This project will update the Countywide Master Plan of Transportation and will build on the recommendations of the General Plan, approved by the County Council in December of 2002. Among other recommendations, the General Plan recommended that an updated Countywide Master Plan of Transportation be prepared as a functional master plan to support and supplement the desired development pattern in the General Plan.
The General Plan's Transportation Systems Element contained three policies:
Provide for a transportation system that supports the General Plan development pattern.
Capitalize fully on the economic development and community revitalization potential of circumferential transit (now known as the Purple Line) alignments within and through Prince George’s County.
Ensure that the countywide transportation system is planned and integrated with land use to achieve county growth and development goals.
The updated Countywide Master Plan of Transportation will be a strategy for implementing Policy 1 above. As a functional master plan, it will concern how the transportation network supports the county’s development pattern by linking public and private resources with specific transportation policies, facilities and services that help attain the goals and concepts in the General Plan.
The updated Countywide Master Plan of Transportation will be prepared in accordance with the Public Participation Program that has been approved by the Prince George's County Planning Board and the Prince George's County Council. This project will not revisit the land use, growth and development issues that were decided by the Council when it approved the General Plan in October 2002. Instead, the updated Countywide Master Plan of Transportation will analyze and provide the more detailed recommendations for the transportation programs, facilities and services needed to support the goals, policies and strategies in the General Plan, as amended by subsequent master and sector plans.
When it is approved, the updated Countywide Master Plan of Transportation may amend the transportation recommendations of existing master plans. The Countywide Master Plan of Transportation will, in turn, be periodically amended by new and revised transportation recommendations in the master plans that are approved once it has been adopted and approved. The Countywide Master Plan of Transportation document itself will be a “living document” that can be comprehensively and quickly updated to reflect these amendments and revisions and thus ensure that citizens, stakeholders and others have one up to date reference for the county’s functional transportation master plan. The current timetable (see below) calls for adoption and approval of the Countywide Master Plan of Transportation by the fall of 2008.
