GREATER WASHINGTON PARTNERSHIP
Vision For Our Future
By working together we will leverage our unique strengths, our diversity and the power of commerce to help make the Capital Region of Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond:
- …the best place to work, raise a family, and build a business
- …a dynamic and inventive business environment with a purpose-driven community
- …a home for those seeking opportunity to fulfill their aspirations and thrive
- …an economic powerhouse that attracts the creatives, entrepreneurs, technologists, and people who dream big
- …a place with the transportation, housing, education, and healthcare systems designed and shaped for the 21st century
- …a global magnet for talent and innovation
…establishing Baltimore, Washington and Richmond as the model for a thriving super-region.
Many of us take for granted the daily efforts of the thousands of dedicated professionals who work tirelessly to help us move around the region. On behalf of the Greater Washington Partnership and the more than 175,000 employees our Board Members employ, we thank you for your service. We want to work with all of you to help provide you with the tools you need to do your job, and ensure you are part of a transportation system that is the envy of the world.
From Vision to Action— The Capital Region’s Mobility Agenda
The Capital Region of Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond is an economic powerhouse—the third largest regional economy in the United States1, and the seventh largest in the world.
With more than 10 million people; hundreds of major companies; world-class universities and research institutions; four significant airports; two marine ports; proximity to the ocean, mountains, and the bay; access to the arts and top-notch museums; and the seat of the United States government, our region has unparalleled strengths, diversity, and potential.
Our transportation system, however, is too oft en failing to meet our needs; and, as the population continues to grow, the system is on path to become a liability that undermines our competitiveness and impedes our quality of life. The Capital Region’s transportation system was built over decades and it, indeed, boasts an extensive network of multi -modal assets compared to many peers. The challenges the system faces are a result of the lack of coordination across jurisdictions, underinvestment relative to growing consumer needs, and inconsistent execution due to the lack of a clear and consistent agenda for the region. We are already feeling the pinch—through lost wages and productive working hours, higher prices of goods as the cost of moving freight rises, and challenges attracting and retaining talent.
Even if we execute on currently planned investments, we will only slow the deterioration of our transportation system’s performance. With currently planned investments, by 2040 the region’s consumers are projected to see congestion grow by more than 150 percent from 2015 levels.3 In other words, by 2040 the region’s consumers will go from sitting in congestion 30 percent of each trip to nearly 50 percent.
This is unacceptable. We must act with urgency and boldly look to both straightforward and innovation solutions. We must collaboratively approach this collective challenge. That is what is required for the Capital Region to take its appropriate place as one of the most important regions for decades ahead, a region that is a global leader with a high quality of life, a region where everyone can thrive and reach their potential.
It is with that challenge that the Greater Washington Partnership embarked to develop a Blueprint for Regional Mobility. Yet, the development of such an effort requires the input and collaboration of many. With support, collaboration, and input from the public and hundreds of stakeholders across the Capital Region, the national and regional leaders who comprise the Partnership’s Regional Mobility Steering Committee, the Equitable Access Task Force, and the Employer Mobility Solution Task Force, the Greater Washington Partnership releases the Blueprint for Regional Mobility, a performance-based transportation agenda bridging jurisdictional boundaries, combining a range of solutions to drive improvement around four priorities: (1) connecting the super-region; (2) improving consumer experience; (3) ensuring equitable access; and (4) integrating innovation.
The Capital Region’s Blueprint for Regional Mobility lays out an agenda for working together to make tangible progress on these priorities, with specific actions our region’s public leaders and private employers can take to address the unique challenges facing our region. Only through collective action can we ensure that when one wins, we all win.
Together, we can reshape our region’s transportation system. Implementation of the Blueprint’s solutions will measurably improve the performance and reliability of our transportation system for all of our region’s residents—transforming the system into an asset that ensures we remain globally competitive. The prosperity and future success of our region are too important for us to wait any longer.
–Co-Chairs, Greater Washington Partnership Regional Mobility Initiative
Executive Summary
Imagine if living in the Capital Region of Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond meant you had easy-to-use, reliable choices to get to a job, to a medical appointment, or to our world-renowned museums.
Imagine if moving throughout the corridor from Baltimore to Richmond was so convenient, affordable, and fast that the Capital Region was respected around the globe for its leading, interconnected transportation system.
What if you could reliably take the train between Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond for a morning meeting and get back in ti me for lunch? What if you could use your smartphone to easily and quickly plan and pay for any trip in the Capital Region, whether by bus, rail, ride-share, bike, scooter—or a combination of several travel options? What if the bus was the fastest and most reliable option connecting your neighborhood to your job? What if a seamless toll network on our highways gave you the option to pay to speed up your drive to make it to your daughter’s recital, while also ensuring carpools, vans, and buses are always the fastest movers on the road?
This future is within our grasp. It is up to all of us. To achieve it, though, we need a different approach. One that consistently executes on our region’s most pressing transportation priorities. One where our jurisdictions and our transportation providers act together, breaking from their structural and jurisdictional silos to benefit all the residents of the Capital Region. That is the vision of the Blueprint for Regional Mobility, a set of solutions that measurably improve our transportation system, that put our region on the path to being a mobility leader, that reduce too-common daily headaches, that connect our incredible people and assets, that overcome long-standing inequities exacerbated by our past transportation decisions, and that smoothly integrate new technologies to ensure we are realizing their potential benefits.
The Blueprint for Regional Mobility is the Capital Region’s first employer-led, comprehensive, region-wide transportation agenda that identifies specific actions to improve mobility spanning the region’s jurisdictions and integrate all transportation modes. More than 75 entities—public and private—play a significant decision-making or operation role in delivering mobility options and services in our region. The Partnership’s release of the Blueprint is a call to action for the region to improve coordination to overcome progress-impeding organizational silos. Each metro area in the Capital Region— Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond—have unique mobility needs that must be addressed. The solutions contained herein tackle the region’s most pressing transportation challenges and will require the region—the public and private sector, multiple jurisdictions and mobility providers, and the entire community—to work together. Some of the solutions can be implemented quickly, while others will require years of persistence. Some of the solutions can be implemented with little funding, while others will require significant public or private investments. Undoubtedly, in the years ahead, we will work together to make changes and re-prioritize our needs. But this gives us a roadmap to start—one based on data and analysis combined with the input of both transportation experts and hundreds of stakeholders across our region.
Unless we can move together in a new direction, we will remain tethered to the flaws of the current approach. If we can move together, however, we can deliver a transportation system consistent with the needs and aspirations of the millions of Capital Region residents today and tomorrow.
Download full summary report (PDF): Capital Region Blueprint for Regional Mobility
About the Greater Washington Partnership
www.greaterwashingtonpartnership.com
The Greater Washington Partnership is a first-of-its-kind civic alliance of CEOs in the region, drawing from the leading employers and entrepreneurs committed to making the Capital Region– from Baltimore to Richmond – one of the world’s best places to live, work and build a business.
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