A crosswalk heavily used by residents of the Seasons apartments, patrons of businesses below it, and now from a newly-opened public parking garage, has vanished. Well, you can still see the faint remnants of it, but it's been scrubbed off of Bethesda Avenue, mid-block between Wisconsin and Woodmont Avenues.
You may recall other crosswalks vanishing in the last year or so, included existing ones on Bethesda Avenue south of Woodmont, on Woodmont connecting the Darcy side with the Flats at Bethesda Avenue side, and another one by Fairmont Plaza.
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Cars exiting the public
garage (upper left) are
required to turn right,
increasing oncoming traffic
for pedestrians jaywalking
across Bethesda Avenue, now
that the crosswalk is gone |
There doesn't appear to be a replacement for this one, which means we can expect plenty of jaywalking mid-block, as pedestrians take the naturally more convenient crossing method. It would seem smarter to add protection to this crosswalk, rather than eliminate it. If they're deadly serious about people not crossing here, they should put up a barrier in the center.
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Jaywalking against traffic
like this is a deadly proposition |
I can't think JBG is thrilled about losing an easy crossing to "Bethesda's next great restaurant" in its Bethesda Avenue-facing 7200 Wisconsin space, either. In any case, the public was not informed of the removal in advance, nor asked for feedback on this crosswalk, to my knowledge.
24 comments:
Pretty dangerous. There's nothing to slow cars down now. They pick up speed quick coming in both directions.
"You may recall other crosswalks vanishing in the last year or so, includ[ing] one by Fairmont Plaza."
How odd that Dyer doesn't mention that this crosswalk was simply moved from the north side to the south side of that intersection, providing a much better connection between Veterans Park (and pedestrians coming from Norfolk Avenue), the 7-11 and the CVS.
They need to re-install the crosswalk on Woodmont between Silver and the Darcy.
Folks need to cross coming to and from different exits of the garage.
They're doing so now, just in the middle of the street.
bring back the sidewalk.
Maybe they realized that having a crosswalk right at the ramp of a parking garage is not a good idea.
I suspect that there will be a new crosswalk installed in a few days, in a safer location just a couple of dozen feet away, and this will be yet another one of Dyer's many tempests in a teapot.
This confirms we still have a lack of communication from the county on changes like this.
This was a temporary crosswalk that was only installed while the sidewalk was closed for the Darcy building construction. It was never intended to be permanent and is completely unnecessary now that there are two crosswalks within half a block of this.
I don't buy the nearby parking garage exit being too dangerous as a valid argument. The now-removed crosswalk was immediately adjacent to the driveway for a large office building, which also has a parking garage, for all this time. It's the building with the circular driveway, across the street from the new county garage. The exit was much closer to the crosswalk then the new county garage, and things have been fine with that for many years.
I asked MCDot on Twitter two days ago about this, and no response.
This TEMPORARY crosswalk had not been there for many years at most it had a 2-3 year run and was put in place well after the lot 31 construction had begun. A quick look through the google maps street view archive show no crosswalk in place in 2012.
Mid-block crosswalks are dangerous and unnecessary and should be eliminated throughout the county. Pedestrians are pedestrians because they aren't lazy. Anyone who complains about having to walk and extra 30 yards to cross safely at a light should get in their car. People like the original twitter poster give us walkers a bad name.
Fact is, no one coming out of the sandwich shop, smoothie place or apartment building is going to walk all the way up to wisconsin or down to woodmont to cross the street.
Great idea in theory to remove it I guess.
The crosswalk at Bethesda & Woodmont isn't great. Folk are turning from Woodmont and not stopping.
Two mid-block crosswalks were just added on Bradley Blvd between Wisconsin and Arlington Road. Poor visibility too, since cars can park right up to the crosswalk.
There's a mid-block crosswalk further down on Bethesda Ave, right near the parking garage.
What's so bad about making it easier for pedestrians? Some of these blocks are quite long. Why make them walk out of their way just to be more convenient for cars?
The problem with mid-block crosswalks are as you noted poor visibility plus the fact that too many pedestrians walk into the middle of busy roads without hesitation thinking that the crosswalk is some kind of force field. Should drivers be aware of the possibility of pedestrians walking out into traffic if a crosswalk is present? Sure, but when the speed limit is 25 mph they should be driving 25 mph not less than that in anticipation of a pedestrian jumping out. We need to keep people focused on the other cars on the road not pedestrians on the sidewalk.
If there needs to be a pedestrian crossing mid-block because there are no existing lights around add a pedestrian activated stop light or a stop sign neither of which is needed at the location the article references.
I used the removed crosswalk mentioned quite a lot. I never saw instances of pedestrians blindly entering the crosswalk. On top of that, traffic never went that fast since there were traffic lights at both ends, which would frequently back up. It was definitely not a speedway. It seems like an ideal place for a mid-block crosswalk -- on Bethesda Avenue, one of the busiest pedestrian areas in Bethesda.
Kudos to Dyer for highlighting the issues in Bethesda.
It's hard for ped issues to get attention until there's a tragedy.
Dyer's right, let's ban cars!
For the crosswalk in question, either it was safe or it wasn't. I assume it was safe since they decided to put it there, and it was there for the last 2-3 years without any incidents.
So why remove it? It's useful to pedestrians, and appears to be safe.
Dyer is right though. Cars are an outmoded and inefficient method of travel. And super dangerous. We should be moving towards less vehicles, less roadways, and more mass transit. Good thinking, Robert!
I heard it was a temporary sidewalk during construction of the lot 31 project.
Mid-block crosswalks need to go away. They don't make any sense. Let's take 100-200 pound pedestrians walking at 2mph and send them across a 2-6 lane vehicle road with 3000-6000 pound vehicles going 25-45 mph. Oh and let's not put up any signals, particularly ones that are standardized and understood by every driver and pedestrian.
Thank goodness they came to their senses and put a traditional stoplight at the Trader Joes intersection on 355. Any random blinking flashing lights and signs wouldn't be effective if they aren't a standard.
@ 8:05 AM - You are correct.
"The crosswalk on Bethesda Avenue that recently was painted over was temporary for the construction of the now completed Lot 31 project, according to Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Director Ken Hartman."
@8:07 Yet the crosswalk that was removed was on a relatively narrow street, with low traffic speed, and had no incidences of pedestrian incidents.
There is a similar mid-block crosswalk down the very same street, one block away next to Nando's.
Bethesda Avenue is a perfect road for mid-block crosswalks. High pedestrian traffic and relatively low vehicle speeds, on narrow roads. It's a bit different from the 6-lane speedway that Wisconsin Ave is at rush hour (I agree the Trader Joe's crosswalk was worthy of a traffic light).
Bethesda Avenue east of Woodmont is not a high pedestrian traffic area.
FWIW, I can't count the number of times I've crossed this section of Bethesda Ave without needing a crosswalk. Look both ways, people. If you can't handle that, walk to the end of the block.
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