More MOCO Upzoning - Starting in Silver Spring

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:If they want to drop the missing middle rezoning proposal and just do this one maybe that is a reasonable compromise, but upzoning everything is a bad idea. Vision zero is idiotic and unrealistic though. The goal of reducing traffic fatalities attainable, but we need to balance operational concerns with safety improvements. The only way to achieve basically zero traffic deaths would be to reduce speed limit to 15 mph everywhere. Ridiculous policy goals like vision zero will harm society more than it helps.

How many deaths do you think it's worth for you to get somewhere 5 minutes faster in your car? How about 10 minutes faster in your car? Also, is it ok for people in your family to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash, or should car crash deaths and serious injuries be limited to people in other people's families?

You are ignoring the real-world trade offs that are involved in something like vision zero. Traffic deaths will never be zero unless we reduce the speed limits to 15 mph everywhere. There are very serious and negative consequences to reducing the speed limits substantially. For example, my doctors office that is now 30 around minutes away will take me around 1 hour and 30 minutes to get to if we lower the speed limit to 15mph. Multiply increases in transportation time across all of the county residents and the amount of time wasted will be astronomical. MOCO only has 39 traffic deaths per year on average. Applying the average demographics of MOCO residents indicates the the each of these people that die in a car accident are losing about 341,871 hours of their life. So any policy that waste more than this amount of other peoples time each year for every death prevented in car accidents is not a smart policy decision. Increasing the average daily driving time by 6 minutes a day for even 10,000 county residents wastes more hours than of peoples time than the hours of life gained by a single person who does not die in a car accident. I am supportive of policies that reduce traffic deaths given that a sufficient cost-benefit analysis is conducted. But it is foolish to pretend that any of these policies provide a free lunch. There are tradeoffs with pursuing policies and the vision zero proponents are largely ignoring this.

Are you listening to yourself?

I am not the PP, but the PP is a realist. Traffic deaths will NEVER be ZERO. Not really possible. Similarly, poverty will never be eliminated. You can work on the edges, which we should of course do. But ZERO is not humanly possible. Welcome to the real world, where bad sh-t happens unfortunately.

It is possible to have zero car crash deaths, though.

However, for the sake of argument: what do you consider an acceptable number of people killed in car crashes?

What’s an acceptable number of violent crimes? Those are far, far, far more common. The number of traffic deaths is pretty small especially when a quarter of them are blamed on cyclists/pedestrians/other non drivers

Zero.

What's an acceptable number of people killed in car crashes?

By the way, I don't know what you're thinking, but the vast majority of people killed in car crashes were in cars.

Look at the police stats. The number of traffic deaths attributed to speeding drivers is tiny. Only nine in DC. The number of traffic deaths blamed on people who weren’t driving cars hovers around one quarter of all deaths.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they want to drop the missing middle rezoning proposal and just do this one maybe that is a reasonable compromise, but upzoning everything is a bad idea. Vision zero is idiotic and unrealistic though. The goal of reducing traffic fatalities attainable, but we need to balance operational concerns with safety improvements. The only way to achieve basically zero traffic deaths would be to reduce speed limit to 15 mph everywhere. Ridiculous policy goals like vision zero will harm society more than it helps.

How many deaths do you think it's worth for you to get somewhere 5 minutes faster in your car? How about 10 minutes faster in your car? Also, is it ok for people in your family to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash, or should car crash deaths and serious injuries be limited to people in other people's families?

You are ignoring the real-world trade offs that are involved in something like vision zero. Traffic deaths will never be zero unless we reduce the speed limits to 15 mph everywhere. There are very serious and negative consequences to reducing the speed limits substantially. For example, my doctors office that is now 30 around minutes away will take me around 1 hour and 30 minutes to get to if we lower the speed limit to 15mph. Multiply increases in transportation time across all of the county residents and the amount of time wasted will be astronomical. MOCO only has 39 traffic deaths per year on average. Applying the average demographics of MOCO residents indicates the the each of these people that die in a car accident are losing about 341,871 hours of their life. So any policy that waste more than this amount of other peoples time each year for every death prevented in car accidents is not a smart policy decision. Increasing the average daily driving time by 6 minutes a day for even 10,000 county residents wastes more hours than of peoples time than the hours of life gained by a single person who does not die in a car accident. I am supportive of policies that reduce traffic deaths given that a sufficient cost-benefit analysis is conducted. But it is foolish to pretend that any of these policies provide a free lunch. There are tradeoffs with pursuing policies and the vision zero proponents are largely ignoring this.

Are you listening to yourself?

I am not the PP, but the PP is a realist. Traffic deaths will NEVER be ZERO. Not really possible. Similarly, poverty will never be eliminated. You can work on the edges, which we should of course do. But ZERO is not humanly possible. Welcome to the real world, where bad sh-t happens unfortunately.

It is possible to have zero car crash deaths, though.

However, for the sake of argument: what do you consider an acceptable number of people killed in car crashes?

