It’s Time to Re-Evaluate the CLRP

In October 15th testimony, the Alliance urged the Metropolitan Washington Council of Government’s Transportation Planning Board (TPB) to re-evaluate the contents of the region’s fiscally Constrained Long Range Plan (CLRP) from a regional perspective rather than just continuing to “update”  the same old CLRP decade after decade.

More specifically the Alliance recommended the entire CLRP should be re-evaluated in terms of which highway, bridge and transit investments do the most from a regional perspective to reduce congestion and travel delays and improve connectivity on the area’s regional transportation network.

As we have pointed out in previous alerts, the 2014 CLRP identifies approximately $42 billion for new construction.

If a major percentage of these funds were directed to projects of greatest regional significance, the region could fund 8-car Metro trains, upgrade the American Legion Bridge and the western side of the Maryland Beltway, build a new Potomac River crossing upstream, expand highway and transit capacity on I-66 outside and inside the Beltway.  By doing so the regional plan would be far more “regionally significant” and the region’s transportation network far more efficient and less congested.

Read the Alliance’s TPB testimony here.

Read more detailed written comments submitted earlier here.

Our region has the highest percentage of inter-jurisdictional and interstate travel in the nation.

To Remain Economically Competitive

Our Region Must Have a Regionally Focused

Strategic Transportation Plan.