TheWashCycle

CWL 2020: #11 Takoma Branch

Takoma Branch is a 1.7 mile long tributary of Sligo Creek, it's rare in the Anacostia watershed in that it flows north - if ever so slightly - and it starts in DC and flows into Maryland*. A trail along Takoma Branch, while only a little more than a mile long, could constitute most of a connection between the ATTS and the bike lanes on Kansas Ave NW in DC. 

The blue line on the map above is the power line corridor between Takoma Park and Ellicott City, which could make most of the trail superfluous. A trail along this corridor from Ray Road to the Beltway was the first one mentioned in the 1990 Sector Plan that governs this area, and it may go back as far as the 1975 Countywide Trails plan. 

Even if such a trail were built, the western quarter of a mile would still be useful. More so if DDOT ever added a protected bike facility to Kansas; something neither they nor WABA have made a priority of. It would likely require an overpass, underpass or improved crossing of New Hampshire Avenue at Poplar Ave/Ray Road to make it safe though.

And the last little bit on the east, from Chillum Manor road to the existing Trail bridge over Sligo Creek could have utility as a connector, and one more pleasant than the one farther down. 

With or without a power line trail, this stream valley has some value as a trail, but more with an improvement of facilities in DC. 

*There are a few others along the south side of Sligo Creek and NW Branch, but they aren't named. The most relevant one to cyclists flows between 16th and 18th Avenue and was once considered as a route of the PG County Connector trail, in fact a small connector trail branches off near it to Ray Road.

Montgomery County Planning Board reports on trails

Last week, the Montgomery County Planning Board presented it's semi-annual report to the County Council and it included quite a bit about trail expansion and safety.

In total the county has about 245 miles of trail, much of which is unpaved or natural ground, according to the report.

“Trail usage data and surveys continue to tell us that our trails are among our most highly utilized and desired facilities,” said Michael Riley, who serves as Montgomery County Parks Director. “They serve so many different purposes from community building to physical fitness.”

Riley reported that a major project currently in the works is the Upper Paint Branch Trail plan which will create a sustainable multi-use trail network in an area that has fewer trails available.

“There was a low level of service in East County,” Riley said. “The trail will provide links to parks community destinations and a larger countywide trail network.”

It will also provide access to natural areas for people to enjoy. The project is in the implementation phase, Riley said.

The Upper Paint Branch trail system will be a natural surface trail system in eastern Montgomery County, near Burtonsville, Fairland, Cloverly, and White Oak.  There are four phases and work on phase 1 started in February. Phase 1 consists of a pair of natural surface loop trails near the source of the Good Hope Branch, a tributary of Upper Paint Branch. Phase 2 builds most of the trail north south along Upper Paint Branch, connecting to the Anacostia Tributary Trail System at Fairland Road, and should be built in the 2-5 year range. Phase 3, to be built more than 5 years from now will create some small pieces as well as extend it north to the Patuxent and west to New Hampshire Avenue. Phase 4 will be built sometime later and will consist of an underpass beneath Briggs Chaney Road.

The report also notes that the next section of the Power Line trail is scheduled to be completed by January 2020. It "will double the distance of the trail to connect Quince Orchard Road to Cabin John Regional Park." And that

To expand potential commuting opportunities for residents, Montgomery Parks will launch a year-long pilot program in spring 2019 to allow e-bikes and e-scooters on all hard surface park trails within the county. Throughout the pilot, Montgomery Parks will solicit public input to consider the possibility of making it a permanent program, which will also accommodate the growth in commercial dockless e-bikes and e-scooters in the county and DC region

The planning board is also focused on improving the safety of at-grade trail crossings

“We’ve identified 121 locations where park trails cross roads. We’re able with our current funding to improve about ten intersections per year,” Riley said.

The goal is to improve all of them by 2030. 

According to Riley, the trails have their own Vision Zero project that aims to eliminate deaths and injuries that are preventable by the design and laws of the roadway. Often that means redesigning streets so that pedestrians are more visible or lowering the speed limit for cars.

