lack of connections, visibility hurt ICC trail

Less than a year old, the InterCounty Connector Trail offers a new way to get across Montgomery County by bike. However, a circuitous route, a lack of connections to surrounding areas and sections with poor visibility all hurt its potential.

The ICC was originally planned to have a bike trail running parallel to it, but in 2004, the State Highway Administration got rid of it, claiming it would reduce the toll road's construction costs and environmental impacts. Instead, they gave the ICC Trail a more circuitous and indirect route, running parts of it along the highway and the rest along local roads like Columbia Pike and Briggs Chaney Road.

Not surprisingly, area bicyclists were unhappy with the decision. "Why do designers think cyclists should have to go the long way, but cars need a direct route?" asks the WashCycle blog.

Part of the trail runs parallel to Columbia Pike between Fairland Road and Briggs Chaney Road in East County. Like the Forest Glen pedestrian bridge that crosses the Beltway, it runs under a highway. The trail is also lightly used and has already been vandalized.

This is unfortunate, because the trail could tie neighborhoods on both sides of the ICC together and is a crucial part of a "commuter bikeway" along Columbia Pike first envisioned in master plans 15 years ago. But this part of the ICC Trail won't get any busier or safer without better foot and bike connections to get people to it.

Let's take a look at the trail:



Here we are on the trail, just north of Fairland Road. That's the exit sign for the InterCounty Connector up ahead.



First we pass this small seating area. People do use it, judging from the abandoned pair of shoes. I enjoy the dry stacked stones and wooden bench, which give the trail a woodsy, rustic feel despite its surroundings. Behind the seating area is the recently-built Fairland View subdivision. It's separated by a grass berm and has no connection to the trail, despite being yards away. (The view, of course, is of the InterCounty Connector.) I assume these nearby chalk drawings came from kids living there.



Now we're heading under the interchange between Columbia Pike and the ICC. This part of the trail is almost invisible from either road and the surrounding houses, and I passed a group of young men smoking right before I took this picture.



There is Sharpie graffiti in the tunnel, though it's not much worse than anything I saw or did myself in high school. The tunnel appears to have been repainted a few times since it opened; in fact, since I took this photo, the scribbles have already been painted over. It's good to see that the state is maintaining the trail, though I wonder how regularly they patrol it.



After the tunnel, we go under a couple of overpasses. The roar of traffic is pretty intense, and I noticed some broken glass on the path where lights have been knocked out.



We're now between Columbia Pike on the left, and the Montgomery Auto Park on the right. Turn around and you get a great view of the interchange. There are maybe waist-high concrete walls on either side of the trail and a chain-link fence separating it from the Auto Park. The wall might keep bicyclists safe from car traffic, but I wonder if it's also there to protect the car dealerships from bicyclists.



And then we hit a wall. This is the interchange of Columbia Pike and Briggs Chaney Road, which was completed about four years ago; the trail takes a hard right to get around it and then joins Briggs Chaney Road.




Across the street is the Briggs Chaney Plaza shopping center; there's a stoplight and intersection in front of us, but no pedestrian signal or even a crosswalk. From here, we can continue down Briggs Chaney, which has a nice, wide shared path for about a mile and a half before connecting to a portion of the trail that's actually on the ICC.

Residents of Tanglewood, a subdivision on the south side of the ICC, complained that a trail would invite "criminals" from the apartment complexes along Briggs Chaney Road. While I still think that accusation was unfair, residents' predictions that there would be vandalism on the trail turned out to be true.

But as WashCycle points out, the best way to make a safe trail is to make it busy. In the handful of times I've used this one-mile portion of the ICC Trail, I've seen maybe a dozen people there. The trail is new enough that some people haven't heard of it, but it's also obscured by a highway interchange and sound berms.

It would've been ideal if the State Highway Administration had laid out the trail first and then worked around it, rather than the other way around. The trail would be more direct, and possibly more visible, while having little or no effect on the ability of drivers to pass through.

Since that opportunity no longer exists, the best thing we can do is to improve foot and bike connections to nearby destinations like Briggs Chaney Plaza and neighborhoods like Castle Boulevard, which recently got new sidewalks and medians. The easier it is to walk or bike in the area, the more likely people are to use the ICC Trail, and the less destructive behavior will occur.

