Officials from the Maryland Department of Transportation are currently touring the state to promote next year's transportation spending plan. This is an excellent opportunity to tell them to focus more transportation funding on expanding transit and improving neighborhoods near transit stations.

Tell your legislators to rethink how we spend our transportation dollars.

Much of the urban development in the U.S. over the past fifty years has been poorly planned.  Development is too often characterized by the conversion of natural or agricultural land to low-density residential enclaves and commercial centers, all separated from one another by roads and parking lots. 

This dispersed development pattern threatens our quality of life and harms the environment.  Poorly managed growth destroys valuable open space and farmland, leads to the abandonment of our cities, forces us to drive long distances between home and work or shopping, increases traffic congestion, wastes tax dollars, and pollutes our air and water.  We must reverse current development patterns and create planned, livable communities. 

We can address these problems by changing the way we fund transportation projects. By funding transit and promoting development around transit stops, we can preserve Maryland's open spaces and increase our quality of life.

In 1997, the Maryland General Assembly passed a package of smart growth bills, but they have not had nearly the impact envisioned.  The pace of land development for residential and commercial uses has been essentially unchanged compared to the decades immediately prior to the launch of Maryland's smart growth strategy, according to a recent Environment Maryland analysis.