DOE

May 19, 1999
Mr. Louis H. Ege, Jr.
Deputy Director
Office of Planning and Preliminary Engineering
Mailstop C-301
State Highway Administration
707 North Calvert Street
Baltimore, MD 21202

RE: Draft Environmental Impact Statement MD 32 from MD 108 to I-70

Dear Mr. Ege:

On behalf of the Environmental Defense Fund and its members I am submitting the following comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement MD 32 from MD 108 to I-70. EDF and its members also join in the other comments being submitted in May 1999 by the Baltimore Regional Partnership organizations (Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Citizens Planning and Housing Association, Baltimore Urban League, and 1000 Friends of Maryland) on this DEIS.

The Environmental Defense Fund, a leading, national, NY-based nonprofit organization, represents 300,000 members, including more than 16,000 in Maryland. EDF links science, economics, and law to create innovative, economically viable solutions to today's environmental problems.

As I explain below, the MD 32 DEIS fails to meet the requirements of the National Environmental Protection Act which require consideration of alternatives and evaluation of cumulative and secondary impacts. I believe that a supplemental DEIS for MD 32 must be prepared that considers alternatives to address the

traffic safety concern without widening this road to four lanes and that fully considers induced traffic and land use effects.

The failure to consider safer two-lane alternatives is a critical flaw in the January 1999 MD 32 DEIS. The Maryland Department of Transportation recently changed the purpose and need for the MD 32 project from capacity expansion and safety to safety alone, but this has not been reflected in the alternatives considered by the DEIS.

The DEIS is also critically flawed by its lack of consideration of how the proposed capacity expansion alternatives will affect the timing, location, and pattern of land development and traffic in the study area and beyond. Reasonable and available methods must be employed to reflect the differences between a no-build, a 2-lane safety improvement alternative, and a 4-lane highway expansion alternative, which will produce differences in driving time and generalized travel costs within the corridor and beyond. The same land use pattern was assumed for all scenarios examined in the DEIS, despite recent court decisions and numerous guidance letters from US EPA to highway agencies stating that it is not acceptable for NEPA reviews of major highway projects to ignore induced traffic and land use effects.

Since 1993 I have served as Federal Transportation Director of the Environmental Defense Fund. In my expert opinion, the proposed expansion of MD 32 will in all likelihood have a significant and prolonged adverse affect on the environment due to induced driving, decentralized land development and increased emissions of air pollutants from vehicles, in particular, NOx, one of the two precursors of urban ozone. These impacts are all the more critical in view of the fact that the MD 32 corridor falls within the region's severe ozone non-attainment area.

I received a bachelor of science degree cum laude in 1978 and a master of science degree in 1978 in Civil and Urban Engineering, and a bachelor of arts degree cum laude in Sociology in1978, all from the University of Pennsylvania. From 1979 to 1982, I provided assistance to local governments and transit agencies in the use of advanced computer transportation planning models as a Research Associate of Public Technology, Inc., the technical arm of the National League of Cities. From 1983 to 1992, I was employed as Transportation Coordinator for the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission's Montgomery County Planning Department. There I was responsible for growth management and comprehensive transportation planning for a jurisdiction just north of Washington, D.C., with a population of approximately 800,000 persons. In that position I represented Montgomery County on technical committees and subcommittees of the Metropolitan Washington Transportation Planning Board from 1985 to 1992. I also served as the Chairman of the region's Travel Forecasting Subcommittee, which provides guidance and oversight to the transportation modeling systems used to meet federal analysis and planning requirements for the national capital region.

In these contexts, I acquired knowledge and experience with successive versions of the MOBILE model, the computer model prescribed by the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") for calculating emissions from transportation of volatile organic compounds ("VOCs"), nitrogen oxides ("NOx") and carbon monoxide ("CO"). I acquired extensive experience with transportation planning models used to estimate the effects of transportation plans and programs on land use and travel behavior.

