This week: WMATA presentations on the Momentum Strategic Plan

I have been remiss in calling attention to three sessions this week, one each in Maryland, DC, and Virginia, plus a presentation by Metro's relatively new director of planning, Shyam Khannam, at Tuesday's meeting of Montgomery County's Action Committee for Transit, that will discuss WMATA's recently released strategic planning document, Momentum.

Monday, February 11 at 5:30 p.m.
Treetops
8181 Professional Place
Hyattsville, MD
(Via Metrorail: New Carrollton)

Tuesday, February 12 at 5:30 p.m.
WMATA Headquarters (Jackson Graham Building)
600 5th Street NW
Washington, DC
(Via Metrorail: Gallery Place or Judiciary Sq)

Tuesday, February 12 at 7:30 p.m.
Action Committee for Transit Monthly Meeting
Momentum - Planning the Future of Metro in the Region
Speaker: Shyam Kannan, WMATA Assistant General Manager for Planning and Joint Development
Silver Spring Civic Center
Fenton Street and Ellsworth Avenue
Silver Spring, MD

Thursday, February 14 at 5:30 p.m.
Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School
7130 Leesburg Pike
Falls Church, VA
(Via Metrorail: West Falls Church)

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I still haven't read the plan, and am not quite in the position of writing a set of summary pieces comparable to the ones I did last week with regard to the new MoveDC master transportation planning process. I'll get to it.

While it makes sense that they have two plans in one, one focused on realization by 2025, of tweaks and improvements focused on maximizing the utilization of the current system, and the 2040 plan, which is focused on adding capacity, I think that 25 years from now is far too long a time to wait for significant capacity expansion.  The implementation processes need to be more simultaneous.

Ironically, in 1990 or 1991 I wrote a very long letter in response to what ended up being the very first "column" of what became the Dr. Gridlock transportation column in the Washington Post.

I wrote that he was proposing a "car drivers lobby" but what was needed was a focus on transportation more generally (his first piece was a screed against during construction on freeways during morning rush hours)--a commuters lobby--because "commuters" use many different modes, not just cars.

One of the many points in my letter (there were as many as 15... I haven't changed) was that WMATA's statements then about not looking to begin planning for system expansion until the originally designed system was completed meant that we wouldn't see significant expansion til 2015 to 2020 at the earliest, because the system wasn't supposed to be completed til around 2000.

Little did I know when writing that letter that significant expansion of the Metro system beyond the original footprint would be more like 50 years!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!