The Future of M83: Clarksburg Meeting Highlights Community Concerns

October 30, 2024

I attended the October 29 meeting at Clarksburg High School about the possibility of M83 being removed from the master plan (hosted by Montgomery Planning).

I live tweeted the first hour and a half of presentation and Q&A sessions until the questions began to get a bit repetitive. You can see the tweets here or read on to see them in article form.

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Presentation Portion of Meeting

What is the Master Plan of Highways and Transitways (MPOHT)?

Why is a Technical Update Needed?

How do we transition from “Functional” to “Complete Streets” Classifications?

Purpose of 2024 MPOHT Technical Update

МРОНТ Schedule

More people have trickled in and filled just about all the chairs so others are standing or bringing out more chairs

M83 project overview

I ended up taking decent notes on this presentation and will do my best when we get to Q&A section.

Based upon questions so far, there will be a LOT of questions and comments during that session.

Presentation has been paused several times for questions directly related to slides
M83 Project Overview – History

Elected official in attendance: Council Member Marilyn Balcombe.

MCDCC member William Robert is also in attendance

I missed one slide which I’ll have to get when they send out presentation.

This map shows green dotted lines where M83 has not been completed.

Master Plan of Highways and Transitways history many plans listed. They showed several different plans over the years but I’m not going to post all of them.

Slide deck issues so they’re taking over manually talking.

Google “Mid county corridor” to see the different plans and options. They settled on 9A in 2015

Meanwhile about 20 more people have come to the meeting

Crowd growing. Again, based on tone I am expecting a lot of questions and comments

One woman asked to large applause “is there a reason why we’re not just talking about this road being possibly removed from the master plan.”

Response: not everyone is on the same page.

MM editorial: I feel the history is interesting and useful to consider.

Here is what the signs look like that many are holding up:

Council will be the ones voting on the master plan.

Montgomery Planning will make recommendations to the council.

There will be a public hearing on November 14th

Audience member: “It’s not their fault that 23 people attend every meeting to try to remove M83 from the master plan. We didn’t show up because it was on the master plan”

Says if we raised hands who supports it now and signs and hands go up (image below)

Planning: We’re here not to make determinations but to do outreach, provide options. If you want to have your opinion heard be sure to submit testimony

I would estimate over 90% of hands went up from the audience member question (image above).

Slide catchup on less importing seeming slides (based upon quickly going through them).

County council resolution (from 2017) says to not assume M83 will be constructed when planning

October 3, 2024 Planning Board Briefing – Options to Address Midcounty Highway Extended

Planning board recommended option 2 above. To consider whether to take it in or out and that is why we’re here with a public meeting

Intent of current outreach

Opportunity to comment (in Wheaton)

Audience member: “if we had M83 it would be easier for us to get to the meeting at 6:30”
Image

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Q&A Session

I did my best to summarize questions and answers in this section based upon the intent of the speakers. Could not get every word obviously.

Question: concerned about the impact to our neighborhood, trees and parks in south end of M83. Do both sections need to be looked at together or independently?

Answer: yes they have the option to look at them separately

Question summary: thank you for keeping M83 in so far. We have been promised this for years. People have been counting on this. I’ve been living here since 2005. You’re expanding this area but not supporting the infrastructure

Answer: when projects get to this point and there’s consideration to remove it. Our agency made recommendations years ago. Planning board and council took action. Our job is to point out there’s a need or desire or conflict that needs to be evaluated and that’s a political question. Need road or transit capacity to handle the number of residents that are coming

Comment: we’re being pitted against each other. No one in Clarksburg wants those at the other end of the road impacted. Let’s work together to get a solution that helps us all. We have two schools impacted and it took years to fight to get sidewalks. So we know what keeping children safe means. We’re going to be impacted too but we need this road. Keep it in the master plan but let’s get it built.

Comment: Wheaton is basically at the other end of the world … the planning meeting should be in the upcounty area. Germantown or Clarksburg or Damascus.
Response: great point. public hearing notice already gone out and the meeting on the 14th is set but we could consider an additional meeting in upcounty

Question: have you talked to the first responders and the trouble with them getting places for people in emergency? Because I have and they have issues getting there.

Answer: yes recommendations in area master plans consider that. But this plan is limited in scope and we don’t update that evaluation

Question: m83 has been in the plan for 60 years. We’ve done lots of engineering and planning and the planning of homes has been taken into consideration. And it took 23 people to comment to consider removing it. Is there something in the planning department that says they should evaluate it or is it just comments? If I get 23 people to say let’s remove BRT from plan or something else, does that mean it will be removed from consideration?

Answer: when comments received, planning board was not aware of the issues about it. So they asked to reopen the public hearing to hear your voice – folks here tonight. We have some part of the story but let’s get the full story.