What’s an acceptable number of violent crimes? Those are far, far, far more common. The number of traffic deaths is pretty small especially when a quarter of them are blamed on cyclists/pedestrians/other non drivers

Zero.

What's an acceptable number of people killed in car crashes?

By the way, I don't know what you're thinking, but the vast majority of people killed in car crashes were in cars.

Look at the police stats. The number of traffic deaths attributed to speeding drivers is tiny. Only nine in DC. The number of traffic deaths blamed on people who weren’t driving cars hovers around one quarter of all deaths.

So, 40? You're good with 40 people killed in car crashes in Montgomery County every year? That's an acceptable number for you? Vision Forty?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don’t want to live in Hoboken, dimwits. If I wanted to live in a dense craphole like Hoboken then I would move to Hoboken. If you want Hoboken, go live there. Leave my home, yard, and neighborhood alone.

Ahhhhh Hoboken, where you get have the privilege of spending 45 minutes after work everyday trying to find somewhere to park after work. Just awful.

Nobody is forcing you to live in Hoboken. Nobody is doing anything to your home or yard. You don't own your neighborhood.

They are absolutely forcing people to live in the Hoboken AKA the “ugly cousin of Manhattan” by pushing through crazy upzoning proposals most resident don’t want.

Public Service Announcement: All of Montgomery County as you know it today, was once upzoned from a lower density designation. Some farmer probably tried to block your SFH development as ruining the character of the county.

Upzoning is the natural consequence of the Nation/Region/County growing. If you are not fabulously wealthy, just mentally prepare yourself for this to happen to your neighborhood some day.

My neighborhood has protective covenants with large multiple acre single family lots. I just laugh at MOCO craziness when these policies are discussed. They are horribly misguided and will ruin quality of life for county residents.

Where is this? Asking for a friend

I wonder if it would be possible to start the process of drafting protective covenants in vulnerable areas now.

Quite the opposite of what that other poster is positing, long term, the areas that remain SFH areas will likely skyrocket in value. I feel bad for the homeowners in the affected areas. The county should compensate them.

In the short/medium term this may be true, but these will become targets eventually. You can't fill a county with "have nots" such that they become the vast majority and get the political power, and preserve the preferences of the "haves." The politics of resentment/YIMBY/climate change/what have you, will eventually carry the day and get them rezoned too.

This battle was lost before most knew it was being waged, because they are incapable of linking cause and effect.

Alternative explanation: many homeowners are unwilling to permanently remove their own property rights (and likely reduce their property values, too).

It is actually a voluntary agreement to protect property rights among willing participants. Some people do not want to live densely populated urban areas. They are more concerned about protecting quiet enjoyment, open space and privacy for their property. There are other components of property rights you are ignoring, noise pollution, air pollution, neighborhood amenities that are equally if not more important to many people. Not everyone wants to build sixplexes on postage stamp lots and live in Arlington.

Upzoning dramatically can also violate peoples property rights when it creates a density that exceeds that capacity of existing infrastructure. Widening roads and expanding power line infrastructure requires the use of eminent domain and people will lose their homes in the name of upzoning and “affordable housing”. So don’t give me that BS about property rights. There are always competing priorities with zoning decisions. Completely unlimited property rights for individual property owners forces neighbors and the county to absorb negative externalities associated with their decisions. People do not live in a vacuum and the impact on local community members is very relevant to zoning decisions. Developers would absolutely love to be able to build whatever they want anywhere and force taxpayers to pick up the bill for their harmful development decisions. You are advocating for the benefit of special interest groups at the expense of the community and MOCO.

Yeah, those evil developers building those evil homes for... people ... to live in?

Get a grip.

Everything costs money and most of these improvements are funded by local taxpayers. They absolutely don’t care about the community and they will destroy it, unless they are forced to pay for the costs to cover infrastructure and schools for new development.

Most of the new roads, water/sewer, etc. are actually funded by the developers, which means they're ultimately funded by the new residents. A lot of the maintenance costs also fall on the new residents.

Except the council has capped impact taxes, which means developers aren't paying their fair share. And shockingly, there's now budget issues in the school's capital budget.

It depends on what you think of as "fair share". The developers pay to build the roads. The developers do not pay for the cost of a brand-new school, nor should they. You know what else developers do? Build housing.

The developers don’t even come close to paying the cost of school expansions required by their projects. The impact fees they pay per expected student are well below the costs of adding capacity for each expected student. It’s fair to debate whether the greater community should subsidize new housing or whether new housing should pay its own way at the front end but let’s do so on the basis of fact, not lies.

Blair is already 3000+ students. This plan reeks of insanity. In one of the local hoods and in disbelief at this.

[Anonymous]

Can someone post a visual depiction of this so we can see it our neighborhood will be next to a shi$storm it not? All this verbiage tells me squat of what the actual “vvision” is—drawings pls for the locals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can someone post a visual depiction of this so we can see it our neighborhood will be next to a shi$storm it not? All this verbiage tells me squat of what the actual “vvision” is—drawings pls for the locals.

