addressed in the transportation planning process established for the U.S. 301 Transportation Study in Maryland.

The U.S. 301 Transportation Study

The five Maryland counties spreading from Washington, D.C. east to the Chesapeake Bay and south to the Potomac River comprise a extensive 1,940 square-mile subregion of the newly combined Washington/Baltimore metropolitan area. U.S. 301 runs northeasterly through this area, linking to I-95 south of the Potomac river in Virginia and, in Maryland, connecting with then following U.S. 50 across the bay bridge before heading north to New Jersey. Before I-95 was completed in the 1960s, U.S. 301 functioned in a minor way as a by-pass of Washington for long-distance traffic. Now the 50-mile stretch in the five-county area attracts commuters bound from the fast-growing outer counties to jobs inside or along the Washington Beltway. The highway also increasingly provides access to shopping and services for local residents. Many sections of the route and several connecting highways are quite congested at peak hours; preliminary projections indicate that most intersections on U.S. 301 and connecting major highways will be functioning at gridlock levels.

The five counties are very different in character, as the statistics in Table 1 indicate. Development in Prince George's County, straddling the Beltway, is booming as housing and jobs spread out from central Washington to, and in some instances beyond, the U.S. 301 alignment. The highway continues south through Charles County, largely rural until a decade or two ago but now developing rapidly, especially in its northern sector. East of Charles County, much of St. Mary's County remains agricultural. Although many of its residents commute northwards, using U.S. 301, many residents work at the Pautuxent Naval Air

Station in the county. Calvert County, still a heavily forested area bordering the Chesapeake Bay, expects to remain an exurban enclave for commuters to both Washington and the Baltimore area. The fifth county, Anne Arundel, is home for many commuters to Washington and Baltimore and with Annapolis, the state capital, and extensive Bayfront development, the northern half of the county is quite urban.

Maryland has given its counties broad authority to provide a full range of municipal services, including planning and zoning, and Maryland courts have given local jurisdictions considerable leeway to regulate land development. All five counties, for example, have adopted and regularly update comprehensive plans and zoning ordinances, most levy impact fees, and all have instituted requirements for adequate facilities as a condition of development.

As Table 1 indicates, the area is slated to undergo substantial development over the next 20 years. At first blush, county plans and zoning policies appear to be directing this growth to designated development areas and preserving large swatches of rural land -- standard planning remedies to address the effects of rapid development. All counties zone for low densities in rural areas and all except Calvert County delineate urban development areas on their plans. Anne Arundel County has zoned its southern agricultural area for a 20-acre minimum lot size to preserve farmlands.

On closer inspection, however, these general policies are belied by on-the-ground development. Even in close-in areas, development is seldom denser than two or three units per acre and many new residents are settling on one- to five-acre lots both within and outside designated development areas. In fact, continued development at current densities could consume much of the developable land in rural areas over the next quarter-century. This development scenario would foster continued dependence on travel by automobile and breed traffic congestion on even rural roads.

Study Background and Objectives.

The U.S. 301 Transportation Study was initiated after the Maryland Department of Transportation had abandoned a previous proposal for an eastern bypass of Washington along the U.S. 301 route. The eastern bypass (and its alternative, a western bypass) was supposed to ease congestion on the Capital Beltway. Public hearings on the bypass in 1989 revealed strong opposition to highway construction that might fuel development and lead to widespread damage to environmental resources, especially the Chesapeake Bay, and the quality of life in this relatively rural sector of Maryland. Opposition came especially from agencies and organizations charged with protection of water quality in the Chesapeake Bay.

Recognizing that transportation pressures were increasing along the U.S. 301 corridor, MDOT initiated discussions in 1990 with a variety of interests throughout the region, including the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Chesapeake Bay Commission, to identify a satisfactory approach to addressing future transportation issues. Also during this period, the federal Clean Air Act amendments and ISTEA were enacted, and the Maryland legislature enacted a new state growth management program, all of which encouraged better integration of transportation planning with growth management and environmental perspectives.

With the support of key interest groups, MDOT decided in 1992 to initiate a collaborative planning process to study transportation and related issues for the U.S. 301 south corridor. An independent facilitation group was employed to help assemble and work with a broadly representative task force. In organizing the task force, the facilitators interviewed more than 150 civic and community leaders, environmentalists, business leaders, and government officials to identify major issues and concerns. A group of 76 persons was appointed by Governor Donald Shaeffer, with the president of the Charles County Community College as chair and, as vice-chairs, the executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Commission and a prominent attorney and civic leader in Prince George's County.

The task force's mission was to recommend transportation improvements and programs and related growth management approaches required for the corridor, including needs for intergovernmental coordination. The recommendations were to be technically feasible, politically and financially workable, and reflective of concerns of people that live and work in the corridor. MDOT promised that it would use the task force recommendations in making final decisions on the corridor program.

The Study Process.

MDOT staff, including the department's chief of transportation planning, managed the project. The consulting group, headed by a large engineering firm, was augmented by experts in transportation planning, computer modeling, land use, and growth management, in addition to the facilitation group.

The central role of the task force in determining project recommendations challenged the project managers and consultants to explain and discuss technical procedures, analyses, and conclusions in laymen's language. Because most task force members were only generally knowledgeable about transportation and related fields, analyses and presentations were precisely honed to communicate key points yet convey the significant complexities of such topics as the transportation modeling process, the concept of transit-supportive land use, and the requirements of the Clean Air Act. A great deal of committee and staff time was spent in clarifying central themes, supplying persuasive evidence for positions, and crafting reader-friendly maps and graphics.

