Downtown Bethesda Bicycle Infrastructure Plan

In July, Montgomery County completed a new draft sector plan for Downtown Bethesda, and next month there will be a meeting to discuss the Bicycle and Pedestrian Infrastructure recommendations from that plan. The meeting will be from 7 to 8:30 p.m. on January 11, 2017 in Room D of the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Center, 4805 Edgemoor Lane, Bethesda.

This community forum, Walking, Biking and the New Bethesda Sector Plan, is intended for those county residents interested in the Planning Board recommendations for making Downtown Bethesda more accessible to pedestrians and cyclists. The discussion will focus on how these proposals for Bethesda are different from what is there today and what it will take to make the changes recommended in the new plan.

The event is co-sponsored by Councilmember Hans Riemer (At-Large) and the Planning Department. It is timed to take place prior to County Council deliberations about the Planning Board-approved draft of the Bethesda Downtown Sector Plan that will begin in mid-January.

You can read the whole plan here. 

The bicycle infrastructure plan recommends adding ~4.5 miles of bike lane along with separated bike lanes, shared roadways and a few blocks of bike trail. 

And by shared street, they don't mean just throwing down sharrows, but rather something like this.

The entire bike sections (page 46-57) is 11 pages long, so it's difficult to to summarize, but among the highlights are separated bicycle lanes on Woodmont Avenue from Battery Lane to Bethesda Avenue; on Bradley Boulevard from Wisconsin Ave to Little Falls Parkway and along Bethesda Ave and Willow lane from the Capital Crescent Trail (CCT) to Elm Street Park. In some cases, the roadway would be widened to allow for bike lanes and wider sidewalks, and in others the road would go on a "road diet" losing a few lanes. 

Other highlights include

• A ramp from Bradley Boulevard to the Capital Crescent Trail, to achieve an ADA-compliant longitudinal grade, where there is currently only stairs
• A connector trail from the CCT to Pearl Street
• Widening the North Bethesda Trail to 12 feet with 1 foot buffers and adding lights

The plan also recommends a bike storage facility, intersection improvements and bike share expansion.

Update: the Post had an article yesterday on the Downtown Bethesda plan too.

Comments

[Brett Young]

Looks like they want a bike lane on Arlington BLVD.
It will be interesting to see how they do that.

[Crickey7]

Were I to guess, I'd say one travel lane in each direction with a turn lane. Which would leave barely enough room for a bike lane in each direction. They need to do something, though. It's the heart of the walkable part of Bethesda, but it's very pedestrian and bike unfriendly along Arlington.

[Anonymouse]

I live close to Arlington and walk it every day. I agree that it's bike unfriendly, but pedestrian unfriendly? Got to disagree with that. Particularly with the new light at Strosnider's it's easy to cross to get virtually anywhere. Am I missing something?

[Crickey7]

To refine my point, I would not safe it's unsafe for pedestrians to the same degree it is for cyclists. It's "unfriendly" in that it's not very welcoming. The sidewalks are fairly narrow and there is no barrier to the traffic zipping by at a speed totally unsuited to its current nature. Did that make more sense?

[Anonymouse]

Ah. That makes sense. Traffic definitely flies at an unreasonable speed for a road that is in the midst of an otherwise pedestrian friendly chunk of real estate.