Howard County's Office of Transportation should play a role in the process for approving new developments, a group tasked with examining the county's transportation infrastructure has recommended in its report.
The suggestion is one of many made by the Howard County Public Transportation Board, which looked at transit in Howard at a time when development in downtown Columbia is giving the planned community a more urban feel and county plans to revitalize the Route 40 and Route 1 corridors are taking shape.
"Columbia itself, within Howard County, is becoming more and more urban, more and more dense, and that calls for public transportation," board chair Sharonlee Vogel told the County Council in a presentation last week.
Linking land use and transportation, Vogel said, has to happen "at the very beginning, not as an afterthought at the end, which it has been for decades and decades."
Currently, proposals for new developments are sent to several county agencies -- such as the department of fire and rescue services -- for review, but that list does not include the Office of Transportation.
Looping the office into the review process was one of the short-term recommendations made by the public transportation board, which also offered medium- and long-term transit recommendations.
Howard's bus routes are three decades old, Vogel pointed out, and some include stops established years ago to reach one or a handful of people who no longer use the service.
"The place has changed, and the bus routes need to change, so we want to be sure that that happens and that there are service standards in place to guide that," she said.
Other short-term recommendations, which the board says could be accomplished in the next one to two years, include:
• Finalizing a site and design for a downtown Columbia Transportation Multimodal Center,
• Revising and implementing the Howard County Design Manual's guidelines for roads and bridges and
• Establishing regulations for a "complete streets" approach to transportation policy, which requires streets to be designed to accommodate a range of transportation options, from car traffic to public transportation and pedestrian access.
In the mid-term, Vogel and other board members recommended the county adopt an automated fare card system similar to the Washington Metro system's SmarTrip card, which is pre-loaded with money and swiped by users to deduct fare as they board a bus or enter a Metro station.
The board would also like to see regional express lanes and dedicated bus lanes in the area, bus rapid transit service on Route 29 and a study on building transit centers at office hubs such as the Columbia Gateway, Maple Lawn, Clarksville and Savage.
In the long term, recommendations include connecting Columbia and the county to Baltimore's light rail system and the Washington Metro, as well as extending MARC train service into Columbia via a CSX line into the Gateway office park.
The county is also looking to improve service for pedestrians -- two upcoming open houses have been scheduled to gather public input on the county's sidewalks, crosswalks, bus stops and paths: one is scheduled for Monday night from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Slayton House in the Wilde Lake Village Center, and a second will be held March 28 at the North Laurel Community Center from 1:30 to 3 p.m. Residents can also offer input at WalkHoward.com.