PlanItMetro

You’ve been diligently telling us what you think our priorities should be and we’ve listened. We’ve been hard at work putting the final touches on Momentum: The Next Generation of Metro and Metro’s Board endorsed the plan today.

Starting Monday, over the following 40 weekdays, we’ll be rolling out the most interesting parts of the plan in daily posts here on PlanItMetro.

Monday Posts: Preparing for Tomorrow’s Region Today

Tuesday Posts: Metro’s Importance to the Region

Wednesday Posts: Metro’s Recent Accomplishments and Public Engagement

Thursday Posts: Strategies and Priority Actions to Make this Vision a Reality

Friday Posts: Metro 2025 – Seven Priority Capital Initiatives

If you want to read and download either the full Momentum plan or the Executive Summary, go right ahead. But if you want to stop back for a daily dose of Momentum, don’t be shy. If you notice something that strikes your fancy, leave us a comment.

Regional support is important to making Momentum a reality! A number of regional stakeholders have already endorsed Momentum. Please sign on and add your name to endorse Momentum and send the message that public transit is vital to the National Capital Region.

Since Metro’s MindMixer site opened on September 27^th, the response has been overwhelming. To date, we’ve had over 425 participants provide more than 1900 votes, 450 comments, and115 ideason a range of topics. The first round of questions generated over 150 pages of comments alone! The site is expected to continue through the end of the year at a minimum, so please continue to join the conversation.

Metro is using MindMixer to start a conversation with our customers about how they envision the next generation of Metro. A quick review of the site shows a wide range of comments and ideas, some that are short-term and many that are very far in the future.

All comments and ideas are being reviewed as part of Momentum: The Next Generation of Metro, the agency’s strategic plan. Metro staff is responding to some of the comments and ideas as they are posted. Often this is to direct a participant to work that is already underway or to provide short responses or explanations of current policies. Other ideas have created discussions between participants, which is one of the main purposes for the site. The vast majority of ideas and comments require further study, more discussion of what is possible within Metro’s environment, and/or prioritization among other needs at Metro. Many of the ideas also require substantial resources to implement.

As the site continues, we are collating and summarizing your comments and ideas based on themes, such as core capacity, information provision, and non-Metro expansion.  This high level summary will be used to support Momentum, our strategic plan, as it provides an indication of the elements that are most important to you, our riders. We will also be taking comments directly from MindMixer to incorporate in the strategic plan document. As part of this blog, we will be further developing some of the ideas and comments to form the basis for a Metro 101 section on PlanItMetro. These posts will help increase the level of understanding of transit in this region. Lastly, for those ideas that require further study, they will be compiled and when MindMixer concludes, this information will be circulated to the respective Metro departments. This will help ensure that decision makers throughout the organization review the thoughtful ideas that have been provided on MindMixer.

While Montgomery County’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) plan moves forward through the master plan update process, the county has prioritized some of these corridors for more detailed study.  One of these is the Veirs Mill Road corridor, generally stretching between the Rockville and Wheaton Metrorail Stations.  Managing the effort on behalf of the county is the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) through the State Highway Administration (SHA) and the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA).  SHA, MTA, and Montgomery County hosted an open house in May to introduce the study to local residents and solicit feedback on some of the issues present along the corridor.  You can view the study’s webpage for more information, where you can access the May 2012 Open House material.

Strategic Importance

Why is the county advancing the study of this corridor?  One reason is apparent with a quick look at the area’s geography and relationship to major transportation corridors.

Veirs Mill Road (highlighted in black) in context

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Potential of Improved Running Ways to Increase Bus Ridership, Reduce Bus Operating Costs, and Increase Effective Road Capacity

Buses operating on surface streets in mixed traffic experience delay from a variety of sources, including traffic congestion, bus stops, traffic signals and passenger movements.  As our region continues to grow and economic conditions make bus an ever-more appealing option for travelers of all kinds, Metrobus corridors experience more and more delay.   This delay results in increased costs for bus passengers in terms of travel time,  and increases the cost of providing bus service:  additional buses and operators must be added to maintain desired service frequencies.

One of Metro’s proposed solutions to the increasing costs and continued degradation of bus service is the Priority Corridor Network (PCN).    Metro has identified 23 high ridership corridors to receive priority treatments, which consist of both service adjustments as well as improvements to the bus (street) runningway.  Service adjustments proposed include restructured routes and schedules, skip-stop operations and additional service overlays.  Runningway improvements could include bus lanes, transit signal priority, queue jumpers, bus stop location, and off-board fare payment systems.

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