Initial planning effort focuses on the area surrounding the future Corridor Cities Transitway.
Silver Spring, MD – The Montgomery County Planning Department, part of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC), hosted a community meeting on Monday, April 20 from 7-9 p.m. at the Johns Hopkins Montgomery County Campus to kick off an update to the Bicycle Master Plan, particularly as it relates to the planned Corridor Cities Transitway, a 15-mile bus rapid transit line extending from Shady Grove to Clarksburg.
At the meeting, County planners explained that they will be focusing on the areas surrounding the future Corridor Cities Transitway over the next few months to ensure the latest thinking in bicycle planning is reflected in the many projects now underway in the area. The goal is to develop a regional bikeway network plan for the Great Seneca Science Corridor area to maximize the coordination, connectivity and effectiveness among the various transportation modes.
The Master Plan will recommend ways of providing access by bike to Phase 1 of the Corridor Cities Transitway, extending from the Shady Grove Metrorail Station to Metropolitan Grove. This planning work will be coordinated with the Life Science Center Loop and future development applications reviewed by the Montgomery County Planning Board.
The Life Sciences Center Loop is being proposed as a shared-use path, following recommendations in the Great Seneca Science Corridor Master Plan. A critical piece of the non-auto transportation and recreation infrastructure, the LSC Loop connects the districts and destinations within the Life Sciences Center to each other and to the surrounding communities. A design is being created for the LSC Loop that will elevate the facility from a simple asphalt path to a distinctive placemaking feature that encourages non-auto commuting and healthy exercise, and helps provide connections to the Corridor Cities Transitway stations within the LSC.
At the April 20 meeting, planners discussed the methods being used to develop and evaluate different types of bikeways being considered for the Bicycle Master Plan. Part of this effort involves gaining a better understanding of cyclists’ needs by studying the stresses imposed on cyclists by motorized traffic on road segments, intersection approaches and intersections. To do this, planners are using an analytic tool set forth in a 2012 report from San Jose State University’s Mineta Transportation Institute that analyzes the causes of these stresses, including higher volume and higher speed traffic, frequent parking turnover and bicyclists’ experiences in crossing major roads at intersections.
An initial analysis of the Life Sciences Center Area found that for cyclists who can tolerate high stress, the entire road network, minus the interstates, is available to them. The bicycling network for low and very low stress-tolerating groups, however, is more limited and disjointed, and includes residential streets and higher volumes streets with separated bikeways. These low stress-tolerating groups account for about 60 percent of the County’s population and would be unlikely to bicycle to many of the planned CCT stations without a network of separated bikeways, so planners are looking into ways of creating such a system.
Starting July 1, 2015, the comprehensive update to the Bikeways Master Plan will be launched for the entire County. The planning process will provide ample opportunities for the community to get involved and offer feedback. Check out the Bicycle Planning web page to learn more.
For more information about the Bicycle Master Plan, contact:
David Anspacher
Functional Planning and Policy Division
Montgomery County Planning Department
david.anspacher@montgomeryplanning.org
tel. 301-495-2191
Learn more about Bicycle Planning in Montgomery County.