“I still meet regularly with state highway (officials), DOT and county police about the Henson crossing at a very small road where unfortunately we had experienced fatalities,” Riley said. “It is much improved but there is still more to be done, and I’m not going to quit on that until I believe that we’ve done absolutely everything we can do to make that intersection as safe as possible.”

There was also another fatality on the Little Falls Parkway where the Capital Crescent Trail crosses a major roadway.

In the first quarter of 2019, four projects have been completed and eight additional projects are under construction. Additionally, 15 crossings are scheduled for the design phase this spring.

CWL 2018 #1 Takoma Park To Ellicott City

The utility corridor from Ellicott City to Takoma Park is the one that comes the closest to Washington, DC, ending just 2000 feet from the DC Boundary at the Takoma Substation along New Hampshire Avenue. The corridor goes north, following a route once planned for a highway and once considered for the Green Line to the Beltway where it tracks along I-95, passing through Laurel and over the Patuxent River to Ellicott City and Howard County. 

Green is the Takoma-Ellicott City corridor, other utility corridors are in red. 

On the close-in section, within the Beltway, the corridor crosses the Sligo Creek, Northwest Branch and the Buck Lodge Community Park Trails, creating connections. The last of those could be the north end of the inside-the-Beltway section.  At Takoma, it could use Poplar Ave, Circle Ave and Kansas Lane in Montgomery County to connect to Kansas Avenue, which has bike lanes and will intersect the future Met Branch Trail.  That could be "Phase I" - the easy, close in trail. 

From Buck Lodge, extending the trail north across Prince George's County would require getting across the Beltway where the power lines go right through the I-95 interchange. Maybe a trail could be built under I-95 someday by building a trail through a larger underpass along Paint Branch, but the easiest route would likely be to connect the trail to the Little Paint Branch Trail extension (which is now open) and use that.  Then, using existing trails and bike lanes the trail could go all the way across I-95 to the ICC at Old Gunpowder Drive, where it could connect to the ICC Trail. From there, a trail to and along the utility corridor could, with admittedly some difficulty, then extend all the way to the Patuxent River. 

The trail would then need to cross the Patuxent River into Howard County, and do so at a point where the river is more of a lake due to a dam. It would likely make the most sense to go around the lake by building a route along Brooklyn Bridge Road, I-95 and Stansfield Road, but a bridge would be wicked cool. 

The trail could then continue along the corridor, with some more challenging barriers - like the Patuxent Freeway and Route 100 - before getting to the north end.

On the north end it connects to another corridor running around Baltimore from Pumphrey and the Baltimore Light Rail station at Nursery Road to Reisterstown and on north into Pennsylvania. 

Along the way the Takoma Park-Ellicott City line connects to two other corridors. One from Ashmead to Hanover and another that goes 84 miles from Germantown to the Nice Bridge. 

Of course a trail along here would only be a little cool. What would be really cool would be a trail with a transit line (like a busway?) along this corridor all the way to Takoma where it could then connect to one or more of the Metro Stations (Takoma, Fort Totten, Georgia Avenue or Hyattsville being most likely). The line is a straight shot and gets to with a couple of miles of multiple Metro stations. There's room for the power line towers, two lanes of busway (or monorail or whatever) and a 16 foot wide bike trail. But it wouldn't be cheap. 

CWL 2018 #2 Forest Heights to Brandywine

The 3rd of 4 lines that cross inside the Beltway in Prince George's County, the line between Forest Heights and Brandywine ends about 2000 feet from the DC boundary and a little more than a football field away from the Oxon Hill Farm Trail in Oxon Hill National Park. 

I recall when the Wilson Bridge Trail opened, I was told that the original plan for connecting the Wilson Bridge to DC was to use the power line ROW from the OHF trail to the Bald Eagle Road Bridge over the Beltway, but that it had run into opposition. It's still the best option. A small connection (purple) from the trail to the end of the ROW would connect the two as well as the Forest Heights neighborhood at Seneca Drive.

