Gaithersburg: Not so bad, but they still mandate a lot of driving.

After last Thursday’s post about Gaithersburg I was contacted by City Council members Cathy Drzyzgula and Jud Ashman, who claimed that their characterization in the linked-to Gazette story and subsequent BeyondDC post was inaccurate. At their request I watched the video of the public hearing in question. With more complete information, I have some thoughts to add to last week’s post:

1. The characterization of the Council as a whole and particularly Ms. Drzyzgula was indeed inaccurate. To the Council’s credit, they seem to recognize the importance of planning, value the principles of Smart Growth, and agree that the city should revisit its formulas for minimum parking. To Ms. Drzyzgula’s individual credit, she seems to be one of the Council’s stronger proponents of good urbanism, and I didn’t hear the statement attributed to her about Gaithersburg’s future as a car-driven community at any point in the meeting.

2. That having been said, the Council still exhibited plenty of examples of car-centric thinking. At one point the Mayor said “parking is one of those issues that really is quality of life; you need to have a parking space close to you.” Council Vice President Michael Sesma said he is “not sure we have the transportation resources necessary to convince people they don’t need the number of cars they have now” and later argued that parking minimums were important, lest neighborhoods near larger developments be burdened with overflow parking. A cars-first bias showed through even when Planning Commissioner Matt Hopkins voiced support for Smart Growth by saying that lower parking requirements would support the “social engineering” efforts by the city to increase walkability and transit use. The message in all of these statements is that driving for most trips is the natural way of things. In truth, there is nothing at all natural about driving everywhere; that only seems to be the case because regulations supporting (and funding) cars to the detriment of other living/transportation arrangements are so entrenched in law that overcoming them is extremely difficult. That brings me to my final point:

3. Despite the progressiveness of some on the Gaithersburg City Council, and despite 20 years as a center of New Urbanism, BeyondDC’s headline last Thursday was absolutely correct – Gaithersburg (and just about all of its peers in the world of local government) continues to legally mandate congestion by continuing to uphold laws that result in a driving-first community. Gaithersburg has gotten rid of some of those laws and is ahead of a lot of places in this region and nationally, but it still has a very long way to go. The good news is at least one person on the Gaithersburg City Council recognizes that – in an email exchange Councilman Ashman asked if I could identify places in the Gaithersburg code that unnaturally encourage driving. Watch for that in a future post.