The Chevy Chase Club has agreed to give up a strip of land 1 feet wide in exchange for a new 8 foot tall fence, a decision that will make a planned shared-use path along Wisconsin Avenue possible.
The project would create a shared-use path on the northbound side of Wisconsin Avenue, between Grafton Street and Bradley Lane, that would accommodate pedestrians, cyclists and bus users. An updated design should be complete by late fall, SHA spokesman David Buck wrote in an email.
An environmental group, the Little Falls Watershed Alliance, opposses the plan because it will remover several trees and has proposed an alternative plan that MoBike opposes
The plan calls for a short sidewalk south of the Chevy Chase Club between Hesketh and Grafton streets, upgrades to bus stops between Bradley and Grafton, and improvements to an existing sidewalk on the other side of Wisconsin Avenue, said Dan Dozier, co-president of the alliance.
The plan is opposed by Montgomery Bicycle Advocates because it eliminates bicycle access on that side of Wisconsin Avenue, said Jack Cochrane, chair of MoBike. MoBike has no formal membership, but has 200 people on its listserv.
Cochrane said the segment of new sidewalk proposed by the alliance is an important segment for pedestrian access, but the project is “not just a pedestrian project.”
MoBike also wants the SHA planned to be modified.
The southernmost 500 feet of the sidewalk proposed by SHA is adjacent to private homes and would be 5 feet wide, he said.
Five feet is unsafe for novice cyclists who risk falling from the sidewalk into traffic, Cochrane said. MoBike will request that the county approach homeowners south of the Chevy Chase Club to obtain additional land, he said.
“We urge the county to ask these property owners to provide land or an easement that would allow construction of the path further from the street in return for monetary compensation of some sort,” he said. “To my knowledge no one has asked them for this.”
5 feet is too narrow for a shared-use path.
The concern is appropriate from an engineering perspective. I think it may prove an acceptable compromise at the end of the day. The 5' portion is short and not heavily trafficed by pedestrians. The path in general is likely to be used by bus passengers along and cyclists. While I prefer to use the road there, it is quite intimidating for many cyclists. The proposed path will be a dramatic improvmeent over using the sidewalk on the other side, which is narrow, heavily used by pedestrians and has numerous cross-streets and driveways.
Posted by: Crikey7 | August 15, 2012 at 06:12 PM