Check out this slideshow of my bike ride along the ICC Trail and other roads in East County.

building accessory apartments in MoCo can be easier, more predictable

Accessory apartment over garage in Seattle. Photo by studio-d on Flickr.

Citing increased housing costs, Montgomery County planners want to make it easier for homeowners to add accessory apartments or "granny flats" to their property and rent them out. While the new policy is a step in the right direction, balancing neighbors' concerns with the need to provide more housing in high-demand areas will be a challenge.

Last week, the Planning Board approved recommended changes to the current policy, which the County Council will review this fall. Today, homeowners who want to build an accessory dwelling have to get a special exception from the county's Board of Appeals, which requires a public hearing.

The new policy would allow accessory units on most of the county's single-family zones by default. Homeowners wouldn't need a hearing, but they'd still need to get approval to build an apartment, register their units with the Department of Housing and Community Affairs, apply for a rental license, and renew the license each year.

Planners say allowing accessory apartments will help financially strapped homeowners cover their mortgages while providing additional housing choices for renters, particularly young adults, who are priced out of many MoCo neighborhoods. Accessory dwellings are already allowed "by right" in a variety of communities, from cities like Portland to suburban Lexington, Massachusetts to rural Fauquier County, Virginia.

Opponents fear "devastation"

Neighbors fear loosening restrictions will lead to more oversized additions like this one in White Oak.

However, not everyone's on board. WeAreMoCo, a newly-created citizens' group, argues that not requiring a public hearing is undemocratic, while angry residents packed a meeting about the proposed change in May, claiming that it would threaten the character of single-family neighborhoods. In an e-mail to the Planning Board, Silver Spring resident Alice Gilson wrote that accessory apartments would "devastate our area" and eventually "lead to middle class flight."

Some opponents argue that allowing accessory units is a bad idea because the county already can't stop every illegal unit that exists. Many property owners do indeed choose to ignore the application process and rent out apartments without permission, and unknown to the county. Often, these units are poorly built or overcrowded, putting tenants in danger.

Others exist in a sort of legal limbo: the owner may get approval to build an addition with a bathroom but not a full kitchen, exempting them from the permitting process for apartments even as they rent the space out as one. Even legal units can earn the ire of neighbors for being oversized or unattractive, like this this 1,500 square foot "addition" to a house in White Oak.

On the other hand, how could you blame someone for building an illegal unit? The current system forces homeowners to defend their financial or household situation to wary neighbors, reducing the incentive to take the legal route. Residents may not want accessory apartments in their neighborhoods, but they probably prefer legal, vetted units to illegal ones with no regulation at all.

How can we ensure the creation of safe, context-sensitive accessory apartments? We need to streamline the approval process, making it less intimidating to property owners. But we also need to make the guidelines for what they can and cannot build clear and easy to follow, letting neighbors know what to expect when one gets built on their block.

What county planners propose This accessory apartment in Kentlands (over the garage) is located on a 4,300 square foot lot, smaller than would be allowed elsewhere in Montgomery County under the new regulations.

The proposed policy reduces the legal process required to build an accessory apartment, but it's somewhat more restrictive than the current regulations regarding the size, number, and location of units throughout the county.

Today, homeowners can apply to build a unit as large as 2500 square feet, but the new proposal caps unit size at either 50% of the main house, 800 square feet or 1200 square feet, depending on the size of the house or the lot. The new rules also specify that a house with an accessory apartment has to be at least 300 to 500 feet away from another house with one in order to prevent the "overconcentration" of units. There's also a limit of 3 residents per accessory unit, which didn't exist before.

So-called "backyard cottages," accessory dwellings in a separate structure from the main house, were only allowed on lots larger than 2 acres today. Planners were going to allow them on most lots in an earlier draft of the new rules, but they now suggest allowing backyard cottages only in rural zones with lots larger than one acre. They also aren't considering giving amnesty to existing illegal apartments. Those who have them would have to apply for a permit just like everyone else.

The new rules won't result in a flood of new apartments, as they would include a cap of 2000 accessory dwellings countywide. Today, there are just 380 legal accessory apartments and 548 "registered living units," built for relatives or household employees who live there rent-free. Planners estimate that 0.2 to 0.5 new accessory dwellings per 1000 homes will be added annually. With 163,000 owner-occupied single-family homes in the county, that comes out to between 30 and 80 new units each year, compared to 10 today.

