Revisiting the need for comprehensive transportation planning at the metropolitan and regional scales | For profit services, and White's Ferry, Montgomery and Loudoun Counties

Chanting "two years too long," several hundred people showed up Thursday at the crossing in Poolesville to lend their voice to the cause of reopening White's Ferry. (Photo: WTOP / Kyle Cooper)

Not much to say.  

WTOP radio reports, "Hundreds rally in Poolesville to get White’s Ferry reopened," on a protest by people advocating for reopening the for profit White's Ferry crossing the Potomac River connecting Loudoun County Virginia to Poolesville in Upper Montgomery County, Maryland.  The ferry allows for the saving of a lot of time by users.

But it's a demonstration of a quirk in planning generally and transportation planning specifically.  Mostly, a master plan only covers what the government controls or operates, and usually ignores for profit services, and often, franchised services.

I mention the ideal model of transportation planning and operation being the German Transport Association, but even there, I don't think they include for profit services like car sharing and electric bicycle or scooter services.

-- "The answer is: Create a single multi-state/regional multi-modal transit planning, management, and operations authority association," 2017
-- "Verkehrsverbund: The evolution and spread of fully integrated regional public transport in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland," International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, 2018

When I first wrote about this issue ("Gaps in planning practice: privately owned White's Ferry on the Potomac River and county transportation planning") I mentioned how neither the Loudoun County nor Montgomery County transportation plans even mentioned the ferry service.

Later comments update the situation, and how Loudoun and Montgomery Counties did commission a report on what to do.

-- White's Ferry Operations Alternative Study

Again, if there were a true regional transportation association, this ought to have been addressed long before.

The point of planning is to be proactive, not reactive.