Wednesday, June 3, 2009

what's up the pike: swimming upstream

JUTP was one of four MoCo blogs, including Rockville Central, Maryland Politics Watch and the aptly-named Gaithersblog featured in the Examiner's first "Blog Roundup" for the county. (Thanks to Brad at RC for the heads up.) It's a nice way to kick off the new month. Anyway:

- A campaign to put a speed camera referendum on the ballot this November fell less than two thousand signatures short of the state's requirements, reports the Gazette. In a press release on their website, Maryland for Responsible Enforcement said the 16,000 signatures collected were a message that "Marylanders do not want speed cameras and do not want more taxes and burdens in these troubling financial times."

- On Friday, the Gandhi Brigade, a youth media group based out of City Place Mall, is throwing a party to kick off their latest venture, an "international peace through video project" with two organizations in El Salvador. According to their website, A delegation of "8 teens and young adults" will explain the project, dubbed the Youth Media Liberation Front, while attendees sample pupusas and El Salvadoran music. The event is at 6:30pm in the Mayor's Promenade, next to Tijuana's Cafe on Georgia Avenue.

- A 71-year-old man was struck and killed by a car while crossing New Hampshire Avenue at Lockwood Drive in White Oak Sunday morning, says the Gazette. Police say Anastasios Hatjikiriakos, who lived nearby in the Oak Hill Apartments on Columbia Pike, was in the crosswalk. My condolences go out to his family; this could have been easily prevented.

New Hampshire Avenue is one of the region's most dangerous roads for pedestrians, especially terrible for one that passes through a dense neighborhood with a lot of people who walk. County Executive Ike Leggett didn't stumble on the scene of the accident, but hopefully we'll be hearing about some well-needed improvements in this area soon.

7 comments:

C. P. Zilliacus said...

Dan posted:

> New Hampshire Avenue is one of
> the region's most dangerous
> roads for pedestrians,
> especially terrible for one
> that passes through a
> dense neighborhood with a
> lot of people who walk.
> County Executive Ike
> Leggett didn't stumble on
> the scene of the accident,
> but hopefully we'll be
> hearing about some
> well-needed improvements
> in this area soon.

I don't know how New Hampshire
Avenue (Md. 650) "ranks" in
terms of danger to people
generally, or pedestrians in
particular, but I agree that
the intersection of Md. 650 and
Lockwood Drive could use some
help, though it's been this
way for many years.

Remember also that Md. 650 is
a state highway,
which means that Montgomery
County (including our
County Executive) must
cooperate and coordinate
any improvements there with
the State Highway
Administration (SHA).

The right improvement
there? Probably to
grade-separate the
two roads, though I don't
think that is recommended
in the current (1997) White
Oak Master Plan, and it would
be an expensive and difficult
undertaking in any case, since
in my opinion, if that were
done, Lockwood should go
under Md. 650, to
ease the way for pedestrians
and bike riders going north
and south on Lockwood.

Such projects are messy
during construction, but
the results are (in my
opinion) worth it, for they
really improve the pedestrian
and bike paths (no more having
to cross eight or nine lanes
of live traffic, which is
what we have there now
when turning lanes are
included), while improving
traffic safety for everyone
(peds and bikes included)
and yes, motorized traffic
flow (Exhibit A is
U.S. 29 at East Randolph Road,
Exhibit B is 29 at Briggs
Chaney Road and Exhibit C
is 29 at Md. 198).

Historical trivia note:

For many, many years, the
grade-separated interchange
at Md. 650 and U.S. 29 was
the only one that was
not on an Interstate Highway
or on a National Park
Service parkway in
Montgomery County.

Dan Reed said...

Grade-separating the roads would be a waste of money and a total non-solution. It's not like Lockwood Drive is a major highway or anything (though it was a state road at one time), and the grade separation would encourage cars to go even faster because they don't have to stop.

The goal should be to slow cars down, not to inconvenience pedestrians with ramps and bridges and all of that. Pedestrians may have a safer time crossing 29 at Briggs Chaney or Cherry Hill, but it's not any more enjoyable than it was before.

Cary Lamari said...

Dan, I think Mr. Zilliacus makes a point, If you grade separated 650 you could provide safer pedestrian access along Lockwood as there could be a walk-way under 650 along Lockwood Drive. I am also concerned with speeding on 650 especially near Cannon Road, there is limited visibility at this location and it can be difficult for people to pull out onto or traverse 650 from side streets at these locations. These are areas where Cameras make sense. My condolences are offered to the family of Mr. Hatjikiriakos.

C. P. Zilliacus said...

Dan responded:

> Grade-separating the roads
> would be a waste of money
> and a total non-solution.

I respectfully disagree.

> It's not like Lockwood Drive
> is a major highway or
> anything (though it was a
> state road at one time),
> and the grade separation
> would encourage cars to go
> even faster because they
> don't have to stop.

Having them go fast on
Md. 650 (or at least not have
to stop at Lockwood) is not
a bad thing.

> The goal should be to slow
> cars down, not to
> inconvenience pedestrians
> with ramps and bridges and
> all of that.

I disagree, in part.

Slowing motorized traffic on
Lockwood Drive is not a bad
thing - it's not an arterial
highway, as is Md. 650.

As for invonveniencing
pedestrians, if they don't
have to expose themselves
to the heavy traffic of
Md. 650, that is a major
improvement, not
an inconvenience.

> Pedestrians may have a
> safer time crossing 29 at
> Briggs Chaney or Cherry
> Hill, but it's not any
> more enjoyable than it
> was before.

I disagree.

