Monday, October 15, 2018

Little Falls Parkway trail crossing options shown to public

Alternative A - Leave road diet, but
add speed table at crossing (shown in blue)
Changes lie ahead for drivers on Little Falls Parkway and Arlington Road under any of the three options proposed by the Montgomery County Department of Transportation for the Capital Crescent Trail crossing of the parkway. The final three alternatives chosen by Montgomery Parks and MCDOT, based on public feedback are: leave the 2-lane road diet in place but add a "speed table" (a long speed bump with the trail in the center), move the trail crossing to a controlled signal at the Arlington Road intersection, or construct a pedestrian bridge for trail users.
Alternative B - move trail crossing
to a 3-phase traffic signal & crosswalk
at Arlington Road intersection
Under each of the proposed options, the road diet remains in place, according to the renderings. Automobile travel times would increase by 7 or 13 seconds under the first two options, but would actually be 3 seconds faster than before the road diet with the pedestrian bridge option. The bridge seemed to have the most support from attendees at public meetings. It also has the highest price tag at $4 million.
Alternative C - pedestrian bridge carries
trail over the parkway (bridge shown in blue)
Montgomery Parks will continue to accept public feedback on these three options in an online town hall forum, where you can make your opinion heard. Based on public comments, a preferred alternative will be chosen and presented to the Planning Board for approval this winter.

17 comments:

Boys Balls said...

Let's be clear - not shown is "Option D" which includes extension of the Purple Line towards Westbard, Sumner, and ultimately the Silver Line.

Anonymous said...

Finally you report on this. It's been days since this community meeting. All options are awful. Return the closed lane and go back to the way it was.

Anonymous said...

pedestrian bridge is by far the best option

Anonymous said...

Hey Robert, thanks for the post! Bethesda local news isn't exactly pressing stuff, so I appreciate your blog where I know I can get the information right.

Anonymous said...

None of these are great. It looks like the stop signs on the trail stay in Option 1. We already know those have no effect on cyclists because otherwise we would not be having this discussion. Option 2 will require jersey walls at and around the current trail crossing, otherwise the cyclists will just use make their own trail crossing. Option 3 is too expensive. There are a lot of better ways to spend $4 million.

Anonymous said...

@5:22AM: Can you post a link to your blog where you covered this?

Anonymous said...

Build the bridge now as it will need to accommodate purple line and trail down to sangamore plaza

Anonymous said...

@6:21: I'm not sure what your comment means. Would you kindly elaborate?

Anonymous said...

@4:28AM: The first commenter criticized Dyer for not reporting this quickly enough. I was just wondering where we might be able to find that commenter's write-up of the meeting. If there is no write-up, then I don't think there's much room to criticize this blog for not being timely.

Anna said...

How many days later an event is reported on by one person has NOTHING to do with who else reported on it or didn't report on it.

The OP was clear in their comment that they were waiting for Dyer to report on it, and it took him days after the meeting, then expressed his views on the plan.

More instances of "reading to reply" and not "reading to comprehend."

Anonymous said...

Let's count on the County to spend and waste the most amount of money possible on this one intersection. Yes, there was a tragedy here but that's a heck of a lot of money to plunk down on one intersection that otherwise wasn't really broken.

Anonymous said...

WTOP got the scoop I believe. Dyer fashions himself as a man about town and in the know. Well, he got scooped right in his back yard

Anonymous said...

@7:35AM: I comprehended their snark perfectly, I think. Dyer is an easy target, but this is a free blog. A lot of people come here to criticize but I don't see any of them trying to do better.

Orkin said...

I was just there last week and a biker blew the stop sign . That's the biggest issue .

Anonymous said...

@5:51PM: That's right. There is no amount of traffic engineering that can prevent deaths and serious injuries when road users ignore the rules of the road.

Anonymous said...

So instead of enforcing traffic laws and speeders on the Parkway the county wants to create "road diets" and build $4 mil bridges. This is total nonsense and a massive waste of taxpayer money.

Anonymous said...

I suspect that on a per user basis, bicycle infrastructure has been the most expensive transportation infrastructure MoCo has built over the past decade.