PIKE AND ROSE: ANOTHER MOCO MISADVENTURE IN ARCHITECTURE

Not again. The "new" designs for future mini-Manhattan Pike and Rose resemble the lackluster ones previously revealed. Clusters of non-descript office towers and mixed-use town centers sit, bump-on-log style, astride a once-bustling shopping center, a half-hearted paean to "The Man."

We're giving up Toys R Us for this?

In that case, I don't want to grow up, Geoffrey!

The plan aesthetically refutes all of the buzz phrases so-called "Smart Growth" development advocates enjoy deploying in planning work sessions nationwide.

To use one of their phrases, there's no "there" there.

Examine the close-up of what seems to be the Bethesda Lane or Rockville Town Square of Pike and Rose.  Context aside, where are you in this scene? Can you identify a single architectural feature that says Pike and Rose, White Flint, Montgomery County, anything? (Please leave it in the comments if you can!).

The comparison to Bethesda Row is indeed a stretch. Bethesda Lane is probably one of the few town centers anywhere that actually has an identity of sorts.  But at Pike and Rose, one could be in New Jersey or Portland or at any of the other bland, nondescript town centers in the DC area.

And why does it look like the grand curve of Old Georgetown Road has been whipped into an old-fashioned, 4-way urban intersection?  Not only is the new work disappointing, but they're going to iron out one of the few road stretches with character in the area to boot? L'Enfant may rise from the dead if he hears of this.

Speaking of roads... That trench labeled "Montrose Parkway" at the top?  That's supposed to be a six-lane Rockville Freeway. And without the Rockville Freeway (and additional MARC and Red Line capacity), this whole White Flint plan simply cannot handle the influx of cars it will bring.

It's no secret I opposed the White Flint plan as passed by the Montgomery County Council.  But if you're going to "transform" an area, at least do it responsibly, and utilizing designs that improve the aesthetics and quality of life for residents.

Despite my opposition to the WF plan, I would probably approve the 2 towers (one already built) and the "ziggurat" development proposed by JBG nearby.  While not Dubai-esque, at least they have something to offer artistically and help define a location.

Maybe it's early, and the buildings shown are placeholders for exciting designs to come at Pike and Rose. But at the moment, what's being touted is only reinforcing what I had predicted long ago.

In the richest county in the richest country in the world, why are we content to take an architectural back seat to Dubai, Hong Kong, and Shanghai?

MONTGOMERY COUNTY BRT COST EXPLODES TO $10 BILLION

COUNTY OFFICIALS

OPENLY PLOT TO

MAKE TRAFFIC

33% WORSE FOR

AUTO COMMUTERS

The cost estimate for Montgomery County's unpopular Bus Rapid Transit plan has exploded to $10,000,000,000, according to county Master Planner Larry Cole.  Ironically, it was Cole who humiliated BRT-obsessed county politicians earlier this year, when he announced the county did not have sufficient ridership for a BRT system.  After keeping quiet for a while - and surely receiving a "talking to" behind closed doors (how else to explain his embarrassing about-face from naysayer to "let's do this?") - Cole is now speaking to reporters.

With a BRT vehicle that requires 50 minutes to crawl 15 miles, a $10 billion BRT price tag, not a single penny in financing, and a county slouching towards fiscal disaster with an unresolved structural deficit, surely officials are ready to end the Fantasy Island talk of BRT, right?

Wrong.

"The bus, Boss!  The bus!"

Instead, they are pressing forward.  With developers pulling the strings for BRT behind the scenes (it will allow them to build town centers in suburban and rural areas), politicians beholden to them have little choice.

Now several officials, including Cole, are talking openly about sabotaging the county's already-failing highway network for automobile commuters, to save a few bucks on BRT lanes.

Their plan is to steal lanes from cars on Route 355 and Georgia Avenue, and make them BRT-only lanes.  This would reduce highway capacity on both roads by at least 33%.