A cap on accessory apartments might assuage the fears of residents who oppose changing the policy. But for those who could benefit from this new source of housing, the new policy doesn't do enough.

How could the rules be improved? Most existing accessory apartments are located in the Downcounty. Image from the Montgomery County Planning Department.

The proposed regulations make it difficult to build accessory dwellings in the areas where they'll have the most impact, which hurts homeowners and renters. However, they should also offer more guidance as to how units are designed, addressing neighbors' concerns about privacy, crowding and aesthetics.

Potential accessory apartment dwellers may want to locate in desirable downcounty communities like Bethesda, Silver Spring and Takoma Park, where housing is often more expensive but close to jobs, shopping and public transit. Not surprisingly, most of the county's existing accessory dwellings are in these places. Encouraging more of them here would put these areas within reach of more homeowners and renters and ideally give them shorter commutes, reducing traffic congestion.

However, the proposed policy limits the number of units that can be created in these areas, by allowing only 2000 units in the entire county and requiring that they're at least 300 feet apart. And because there aren't any one-acre lots in these neighborhoods, the new policy won't allow backyard cottages there, either.

Why should it be easier to build an accessory apartment on an acre in Potomac, far from jobs or transit, than in a neighborhood like Woodside Park in Silver Spring, where homes sit on generous 1/3-acre lots less than a mile from the Metro? They already exist on much smaller lots in neighborhoods like Kentlands in Gaithersburg, which isn't under the jurisdiction of the county's planning department. Seattle's Backyard Cottages Guide shows homeowners how to site an accessory dwelling on their property.

Opponents of the new policy might say that accessory dwellings will harm neighborhoods like Woodside Park, but clear, properly enforced guidelines can ensure that new units respect the existing context. Many places that allow accessory apartments offer clear directions on what homeowners can or cannot do. Vancouver, Canada has a "Laneway Housing How-to Guide," which provides examples of accessory units that have already been built. Seattle has a 54-page guide to building backyard cottages, including sample layouts and directions on how to provide parking or maximize privacy. And Portland walks homeowners through the approval process, ensuring that their unit meets all regulations before they apply.

These guidelines should be made with public input so neighbors can help set the rules, rather than fight them in a public hearing. As a result, homeowners get a template they can follow, saving them time and hassle; neighbors know what kinds of additions to expect in their community; and tenants get safe, functional, and attractive places to live.

Accessory apartments give residents freedom

Opponents say that accessory apartments will hurt their single-family neighborhoods. But as Post columnist Roger K. Lewis points out, many of Montgomery County's single-family homes were built for large families. But as households shrink, many of these homes hold just one or two people today. A retired couple living in a four-bedroom house and carving out an apartment for their grandkids or an unrelated tenant isn't "changing" the neighborhood, but bringing it back to the occupancy level it was built for.

Let's face it: Montgomery County is an expensive place to live, and many households are struggling to make ends meet. Making it easier to build accessory dwelling units gives both homeowners and renters the freedom to live where they want and within their means. The county's current policy doesn't prevent accessory apartments from being built, but it does ensure that the creation of more illegal, unsafe, and unattractive apartments. That's a status quo our residents and our neighborhoods can't afford to keep.

six years (dedicated to kevin keegan, magician & journalism teacher)

On June 26, 2006, my bus to work didn't show up and I was inspired to write a blog about it. And six years, 1467 comments, nearly 6000 comments and some 800,000 views later, it's still going. If that's a surprise to you, it's definitely a surprise to me.

Just Up The Pike has given me the opportunity to meet dozens, if not hundreds, of awesome people making a difference in our community. I hope I've made a few friends as well. However, there's one person without whom this blog may have never happened.

Kevin Keegan approached me during my junior year at Blake High School about writing for the Blake Beat, the student paper. I was skeptical at first. I already had Ceramics as my elective and was looking forward to honing my skills on the throwing wheel. However, Mr. Keegan suggested that my talents were better spent behind a keyboard, so I enrolled in his class mid-year.

I learned about picas and column inches, interviewing sources and fact-checking, and how to tell a story in 400 words. I absorbed the Blake Beat stylebook and read columns by John Kelly, now a columnist for the Post, from his days in Mr. Keegan's class at Rockville High School in the 1980's.

In the fall of my senior year, I was appointed Opinions Editor and got a regular column. Not only could I write about things that mattered to me, but people actually read and responded to what I wrote, which I still find exhilarating today.