Getting through the interchange would be extremely difficult, but skipping over that, a separate trail could be built on the ROW from Carson Park in Oxon Hill to Cherry Tree Crossing Road in the Cheltenham area of Brandywine. In fact a section south of Piscataway Road already has a trail, the Green Trail, on it as part of the Cosca Regional Park trail system.

Along the way, such a trail would intersect with the Henson Creek Trail at Tucker Road, and with other power line ROWs elsewhere at Tucker Road, at Burches Hill and then on the east terminus. Those ROWs could connect to Capital Heights, the Nice Bridge, White Plains and all the way to Germantown in Montgomery County and Dunn Loring, VA.

There would be some tough crossings for this trail - especially at Branch Avenue and Crain Highway - but altogether the ROW could be used to create a relatively painless pair of trails about 14 miles long.

CWL 2018 #3 Alexandria to Dumfries

This is the only utility corridor on this list to stretch into Alexandria, and it then heads south across Fairfax where there are already short trail segments on the corridor.

On the east end, the corridor starts just inside the beltway at the water treatment plant and then moves into the same corridor as the Beltway. This is not impossible for a trail to navigate, but it would mean placing a trail in between a freeway and its ramps, or other facilities, on top of what is now a drainage ditch.  And at least one bridge would be needed over Hooff Run. It's probably not worth it, even if it does create a connection to the Eisenhower Avenue Metro.

Getting across the Beltway there would be very difficult too. Better to just use the trail on Eisenhower and the ramp to Telegraph Road. But it's nice to have options.

From there, the corridor - now in Fairfax County -  becomes a lot easier to use all the way to S. Van Dorn Street. In fact for most of the way between S.Van Dorn and Rose Hill there's already a trail. Between Van Dorn and Hayfield the corridor runs along Manchester Boulevard and over some parking lots, making it harder to adapt, but at Hayfield another trail picks up (and diverts along a spur to Kingstown Village Parkway) and the corridor becomes easy to adapt all the way to I-95 and the railroad line east of it. The spur is also adaptable up to that point.

Interestingly, a bridge for either of those over the railroad would create a connection to the Fairfax County Parkway Trail. 

There's no way to cross I-95 by bike between Rolling Road and the Franconia-Springfield Parkway (and maybe that should be fixed) but once on the west side it again becomes a good corridor all the way to the Occoquan. One small section has a trail on it and the corridor is criss-crossed by trails in the South Run Stream Valley Park. It also connects with the Cross County Trail, some sidepaths along Pohlick, Ox and Silverbrook Roads and another corridor that goes to Middleburg, VA. On the downside, crossing some of the roads would be unpleasant without grade separation. 

On the other side of the Occoquan, in Prince William County, the corridor gets more difficult with lots of water crossings, another crossing of I-95 and some wetland issues. But certainly parts could be adapted.  There are two parallel corridors in that part of the County that lead to the Possom Point power plant - the other one goes to Idylwood -  and it might make sense to focus on the other one first, or to find a way to use parts of each. Along the way it intersects another corridor, and then there are a few other lines that come out of Possom Point. 

CWL 2018 #4 Capital Heights to La Plata

Starting at the Addison Road Metro Station and heading south into down to Charles County to the east side of La Plata, this 42 mile corridor connects to both the Henson Creek Trail and the Indian Head Rail Trail.

Inside the Beltway

Inside the Beltway, the corridor is mostly open with just a few parking lots built on it, but there more than a few big roads to cross: Walter Mill Road, Marlboro Pike, Pennsylvania Avenue, Suitland Road, the Suitland Parkway and Branch Avenue. There's also Henson Creek to get across. Along the way, the corridor passes through Walker Mill, District Heights, Suitland and Marlow Heights and within a few hundred feet of the Branch Avenue Metro. A trail on this part of the corridor would be easy to build and fill a void in an under-served area. 

Outside the Beltway

Getting over the Beltway might require a unique crossing as there aren't really any good ones nearby.  But once over, it's a short distance along Henson Creek to the Henson Creek Trail. Then the corridor goes across Oxon Hill where it intersects with a corridor between Forest Heights and Brandywine (#2 on this list). Past that, it gets a little difficult as it passes over back yards until it's south of Airport Drive near Rose Valley Elementary School, but it could go on road. It then passes through Tinker's Creek and Piscataway Stream Valley Parks into White Hall. There it begins a long run parallel to, but about 2000 feet east of, Indian Head Highway all the way to Charles County. It's a little built up in this section, but not impassable for a trail.

