National Naval Medical Center BRAC not looking good

Late last month I wrote about the Base Realignment and Closure plan , which will move the Walter Reed Army Medical Center from its current location in Washington, D.C. to the campus of the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda.

Since then more has been brought to my attention. First, there's this article from the Gazette which points out that the $200 million project is only "expected to [cause] small improvements in efficiency with the new traffic from BRAC after the projects are completed." Many people claimed that it does little to nothing to improve safety for pedestrians, increase transit or make cycling easier.

Angela Atwood-Moore, president of the Bicycle Commuter Club at the National Institutes of Health, sharply criticized SHA for not promoting bike infrastructure as a way to reduce the number of cars on the road.

"You can't do that by making it easier for people to drive their cars," said Atwood-Moore.

In the design, the State Highway Administration (SHA) is ignoring its own recently adopted guidelines (2-602 of the Annotated Code of Maryland) calling for bicycle enhancements to be incorporated in all major SHA road construction projects

As to any new transportation project or improvement to an existing transportation facility, the Department shall work to ensure that transportation options for pedestrians and bicycle riders will be enhanced and that pedestrian and bicycle access to transportation facilities will not be negatively impacted by the project or improvement.

In some cases the work they are doing will make it harder to add master planned bike facilities in the future because they are taking all of the available right of way. The bicycle facilities the plans impact include

1) A planned multiuse path on Ceder Lane between Rockville Pike and Old Georgetown Road

2) Widening the existing Bethesda Trolley Trail (aka North Bethesda Trail) which, near NIH, is just a narrow sidewalk (which at one one intersection has a telephone pole in the middle). Widening Old Georgetown Road could make it impossible to widen the trail to be AASHTO-compliant. As Jack Cochrane points out "The county wants to widen the trail and move it a few feet from the street. Some homeowners are not opposed, but signs are not good that NIH would allow any widening on their land.  The real crime is that the BRAC proposals widen both Cedar and Old Georgetown (not to mention Rockville Pike, etc.) yet do not call for any improvement to this trail. Depending on NIH, that could kill chances of ever widening the trail."

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3) Widening and other upgrades to the multiuse path on the east side of NIH (running on the west side of Rockville Pike between Jones Bridge Road and Cedar Lane)

4) Striped bike lanes on Old Georgetown Road, Jones Bridge Road, and Connecticut Avenue in the vicinity of the intersections covered in the BRAC scope of work.

Congressman Van Hollen wrote a letter to SHA asking them to include bicycle and pedestrian improvements in their plans. He rightly points out that "if attempts to improve automobile access come at the expense of bicyclists, then efforts to relieve traffic may actually increase the number of cars on the road as bicycle commuters turn to automobiles to get to work."

Right now, as the area tries to move away from an automobile-centric way of planning roads - such as just up the road in White Flint - this seems like backward thinking. ACT wrote which raised concerns about the excessive focus on moving automobiles as part of the EIS process.

It's foolish to focus solely on improving automobile access at a facility that is

a) Across the street from a Metro Station
b) Surrounded by three bike trails
c) In a walkable area
d) With frequent bus service

Especially at a facility focused on health.

WABA and Mobike are working with the NIH Bike Commuter Club and neighborhood groups to encourage SHA to include better bicycle accommodations as part of the Bethesda BRAC project.

Anyone interested in weighing in on behalf of including these improvements can send an e-mail to:

Barb Solberg, the project representative, at BSolberg@sha.state.md.us

Update: I missed this article when writing the initial post. 

State transportation officials are getting more pressure to focus on bike and pedestrian improvements as part of a solution to new traffic caused by Walter Reed Army Medical Center's future move to Bethesda.

Community members continue to criticize the lack of long-term plans for the area around the future Walter Reed National Military Medical Center at the current National Naval Medical Center campus. They argue that proposed improvements at four intersections near the campus do not facilitate the ultimate goal of taking cars off local roads, and that bike and pedestrian upgrades should be a focus of the $36.2 million in state and federal money available for Base Realignment and Closure project improvements.

Residents are interested in pedestrian and bike paths similar to the wide path and associated grass buffer in front of Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, Hopkins said. They are also interested in promoting better connectivity between the existing paths.

County BRAC Coordinator Phil Alperson also said at the committee meeting that he expects to hear "fairly soon" about a $750,000 grant requested [WC:it was granted] from the Department of Defense that would pay for a county study of the bike and pedestrian facilities around Navy Med.

The facilities that would be studied for potential upgrades are located along Cedar Lane and West Cedar lane, Battery Lane, Glenbrook Parkway, Rockville Pike and Jones Bridge Road.

SHA engineer Barb Solberg, who is working on the intersections, said she didn't know if the bike and pedestrian improvements would help reduce the traffic on BRAC-affected roads.

Two out of 82 public comments received as of April 21 were supportive of the projects, according to Solberg.

Committee chairman John Carman said community members could choose to turn down the money for the improvements and instead request a new long-term master plan for the area beyond September 2011, when the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center is required to open.

"Are you willing to accept nothing?" Carman asked.

Considering the complete lack of support, I think people are willing to accept "nothing". Though "nothing" is not how I would phrase the status quo. And really, it's their car-centric improvement or nothing? {Don't worry it isn't]

Comments

[Jack Cochrane]

Part of the impediment to improving the Bethesda Trolley Trail has been NIH (or so we thought), since a wider trail further from the street would have some impacts on NIH property. But now we're finding out that there may have been a misunderstanding between SHA and NIH, both thinking the other is against improving the trail. We're hearing NIH might not be opposed. With the help of the Montgomery County Planning Dept. we're trying to put all parties on the same page and we're more hopeful on that front. As for the Cedar Lane path, that may be an easier project to build, but we're working on that too. It remains to be seen what can be done on Jones Bridge Road or Connecticut Ave.