I have crossed both on foot,
before the interchanges were
built and after. Because
U.S. 29 was so w-i-d-e at
both of these signalized
intersections (because of
double left turn lanes and
right turn lanes, crossing
the road there meant crossing
nine or ten lanes of active
traffic. With the
interchanges, U.S. 29 is
actually narrower than it
was with the intersections
at-grade!


What's left to cross instead
are the ramps to and
from U.S. 29, and those are
much narrower, and
carry much less traffic
than what we had to
cross before!

Now getting back to Md. 650
and Lockwood Drive, building
an interchange there would
be challenging and likely
expensive. And the people
that live there may not want
to put up with the disruption
in any case. But it
would improve things
for pedestrians when done,
for it would remove most
of the vehicle/pedestrian
conflicts.

Please do not object to
grade-separation projects
just because they improve
traffic flow on roads like
U.S. 29.

On a related topic, one of
the principals in the
Montgomery County Sierra Club
(which normally professes to
be so very much in favor of
planning) tried desperately,
behind the scenes and with
no input from East
County residents (the
individual in question is a
resident of the City of Rockville)
to get the 1997 Fairland and
White Oak Master Plans
nullified after they
were approved - only because
we had the temerity to call
for new interchanges along
U.S. 29 (and the Sierra Club
could have raised objections
during the five years that
these plans were being
written, but failed to do so).

C. P. Zilliacus said...

Cary Lamari wrote:

> Dan, I think Mr. Zilliacus makes
> a point, If you grade separated
> 650 you could provide safer
> pedestrian access along
> Lockwood as there could be
> a walk-way under 650
> along Lockwood Drive.

Thank you for your kind words.

> I am also concerned with
> speeding on 650 especially
> near Cannon Road, there
> is limited visibility at
> this location and it can
> be difficult for people to
> pull out onto or traverse
> 650 from side streets at
> these locations.

For some reason, since
Md. 650 was widened to a
divided highway in the
early 1970's (though the
section between Randolph Road
and Md. 198 was not done until
the late 1980's or early
1990's), this road has
always been something
of a speedway - all the way
from north of Randolph Road
south to at least Langley
Park - even though unlike
U.S. 29 north of White Oak,
it is not classified
as an expressway, and has
many driveways and minor
cross-streets.

I have personally seen many
wrecks along this section of
road, all the way from
Bonifant/Good Hope south
to University Boulevard.

> These are areas where
> Cameras make sense.

Or old-fashioned pull 'em
over police traffic enforcement!

> My condolences are offered
> to the family of
> Mr. Hatjikiriakos.

Agreed.

Thomas Hardman said...

CP Zilliacus said:

For some reason, since Md. 650 was widened to a divided highway in the early 1970's (though the section between Randolph Road and Md. 198 was not done until the late 1980's or early 1990's), this road has always been something of a speedway - all the way from north of Randolph Road south to at least Langley Park - even though unlike U.S. 29 north of White Oak, it is not classified as an expressway, and has many driveways and minor cross-streets.

New Hampshire Avenue north of Bonifant Road was never expected to be much of anything other than a heavy-hauling farm-market road also carrying significant residential traffic, as well as occasional military traffic. It is a very old road along most of its length and is "built deep". For much of its length, it remains as an example of how to build a road that needs almost no maintenance. Almost anything that can be done as an "improvement" is going to ruin the original roadbed and considering modern costs and standards of construction, whatever would be done probably would not last very long without significant upkeep expenditures.

Dan, for all of his knowledge and talent, has what I am learning to think of as a blind spot. Most of MD-650 was never intended nor expected to be anything other than a long-haul rural highway with significant but intermittent short/medium-haul traffic.

Nobody ever really planned for the suburbias that erupted along its length all feeding their immense cul-de-sac traffic into that lone arterial.

No doubt I am showing my age and my untrendy and declasse suburbianism, but I remember that back in the mid-late 1970s, I used to hang out with friends who lived just south of Ashton. It we were hitchhiking, we could stand there for 20 minutes before a car came by, and you could generally hear it coming for a few minutes before it got there.

But as time went by, and Olney was built up and became a major residential suburb rather than a well-populated and long-settled rural zone, traffic increased to the point where you never stopped hearing the traffic and indeed you took your life in your hands trying to get across that road anywhere other than at a signal.

But you have to understand: if you work downtown and the closest MetroRail station on the US-29 (fed from MD-650) corridor is in Silver Spring, and you live in Brinklow or beyond, you haev one outrageous commute. The only way anyone can deal with it is to keep traffic moving and to keep it moving as fast as it can go and conditions will allow.

Expecting a rural highway -- running at the saturation level that still allows planned speeds -- to acceed to the demands that the entire traffic stream be backed up all of the way out to Ashton because one pedestrian doesn't want to have to use a crossing, that's ridiculous.

In the urban environment, it's essential to grant primacy to the pedestrian and make allowances for bicycles.

In the rural and utterly car-bound transit domains, one pedestrian cannot be allowed to disrupt the traffic flow of thousands.

The discussion here, though, is really about suburbia, where both the urban and the rural domains and their paradigms intergrade.

And as we learned in Aspen Hill for several years, when you take rural people put them in the city, if they don't know the rules whereby highspeed traffic can safely co-exist with pedestrians, you get a lot of pedestrian fatalities. Ever since the County saturated the neighborhood with flyers and the foreign-language radio stations with public service announcements telling people how to cross the roads, we have had no fatalities here from car v. pedestrian.

And PSAs are one heck of a lot less expensive than any other solution that is comparably effective.

I have personally seen many wrecks along this section of road, all the way from Bonifant/Good Hope south to University Boulevard.

It's the closest thing available to a desperately needed freeway.

Dan Reed said...

I'm really looking forward to when the Fairland and White Oak master plans are updated . . .