The Montgomery Planning Department is having FOUR MEETINGS (or three meetings, after tonight's meeting) just so you and other members of the public can get your questions answered.

https://montgomeryplanning.org/planning/corridor-planning/university-boulevard-corridor-plan/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone post a visual depiction of this so we can see it our neighborhood will be next to a shi$storm it not? All this verbiage tells me squat of what the actual “vvision” is—drawings pls for the locals.

The Montgomery Planning Department is having FOUR MEETINGS (or three meetings, after tonight's meeting) just so you and other members of the public can get your questions answered.

https://montgomeryplanning.org/planning/corridor-planning/university-boulevard-corridor-plan/

Are we free to VETO this? Or is it being forced upon us?

[Anonymous]

How are Trone or Ashwell voting on this? I won’t to find the No person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone post a visual depiction of this so we can see it our neighborhood will be next to a shi$storm it not? All this verbiage tells me squat of what the actual “vvision” is—drawings pls for the locals.

The Montgomery Planning Department is having FOUR MEETINGS (or three meetings, after tonight's meeting) just so you and other members of the public can get your questions answered.

https://montgomeryplanning.org/planning/corridor-planning/university-boulevard-corridor-plan/

Are we free to VETO this? Or is it being forced upon us?

You could participate in a meeting and ask the planners this question.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How are Trone or Ashwell voting on this? I won’t to find the No person.

This is a county issue. The members of the County Council vote on it. Who is Ashwell?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone post a visual depiction of this so we can see it our neighborhood will be next to a shi$storm it not? All this verbiage tells me squat of what the actual “vvision” is—drawings pls for the locals.

The Montgomery Planning Department is having FOUR MEETINGS (or three meetings, after tonight's meeting) just so you and other members of the public can get your questions answered.

https://montgomeryplanning.org/planning/corridor-planning/university-boulevard-corridor-plan/

Are we free to VETO this? Or is it being forced upon us?

You could participate in a meeting and ask the planners this question.

Ask them specific questions like what were the estimates of how many students this plan will generate or how many new housing units will result from this proposal. The planning departments are useless and they usually don't thoroughly evaluate the consequences before proposing this BS.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Good. I’m a YIMBY. We need more housing.

Go move to a city then. I moved to the suburbs for a reason.

and the reason is?

Because I like having space and not living on top of people. Let people who want to live in SFH do that in peace. Stop pretending you know what's best for everyone.

You do realize that decades ago your own property was farmland and your house/neighborhood represented change -- change from rural to suburban, right? Times change. Areas change. Flux is normal. When more people move to an area, it becomes denser. It happens all the time except when the opposite happens and people leave areas that then become deserted.

[Anonymous]

Can they post like a Lego recreation of their plan? I cannot zoom into the map enough and my actual street and neighborhood is on the master bus(?) bike lane? I can’t see if they are turning my neighbors houses into townhouses/duplexes or if it is just how they drew the lots? My house seems to stay house but we would all like to know?!?! I’m not for or against but need a LEGO mock-up of the entire area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone post a visual depiction of this so we can see it our neighborhood will be next to a shi$storm it not? All this verbiage tells me squat of what the actual “vvision” is—drawings pls for the locals.

The Montgomery Planning Department is having FOUR MEETINGS (or three meetings, after tonight's meeting) just so you and other members of the public can get your questions answered.

https://montgomeryplanning.org/planning/corridor-planning/university-boulevard-corridor-plan/

Are we free to VETO this? Or is it being forced upon us?

You can vote like next week you know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone post a visual depiction of this so we can see it our neighborhood will be next to a shi$storm it not? All this verbiage tells me squat of what the actual “vvision” is—drawings pls for the locals.

The Montgomery Planning Department is having FOUR MEETINGS (or three meetings, after tonight's meeting) just so you and other members of the public can get your questions answered.

https://montgomeryplanning.org/planning/corridor-planning/university-boulevard-corridor-plan/

Are we free to VETO this? Or is it being forced upon us?

You could participate in a meeting and ask the planners this question.

Ask them specific questions like what were the estimates of how many students this plan will generate or how many new housing units will result from this proposal. The planning departments are useless and they usually don't thoroughly evaluate the consequences before proposing this BS.

Well I work in office and only just found out via a late sent postcard so no not possible. Maybe send that postcard out two weeks prior?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone post a visual depiction of this so we can see it our neighborhood will be next to a shi$storm it not? All this verbiage tells me squat of what the actual “vvision” is—drawings pls for the locals.

The Montgomery Planning Department is having FOUR MEETINGS (or three meetings, after tonight's meeting) just so you and other members of the public can get your questions answered.

https://montgomeryplanning.org/planning/corridor-planning/university-boulevard-corridor-plan/

Are we free to VETO this? Or is it being forced upon us?

You can vote like next week you know.

Like yes I will but out of Trone vs Alsobrooks who is yay who is nay?