| #e.22574 | Wednesday 6:30PM to 8:00PM
February 20,
2013 | CM | 1.00 |
Reinventing Cities: The Next Generation of DC’s Regional Transit SystemAPA National Capital Area ChapterWashington, DC Free event The metropolitan Washington region’s transit system is at a critical juncture. Since the current Metro system was planned, the region has grown tremendously, and so has transit ridership. Yet investments and upgrades to the system did not keep up. Recent efforts to renew the system are helping matters, but will only bring the system back to where it should have been all along.
Meanwhile, the region is projected to continue to grow over the coming decades, and this growth will place even more pressure on a system that is already nearing capacity. Without an eye to the future of the Metro system – and how it might keep up with continued strong growth in the metropolitan area – the region’s competitiveness itself may be at stake.
To plan for the future while rebuilding the system, Metro has recently released a staff draft of Momentum, a strategic plan that will guide Metro’s decisions and business plans over the next ten years and ensure that the system continues to support the region. The focus of this session will be to discuss possible strategies to improve the region’s transit system. Key strategies will include:
• Maximize What We Have – Metro will meet growing demand and address overcrowding by optimizing the capacity of the existing rail infrastructure. In addition, Metro will work with local jurisdictions to implement transit priority improvements on the street to move buses faster.
• Enhance Access - Access to and linkages between stations/stops and services are the basis for a successful transit network. Metro and its partners have added sidewalks and bike lanes and connected local bus services to stations, but there is still much work to be done.
• Expand for the Future - Metro will work with local partners to enlarge the rail and bus network to provide high quality transit to communities across the region. With multiple modes and operators around the region, Metro will need to focus on regional integration, ensuring that today and tomorrow’s regional transit services move people where they want to go, seamlessly.
• Be Green - Metro will employ technologies and practices to reduce consumption of natural resources and pollution. Lower energy usage, alternative fuels, and sustainable development criteria will be considered for new facilities and vehicles.
The format for this session will be dynamic and interactive including overview presentations by Metro staff, facilitated discussion on specific issues and strategies, and development of recommendations on the future direction of the transit system.
Instructors: Shyam Kannan Mr. Kannan brings extensive planning and transit-oriented development experience in the public and private sectors to WMATA (Metro). At Metro he directs the Authority’s strategic planning efforts, called Momentum, as well as supervises long-range planning, sustainability, and regional coordination. He has a particular interest in the economic benefits of transit, as well as coordinating closely with the business community in the region. He was most recently with RCLCO (formerly Robert Charles Lesser and Co. LLC), a Washington-area based real estate strategy firm. While at RCLCO, he founded the firm’s Public Strategies Practice Group, where he oversaw planning, development, and transit system finance for public sector clients across the country.
Active in the region’s planning community; Mr. Kannan is a committee member of the Urban Land Institute’s Transit-Oriented Development Council, the Region Forward Coalition of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, and the Housing and Retail Development Committee of the District of Columbia Building Industry Association.
Mr. Kannan has a Master’s Degree in Public Policy and Urban Planning from Harvard University, and is also a graduate of the University of Virginia.
Tom Harrington Mr. Harrington has over two decades of professional experience in transportation planning, working at Metro for the past ten years. He is currently leading a team of transit planners that are developing the Regional Transit System Plan, a long-range vision for multimodal transit service in the region. Mr. Harrington manages a planning office that conducts a variety of planning activities including identifying transit capacity and access needs, analyzing and forecasting changes in ridership, determining long-term capital improvement needs, and advancing a variety of bus and rail improvements throughout the region.
Prior to joining Metro, Mr. Harrington worked at the Montgomery County (MD) Department of Planning and as a transportation consultant. Tom has a Master’s degree in Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Bachelor’s Degree in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia.
(21 Ratings)
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