Both Rockville Pike and Georgia Avenue are currently jammed full, and move at a crawl from red light to red light, during rush hour.

Amazingly, Cole and other county officials are attempting to claim - with straight faces, no less - that reducing capacity by 33% will have no impact on existing automobile traffic.

Even more amazingly, local media continue to allow them to make these Fantasy Island claims.

What planet are these people living on?

Have they ever driven the roads they're talking about?

I've been on both in rush hour more times than I can count, and can definitively say that taking even one lane away would be absolutely catastrophic.

"Welcome to Fantasy Island"

Blissfully removed from reality, Cole continues his salesman spiel to Kate Jacobson of The Examiner, telling her chopping down capacity 33% on highways will have no impact because "there are more people on the buses and there are less vehicles on the road."

Huh?  I've got Ricardo Montalban on Line 1, and Rod Serling on Line 2 here, man!

Mr. Cole: welcome to reality.  Welcome to the world.  We'll try to get you up to speed here.

Across Montgomery County, 85-90% of residents drive, and only 10-15% use public transit.  No suburban area like Montgomery County has ever been successful in "getting people out of their cars," with the exception of Communist China, who did it by force.

Ironically, as we found out a few weeks ago, Communist Chinese officials are advising the county on their BRT plan.  Nice PR move, guys.

But the bottom line is that Mr. Cole's statement is false.

One motive behind the plot to steal lanes from drivers, and make their commutes even worse?  A misguided belief that they can use pain to force you to stop selfishly driving, and board their $10B bus for a two hour commute.  In other words, artificially gin up ridership for a bus that Mr. Cole himself declared there is insufficient ridership for.

Cole was against BRT before he was for it!

He's not alone, though.  Two other county officials have endorsed the "punish drivers" plan.  And, get this:  they're going to punish you, the citizen, who pays their salaries!

Senior BRT planner David Anspacher told the Washington Post this:

"When folks see buses running down Rockville Pike while traffic is stopped, that will be our best marketing."

Thumbing your nose at 90% of county taxpayers is a popular pasttime among officials, apparently.

Kate Alexander of The Gazette reported last week that Planning Commissioner Casey Anderson declared "the county was no longer going to be in the business of trying to accomodate the demand for single-occupancy vehicles, and that transit was preferred."

Wow.  I'm afraid "radical" may be too weak of a term to describe Mr. Anderson's statement.

Let me get this straight:  the county is shirking its primary transportation responsibility we pay it to execute - maintaining a functioning highway system for 85-90% of residents?

Can we see the data that proves the fantasy assertions of no impact on auto traffic?  Of course not.

To top it off, three "public meetings" are being held this week.  But if you live in Bethesda or Clarksburg or Potomac or Burtonsville, ah, well, you're not really invited.

That's because the meetings are only at Montgomery Blair HS, Shady Grove Training Center (the Shady Grove what?!  Where's that?!), and Wheaton Library.  All super-convenient for residents of the remaining 80% of the county, right?

Get the sense that they don't really care what your opinion is?

But they do care about you paying for BRT.  With no financing in place, BRT taxes will cost many Bethesda residents $1000+ annually in new taxes.  And they won't even get to ride it, because it doesn't even go south into DC!

All this for a bus that goes 15 miles in 50 minutes, and will still take longer than your car, even if they artificially make traffic jams even worse.

All aboard the Emperor's New Bus.  Next stop:  The Twilight Zone.

AMERICAN LEGION BRIDGE STUDIES PROVE ROCKVILLE FREEWAY, OUTER BELTWAY WOULD EASE BETHESDA BELTWAY CONGESTION

LEGION BRIDGE

ISN'T THE PROBLEM,

THE MISSING

HIGHWAYS AND

BRIDGES ARE

Another Robert Dyer @ Bethesda Row Exclusive

"Hooray!  Finally, someone is doing nothing about something!"