Over the past decade, I have also frequently served as a consultant on transportation planning and/or computer modeling to the Federal Highway Administration, the World Bank, and state and local governments and public interest groups. In 20 years of professional practice, I have authored more than 150 articles, one book, and several major reports on a wide variety of topics in transportation planning. I am currently a member of the Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences. From 1993 to 1997, I was a member of the Federal Travel Model Improvement Program Review Panel, a joint advisory committee giving guidance to the US Department of Transportation, Department of Energy, and Environmental Protection Agency in their increasing research, development, and training programs related to transportation, land use, and emission computer modeling. I have been qualified to serve as an expert witness in several transportation environmental review cases.

From 1994 to 1995 I was a member of a National Academy of Sciences/Transportation Research Board expert panel which evaluated the effect of additional highway capacity on energy and the environment in a study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. In that capacity I reviewed extensive prior studies and literature pertaining to the effects of added highway capacity on travel demand and air pollution emissions. This literature review informed my professional judgment with the added findings of many other studies and the opinions of a diverse cross-section of researchers and professionals with expertise in this area.

The DEIS states, "Although the build alternatives would change access routes to these proposed residential development, it would not negate or cause changes in planned land uses. Access to land areas adjacent to the study area would remain as they currently are, with or without the proposed project. Growth depends on the implementation of land use controls to focus potential growth into specific areas. The responsibility to guide development and land use rests with the Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning. (DEIS, pg. IV-6 and IV-7)." This assertion that the MD 32 project would not change land use is not properly supported.

The land use pattern traffic zone job and housing numbers for the DEIS 2020 horizon year were developed assuming that the 4-lane MD 32 expansion from MD 108 to I-70 would occur well before 2020 according to various sources, including SHA. However, if the road capacity in this corridor were constrained to two lanes with safety improvements, it is reasonable to assume that there would be at least somewhat less residential and commercial development in the corridor, in Southern Carroll County, and out the I-70 corridor. This would mean that the DEIS analysis overstates the traffic congestion levels on MD 32 in the no-build, 2-lane alternative.

"The Smart Growth Areas Act went into effect in October 1997. The intent of this legislation is to direct state funding for growth related projects to areas designated by local jurisdictions as Priority Funding Areas (PFAs)...This project is outside Howard County's PFA, therefore it will require approval by the Board of Public Works before State funds can be spent on construction. The Smart Growth Area Act allows for the approval of transportation projects outside Priority Funding Areas if the project provides a connection between PFAs and if adequate access controls are in place to prevent development inconsistent with the State's Smart Growth Policy. Upon completion this project would provide a fully access controlled connection from PFAs situated along the Patuxent Freeway in Anne Arundel and Howard Counties to PFAs in Carroll and Frederick Counties and other points west. Both Howard and Carroll Counties have identified this link of MD 32 as the preferred location for such a connection to occur. Once completed, this facility will be capable of safely handling the projected demand to travel between these PFAs." (DEIS, pg. IV-7). By providing these high speed road connections, the proposed project will have a major influence on the projected demand for travel, but this is not appropriately evaluated by the DEIS.

Moreover, given common real estate dynamics it is reasonable to assume that if MD 32 is built to 4 lanes all the way to I-70, that there will be significant future pressure for rezoning to allow more intense development near the intersection of MD 32 and I-70, for example in and around the Howard County Fairgrounds to take advantage of this high access location. There will be significant future pressure for rezoning and added development in Carroll County, which just eliminated most of its planning department to reduce impediments to unplanned growth. These factors which would also yield differences in land use and travel demand between alternatives are not evaluated or considered in the DEIS, although they are foreseeable secondary and indirect impacts of the proposed project.

The DEIS asserts, but does not provide sound support for the statement that, "The amount of development anticipated to occur within the SCEA boundary is not influenced by the MD 32 project, therefore, secondary effects were not anticipated to occur." But the DEIS continues in the same paragraph: "In general, an improved transportation facility may result in future zoning change requests to allow higher density development in areas not currently zoned for such development. Among the indirect impacts associated with the proposed roadway improvements is the potential for secondary development. Secondary development is defined as the development that could potentially occur as a result of new highway construction. Although the potential for secondary development exists, there are physical conditions and land use controls that limit this development from occurring within the region."

