Prince George’s County Councilmember Eric Olson (right) speaks with Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley (left) at the announcement of new state offices near New Carrollton station. Photo via Flickr.
Prince George’s County, MD has no lack of ways to get around or places nearby to go. The largely suburban county just outside of Washington, DC contains fifteen Metro stations and is served by two MARC commuter rail lines, among other transit routes. But regulatory red tape has made it difficult for developers to build near stations and as a result, many stations are most easily identified by the parking lots that surround them.
Prince George’s County Councilmember and Smart Growth America Local Leaders Council member Eric Olson is working to change that and to help the county’s transit services work better for county residents, neighborhoods and businesses.
Olson’s district is made up primarily of “legacy suburbs,” neighborhoods built in the years after World War II and conveniently located close to a city’s center, and Olson has worked to make sure these neighborhoods are well-maintained.
“You need to make sure that investments are still going in to legacy neighborhoods,” Olson says. “That sidewalks are functional. That you can walk safely to a bus station or Metro station, so they remain attractive places to live.”
Building near transit stations is part of keeping the county’s legacy neighborhoods strong. Olson has introduced, sponsored and helped to pass bills that have lowered the fees for developers who are building around Metro stations, and helped to implement the County’s Complete Streets policy by requiring the Planning Board to “ensure the adequacy of non-motorized multimodal transportation facilities including sidewalks, bikeways, and pathways” close to any new development in the County’s transit-heavy Centers and Corridors. His experience helping to turn merely transit-adjacent spaces into vibrant, walkable centers has colored his definition of smart growth: “It’s making sure that we put the jobs and the housing where we have existing transit.”
Olson’s efforts to provide alternatives to short car trips extends to his district’s most prominent institution: the University of Maryland at College Park. Until relatively recently, driving from an off-campus apartment to class was the obvious daily transportation choice for many students.
Things are starting to change thanks to Councilmember Olson. For the past decade, he has been “instrumental” in helping to secure a mix of new student housing and retail along the Route One corridor, which is walking distance from campus and is served by several of the University’s Shuttle UM routes.
Since the first campus-adjacent development went up in 2004, annual ridership has doubled on the University shuttle, from 1.6 million riders in 2004 to 3.5 million in 2012. “That’s a good correlation,” Olson says. “Many students I’m sure are also walking from these student housing developments.” Recently, Olson, the Council and the University have turned their attention to expanding the permitted uses of land surrounding College Park’s Metrorail station.
Despite the extensiveness of rail transit in and around Washington, “there’s no way to get from one side of the [Maryland side of the] region to the other without going all the way in and then out again,” says Olson. A solution is near in the form of the Purple Line, a proposed expansion of the Washington Metro that will connect Maryland’s Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties via a 16-mile light rail line. Funding for the line, announced this year, will include the state’s first transit public-private partnership, state funding, and federal grants.
The Purple Line, which has been championed by Olson and fellow Local Leader Hans Riemer, will transform Metrorail from the traditional “hub and spoke” transit system in which lines cluster in a city center and spread far apart in the suburbs into an interconnected system that better serves walkable suburbs like those in Prince George’s County.
Olson’s advice for other elected and appointed officials working to strengthen legacy suburbs? “Listen. Listen to your constituents and take a holistic approach. Everything is related.”