New rules could stall Germantown development

Road congestion mitigation could keep companies away, property owners say

But some in the business community say that a new formula that places more responsibility for infrastructure on developers in Germantown East — areas east of Interstate 270 — and non-municipal Gaithersburg — will hurt growth.

Under the new formula, the two policy areas were found to have inadequate road systems for their current levels of development.

Traffic generated by any new development in the two areas must be mitigated by 100 percent, which critics say could bring expected growth in Germantown to a standstill.

‘‘Germantown is an area where growth is reasonable because we’re the only area in the county with undeveloped commercial property,” said Marilyn Balcombe, president of the Gaithersburg-Germantown Chamber of Commerce. She added that she has not heard concerns about the Gaithersburg policy area, which does not include the city of Gaithersburg. ‘‘...It’s totally absurd, because when we went into this nine months ago, everybody agreed that this was the only place where development should occur.”

The new test, called Policy Area Mobility Review, determines traffic congestion by measuring an arterial roadway’s speed limit compared to actual travel speeds during peak and non-peak hours as well as the time spent driving to a location compared to taking mass transit. The formula does not include transportation projects that have not yet been funded, such as the proposed Corridor Cities Transitway, which would connect the Shady Grove Metro station to Clarksburg by light rail or rapid bus.

Each area has a standard for congestion, and the formula allows for urban areas with existing infrastructure for mass transit, such as Rockville and Bethesda, to have greater congestion.

‘‘If you work here every day and drive these arterial streets, I don’t think you would have concluded that Germantown would be placed in this category compared to other parts of the county,” said Doug Wrenn, a principal with Germantown-based Rodgers Consulting Inc.

A drawback of the new formula is that it can seem counterintuitive, though it was the strongest of several options considered by county planners because it considers the actual driving experience, said Karl Moritz, chief of research and technology in the county’s Department of Park and Planning. One of the factors that influenced Germantown East’s score was Route 355, he said, and the policy will be used to prioritize where transit improvements are most needed.

‘‘Germantown East kind of got caught between a rock and a hard place,” said County Councilman Michael J. Knapp (D-Dist. 2) of Germantown. ‘‘All the traffic going through there is getting worse, but it’ s not because of development [in Germantown East].”

Developers with projects in the two planning areas that submitted a preliminary plan to the county Planning Board after Dec. 31, 2006, must mitigate all vehicle trips added to the area. Mitigation options include adding roadway or transit capacity, reducing trips from other sites in the policy area like by encouraging commuters to carpool or providing non-automobile facilities, such as sidewalks and bus shelters, that encourage walking, biking or use of mass transit.

Moritz noted that a considerable amount of development has already gone through the Planning Board process and that other property owners can choose to either wait for road improvements to be made before beginning a project or take steps to mitigate the additional traffic.

‘‘What kind of disappointed us was that we’ve been working for several years on developing this business corridor,” Wrenn said. ‘‘...If there’s additional cost and risk for a developer that has to be mitigated, it might make it more difficult [for Germantown] to become competitive.”

The County Council will reevaluate the policy if there are unintended consequences, Knapp said, such as stunting development in Germantown East. County planners are also in the process of updating the 1989 Germantown Master Plan, which calls for increasing jobs in the community, including Germantown East. The county’s growth policy looks at long-range master plan visions, Moritz said, but the Germantown update was not factored in because it was still a work-in-progress.

Though the policy will change how planners evaluate school and road capacity, it will not have too much of an effect on the upcoming master plan, said Sue Edwards, a county planner assigned to the Germantown area.

‘‘The growth policy is really about allowing increments of growth that match up with infrastructure,” she said. ‘‘Growth will still be allowed, just more of it will be on the developer.”