Mr. Keegan sought out the brightest kids at Blake for his staff, and he took us seriously. We enjoyed a lot of control over how the paper was run, but also had the responsibility of producing a superior product each month. From spending evenings in paste-up assembling the next issue to having long, spirited arguments about the proper use of a semicolon, work at the Blake Beat was challenging but always fun.

As a result, the Beat has been named one of the best student newspapers in Maryland and the country for over ten years.

Rumors of Mr. Keegan's retirement have been swirling for just as long, it seemed. But every time I returned to Blake, he was always in his office and willing to shoot the breeze. On my last visit this spring, Mr. Keegan told me he was finally retiring after 34 years and moving to Massachusetts.

I already said it then, but I'll say it again: Thank you, Mr. Keegan. I never learned how to make a bowl, but you taught me how to work on a team, how to think critically, and how to ask questions. I'm not sure JUTP would've happened had I not been part of the Blake Beat. Or, at least, it would've been a lot worse.

postcard from a well-designed hotel room in north carolina

Suite at a Hyatt Place hotel in Itasca, Illinois. Photo by DiscoverDuPage on Flickr.

When I went to Raleigh last weekend to visit a sick relative in the hospital, I wasn't expecting to find innovations in small apartment design. Then I spent three days in a Hyatt Place hotel by the airport. Though the hotel is geared towards weary business travelers, its cleverly-designed suites might make good permanent homes as well.

Most of the hotel rooms I've stayed in work like this: you walk through a narrow vestibule with a closet on one side and a bathroom on the other. Then, you enter a room with a bed, a television atop a dresser, and a window with a view of the parking lot.

Meanwhile, my family's room at the Hyatt Place, designed by national architecture firm CI Design, felt more like a little apartment. You enter into a sort of "living room," with a large, L-shaped couch, a kitchenette, and a desk with a large lamp. Beyond a small partition is the "bedroom," with one or two beds, a vanity, and a small bathroom. (The view of the parking lot remains, unfortunately.) Straddling the two spaces is a flat-screen television on a pivoting base, so you can watch it from the bed or the couch.

The partition is what makes this space work. It's just long enough to create two discrete spaces, allowing my mother and brother to watch TV on one side while my dad sleeps on the other. But it's also open enough to let natural light from the window into the entire space, preventing it from feeling claustrophobic. I may be exaggerating, but I feel like the partition and the mix of public and private activities it accommodates has really helped our family stay sane during this difficult time.

Floorplan of a typical Hyatt Place suite. Image from Hyatt's website.

Of course, an American family of four can only last so long in 400 square feet, but one person might be pretty happy here. "I'm surprised they don't make apartments for single people like this," my dad mused.

In fact, they do. Apartments the size of our hotel room, dubbed "micro-lofts," are increasingly popular with single adults seeking relatively affordable accommodations in expensive, in-town neighborhoods. Like a traditional warehouse loft, these units consist of one open space, albeit a small one. To make the space more efficient or flexible, designers use a variety of solutions, like loft beds or Murphy beds that free up room for other activities during the day. Like our hotel room, some micro-lofts have some version of a partition that allows the space to work as one large room or several smaller ones.

Micro-lofts have been built or proposed in cities from Providence to Vancouver and Seattle (PDF). Locally, I've heard rumblings that a developer wants to build some in downtown Silver Spring as well.

Above: floorplan of a "one-bedroom" apartment at Mosaic at Metro from the complex's website. Below: a "bedroom" enclosed by partial walls at MetroPointe.

The designers of some newer apartment complexes in the D.C. area, like MetroPointe in Wheaton or Mosaic at Metro in Hyattsville, use partitions with their studio and one-bedroom units. Like our hotel room, the dividers define separate spaces, but they also allow some flexibility in how those spaces are used.

While the plan above denotes "living," "dining" and "sleeping" area, I might want to set my bed up by the big window in the "dining" area, place a dining table by the kitchen in the "living" area, and take advantage of the partition to place a TV in the "sleeping" area. That's far more difficult to do in most conventional one-bedroom layouts with walled-off rooms.

Apartments like this certainly aren't for everyone, but they're an interesting way to provide much-desired housing in areas where space is limited and housing costs are high. Small apartments force creative design solutions. But if done well, they can make a great place to stay, whether for a few nights in Raleigh or as a permanent home.