Reform Washington’s dysfunctional Transportation Planning Board

My first encounter with the Transportation Planning Board for the Washington Metropolitan area (TPB) – our region’s obscure transportation planning agency charged with making our big transportation decisions – came in 1994 shortly after I joined the staff of AAA.

 

The TPB, with more than 25 members in attendance, spent over a half hour discussing the urgent need for more bicycle lockers at Dulles Airport. No kidding.  It left an indelible impression on me.

 

Over the years, the TPB has continued to reinforce that first impression. Most recently, it took an easy, common sense decision to allow Virginia to go forward with minimal improvements on I-66 inside the Beltway, and made hash of it. The TPB got it wrong—so wrong it had to undo its February decision at March’s meeting. 

 

More broadly, the Washington Metropolitan area’s transportation system is largely a failed experiment in regional mobility. By almost every standard, our roads are some of the most congested in the United States—the authoritative Texas Transportation Institute’s annual study ranked them 2nd worst last year. 

 

And our urban rail system, once the pride of the region and an example for the nation, is now old and broken, thanks to years of chronic under-funding. Unfortunately, its annual funding crisis has forced the Metro system to regularly raise its fares and its parking fees, while its service deteriorates and cars keep breaking down, as happened this week forcing track closures on both the Red and Orange/Blue lines.

 

So, our region’s roads suffer nearly the worst congestion in the U.S., and our Metro Rail system is worn out. These are just the gross symptoms of a very broken regional transportation system. Certainly this all can’t be laid at the feet of the TPB, but also certainly, this agency cannot escape reasonable blame.

 

Although created back in 1965, it really became a major player in the early ‘90’s when the federal transportation budget reauthorization empowered the Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO’s) to approve regional projects before federal money could be spent. With the purse strings came the power.

 

The idea was to force metropolitan areas to examine major transportation decisions and planning at a regional level, thus requiring all of the regional players to be involved. It sounds great. Perhaps it might work in jurisdictions that don’t have two states and an independent federal city, not to mention a plethora of counties and municipalities involved.

 

In this region, the TPB has become one more choke point where projects can be strangled, or at least debated to death, in a region where killing transportation projects is a favorite past time.

 

Remember the Disney theme park proposed for Haymarket Virginia? It was the TPB, ostensibly because of transportation issues, where it ultimately died, after dominating debate there for nearly a year.

 

The question is, should Montgomery, Prince Georges, and the City of Takoma Park have a make or break say about a project in Virginia 25 miles beyond the Beltway? Or, similarly, should Arlington, Alexandria and the City of Fairfax have a make or break say in whether Maryland can build the ICC?    

 

The TPB, unfortunately, rather than adding broader regional considerations for the better, has empowered narrower parochial interests for the worse. It is a powerful forum that has been twisted into a place where narrow interests wield disproportionately broad powers.

 

In the next few months, national transportation debate will be focused on the looming six-year federal transportation budget reauthorization, the same process that first empowered the TPB.

 

Based upon our experiences in the Washington Metropolitan Area, serious reforms need are needed in the MPO transportation planning process, and the D.C. region should be Exhibit A in dysfunctional systems and their urgent need for reform. 

 

Mahlon G. “Lon” Anderson is Director, Public and Government Affairs for AAA Mid-Atlantic.