Blaming transit for failures in transportation demand management

I mentioned awhile back that I submitted an amendment to the DC Comprehensive Plan, requiring transportation demand management planning. It is arguable that the current Policy T-3.1.1 requires this (I argue that it can be construed that way but others don't agree):

Policy T-3.1.1 (as written currently): Transportation Demand Management (TDM) Programs: Provide, support, and promote programs and strategies aimed at reducing the number of car trips and miles driven (for work and non-work purposes) to increase the efficiency of the transportation system. 414.8 .

This is the proposed new text:

Policy T-3.1.1: Transportation Demand Management (TDM): Require transportation demand management planning for neighborhoods, districts, institutions, commercial businesses of a certain size and/or type, and multiunit residential buildings, in order to provide more travel choices and reduce the relative proportion of single-occupant-vehicle traffic and to induce travel shifts to other modes including transit, carpooling, walking and bicycling, and through innovative car and bicycle sharing systems.

What this means in practical terms is that a series of "transportation management districts" would be created and entities meeting the requirements for participation (based on a certain number of trips generated, and certain kinds of transportation demand such as freight/delivery) qualifying organizations would have to create and implement plans focused on optimizing mobility.

But it does make it a requirement, not an option. And it is specifically about mitigating traffic and reducing automobile traffic specifically--not providing a list of items to select from to pay for as a kind of transportation infrastructure improvement, although that should be part of zoning and building regulation process anyway, and would be with a TDM requirement in the Comp Plan.

For supermarkets and drug stores like CVS locations, that might mean shifting some deliveries to the evening.

For sports arenas and stadiums, it would mean more serious planning and diversion of trips to transit through combining transportation planning with the sales and ticketing process.

Etc.

Organizations would have to file and implement traffic mitigation plans and annual reports. From the Montgomery County Commuter Services webpage:

Now it’s even easier to comply with traffic mitigation requirements for employers in Montgomery County. Employers with 25 or more employees located in a Transportation Management District (TMD) are required by law to file a Traffic Mitigation Plan (TMP) and Annual Report. Both the TMP and the Annual Reports can now be filed online.

The purpose of the law is to reduce gridlock and encourage commuting options in the County. The law applies to employers with 25 or more employees that are located in the County’s four TMDs:

• Bethesda
• North Bethesda
• Friendship Heights
• Silver Spring

I raise this because Sound Transit in Seattle is blamed in a couple letters to the editor in the Seattle Times for poor planning after a Seattle Sounders soccer game, because 550 or so people wanted to ride a particular bus which normally only runs every half hour, and likely a capacity of about 80 people. See " Sound Transit and Sounders: Why isn't public transit ready after games?" and " Soccer Fans Encouraged to Arrive Early for Wednesday's match."

Now in the DC region, entities can contract for WMATA to stay open later after games (I can't remember the cost per hour), but without real planning, it's hard to say how much demand is actually required. With heavy rail (the subway), it's relatively easy to deal with this as people use the system based on the route structure in place. OTOH, it's hard to predict without more solid information about the demand for buses.

But likely, the attendance for this particular soccer game in Seattle, against Barcelona, was triple or more the normal attendance, generating far greater demand at a time of night when service normally declines, and fewer personnel and buses are in service.

This isn't fully the fault of the transit system, which doesn't normally have situations where particular bus routes experience a temporary 1000% spike in service demand, as much as it was a failure of the sports team and the transit system to jointly plan service responses for game day service.

With transportation demand management systems in place, there is a means to deal with this. Without such requirements, it's just more letters to the editor ad infinitum.

In our region, a key way to make this work better is to require that sports arenas and stadiums be placed adjacent to high capacity fixed rail transit which has the flexible capacity to handle temporary spikes in service demand. But because there are three separate jurisdictions (DC, Maryland, and Virginia) this must be mandated by each jurisdiction and it isn't.