Case Study:

Montgomery County, Maryland

Application

Extension to 2050 Analysis

In addition to evaluating packages of near-term transportation improvements, the county used the accessibility measures to evaluate long-term transportation and land use scenarios. The county evaluated three land use scenarios for the year 2050:

1. The Master Plan Scenario included the land use pattern anticipated by the build-out of the approved area master plans by the year 2050.
2. The Transit-Focused Scenario focused development in areas within walking distance of the master planned transit stations, with resulting densities up to 25 percent beyond those in currently approved master plans.
3. The Locally Balanced Scenario focused development within walking distance of transit stations and, in addition, balanced the number of jobs and employed residents in the two major radial development areas (along I-270 and U.S. 29).

Each scenario was then tested with the full transportation network in the county's area master plans (Master Plan Network), as well as with Enhanced Networks that include transitways.

The analysis concluded that land use patterns make a significant difference in the demands on transportation networks. In particular, the Locally Balanced Scenario achieves significantly greater transportation benefits (on all measures of effectiveness) than the Master Plan Scenario when evaluated with the same network. For example, the Locally Balanced Scenario results in 12 to 22 percent higher accessibility scores than the Master Plan Network, compared to the Master Plan Scenario. The scenario provided similar benefits on the Enhanced Transportation Network (Table 4).

Table 4. 2050 Transportation and Land Use Scenarios

Source: Maryland-National Capital Park & Planning Commission (1999).

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