A bike friendly Rockville Pike

The Gazette reports on the draft concept plans for the Rockville Pike Master Plan

The planning area begins near Richard Montgomery High School and extends south just past Twinbrook Parkway

Rockville Pike in the next 20 years turned into a ‘‘grand boulevard,” designed to encourage use by pedestrians, bicyclists and public transit.

Sketches of the vision of the Pike include service roads that run parallel to the main street and serve buses, bicyclists and pedestrians, separated by a line of trees. The drawings showed wider sidewalks along street fronts, a bike lane in the street and parallel parking.

‘‘If developed, the idea is to have a concept that works, that’s great for pedestrians, works really well for transit and cars,” Levy said. ‘‘If we do it right, transit will be a viable option and pedestrian and bikes are viable options.”

During the workshop, community members, facilitated by city planning staff, sketched their ideas for the city’s portion of the Pike. The sketches included more mixed-use development along the Pike, more density near the Rockville and Twinbrook Metro stations, additional roads and pedestrian and bike paths.

Here's the transportation portion of the charrette. Here's Rockville's Bike Plan.

Oh and there's a meeting on this tonight

Construction is scheduled to begin in mid-July on a new interchange for Rockville Pike and the relocated Randolph Road in Montgomery County. If work goes as scheduled, it should be done by fall 2010.

Maryland State Highway Administration representatives will discuss the impact of the construction at a meeting from 6 to 8 o'clock tonight in the Montrose Christian School cafeteria, 5100 Randolph Road, Rockville.

The new interchange will tie into the new Montrose Parkway, which Montgomery County is building just to the west. The project includes construction of a hiker-biker trail connecting existing trails.

Comments

[old reader]

gee, the last time i read -- and then stopped reading - this blog was over a year ago...and I see that little has changed: it is still irrelevant...it needs a new editor and or editorial direction...

[washcycle]

Well, it's not really fair to just say it sucks. How could it become relevant? What type of editorial direction should it take?

Wait Mike/Jon/Thomas Paine/walter/lars/not a moron/Michael Ross/Guido Giarusso/DOOM/Ernest/old reader/bicycleutopia/jkurere or whatever your name is now. Since you bike so many miles and are "a cat 2 biker and friends of marty nothstein and have a PhD, have taught at 4 universities, been in clinical practice, blah, blah, etc etc., and biked around the world as well as never owning a car; and you raced with a young lance armstrong when you were a older pro and he was a young one", perhaps you should write a bicycle advocacy blog. One that is relevant. You could edit and provide the correct editorial direction. I welcome another voice.