Charles County

After passing through the Accokeek area into Charles County the corridor cuts through forest all the way to the Indian Head Rail Trail with just Livinston Road in the way. From there it runs east, around the south and east sides of La Plata where it ends at the corridor between Germantown and the Middleton Bridge (#8). 

This corridor touches on at least four valuable connections (Addison Road and Branch Avenue Metro stations, and Henson Creek and Indian Head Rail Trails) and any or all of them work as a starting point for building a trail on this corridor. The 3 miles from Henson Creek to Branch Avenue - especially with a bridge over the Beltway - would be first on my list. 

CWL 2018 #6 Walker Mill to Aquasco

Corridor #6 on this year's Christmas Wish List is the first one entirely within Prince George's County and the first one to reach inside the Beltway. It runs 28 miles from a substation located less than a mile from, and easily connected to, the Morgan Boulevard and/or Addison Road Metro Station. From there it crosses the Beltway and goes through Largo, Upper Marlboro and Marlton before passing through some lightly populated areas and ending at the Chalk Point Generating Station in the SE corner of the county.

On the north and south ends it connects with other corridors and along the way with two others, including #8 on this list. It doesn't intersect with any major trails, but it would connect with the Central Avenue Trail if that gets built. 

The inner part of this corridor, from Shady Glen Dr to White House Road, has the most potential. That part is 3.5 miles long. It also involves crossing the Beltway - which is no small task. If that is to be done, the trail would best be extended to Dulley Station Road to make it worth while. South of Dulley Station, the trail passes through low density areas and over a quite a bit more farm land. But as is true elsewhere, development is going to spread out this way and it would be smart to start planning for a trail along this corridor. 

And of course, as was true yesterday, the way to get real value out of this corridor - which is more than 200 feet wide at all points - is to add transit to it. 

CWL 2018 #7 Bethesda to Dickerson

Corridor #7 on this list is also known as Utility Corridor #1 in Montgomery County's Bike Plan. It stretches from Bells Mill Substation just outside the Beltway to the Dickerson Generation Station along the Potomac. It covers 22 miles. On  the east side it ends about 3 miles from the Grosvenor Metro and on the west side it ends about 1000 feet from the C&O Canal Trail. Along the way it intersects with 6 other utility corridors including #12 and #8 on the list. The center portion, about 5 miles in length was turned into a trail this year. 

Here, as with yesterday's corridor, Montgomery County is planning to build a trail on almost the entire corridor - in this case from Dickerson Road (Route 28) to Tuckerman Lane. 

On the Bethesda side, while the bike plan ends the trail at Tuckerman, the corridor goes past Tuckerman to Westlake Drive. Tuckerman is the straightest shot to the Grosvenor Metro, but they should extend the trail to Westlake. 

On the Dickerson side, the trail ends at Dickerson. Via bikeable shoulders on Dickerson, trail users could reach the Dickerson MARC station 1.2 miles away and the C&O Canal Trail in 3 miles. Future bike planners should create a direct connection to the C&O Canal at this point.

The utility corridor runs parallel to and just south of the MARC rail line and then it turns south before heading to Bethesda. On the east end, where it diverges from the rail line and moves through denser area, it might someday make a great corridor for Bus Rapid Transit, with a bike trail of course. It's wide enough to support both. A BRT line from Darnestown Road to the Grosvenor Metro would be a nice extension of the transit system. 

CWL 2018 #8 Germantown to Middleton Bridge

This is another long one. It's more than 80 miles from Germantown, around DC, across Prince George's County and down to the Morgantown Generating Station next to the Middleton Bridge (formerly Nice). Most of the way, it's pretty far out from DC too far to connect with any existing trails, but it intersects with the WB&A trail and 14 other corridors on the way, many of which are part of this series.  Unlike other corridors on this list, there is an existing plan to put a trail on a several miles of this corridor.

