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Clearly it's time to reconstruct much of Veirs Mill Road from Twinbrook Parkway to the Montrose Parkway. They're already diong a bit of that, having completed the major expansion at Veirs Mill Road and Aspen Hill Road, though mostly what that does is give the carrying capacity to the intersection to dump freeway-like traffic into a merge going up a steep hill on Aspen Hill Road and letting it bottleneck up to Arctic Avenue's traffic signal, rather than having it bottleneck along one lane turning left, from Twinbrook Parkway down to Aspen Hill Road, as it did before the "improvements".

Of course, I invite people to stop by the neighborhood website, perhaps a good start page on roads issues would be Aspen Hill Road. But I digress.

To continue, by widening Veirs Mill Road to a potential three lanes by three lanes, median separated with signal-controlled left-turn pullout lanes, that already freeway-like traffic can hopefully handle not just the projected traffic associate with the Montrose Parkway, but also the inevitable concentration of High Density Mixed Use development that "doubtless needs to be done" eventually replacing most of Veirs Mill Village and Stoneybrook Estates both Parts One and Two, which is to say, north of Veirs Mill Road on both banks of the Turkey Branch of Rock Creek. "Connecticut Estates" as it's sometimes known, which includes the troublesome property also known as "Korean Korner", clearly is full of houses that are reaching the end of their designed life, as most were built in the early 1950s through the mid-1950s. And there are legacy design elements in places like South Aspen Hill -- such as the oddly large southern intersection of Parkland Drive and Grenoble Drive -- which could be adapted to their original purpose, an additional north-of-Veirs-Mill out-of-flood-plain crossing of Turkey Branch. But why would anyone need to do that? Why, to close the square around a development that has immense "walkability" potential, what with the large parks right south of Veirs Mill and commercial zoned strips at 3 of 4 corners of Randolph Road and Veirs Mill Road.

But that part of Veirs Mill Road that needs to be elevated another 15 feet to be mostly out of the 100-year flood plan, that's almost 2 miles long, you say? Wherever will they get that much fill dirt, you ask? Why, when they condemn the Randolph Hill strip mall at the southwest corner, they can shave down the top of that side of the hill and once deeply down to bedrock, it's perfect foundations for... high-rise high-density mixed-use development, and all of that dirt can go right down the road as fill dirt for raising Veirs Mill that obligatory 20 feet.

And that also clears out some of the uglier parts of Veirs Mill Village, who needs leftover Levittowns anyways. And while they're shaving down the top of the hill, and padding up the flat parts, why not level out the general run of the road so that you can run light-rail rapid transit straight from downtown Rockville to downtown Wheaton? With the present hills and grades, they'd need cog-rails like on the Swiss Alps, but with enough levelling you can have light-rail without cogged drives and that's very efficient. And you can build huge parking garages for all of the freeway-like traffic coming home off of the Montrose Parkway, and all of this construction will develop a local industry large enough so that when they finally decide to actually, not jokingly, Pave The Bay, it'll look like a job that's not much bigger than the terraforming of Korean Korner and Stoneybrook Estates and Connecticut Park Estates and South Aspen Hill...

Sorry to go on and on in an ironic high dudgeon, but I hadn't yet heard sufficient whimpering.

The problem around here is that they have a shovel factory, they really prefer holes, and digging is their favorite pastime.

Did I forget to mention the Planning Board voted to go ahead with their Georgia Avenue Corridor vision? Next on the drawing-board, major high-density high-rise mixed-use development definitely on the way for Northgate Plaza (Lee Development Group) and doubtless Aspen Manor. But first they'll have to bulldoze the Aspin Hill Pet Cemetery grounds to convert Harmony Hills to multifamily zoning and interim high-density housing.

It's already well on its way, to judge by the illegal hotel/rooming house that's scheduled to be passed-on as a "done deal" when the new "accessory apartment" zoni8ng amendment mysteriously sails right through the County Council in a form nothing like anything that was ever debated.

Note, that picture is not an artist's conception, it's actually there and you could launch a jet from the roof, if you had a catapult.

You may now commence with the shivering and expressions of sincere dread.

by Thomas Hardman on Dec 28, 2008 3:10 pm • link • report