The DEIS then goes on to describe how land will be protected from development in the corridor. However, the means of protection - zoning and current lack of access to public sewer and water - are all generally at best one County Council and County Executive election cycle away from being changed or discarded, and do not for the most part involve more reliable vested purchase of development rights. "The MD 32 Planning Study is located in Western Howard County. A majority of the land in this area is zoned rural residential, rural conservation, or agricultural. Howard County is committed, through their future land use plans, to maintain this zoning. In support of this commitment, no water or sewer facilities exist or are planned for this region. Additionally, Howard County has initiated and expanded an agricultural preservation program. The goal of this program is to preserve 30,000 acres of farmland. To date over 17,500 acres have been preserved in Howard County west of Ellicott City and Columbia." (DEIS pg. IV-62 and IV-63). The DEIS fails to note that the Agricultural preservation program funding for purchase of easements ended in 1997 (Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning. Development Monitoring System Report. March 1999, p. 31), diminishing the likelihood of meeting the land protection goal stated.

The reality is that 17,630 acres are available for development within the SCEA boundary, projected to produce 7,567 new dwelling units, a 64 percent increase over the 1990 level of dwelling units in the SCEA boundary (DEIS, pg. IV-65). Additional development potential that is likely to be affected by whether or not MD 32 is widened to four lanes lies outside the study boundary near Sykesville in Carroll County and out I-70 to the west. It is implausible that developers and home buyers will seek to use this full development potential under current zoning by 2020 if MD 32 is not widened to 4 lanes between MD 108 and I-70. Some portion, possibly a considerable portion of this development potential is likely to choose a different location for residential development and home-buying if they face growing congestion delays on a safer, but two-lane MD 32. If MD 32 is made 4 lanes, this area will indeed be much more attractive to this projected 2 unit per acre and 3 unit per acre automobile-oriented sprawl residential development between now and 2020. This difference in projected timing, pattern, and location of development must be accounted for in the DEIS. If MD 32 is constrained to 2 lanes it is quite likely that future County and state governments will take further steps to reduce the now permissible sprawl development in this corridor to help manage long term traffic and emissions growth in the area.

The DEIS states that "Benefits [for the build alternative] would include...reduction in travel time," (DEIS, pg. IV-85), but nowhere does it document the forecast travel time savings. However, given the large projected difference in level-of-service for the build vs. no-build alternatives, it is obvious that SHA projects a large difference in travel time, which could amount to 5, 10 or 15 minutes or more of delay. There is extensive scientific literature (e.g, Goodwin, Phil B. Empirical Evidence on Induced Traffic: A Review and Synthesis. Transportation. Vol.23, no.1. Feb. 1996; Mark Hansen, of University of California Berkeley Institute for Transportation Studies, was published in Transportation Research, Vol.31A, No. 3, 1997, pp. 205-218) supporting the contention that changes in generalized travel cost and time in a corridor produce changes in the location of land use, the length and destination of trips, the time-of-day of traffic, mode of travel, and propensity to travel. The transportation analysis models and land use assumptions used for the DEIS do not take these well supported relationships into account, even though reasonable evaluation methods are available to SHA and its contractors to evaluate them. Again this renders implausible the assumption that future land development decisions are not in some way dependent on whether this road is widened or not.

As a result of this failure to consider secondary and cumulative effects of the proposed action vs no-action and a 2-lane safety alternative, the DEIS ignores and mis-states the likely impacts of the project and its alternatives, saying, "The transportation improvements proposed will improve traffic operations and are not expected to increase traffic in the region." (DEIS pg. IV-84). The DEIS fails to recognize how it would create an irreversible and irretrievable commitment of resource indirectly through changing regional land use and traffic patterns (DEIS, pg. IV-84). The erroneous assumptions that the project would have no effect on land use or the amount of traffic also render erroneous the analyses of air quality, noise, energy use, safety, the traffic level of service, and other elements of the DEIS that are dependent in any way on forecasts of traffic volumes for a particular alternative (DEIS pg. 30-58). These errors should be corrected through a supplemental DEIS.

