The Montgomery Council Council voted to delay the expansion of the Montrose parkway and to defer adding two lanes to Goshen Road South in Gaithersburg until after 2024 to free up money for transit, pedestrian and bicycle projects.
The Montrose Parkway project, while mostly a road expansion, would also include a 10' wide bike path along the north side from Parklawn to Viers Mill. Planners believe the trail would get high use. Where the Parkway met with the Rock Creek Park Trail, the new path would connect to the trail and the trail would go over the Parkway on a 107 foot long bridge.
Design for the RCT bridge over Montrose Parkway
The Goshen Road widening would include an 8'-wide hiker-biker path on the west side and 5'-wide bike lanes on both sides.
The one-year delay from Leggett’s initial proposed construction schedule will enable the [Parkway] project to be redesigned to incorporate “better pedestrian and bicycle facilities and connections,”
The major change would be to enlarge the width of the shared use path from 10' to 16', consistent with its view that this trail be part of its proposed off-road "breezeway" network of bikeways.
Some of the money freed up ($2.98million) will go to funding the Bicycle and Pedestrian Priority Area Projects.
The council proposed other projects, but only the one in bold below was in the final agreement.
- $2.8 million to accelerate bicycle infrastructure projects in the Wheaton, Veirs Mill, Takoma-Langley and Pine Branch areas
- $1 million for bike lanes between Nebel Street and the White Flint Metro station
- $12 million to begin the final design and right-of-way acquisition for a new four-mile hiker and biker path along the east side of Falls Road from River Road to Dunster Road in the Potomac area
- $12.5 million to construct a 3.5-mile cycling and walking path called the Life Sciences Loop Trail in the Gaithersburg area
- $9 million to complete a bikeway on MacArthur Boulevard from Oberlin Avenue to DC. The improvements included widening the existing shared-use path to 8', widening the roadway to 26' to allow sufficient width for on-road biking, and providing a 5' -wide buffer between the road and the shared-use path. Project will be delayed for ~4 years.
In addition,
Some proposed investments in bicycle infrastructure were deleted from the plan, especially in areas upcounty and near the Potomac.
As an aside, I noticed that on the Capital Crescent Trails Budget Page they used a photo of the trail from in DC.
Finally, this letter has a lot of information on the status of bike projects in Montgomery County. If you're curious about something, it's a great place to start. For example, the CIP includes funding to:
Build an on-street route for the Capital Crescent Trail through the Bethesda CBD and funding for the Bethesda Loop Trail identified in the recently approved Bethesda Downtown Sector Plan. It will consist of protected bike lanes on Woodmont Avenue between Norfolk Avenue and Wisconsin Avenue ($1,860,000), protected bike lanes on Montgomery Avenue between Woodmont Avenue and Pearl Street ($1,004,000), and bike lanes on Norfolk Avenue/Cheltenham Drive between Woodmont Avenue and Pearl Street ($91,000) and on Pearl Street between Cheltenham Drive and Montgomery A venue ($45,000). The Pearl Street bike lanes would be finished in FY20, and the other segments in FY21.
After a period when MoCo fell increasingly behind Arlington in bike infra, it looks like it's starting to catch up--at least on paper. Now if I can just get drivers to stop parking in the bike lanes on Woodmont, and driving in the bike lanes on River.
Posted by: Crickey | June 08, 2018 at 04:27 PM