Public Comment Begins on 2035 Transportation Plan

“An enormous leap forward”

David Crossley, May 22, 07.

Tagged with transportation, public comment, h-gac

Here is our first reaction to the new 2035 Regional Transportation Plan (RTP):

Conceptually, the plan is an enormous leap forward from the seeds planted in the 2025 plan. In the new plan, H-GAC "recognizes that land use decisions can have a significant impact on congestion." It then makes the case that "The strategy with potentially the most effect upon improving mobility and quality of life is the strategy of connecting transportation and land use."

The plan also incorporates, for the first time, the goals and values of hundreds of the region's citizens, who participated in envision+Houston Region. This was a ground-breaking series of workshops in which citizens talked about where and how to develop for the addition of 3,538,000 people to the region.

Those citizens, H-GAC says, expressed a desire for more green space, less development in floodplains, more travel options, and jobs closer to their homes. Those values are incorporated in the plan, along with those of the elected officials and transportation agency executives who control the actual projects that get built. Official goals always begin with "less congestion," which is the modern equivalent of "a chicken in every pot." It's something that cannot be delivered but is always desired.

The goals in the 2035 draft are these:
1. Better mobility, less congestion and cost
2. Easier access to jobs, homes, and services
3. More transit
4. More green space and preservation of flood plain areas for aesthetic and recreational activities
5. Healthier environment

Generally, these are excellent goals. Particularly, the addition of the word "access" to the plan will open up a whole new field of measurement about where people want to go and how they get there. The previous all-mobility strategy simply meant finding ways to move vehicles around a network. This one adds the strategy of access to destinations. That changes the whole paradigm of the civic discussion.

The plan starts out right. There is a "vision" expressed in the executive summary that is not in the plan itself: "Our community will have a better quality of life through improved mobility, better access and a healthier environment." This should definitely be in the plan, and we suggest a slight reordering that gets the priorities straight:
"Our community will have a better quality of life through better access, improved mobility, and a healthier environment."

All human issues are contained in "quality of life" and nearly all of us want that quality to be improved, constantly. Access and quality of life are tightly linked, and people value mobility right at the top of their desires. So this vision is a very good one, and needs to be firmly stated at the beginning of the plan, because everything emanates from it.

In planning, you set some goals to move in the direction of a shared vision, and the goals of this plan do that. Then the plan properly proposes strategies to go toward the goals, and programs to implement the strategies. They are sensible.

While we still have a lot of reading to do, this plan seems to be just what we need. It lays out all the research and ideas about walkability, compact communities, self-contained neighborhoods and town centers, connections between centers via transit, and the reasons and strategies to protect the environment.

Many people will be strongly supportive of the plan's goals and strategies, because Houstonians have made it pretty clear in recent years that green - less pollution, more trees, more natural greenspace, preservation of natural and agricultural land - is what they want.

But in the background, H-GAC rings a public alarm bell: "many projects are already planned and programmed for the next ten years and any changes to the current scheduling of projects will not likely respond as quickly." It warns that we may have to wait until 2015 before we begin to see the land use changes proposed in the plan.

This is a resigned position H-GAC probably must take, but it is a shame to imagine that we have to endure another 10 years of worsening the quality of life simply because it is somehow "planned and programmed." While the concepts of the plan deserve huge public support, the projects that are trying to be constructed in the background go in the opposite direction of those concepts.

The road-building aspect of the plan is still enormous. In the biggest piece, Harris County and the State of Texas have plans, using Harris County's toll revenues, to build or widen in the very near future some 484 miles of new highway lanes. These include the Grand Parkway, which is intended to open up a lot of new land for sub-urban development, just as the region is beginning to come to grips with the idea of not doing that.

While the plan looks good from 30,000 feet, the devil is always in the details. In the coming days and weeks we will write a lot about the plan, and report on the ensuing debate. We welcome participation and comment starting now.

Note: The RTP is a complex document with several appendices and a mountain of history and background. The official public comment will begin on June 1 and end on July 2, only 30 days. It will be a challenge to read, discuss, analyze, and comment on it in a serious way in such a short period of time. Therefore, the Gulf Coast Institute's first public comment is that the period should be extended by 30 days, at least.

The draft RTP can be downloaded from 2035plan.org.

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