The DEIS incorrectly assumed that the time-of-day of traffic is not in any way affected by the amount of traffic congestion (DEIS, pg. IV-31), assuming a fixed percent daily distribution traffic curve to estimate traffic flows for various times. There is substantial evidence that travelers facing substantial traffic delay tend to shift their trips earlier or later, or to other less congested routes, or choose different destinations (provide cite). There is evidence from intensive official planning studies in neighboring Montgomery County, Maryland, that the peaking of traffic is related to both congestion levels and to the heterogenity of land uses in an area (M. Replogle, "Computer Transportation Models for Land Use Regulation and Master Planning in Montgomery County," Transportation Research Record 1262, Wash., DC, 1989). Thus, the DEIS overstates congestion that would exist on MD 32 with a 2-lane no-build or 2-lane safety improvement alternative.

The DEIS does not provide adequate documentation of how SHA and its consultants evaluated the three projects outside the SCEA boundary that "may have potentially impacted development within the study area." (DEIS, pg. IV-61) These were relocated MD 32 from MD 108 to Pindell School Road (completed in 1996), the new 6-lane highway MD 100 from US 29 east to I-95 (completed November 1998), and widening from six to eight lanes US 29 from I-70 south to MD 103 (estimated to be complete in 2015). SHA asserts that its "review found that development within the SCEA boundary was not impacted by these projects. However each of these projects influenced the traffic volumes projected for the MD 32 study area. This impact is addressed in the direct impacts of the project. Impacts other than those considered within the direct impact analysis were not identified and therefore were not further considered in this analysis." (DEIS, pg. IV-61).

The recently opened MD 100 expressway can be expected to "relieve traffic conditions on the existing highway network and serve the growth areas of Northern Howard County." (DEIS, pg. IV-61) This project in particular, lying only four to five miles east of the MD 32 project, is having a significant effect on growth in the region, drawing new developments and traffic, providing an alternative to MD 32 to serve traffic coming from I-70 near MD 32 and headed towards the I-95 corridor and Anne Arundel County. Further documentation is needed to identify how this MD 100 project has affected projected traffic demand in the MD 32 corridor for the proposed alternative, no-build, and a 2-lane safety alternative. The Baltimore Metropolitan Commission's traffic analysis of the long range transportation plan shows MD 32 to be uncongested in 2020, suggesting that MD 100 may relieve much of the projected traffic demand even given current land use forecasts for the study area.

On the basis of that review and my 20 years of professional experience in transportation and land use planning and analysis, I am confident in concluding that widening MD 32 to four lanes from MD 108 to I-70 as proposed can be expected to produce several effects: an immediate and lasting increase in emissions of Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) and a gradual increase in motor vehicle trips and vehicle miles of travel (VMT) within a few years. This increase in motor vehicle use is likely to lead in the longer term to significantly increased emissions from this induced traffic of both Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) and NOx, the two precursors of ozone or smog. These effects will delay the attainment of federal air quality standards in the Baltimore region.

It is now well recognized that additional highway capacity, whether SOV or HOV, frequently has the effect of stimulating additional travel, which increases air pollution emissions. Increased vehicle use will take several forms. First, some drivers who now schedule their trips to avoid peak congestion will likely respond to the additional capacity by changing their departure time for commute travel to the time of peak commuting, since the new capacity will reduce travel time in the peak period. This effect has not been accounted for with appropriate sensitivity in the SHA analysis, which relies on fixed hourly distributions of traffic. Second, some drivers will likely choose trip destinations and routes that take advantage of the additional capacity and added speed of travel to make longer trips. Third, in the longer term, additional highway capacity, especially in the form of high speed expressways and HOV lanes at the fringe of metropolitan areas is likely to facilitate the development of new homes, offices, and factories which can take advantage of the increased accessibility offered by the highway to low cost land at the metropolitan fringe. This fringe metropolitan development is likely to come at least partially at the expense of future development within the already built-up suburban and urban parts of the metropolitan area. Such fringe development is likely to be much more dependent on the automobile than equivalent development inside the existing envelope of metropolitan development.

