At the 1st Place and Galloway Street NE meeting a few alternatives were presented, but for cyclists these alternatives had no differences. You can see some community input here.
Along 1st Place (at right), the narrow sidewalk along the west side (in the right in this picture) will be expanded to a 14' sidewalk/trail with a 6' plant buffer, which will serve as a segment of the Metropolitan Branch Trail. This will tie in to the path to Gallatin St. NE and to the stairs near the Metro Station.
Galloway Street NE
Along Galloway Street a 10' sidewalk/trail will be built along the south side of the street where now there is no sidewalk. This will serve as part of the Prince George's County Connector. The sidewalk on the north side also be 10' wide (in most alternatives). I did suggest that the south side should be 12 to 14 feet wide. They have a 60' right of way, but in none of the alternatives do they use it all. The south side will get more traffic because everyone has to eventually get on the south because that's where the Metro is. And it will be serving double duty as the bike trail. They can take space from the unused ROW, the buffer or the north side sidewalk. They don't know the boundary of the right of way, but depending on that, they may have to move the center line of the road which would involve a redesign of the intersection with South Dakota Ave.
The last piece is the suggestion of building a bike station on the median under the Metro tracks. The rendering they had showed bike lockers and inverted U parking. But I wouldn't mind seeing them do something more modern. Bike cages like in Chicago. Pay by the hour lockers like in California. Or working with bikestation to allow Union Station bike station members to use one card/account for lockers at Fort Totten and Union Station. They need to make sure that parking matches demand and they should have also left space for SmartBike.
The design phase will begin this year if they can get stimulus money or next year if they don't. Design takes about a year.
The bigger controversies were about the kiss and ride lot and the cut through paths on NPS land. NPS doesn't want to formalize the paths because they cut down on greenspace. They're hoping that the PGC tail will encourage people to walk around the park. That will not happen.
The kiss and ride lot issue is that Toole Design recommends moving the entrance/exit to the north and putting the taxi queue inside. Some people felt the design wouldn't work and Toole said they were limited by WMATA requirements. But a WMATA employee didn't care for that and pointed out that this is not a WMATA design and that WMATA is not sure it will work.
Two other notes. There was no bike parking at the Metro Transit Police station where the meeting was held - sigh - and I thought it was funny that a sign in front of the trail to Gallatin read "Area Closed at Dark" but then the trail has solar powered lighting.
Update: Stephen Miller with GGW has a post that covers more of the pedestrian and transit issues.
Normally, I wouldn't agree with you about a Smart Bike station here. There aren't other destinations nearby.
However, you could make it a staging point for people who would want to use shared bicycles for using the trail, albeit more into PG County.
This is something I am exploring in Baltimore County, providing bicycle sharing options, albeit with more appropriate bicycles, at transit stations proximate to parks and trails.
Posted by: Richard Layman | March 23, 2010 at 02:31 PM