"For me, the safest option will be option B," Commissioner Natali Fani-Gonzalez said, "move the Capital Crescent Trail to Arlington Road. The safest option...for me has to be a traffic light."
It appears that, in addition to the strong lobbying efforts by the surrounding community to end the road diet, the lack of supporting data did-in the proposal by staff to shrink Little Falls Parkway to two lanes. Kudos to Commissioner Tina Patterson, who chastised planning staff for misrepresenting data regarding accidents and fatalities at the trail crossing. "I'm extremely disappointed to hear that we presented a fatality without really giving the specifics," Patterson said just before the Board voted. "If we're going to talk about something that's impacting the community, we have to give the full details. If I had moved forward without knowing this after the fact, I would have been embarrassed. so it's again as a matter of oversight, let's just be transparent in presenting our reports when we have data.
"Sometimes we need to listen to the community," Patterson added. And this was a rare recent vote in which the Board actually did. Their choice was not even one listed in the staff report; all staff options had a permanent road diet of two lanes.
The decision is a good one for the community. Now we may again actually be able to see cyclists and pedestrians, without the clear view being blocked by a maze of ugly poles sticking up all over the road. Cyclists and pedestrians will not be able to blow through the crossing stop signs, but will cross in an orderly fashion at the light at Arlington. There will be less cut-through traffic speeding past houses in Kenwood and along Hillandale Road.
The bridge is still the best solution, and it is good to hear it is on the table still. Cost estimates and design complexity for that option were severely overblown in the staff report; a new bridge design and cost estimate should be developed with the assistance of executive branch employees who can provide cost-cutting oversight.
Most importantly, if a barrier is erected in the median, and the crossing removed, the random interaction and guessing games will be gone. If the light is correctly timed, and adjusted as needed going forward, additional delays should be minimal at the Arlington-Little Falls intersection. This will allow the full capacity of Little Falls Parkway to be restored, just as the same Board has recently approved over 10,000 new cars to be added to that area via the Westbard and Bethesda Downtown sector plans.
It all comes back to Westbard. It always does.
ReplyDeleteGreat job here, Robert. Thanks for staying on top of this and keeping us informed. I did not see anything about this in my other Bethesda-related readings today.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the Dyer pounding logic, gave some on the board a spine.
ReplyDeleteBuild the bridge.
ReplyDeleteWhat a stunning defeat for Casey Anderson and the bike lobby. The biking groups should be more thoughtful about trying to use a fatality to make political points. Facts matter. This was almost certainly the wrong decision, and it was WABA who helped us get there.
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting to see how long any barricade there lasts, and cyclists revert to using the old crossing.
ReplyDeleteWhy must the convenience of drivers always come first?
Thanks, Robert. As one of the local bike commuters it sad to see the county not walk the talk. They survey the cycling community, hold community meetings, and have even developed an elaborate heat map to track the most dangerous roads and intersections. But...even the death of a cyclist won't motivate them to create a safer environment.
ReplyDeleteWhy spend $2 million to build another interim solution before the bridge is built?
ReplyDeleteCasey Anderson got it right. Too bad he got outvoted.
@9:29: Community engagement in this county is always nothing more than a dog and pony show. But there's no question this solution is the safest of all because it moves the crossing to a signalized intersection. What I wonder is why should the death of the cyclist have a greater impact on the county's behavior than it has had on cyclist behavior at that intersection? The cyclist ran a stop sign. He was at fault. That collision would not have happened if he had stopped at the stop signs. But how many cyclists started following the law at that intersection after the collision?
ReplyDelete@9:14: This solution is less convenient for everyone in terms of travel time, and it's going to be a signalized intersection, so I'm not sure how this is a case of driver convenience coming first. Everyone will have to take turns. If anything, that seems pretty fair and consistent with the queuing and alternating paradigm that's common across all of our roadways.
Thinking about creating a gofundme page to raise money for a bridge in honor of Dr Laszlo Tauber who came to the US with nothing as a holocaust survivor and became a billionaire (when there were few) back in the 70's and 80's as the largest landlord of the Federal Govt. Wonder if BTB will support this great achievement of the American dream?
ReplyDelete11:26 AM I support the statue, in a museum in Westbard (donated by the out of town developer) that also covers the Original Sin of Westbard (the desecration of the cemetery)
ReplyDeleteA statue of Montgomery County's first billionaire would be an awesome way to reverse our County's perception of being anti-business, and would also send good vibes to keep the local ultra-rich happy here rather than fleeing to rural Tennessee.
ReplyDelete11:26: Tauber's involvement in the desecration of a black cemetery, and the ensuing cover-up, would likely deep six any memorial effort.
ReplyDelete9:59: $2 million? Walking up to the light at Arlington is free. The main cost will be undoing the stupid road diet mess that was paid for with illegal funds.
"paid for with illegal funds."
ReplyDeleteYou are an incoherent, ranting fucktard.
5:22: Wrong. Thanks to my investigation, I was the first and only media outlet to report that Parks & Planning illegally used funds from a countywide trail maintenance fund for the road diet highway project. That was a capital project, and they had to get an appropriation of funds from the County Council to do it legally.
ReplyDeleteYou can't take money allocated by the Council for one purpose, and use it for another. You would criticize Trump to high heaven when he tried to do the same at the federal level.
You just made a total fool of yourself, and again revealed that the MoCo cartel employs people who still use the R-word and find developmental disabilities a source of humor and ridicule in the year 2019. Sad!