To ensure the commitment of task force members to its outcomes, the process was painstakingly deliberate. The project focused on defining multimodal transportation improvements and programs that will improve travel performance in the study area. MDOT, in initiating the project, however, made explicit its expectations that improved mobility would also depend on creating development patterns supportive of the proposed improvements. Implicitly, MDOT indicated that commitments to major investments for improving mobility would go hand-in-hand with local governments' commitments for developing supportive land use patterns. Thus transportation/land use relationships became a key element of the U.S. 301 planning and implementation process.

Accordingly, the task force spent a great deal of time and effort in examining current and projected land use patterns and in coming to understand the types of patterns most supportive of various transportation modes. The task force became familiar with current tendencies for low-density sprawl in much of the study area. It analyzed the jobs/housing balance in each of the counties and considered ways to shift that balance to reduce long-distance commuting. It evaluated densities and designs of projects and activity centers that would encourage travel by other than single-occupant cars.

Evaluation of Alternatives.

• A "current plans" alternative based on land use projections by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, which reflected land uses shown on county plans;

• "Market-driven" alternatives that expressed land use changes that might follow introduction of new transportation options;

• "Policy-driven" alternatives representing land use changes designed to support individual transportation packages.

The land use changes for the market-driven and policy-driven alternatives required that "current plans" projections of jobs and households be reallocated among the almost 600 traffic analysis zones (TAZs) in the study area. In this part of the evaluation, the project team made a significant departure from the usual process. It assembled an advisory panel of seven experts in planning, economic analysis, and development to recommend general patterns of allocations throughout the study area. The hope was that this multi-disciplinary process would yield more realistic results than the typical backroom analyses by project staff. Panelists were based in the Washington/Baltimore or mid-Atlantic region, so that they possessed some knowledge of development trends in the area. They were given a briefing and background information and requested to tabulate their recommendations for each of the market-driven and policy-driven alternatives for each transportation package. The panel was then assembled for a day-long discussion, .

In fact, the panel provided an unexpected dose of reality: panelists took issue with the regional projections that forecast 160,000 added jobs for the District of Columbia by 2020. Most of those jobs, said the panel, would instead occur outside the District, and many would gravitate to the study area when transportation improvements were made. The panel concluded that study area projections should incorporate more job growth and recommended job increases for each county.

After considerable discussion, the task force took the panel's findings to heart, deciding to evaluate seven new scenarios, all assuming additional jobs, in addition to the "current plans" scenarios:

• two highway-oriented, market-driven scenarios, one assuming only additional jobs and a second assuming additional jobs and an equal number of additional households;
• a highway-oriented, policy-driven scenario assuming additional jobs (in which policies supportive of a new highway would be assumed to affect land use reallocations);
• a light-rail, market-driven scenario assuming additional jobs;
• two light-rail, policy-driven scenarios, one assuming additional jobs and one using the "current plans" projections (to test the effectiveness of light rail service for a more centralized job market in the District);
• a commuter rail, policy-driven scenario assumming additional jobs.

Based on the panel's advice on county-by-county allocations for these scenarios, the project team produced allocations of households and jobs for 35 subareas. The subareas were used throughout the study as identifiable communities and places for which task force members could readily understand the potential effects of land use changes. Agreement by the task force on allocations at this level then guided consultants in determining final land use inputs for each of the scenarios.

The results of the model runs proved interesting:

• a major upgrade of U.S. 301 was clearly required to serve future travel needs, regardless of capacity contributions from other modes and shifts in development to make more efficient use of various modes;
• proposed transit improvements, including a light rail line in the principal commuting corridor, reduced highway travel needs only slightly, even under supportive land use assumptions;
• land use shifts, indeed, made relatively little difference in overall results, due in part to the extent of existing low-density patterns of development and in part to the degree to which such patterns realistically could be altered over the next 20 years, even by taking steps to concentrate new development;
• however, it was also clear that by 2020 traffic volumes would begin to catch up to increased highway capacities, underscoring the necessity of initiating other transportation modes to increase availability of travel options.

Recommendations.

Follow-on Activities.

Conclusion

The U.S. 301 Transportation Study illustrates the "new look" in transportation planning responds to emerging imperatives for more cost-effective urban development. The integrated planning process requires more elaborate procedures and greater sensitivity to a wide range of variables than previous procedures. Agencies charged with such planning must grapple with the complexities of understanding the interplay of urban systems and relating them to the needs and desires for development in specific areas. The introduction of citizen advisory groups challenges planners to translate technical concepts and terms for general public consumption, and stretches out planning periods while presumably building consensus on results. Meanwhile, relationships among state transportation agencies, local land use regulators, and regional planning entities are evolving, as each discovers distinct needs and competencies of the others. The result might be viewed as ISTEA turbulence -- or as finally mixing the proper brew of perspectives and interests.

Douglas R. Porter
President, The Growth Management Institute

This paper was based in part on my article, "Linking People, Plans, and Trips: Revamping the Land Use Connection in Transportation Planning," in the Lusk Review (published by the Lusk Center at the University of Southern California), Vol. 2, No. 1, Summer, 1996, pp. 62-73.

Copies of the Task Force's Final Report and supplemental technical reports may be ordered from the Maryland State Highway Administration, 410/545-8533.