White Oak's first delineated bike lanes

Really late to this but earlier this year Montgomery County announced the first "protected bike lanes in White Oak," even though I don't think a lot of readers of this blog would call them "protected". Not to poop on them, as it's great that they have them, it's just they're buffered with flexposts, but don't provide real protection. 

The bike lanes were built by Washington Adventist Hospital as part of the agreement to amend their site's zoning. They're on Plum Orchard Road and stretch for about a mile, connecting to the sidepath along Cherry Hill Road on one end. The flex posts were a late addition and are better than simply buffered bike lanes, IMO. An older design included a two-way bikeway on one side of the road. 

They represent the first time that a private entity - the recently opened Adventist HealthCare - has constructed separated bike lanes in Montgomery County. The Plum Orchard Ave bike lanes are the first installment of the  White Oak separated bike lane network, which will be further expanded as part of the Viva White Oak development project.

Someday this (highlighted in yellow) will connect to a larger network, but not a trail along Paint Branch.

Comments

[Martin P]

There is something vaguely approaching a network beginning to take shape in that area, although a lot of it is substandard in my opinion. There are now traditional bike lanes on Broadbirch that aren't shown on that map (albeit rather narrow ones), and a few weeks ago traditional bike lanes were also striped on Cherry Hill from 29 to Broadbirch/Calverton (although I think that setup without buffering is not great for a road as busy as Cherry Hill is).

These two just seemed to be resurfacing opportunities to fit in bike lanes rather than seriously thinking about how to redesign the roads, though.

[Shalom Flank]

It's *south* on Cherry Hill (from Plum Orchard) that is the worst gap in the network around there. There's the beautiful new sidepath trail up from the UMD campus, but it only goes as far as Sellman, where it turns to head into Little Paint Branch / Beltsville commmunity center. There's simply no route to safely get up to all those high-activity centers (the shopping center, Riderwood, FDA, etc).

(Although I haven't been there since the pandemic started, so maybe a miracle has happened in the meantime?)