So please testify if you want to be considered

Answer continued : those homes that were considered, are here now. So we need to handle the transportation aspect one way or another

Question: would you agree that master plan is aspirational in nature and that not all master plan elements can be or are realized or implemented.

Answer: yes master plan is aspirational so anything built is based on the council and politics

Question: What other projects that are currently or were previously in the plan (he lists several projects) have been recommended?

Answer: we need testimony to develop a response to consider any of these

Question: when planning board and council decided to not consider the road in 2017, what was considered

Answer: they didn’t want to remove it completely but it was a compromise to keep the planning board work and the land available

Question: it would be right in my back yard, if the road were built would there be a sound wall?

Answer: if the noise exceeds a certain amount they would require a sound wall

Question: in recent years, we have 45 or 50,000 new people in Germantown and Clarksburg (most of the people in county), but we don’t get any new roads? When we look at environmental impacts, 200 was a lot more than M83. We basically built thousands of houses with promises and we paid property and income tax and what we get is the road is removed that was promised?

Answer: best way to do that is to testify
Talking about tesifying in Wheaton, residents ask for transportation and saying without this road we can’t get there

Question: How are you going to get information out to residents about that meeting to Clarksburg that are not in special interest group?

Answer: with smaller plans they send mailers or emails to all residents affected but with a county wide plan we can’t do that

Comment: A lot of issues with lack of notification and also location of meeting being so far away from residents affected.

Answer: please share with people and testify and also spread information around. Meeting could possibly be postponed or have an additional meeting

Question: I’ve been here for several years and one thing we all deal with is needing new schools to be built. Thats based on hard statistics. Is there a similar hard statistic on roads we can use?

Answer: yes we have traffic models, so does the state and region with existing and planning infrastructure. There is also data on the intersection data which shows the level of service (MCAtlas) at intersections. Also the vision zero website has data on crash history.

Question: can we have a second upcounty location that is streamed for the meeting so that we can show up in person. In 1984 when the plan was modified Clarksburg was not as populated as it is now. My suggestion is keep m83 in master plan but add metro along 270 and use federal funding and see if it impacts the need for m83. Silver line in VA as an example.

Answer: two great questions. The latter involves conflicts with other plans for 270

Question: the transportation slide contains environmental impacts for m83

Answer: the plan would involve park land so that could take a lot of review from parks department to offset the impacts. Some of these impacts were pretty major and some design was added to address parks issues. When projects impact parks the additional cost is high

Question: the issue is not just a Clarksburg issue. The southern end has impacts in Derwood and other areas. HOAs not best way to get word out not everyone is in HoA. It seems like we’re using old data. I would suggest we get accurate data and a short term study to give relevant information to make an educated decision.

Answer: not only has it been years since we did our study but things have changed on federal level: climate, equity, and other considerations. There’s a lot we could look at and possibly come to different conclusions if we did a study update. But the problem is doing a study in a timely manner.

Question: another comment about the meeting being in Wheaton. Open a zoom call with big screen that can join. Lots of friends didn’t come here. We can show our faces how many can join.

Answer: certainly the fact the problem was originally county wide but this is more limited in scope we should have looked at the public hearing being in a different location. We need to consider additional outreach or virtually include people from other locations.
Answer continued: I’ve had meetings in upcounty so I appreciate the traffic and impact and how early people have to leave in Frederick

Sidebar about Upcoming Processes

After the planning board public hearing, we will conduct work sessions and go through the comments. Planning staff will have recommendation to the board and the board will make a recommendation draft to the council. For straightforward plans usually it just goes through the board but more controversial or when the board has opinions on something, things change more often

Council Member Marilyn Balcombe speaks on process

Council will get the planning board draft. Judging by my 2 years on council, it’s going to be so much easier to keep M83 if it’s in the master plan draft (given to council). My goal is to keep M83 draft plan for the planning board. If it’s in there, the fight is to keep it in there. If it’s not, then the fight is different.

Question: do you have an idea on the types of metrics you can cite that might help us make the case for this?

Answer: there are previous studies but it’s old and the data not up to date. The main argument is that when a master plan is completed we do a traffic estimation. Decisions on removing roads are political but the argument master plans have been approved means we’d end up with inadequate transportation in the future. Decisions were made on a lot of data and taking out without full analysis raises a lot of issues of where that traffic is going to go.

Comment (William Roberts): for the regular people who are trying to decide what to do is think about how we talk infrastructure to not just talk about the road but also potential for transit like BRT, connect to shade grove , protected bike lanes and trails like along 200. Thats important to consider when talking to the political people at the council.

Answer: maybe alternate options like MARC up M83 would help make the case and provide more solutions

Question: is there a more detailed master plan that shows the impacts detailed at a lower level especially on the Redland end of M83 impacts ?

Answer: we don’t go to that level of detail. We go down to the interchange level only. You can find that: https://mcatlas.org/mpoht/

Conclusion

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