O
ver 60 years ago, planners first drew a line on the master plan for a proposed six mile highway connecting Montgomery County’s Clarksburg to Gaithersburg, east of Route 355. Conceived amid early dreams of auto travel and prior to the nation’s environmental laws, the Midcounty Highway Extended, also known as M-83, would travel through stream valleys, wetlands, and parts of Montgomery County’s Agricultural Reserve. It would also fail to address the transportation needs of existing and future residents and employers.
As the new MCDOT study gets under way, our report analyzes how the M-83 master plan alignment compares to a transit-based alternative in meeting the transportation needs of Upcounty residents, and the costs and benefits of those alternatives. As far back as the 1960s, Montgomery County’s general plan called for moving away from a reliance on automobiles. Forward-thinking planners envisioned a series of transit-oriented communities along the I-270/355 corridor in Gaithersburg, Germantown, and Clarksburg to fulfill that goal.
Montgomery County Department of Transportation’s (MCDOT) Midcounty Corridor Study, has spanned 11 years, faced sustained opposition from county residents, and raised serious concerns from environmental resource agencies. A majority of the current Montgomery County Council opposes the highway, and demanded that MCDOT complete and release the study.
Yet today, north of Shady Grove, residents of these communities still lack access to frequent, all-day, high quality transit service. Fortunately, the county’s recentlyadopted plan for bus rapid transit, including the 355 corridor, offers a real opportunity to provide effective, efficient transit service to Upcounty residents, and forms the core of the alternative to M-83.
When MCDOT finally released the study in the spring of 2015 – formally dubbed the Draft Preferred Alternative/ Conceptual Mitigation Report -- it recommended the original 1964 master plan alignment (Alternative 9A), with modifications at the northern terminus, as the preferred alternative, with an estimated cost to the county of $357 million, not counting environmental mitigation and other ancillary costs.
A transit-based combination of alternatives, including local road, pedestrian, and bicycle connections, and demand management approaches, would provide improved transportation options to more people of all incomes and be more environmentally sustainable than building the highway. In a time of limited resources, we can implement this transit-based alternative at a similar cost to building M-83, and with far greater co-benefits for communities and the environment.
But now, due to a combination of council pressure and new leadership at MCDOT, the agency has stepped back from its own recommendation and initiated a study of a transit alternative. Opposite page: MD-124 -- part of the existing M-83 highway that has been built in Gaithersburg. Image by Bossi on Flickr.
What follows is an overview of the proposed alternatives and their costs, and an assessment of how the alternatives meet the original expressed purpose and need for the corridor and the needs of Upcounty residents.
The Case for Cancelling the Midcounty Highway Extended (M-83) | 3
