PGC's "Adequate Public Pedestrian and Bikeway Facilities in Centers and Corridors” Act

Prince George's County Council Members Eric Olson (District 3) and Mel Franklin (District 9) have introduced a new bill in that would ensure

that new development in urban centers creates safe connections for people to transit, schools, parks, stores and other destinations by building missing links in essential walking and bicycling facilities

Think of it as complete streets for county planning. 

Currently, new developments are only obligated to contribute to road capacity for car traffic in off-site transportation improvements. This means that a developer may be required to pay millions of dollars in road capacity expansions far from the development site but make no investment in missing sidewalks, hazardous crossings, or other basic pedestrian or bicycle infrastructure connecting the property to nearby destinations. This bill helps new developments fill in missing links and ensure that new residents can safely walk or bicycle to the nearest bus stop, Metro station, school, store, library or park. By investing in relatively low-cost sidewalks, crossing improvements, bike lanes, trail connections or other walk/bike facilities, residents will have true alternatives to driving for every trip and can take better advantage of transit and nearby amenities. This builds higher quality communities and takes cars off the road, relieving overall traffic impacts of new developments.By filling in the missing links in sidewalks, bikeways, and pathways, this bill helps build “complete streets,” by designing streets that work for everyone, an important goal of the Countywide Master Plan of Transportation

Act Now county residents (Seriously the vote is later today)

Contact your Prince George’s County Council Member, or the Council Chair, the Honorable Andrea Harrison, and urge them to support this bill. This bill increases safety, broadens transportation choices, reduces traffic and enhances the quality of new development. Let them know that the old way of doing things – only building bigger roads for more cars, while ignoring the opportunity to make walking and bicycling safer and easier – needs to change. Creatingmore walkable communities and better connecting people to transit, stores, schools and jobs makes for safer, healthier and more attractive places to live and work.

The bill will be considered by the Planning, Zoning, Economic Development Committee (PZED) February 15 at 1:30 pm, and if it wins a majority of committee votes, will advance to the full county council for a public hearing and vote

Comments

[Greenbelt]

Letter sent, plus the Greenbelt APB and planning staff alerted. Thanks for the news!

[Pseudoprime]

My worry about this sort of thinking is that it makes developers responsible for biking/walking infrastructure. Look at the Trolley Trail extension to Riverdale Park and Hyattsville. It's tied up in the Cafritz development and EYA. I mean, if the sidewalk is missing, it should be the government's responsibility to put it in there, whether or not development happens.

[Jim T]

Under the proposal, developers will only be responsible for infrastructure that mitigates problems they cause with their development, in "rough proportion" to the stress they put onto the system.
Aside from the terms of the legislation, if the county requires more, they will be violating Dolan v. City of Tigard.

Of course, localities would love to require developers to fix "missing links" whose absence was problematic before the development, in which the benefits accrue to the public at large. If this is really what the county is seeking (rather than an attempt to explain the legislation to the lay public) then it will easily be struck by courts as an "out and out plan of extortion (Nollan v Calfornia Coastal Commission).

[Elizabeth]

Thanks for publicising this!