Silver Spring's Second and Wayne Avenue bikeway will connect trails through downtown

Sometime in 2018, MCDOT hopes to build a protected bike lane on Second and Wayne Avenues in downtown Silver Spring. This road diet, would create the county's 5th protected bike lane. 

This project will follow the Spring Street/Cedar Street Separated Bike Lanes project (the county's 4th protected bike lane), which is being constructed in Spring 2017. It will connect to, and extend those lanes west - where they will connect to the future Capital Crescent Trail.  On the east side, it would connect to the Silver Spring Green Trail. 

Because the road has different widths in different locations, the design differs from section to section. From Spring to Fenwick, there will be conventional 5' wide bike lanes. From Fenwick to Colesville Road there will be one-way, 6' wide separated bike lanes on each side, with a 6' wide buffer.

From Colesville Road to Georgia Avenue it will have a 2-way, 8' wide separated bikeway on the north side of the street. This will be accomplished by moving the curb in and taking advantage of an old bus bay. 

The most unusual, and likely most controversial, part is the so-called "Colesville Transition," where eastbound cyclists will turn across the avenue to the north side to join the two-way bikeway.

Other intersections will be redesigned too. Designs use two-stage queue box pavement markings, colored paint, and floating bus stops. 

And at Spring and Second, there will be a protected intersection.

The final design should be done this upcoming summer, with the 3-4 month project starting in late 2017 or early 2018. A .pdf with the full current design can be found here.

Public comments can be sent to [email protected] until December 21st. 

 

Comments

[Crickey7]

MontCo is finally taking some baby steps on cycling infra. It may or may not work, but they can always tweak it.

[Clark]

I look forward to this critical connection for safe bike travel across Colesville Road. Though I wonder why the transition between the one-way protected bike lanes west of Colesville and the two-way protected bikeway to the east needs to happen at the Colesville intersection? The two-stage crossing for eastbound bikes will be confusing, it's a very busy intersection for all modes, and crossing the Lenox Park drop-off zone on Second Avenue will cause frequent conflicts. I'm most concerned about eastbound bikes queuing up on the crosswalk at the northwest corner of the intersection, blocking people walking and drivers turning. Seems like an unnecessarily complicated design.

Why not move this transition west to the intersection of Second Avenue with Apple and Cameron Streets or, better, Fenwick Lane? The intersection could more easily take advantage of a bike-only light cycle and there wouldn't be the queuing issue for east bound bikes at Colesville Road, they would just continue through as part of the two-way bikeway. Seems to be adequate space since the continued cycle track would need 10' while the proposed one-way protected bike lane just on the north side of Second Avenue calls for 12'.

Am I missing anything that would make this unworkable?

[Brian]

Clark:
I attended this meeting and the staff mentioned that it wasn't possible to move the transition further west because 2nd Ave is too narrow with turn lanes to make that possible.

They also stressed the benefit of keeping the one way lanes on each side which overall a better design. With the metro station on the eastbound/south side, many riders would not want to transition to the north side of the street just before heading right into the station area.

[Clark]

@Brian

I agree that the width of Second Avenue would be an issue if the center medians stayed where they are. Otherwise, it seems there's more than enough space curb-to-curb. And one-way lanes do seem valuable as they run with the flow of traffic, though the length of conflict area on the southside of Second Ave (btwn Apple and Colesville) and two-stage 'Colesville Transition' seems to complicate the benefit.

I appreciate the importance of access to the Metro Station, though it that were a priority, I'd expect the one-way protected bike lane on the south side of Second Avenue to continue one block more to the east (Ramsey Avenue).

I'm sure staff explored many options here, just adding my two cents. I'll be happy to ride anything better than what's there today.

[Roo_Beav]

There's a LOT going on in those diagrams. The thing I like best is the floating bus stops.

What I don't care for is that this is a lot of paint without any protection. The legend has delineator posts (flexposts), but none are drawn in. Throw several hundred of posts up and things improve greatly.

Things work well in traffic engineering theory, but here's where I see things breaking down:
- Spring to Fenwick is in door zone (Remove east-side parking & put west-side bike lane behind parked cars)
- Southbound vehicles at Apple will swerve into bike lane (w/o looking) to pass left-turning vehicles (Remove center planter or protect bike lane somehow)
- Lane in front of Metro Plaza is useless with current double-parking/unloading (Inset A doesn't fix it)

I'm not a fan of the Colesville setup. I usually get into the left turn lane instead. Perhaps after Apple, the southbound lane becomes center-running?

The bus stop by McDonald's is very busy, but has been removed? Forces riders to walk uphill or cross ~13 lanes of traffic to transit center.

Longer term, there should be a curb bump-out in front of 8401 Colesville.