Montgomery County

On the west end, the trail starts at the recently opened PEPCO trail (Utility Corridor #1 in the plan and #7 on this list) near South Germantown Recreation Park in Montgomery County. The new Montgomery County Bike Plan places a trail on the entire corridor in the county from there to the Prince George's County line. The plan calls this "Utility Corridor #2". This alone would be a ~24 mile long trail. It was pass to the north of Gaithersburg and end just north of Burtonsville. 

Prince George's County

In PGC it crosses through more developed areas, a trail would have to cross I-95, the Route 1 corridor, the BW Parkway and the Patuxent Research Refuge. These are difficult, but not impossible barriers. Then it crosses through Bowie to the WB&A Trail and south to within a short distance of Six Flags and Andrews Air Force Base. This part would not be relatively east to build on, even though it has a few barriers like US-50 and Pennsylvania Avenue. South of Pennsylvania Avenue, the corridor crosses Rosaryville State Park and Cedarville State Forest before leaving the county. There is no technical reason why a trail can't be built the whole way across the county on the corridor, a PG Cross-County Trail if you will. It would be amazing. 

Charles County

Charles County is out of my usual service area, but the opportunity to take a trail right to the base of the Middleton Bridge, which should get a bike-ped crossing over the Potomac when rebuilt, is too appealing to pass on. In Charles, the corridor travels to the east of the more developed parts like Waldorf which increases it's ease of construction but would need connectors to improve its utility. A connection to the Indian Head Rail Trail, 3 miles away, would be key, for example. The corridor does pass over SOME farm land, but there is room to easily go around that. The corridor defines the border of the Zekiah Swamp Natural Environment Area (which might mean boardwalks) and the Allen Fresh Natural Area and then past Newburg to the bridge. Here again there is not a lot of built on land that would prevent a trail. 

It's not impossible to believe that a trail could be built across all three counties, connecting to a new Potomac River Crossing on one end, a recently built and soon to be expanded bridge on the other; and to a major trail and more than a dozen other power corridors along the way. I wouldn't count on making the trip anytime soon, but if it were done it would be spectacular. 

CWL 2018 #9 Lorton to Middleburg

Today's utility corridor runs 30 miles along the south side of Fairfax County from Lorton all the way to Middleburg in Loudoun County, passing briefly through Fauquier County. Just outside of Middleburg the power lines split, going north and south along Wancopin Creek, but the corridor is too thin and goes over too much farmland to be useful. On the east end, the corridor connects with what will be #3 on this list and in between it connects to six other corridors including #12, #11 and #5 on this list. Where it connects with #12 in Centreville, it forms part of the Cub Run Trail System, which is built on numerous utility corridors. And like so many other corridors on the list, it too intersects the future I-66 Trail. This corridor is long and straight, and because of where it is, is more feasible than most of the ones on this list.

Though it's far from the denser parts of the area, that's what makes this such a great opportunity. There is almost nothing else built on it. No one has started to fence it in as part of their yards. There is unlikely to be much conflict. And there aren't that many barriers. There are streams and roads to traverse for sure, but the only two big ones are I-66 and US-29. But getting past I-66 would be a snap, because of the I-66 trail. That trail will connect the north side of this corridor to Compton Road where the I-66 Trail will pass under I-66 and then corridor #12 could connect the south segment of this corridor the short distance to to that crossing. 

[Corridor #12 is in red, and the I-66/Cub Run trail is in yellow]

The corridor remains clear all the way into Loudoun up to the James Madison Highway in Blue Ridge, and then it starts to run over farm land, making any further extension difficult. But that still leaves 24 out of 30 miles available.

The Fairfax County Bike plan doesn't show any bike facilities in the area of this corridor, but the area is starting to fill in with sprawl. Now might be the time for the county to start staking a claim to a trail here. 

The only bit of bad luck is that though it intersects with a VRE rail line (another barrier to be crossed), it is right in-between two far away stations. If only there were a station in Clifton.