I don't know if that was an exact quote, but the above sentence sums up the decidedly-awestruck tone of media coverage of a recent "high tea" party, held by the Montgomery and Fairfax County Councils.  The meeting was presided over by Ronald Kirby, Transportation Planning Director for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

Which is an Orwellian title indeed, as the sum of Kirby's public statements suggests he shares the Montgomery County Council's anti-highway, anti-car fervor - and promotion of transit-only policies that benefit development interests.

No surprise, then, that all parties involved conveniently reached a consensus that the solution to Beltway gridlock is... buses.  Never mind that there used to be a Bethesda-Tysons Corner bus that was terminated for lack of ridership.  "Rapid" bus?  Uh, what are you going to do, put bus stops on the shoulder?

Also predictably, we're told that widening the bridge would cost $800 million, and Beltway HOT lanes on the Maryland side would be even more cost prohibitive.

The good news I have for those doomsayers, is that we actually don't need to do either of those things.

What we need to do, is finish our 50-year-old master plan highway system. The twist is that the very numbers anti-highway Kirby touted, actually prove that he and the County Council are wrong, and I - and the planners of five decades ago - are right.

These studies clarify the missing highway capacity of the unbuilt Rockville Freeway and Outer Beltway.

Virginia drivers, the studies say, are headed to Interstate 270 27% of the time when they cross the Legion Bridge.  And a whopping 63% want to go east on the Beltway.

The 270 folks would use Potomac River bridges planned for the Outer Beltway and the Rockville Freeway to reach western Montgomery County and 270.  If one or both bridges were built, you'd have 27% of American Legion Bridge cars off the Beltway right there.

That 63% heading east?  It's likely some portion of that group could use the Rockville Freeway and ICC to reach their eastern destinations.  A Beltway-ICC link via the unbuilt Northern Parkway would further decrease that 63% group of cars headed east from Virginia.

How about Maryland drivers?

We've been told for years that nobody crossing the Legion Bridge in the morning from Maryland is going to Dulles.  Common sense told us that was bunk.  And now, the studies confirm it was complete and utter bunk.

23% of Maryland bridge-crossers are headed for the Dulles area.  Just consider that for a moment:  a Potomac crossing to Dulles via the unbuilt Outer Beltway and/or unbuilt Rockville Freeway, would take a full fourth of Virginia-bound cars off the Legion Bridge like a magic wand.

Another 24% of Maryland crossers were headed to areas of Northern Virginia that would be accessible to drivers on proposed bridges via the Rockville Freeway (Fairfax County Parkway) or Outer Beltway (Sully Road/Rt. 28, or the now-talked-about alternative west of Dulles).

In total, one or two additional bridges would reduce Virginia-bound traffic by nearly 50%.  And reduce Maryland-bound traffic by at least 50%.

And there are actually people opposed to new highways and bridges?!

Yes!  The scary thing is, among those opponents, are the very people discussing the future of the American Legion Bridge at this comedic farce of a meeting.

Best of all?  The $800 million cost of the unnecessary American Legion Bridge widening would could pay for the construction of most of the Rockville Freeway within Montgomery County, between 270 and the ICC.

Federal funds, as well as private/toll-funded options, could very realistically be secured to build at least one new Potomac River bridge.  Even if the Rockville Freeway only ran between 270 and the ICC (at Indian Spring Country Club), drivers crossing an I-370/ICC bridge could easily access it via 270.  The Rockville Freeway's 270 interchange already exists; most today know it as Montrose Road.

The good news is that one of Bethesda's biggest traffic nightmares, the American Legion Bridge, can be fixed without widening the bridge or the Beltway.  And if your home is one that would be demolished to make way for that widening, I suspect you'd have a strong self-interest in supporting the Rockville Freeway and Outer Beltway (both can be built without destroying homes within Montgomery County, as can the Northern Parkway).

The bad news, is that your county council and the wise people at COG have studied the same data I've presented to you here, and concluded that the answer is to do something short of nothing.

"Hooray!" for "leadership."