Thus, the addition of the proposed MD 32 widening at the fringe of the metropolitan area is likely to stimulate a further increase in motor vehicle use which will lead to increased air pollution of VOC and NOx and delay timely attainment of air quality in metropolitan Baltimore. The additional road capacity that this project would provide can be expected to stimulate significant additional development that would not occur over the next two decades, particularly in Howard, Carroll, and Frederick Counties, in the absence of the proposed road widening project. This additional development will increase not only emissions of VOC, NOx, PM-10, and CO, but will increase the average level of emissions per household and per job in the entire non-attainment area. If the proposed MD 32 project is not constructed, or is constructed as a 2-lane safety project, then some of this additional development will likely be relocated into other locations in the metropolitan area with better transportation accessibility, lowering total pollutant emissions.

Over the period covered by Clean Air Act planning requirements, the proposed MD 32 project can be anticipated to increase VMT, vehicle trips, vehicle trip length, and overall motor vehicle use significantly, due to its effects on land development patterns. This will create a significant further increase in air pollution emissions from motor vehicles. The air pollution and other environmental impacts of induced driving and altered, more decentralized patterns of development will, in all likelihood, be significant.

A supplemental DEIS is needed for the MD 32 project to take these relationships into account and disclose these potential impacts will be in a context in which other experts and members of the public have an opportunity to review, comment and critique these data, analyses and methodologies prior to a final Record of Decision. Without a supplemental DEIS for this project, it is highly unlikely that these analyses will be conducted or disclosed publicly, giving no systematic means for public comment or disclosure. Since this project will require a special exception from the Maryland Board of Public Works under the Smart Growth law, such information is vital to an informed state decision-making process as well as to meet federal legal requirements.

SHA has not adequately evaluated alternatives for addressing safety and congestion concerns in the MD 32 corridor, looking only at 4-lane and no-build alternatives, not at how to address the purpose and need with a better and safer 2-lane design and traffic operations plan. A major benefit of a supplemental DEIS would be to allow for public review of reasonable alternatives, including safety and transportation demand management (TDM) measures, land use impacts, and smart growth options.

The other major statutory provision besides NEPA that requires consideration of alternatives to major capacity expansion to address congestion concerns is the major investment study (MIS) program of ISTEA/TEA-21. The July 1997 Maryland Congestion Management System Corridor #24 Report Mt. Airy/ Baltimore/ Annapolis, prepared by Maryland Department of Transportation, does not meet the MIS requirements. While MIS as a stand alone document is no longer required under TEA-21, that statute requires that all the elements of MIS reviews continue to be incorporated into the NEPA and planning process. An alternative scenario should combine safety options identified in the May 12, 1999 paper by Gerald Neily, "Transportation Analysis: MD 32 Draft Environmental Impact Statement and State Highway Administration MD 32 Safety Action Plan, An Assessment of Transportation Alternatives for MD 32 from MD 108 to Interstate 70," prepared for the Baltimore Regional Partnership.

A supplemental DEIS should additionally consider travel demand management and Smart Growth strategies. These should include the effects of Commuter Choice Maryland transit tax credit and federal tax code changes for Commuter Choice and parking cash-out programs, along with park-and-ride lot development, vanpool and ridesharing service expansion, investments to improve pedestrian and bicycle access to transit, and promotion of transit/ pedestrian-oriented land use and street management in activity centers proximate to the study area. Improvements to paratransit services should complement transit service additions in this corridor's automobile-dependent suburbs.

Thank you for your consideration of these views.

Sincerely,

Michael Replogle
Federal Transportation Director

cc: John D. Porcari, Maryland Transportation Secretary
Michael McCabe, Regional Administrator, US EPA Region III
Nelson Castellanos, FHWA Maryland Division Administrator