MCDOT Director Chris Conklin Discusses the Department’s Key Priorities at Virtual Sierra Club Event

For Immediate Release: Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Montgomery County Department of Transportation (MCDOT) Director Chris Conklin was a panelist at a Montgomery County Sierra Club forum on Transit Equity and Safety of Transit Workers during the pandemic. The panel took place on March 3 and the full discussion can be viewed on the Sierra Club’s Facebook page. Joining Conklin were Gino Renne, President UFCW Local 1994 MCGEO; Raymond Lee, Field Services & Organizing, UFCW Local 1994 MCGEO; and Ashanti Martinez, Research and Policy Analyst at CASA.

Conklin spoke about three of MCDOT’s key priorities: Vision Zero – eliminating severe injuries and deaths along our roadways; implementing the County’s climate action plans for transportation and helping the County achieve its economic growth and development goals.

Below are excerpts from Conklin’s presentation:

Vision Zero

• During the past year, MCDOT has made progress on improving the sites where vehicular crashes have occurred; however, our success in reducing pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities is not where we want to be.
• It’s a very difficult challenge because local infrastructures was largely developed in the 1950’s through 1980’s with the goal of moving cars long distances at high speeds. And that is not our vision for the Montgomery County of the future.
• We have been in transition for about 15 years from the earlier model to one where walking, biking and transit are emphasized. But that is a small amount of time compared to the 50-to-60-year investment made in the car-oriented system.
• Remaking our infrastructure remains a big challenge – but MCDOT is committed to accelerating engineering infrastructure changes that create a network that is less hazardous to people who are walking, biking or using transit.

Climate Action Plan

• Our future ideal is to transition to a County where one lives and works in a community that is connected to others without the use of energy-intensive transportation modes.
• To reduce our impact on the environment and carbon emissions, we need to be able to move people more efficiently than we do today.
• We’ve had some setbacks because of COVID as people became more dependent on driving cars for their trips.
• Yet, rather than accept this situation, it’s important to direct our future through actions and strategies that continue to invest in making transit easier, better and more competitive while reducing its environmental impact.
• Compared to individuals driving in their own cars, transit’s impact, regardless of the fuel source, is small. However, we are addressing the types of fuel our bus fleet uses. This year we rolled out our first four all-electric transit vehicles, and they have been exceeding the department’s expectations. We are working with the County’s Department of General Services on developing a microgrid at the Silver Spring Depot that would support the transition of one-third of that depot’s buses to all-electric vehicles.
• We hope to meet the County’s climate action plan target date of 2035 to produce no emissions from our transit fleet.
• Other challenges include our aging stormwater infrastructure, much of which was built in the 1960’s through 1980’s. It is degrading and just isn’t meeting current needs as storms increase in intensity.
• In addition, we are encouraging public and commercial adoption of electric/zero emission vehicles and fleets and implementing transportation demand management strategies to significantly reduce use of single occupancy vehicles.

Economic Growth and Development

• Population and jobs are growing in this region.
• We need to focus on helping the business community recover from the economic effects of the pandemic.
• One way is to enhance the attractiveness of our communities by being thoughtful about the way we invest in new infrastructure.
• By building on our strengths and focusing on equity, inclusion, sustainability and a less impactful lifestyle, we can make investments that transform our infrastructure and services to better meet our needs now and in the future.
• In the coming weeks, we will be discussing new initiatives to get more reliable and predictable funding for transportation services and infrastructure that allow us to make the investments we need for our economy to be successful.
• We implemented short term strategic measures during COVID, such as streeteries and open streets. We need to assess the impact of adapting our infrastructure to make these types of programs permanent while meeting the needs of restoring the County’s economic health.
• In looking at our transit services, we viewed our response to COVID through a lens of equity, assessing: Where do we have zero carbon households?; Where do we have one car households?; Where do we have lower incomes?; Where do we have people that are most likely to be working in essential service jobs?; Where are people who don’t own or have access to a car to get to work or obtain food, medicine, banking services, etc?
• We worked very hard to meet our residents’ needs during the pandemic by structuring our transit program response around connecting communities to services. It wasn’t easy and we had to make many adjustments along the way.
• Right now, we are providing about 80 percent of our normal transit service focused on where ridership is occurring.
• Because of social distancing requirements, we have had to be mindful about meeting ridership needs while customers maintain adequate spacing.
• This is a big change from our former push to maximize ridership.
• We’ve kept buses and operators in reserve to respond to overcrowding.

MCDOT has worked hard to restore service where people need and are using the service

For ongoing updates, follow @MCDOTNow on Twitter, visit the department website at montgomerycountymd.gov/mcdot, subscribe to MCDOT news releases or subscribe to MCDOT’s ‘Go Montgomery!’ newsletter. 

Release ID: 21-033
Media Contact: Hannah Henn 240-777-8389