Don't make me go all intermodal on you!

This morning I woke up refreshed after a great evening with my grandparents attending a book signing at the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins in downtown Washington. The book was titled Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oil. It looks to be a great book (only 35 pages in...) about how our world's dependence on oil is leading to more and more involvement in Africa. New offshore opportunities in places like Angola, Equatorial Guinea, etc. will lead to many opportunities for development but also for corruption. I have always been interested in reading about Colonialism and this seems to be a modern version of what happened in the late 19th century land grab for African colonies. But I digress.....

As I walked to metro and went through the turnstiles and up the escalator, I ran into a huge group of people with a train waiting at the platform. Any subway commuter can tell you that is not a good sign. It turned out Fort Totten Station was closed for power outages due to the rain. So I walked right out of the station and jumped on the S2 bus and was downtown at my office in 30 minutes. This journey made me realize that our country needs more intermodal transport in order to lessen the burden on our environment and our hunger for oil.

A successful intermodal program would develop a network where rail, bus, airport and car are linked together to provide the maximum benefit for the movement of people. Of course we need highways and cars, I am not trying to preach that. But we need increased access to move greater numbers of people across all modes of transportation. Cities in Europe are light years ahead of the U.S. And Washington is much more of an intermodal region than other cities in this country.

Here are a couple of examples that have me thinking:

• A new Silver Spring Transit Center is planned to open in 2009 which will link road, bus, taxi, commuter train and metro all together. This will help continue Silver Spring's development as an urban close in suburb and in the process will alleviate traffic for those commuters coming from farther out points in NE Montgomery County and Howard County. But what I love about this transit center is that it will benefit all socio-economic classes of our area's population. Regardless of what mode you rely on.
  
• The new Chicago 2016 Olympic bid will include many projects that will upgrade the transportation infrastructure exponentially. If Chicago's transportation infrastructure isn't developed in a strategic multi-year vision soon, another city could overtake them as a midwestern hub (much like Chicago did to St. Louis at the turn of the century). While it's sad that an Olympic bid really fast-tracks some of these projects, it's a unique opportunity that shouldn't be passed up! Ask Barcelona and Vancouver....
  
• The Intercounty Connector project in Montgomery County is an extremely controversial project in our region as residents feel that the road, which would cross over our county to increase access between I-270 and I-95, would lead to uncontrolled growth therefore just increasing traffic around the region. Of course, a significant environmental impact has been discussed at length as well. My thoughts are this, how healthy is it for our environment when Washington commuters spend an average of 70 minutes a day in their car for a one-way commute? Not good at all. What our region needs is a smart, realistic and collaborative vision for transportation growth - the ICC should be a limited access highway with controlled growth around those 3 exits. If we don't get it right now, we are going to dig ourselves into a deeper whole.
  
• Washington National Airport has the highest percentage of passengers that use rail for access among U.S. airports. This is a great story of intermodal planning. The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority recently struck a deal with the Virginia state government to take over the operation of the Dulles Toll/Access Road to fastrack funding for a Metro extension (Silver Line) to Washington Dulles. And now who wants a piece? The State of Maryland, which operates BWI, is also pushing for the Green Line to be extended to BWI. Rail access becomes a huge competitive advantage of getting passengers between the downtown and airports.
  
• Light Rail or Heavy Rail? Years ago, leaders from Montgomery and Prince Georges county worked together to decide what type of rail line should the Purple Line be? This is the new line that will run from New Carrolton to Bethesda with hopes of laying out a foundation for a circular route for the Washington area. Light rail would divert traffic among the poorer populations from the bus to light rail and would have a minimal impact. Of course it would lead to economic development around stops and would increase access. But not to the level of heavy rail which of course is more expensive. Heavy rail would link New Carrolton to Greenbelt to Wheaton to Grosvenor and would actually alleviate traffic on roads. It would mean workers from NE Washington, Olney, etc. at Marriott headquarters (rich, poor, middle class) could take rail back and forth to work. But unfortunately a smaller scale Light Rail system was agreed to. The success story of the Washington metro area can be directly attributed to our first class metro system. By having a vision of an intermodal world for all cities of the world, the increased movement of people can be achieved.

Ok, that is my Friday rant on intermodal transportation! I have always said that if I went to graduate school, I would be interested in transportation planning.... Who knows, maybe my ideas would make sense one day. A day when gas costs $6 a gallon?

Feel free to add to the debate!