It’s confession time, folks. I did Nancy Floreen wrong two weeks ago. I mistakenly included her among Washington region politicians who didn’t respond to The Washington Examiner’s request for comment on a controversial new book on congestion.
Instead of being among what I called the ostriches on the Montgomery and Fairfax county councils who resolutely refused to read and comment for the record on the book, “The Road More Traveled,” Floreen was actually the first official to offer her reaction. The Examiner provided review copies of the book to each member of the two councils.
Floreen, who is elected at-large in Montgomery County, was joined by colleague Phil Andrews, who represents a Gaithersburg-Rockville district, in providing thoughtful comment on the book. Both Montgomery council members are Democrats.
You don’t have to agree with every position or program advocated by a politician to recognize and value the political conscientiousness demonstrated by Floreen and Andrews in reacting to a book that is highly subversive of the conventional wisdom about traffic congestion. It’s no exaggeration to say authors Ted Balaker and Sam Staley of The Reason Foundation literally wrote the book on creative new ways of reducing or even eliminating traffic congestion.
Floreen’s enthusiasm for “The Road More Traveled” is especially significant because, before being elected to the Montgomery council, she was a member of the county’s planning board. She knows first-hand the stifling influence of such erroneous maxims as “we can’t build our way out of congestion” that for decades have slowed or stopped construction of desperately needed new roads throughout the Washington region.
“Finally, someone has debunked planning doublespeak with a common sense reality check,” she said. “I hope that this kind of thoughtful, non-dogmatic thinking will help politicians throughout the region realize that we must fund and build the roadway infrastructure we need. The costs of inaction are deeply disturbing. This, of course, is far more easily said than done.”
But Floreen’s was not an unqualified endorsement of Balaker and Staley’s policy recommendations, which focus heavily on encouraging more public-private partnerships to build needed new roads.
She suggested that “while privatization is popular because it transfers the fiscal burden to private risk-takers, it eliminates public engagement and ,more importantly, all the ramifications of public ownership.”
She also said that “the next book should address funding proposals, and focus attention on the dramatic failure of the federal government to finance transportation infrastructure.”
By contrast, Andrews expressed stronger reservations, notably on the question of whether mass transit actually reduces the number of vehicles on area roads. Balaker and Staley suggest not, because the typical mass transit rider is not always a car owner.
Andrews agreed with the authors that “the impact and benefits of transit should not be oversold,” but countered that “they should not be undersold either as the authors tend to do. For example, In Chapter 5: “10 myths about car-crazy suburbs,” the authors assert that most transit users do not own cars and thus would not contribute to road congestion if the transit they use disappeared.”
One need look no further than the Shady Grove and Vienna Metrorail stations, Andrews argued, to see that “the availability of Metrorail in our region does keep thousands of vehicles off major highways such as interstates 270 and 66 and helps drivers on those roads by reducing demand for the limited road capacity.”
Andrews added that “Metrorail stations foster concentrated mixed-use development that produces fewer vehicle trips per person than does less dense development.”
I don’t share Floreen’s apparent enthusiasm for increasing the role of the federal government in funding transportation infrastructure, nor do I think Andrews’ eagerness for mixed-use development is necessarily the last word on that issue. Another useful title in this regard is Robert Bruegmann’s “Sprawl, a Compact History.”
But I have nothing but plaudits for these two local officials who vividly demonstrated the thoughtful seriousness required to take on and ultimately overcome the Washington area’s most serious regional challenge.
Mark Tapscott is editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner and proprietor of Tapscott’s Copy Desk blog.
