Last month, both the Montgomery County Council and the Planning Board approved the new Sector Plan for Downtown Bethesda. The bicycle portion is largely the same for cyclists, adding ~4.5 miles of bike lane along with separated bike lanes, shared roadways and a few blocks of bike trail, but in a few cases the bike facilities were truncated a little and in one it was extended.
The draft plan map looked like this:
And the final plan like this
There are a few differences.
- The proposed bike lane on Wilson no longer extends all the way to Arlington Road
- The proposed sharrows on Edgemore no longer go west of Arlington
- The proposed bike lane on Pearl now goes 1 block farther north before turning into sharrows, but no longer goes north of Sleaford Road
- The proposed sharrows on Avondale now extend another block to Pearl
That's it as near as I can tell.
Of course in addition to adding some new facilities, it recommends improving others. For example it recommends widening the North Bethesda Trail to 12 feet with 1-foot- wide shoulders on either side between Rugby Avenue and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus and lighting added. It would also add a 0.9 acre North Bethesda Trail Gateway Park - a green and active linear park
connection between the National Institutes of Health and Woodmont Triangle.
Approval is next needed from the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission
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