Bringing BRAC Into Focus (Metropolitan Report, 2007)
Understanding BRAC: BMC Helps Clarify the Big Picture
Over the next 15 years, the Baltimore region will see significant growth in employment, population and households as a result of the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) adjustments that will occur at Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) in Harford County and Fort Meade in Anne Arundel County.
All told, the Baltimore region could become home to more than 19,000 new households because of the increase in BRAC-related employment, according to estimates. While these new jobs will bring greater economic prosperity to the region, they also bring their own set of challenges, as existing public infrastructure and services become strained.
Mindful of these challenges, the Maryland Department of Planning (MDP) was charged with completing a study to address the statewide implications of BRAC on education, housing, utilities and transportation infrastructure. BMC staff, as a subcontractor, worked with MDP to assess the transportation impacts of BRAC in the Baltimore region. BMC was tasked to create a list of needed highway and transit investments and provide planning study recommendations for the areas around Fort Meade and APG.
"We always enjoy partnering with state and local agencies," said Larry Klimovitz, Executive Director at BMC. "In this case specifically, BMC was uniquely equipped to handle the technical work that state planning needed to have done in order to better understand the impacts of BRAC."
"By working together, I think we were able to create a realistic snapshot of future transportation needs based on the best information available," Klimovitz said of the study, which was completed in December 2006.
Before BMC could begin to assess the transportation implications of BRAC, there needed to be a better understanding of the location of new employment and households. BRAC study partners, MDP and the Regional Economic Studies Institute (RESI) of Towson University, worked with BMC to first define the expected employment types, locations and income information. The types and locations were defined as:
- Direct employment -- which includes on-base military and Department of Defense civilian personnel and embedded contractors;
- Indirect employment -- contractors that provide direct support to the base mission and are generally located within a 45-minute travel-time of a military installation;
- Induced employment -- retail, service, and other types of employment associated with providing goods and services to the new workers, both directly and indirectly.
MDP used the above information as well as home value data, land use data and existing forecasts from the local jurisdictions to allocate the new BRAC-related population households and employment to small geographic units called "transportation analysis zones" or TAZs.
"When you do a study like this, it is important to have a good idea about where you believe the new jobs and households will be," said Dunbar Brooks, BMC's Manager of Data Development. "Only then can you can start looking at the effects these new jobs and households will have on the transportation network."
BMC uses a multimodal travel demand model to predict travel demand and travel behavior that will occur in future years in the Baltimore region. The model allows transportation planners to test various "what if" scenarios and is invaluable in helping prioritize future projects.
In the BRAC study, BMC used the travel demand model to conduct a macro-level analysis by considering the current transportation network, planned improvements and socio-economic projections that were developed earlier. BMC staff analyzed several scenarios for years 2010, 2015, and 2020.
"Using the model, we evaluated the benefits of accelerating certain projects that are in the Baltimore Regional Transportation Plan and whether or not those adjustments would help alleviate anticipated BRAC-related congestion," said Gene Bandy, Manager of Technical Services at BMC.
The results of this work produced a bevy of transportation-related recommendations for the Ft. Meade and APG areas. The findings included recommendations for accelerating planned improvements of several highways, as well as regional bus and/or rail service improvements. Several recommendations for specific planning studies were also included.
Over the next year, BMC, working with local member jurisdictions, will continue to study the potential transportation implications as more information about BRAC activities becomes available. Recently, BMC staff was tasked by the Board of Directors to develop a regional list of critical BRAC-related transportation projects, to assist local jurisdictions as they cooperatively seek state and federal assistance for the recommended investments.
Other Metropolitan Report articles