Posts about White Flint

Marc Elrich has been a strong proponent of a Bus Rapid Transit network, pushing the idea tirelessly and making it a signature issue. However, he's also the strongest defender of traffic-based tests that in effect hinder walkable development.

Nancy Floreen pushed through the White Flint plan, one of Montgomery's biggest opportunities for meaningful transit-oriented development, and opposes the traffic-based tests that Elrich likes. On the other hand, she also opposes most rules that would limit development in rural areas far from transit. She generally advocates building in the county and is less discerning about what or where.

George Leventhal has been a leader in the fight for the Purple Line, and for transit in general in the county. Yet he also strongly supported widening I-270, and basically favors any transportation project of any kind in any location. Duchy Trachtenberg has been good on the environment and transit issues as well and not a road booster, but hasn't shown as much leadership on growth and transportation issues generally.

I'd recommend Montgomery residents (like my in-laws) vote for Mr. Riemer and decide among the other candidates based on the other issues, like schools, budgets, labor relations and many more. If you're not sure of some of the candidates, it's also fine to vote for only two or three. Leaving a blank or two on the ballot makes the votes you do cast count even more, as the top four total vote-getters win the seats.

Two district seats are also contested, which happen to be the two that had Montgomery's greatest development debates in the last few years. District 1 includes Chevy Chase, Bethesda and Potomac, and has significant numbers of residents who oppose the Purple Line and/or White Flint. Roger Berliner, the incumbent, has championed both projects a good future for his area despite the short-term political risk. Meanwhile, his challenger, Ilaya Hopkins, has chosen to throw her lot in with the antis. Mr. Berliner should be reelected to prove that anti sentiment doesn't drive Montgomery politics.

In District 2, the suburban and rural northern part of the County, former Planning Board Chair Royce Hanson is the best choice for the open seat. He's been a strong proponent of Smart Growth on the Planning Board, and was largely responsible for the Agricultural Reserve, the large belt of (mostly) protected land at the County's edge, much of which is in that district. His support for the sprawl development at Gaithersburg West was more of a disappointment, but his multi-decade track record warrants your vote.

The other district members, Phil Andrews, Nancy Navarro, and Valerie Ervin, do not have primary challengers.

Photo by author.

It is clear that the enclosed walkway was erected with the rush hour commuter in mind. The walkway makes perfect sense for commuters walking from the parking garage to the Metro. It's light out and there are plenty of people around. My friend noted that at night she couldn't much see around the curve in the sidewalk. It was completely impossible to see around the corner into the parking garage.

It is disappointing that the walkway couldn't have been designed with safety and comfort in mind. I don't think that the enclosed walkway was built to feel unsafe at night on purpose. I think that the concept that a young woman would walk there after dark was just never taken into consideration.

Lighting, mirrors, and perhaps periodic openings for egress are all necessary attributes for a workable temporary walkway. These considerations will be even more important if this walkway is still there in the late fall, when the sun sets before the commute has ended.

Montgomery County can do better than this. The county should plan for pedestrian safety after residents leave those destinations and walk home from the Metro. They should require that if a sidewalk is obstructed due to construction, that a safe alternate route be provided. And that detour should include lighting and other safety features if necessary.

Photo by author.

Because of the placement of the bus stop located on the south side of Marinelli across from the Metro entrance, there is a desire line across the street. The wall makes pedestrians go the long way around, and is typical of the conventional mid-20th century transportation orthodoxy which asserted that cars and pedestrians should be kept separate.

Additionally, the wall creates hazards for motorists. While I was taking photos, I saw two motorists turn left from southbound Rockville Pike (MD 355) into the oncoming lanes on Marinelli Road. A friend of mine who lives in one of the apartment buildings adjacent to the Metro said to me that she did the same thing the first time she turned left onto Marinelli. This wall violates the concept of driver expectancy. Drivers often drive based on what they expect, not necessarily according to actual conditions. To many drivers, a wall implies the side of the road rather than a median.

The wall also partially obstructs drivers' view of pedestrians in and around the crosswalk. It is especially hard for drivers to see road hazards, shorter pedestrians, children, and wheelchair users.

A more progressive approach would be to relocate the bus stop directly across the street from the Metro entrance. The stop line for cars approaching the Rockville Pike intersection on westbound Marinelli Road would also be moved back to allow a crosswalk to occupy the new desire line to the bus stop and NRC headquarters across the street.

As White Flint develops into a more urban area, Montgomery County will need to begin to treat the needs of pedestrians as more important than those of drivers. If Rockville Pike remains as hostile to pedestrians as it is now, no amount of density will turn White Flint into an urban center.

2. Wheaton is both routinely overlooked by the county as a whole and also posseses great economic and social potential as a vibrant, walkable, sustainable town. What is your vision for Wheaton's future?

Wheaton's time has come! The next Council must prioritize Wheaton for investment and support. There are many interesting and good plans for revitalizing the parking lot in the center of town into a community square. We should move those plans forward.

However, the elephant in the room is the Westfield Wheaton Mall. We should establish a walkable street grid with housing on the mall property, and use economic development dollars to incentivize the transformation through gap financing. If we attract more residents who embrace walkable lifestyles to the urban core in Wheaton, the small businesses there will flourish. It is a very risky proposition to move existing businesses out of their spaces and hope that they survive during a rebuild — and will be able to afford new-building rents afterwards.

If well designed, such a transition of the Mall would work without jeopardizing Wheaton's existing small business character. Finally, if the County is going to give Westfield $4 million to build a Costco, they should use that as leverage to get going on a mixed use (housing + retail), walkable street grid on mall property — without any more gas stations. Georgia Avenue already has plenty.

I will also add that plans for Wheaton have come along every few years and have gone nowhere for a variety of reasons. We're only going to see success during this coming Council term if we bring together the bloggers, transit advocates, neighborhood activists, immigrant organizers, small businesses, property owners, and others, in a mighty chorus of "Now is the time!"

3. In your campaign kick-off, you expressed a clear vision for locating many new jobs along existing infrastructure in East County rather than in new office parks in Gaithersburg West. What sites do you envision for new jobs and do you see a need for new transit infrastructure to support them?

We have plenty of room for new jobs in Silver Spring, Wheaton, White Oak, Burtonsville, and Glenmont. Many of these areas are currently served by Metro. Others are in the Route 29 corridor, which needs a rapid transit service in order to support new jobs. One cost-effective transit solution would be a next generation bus system, as described by Councilmember Elrich, with its own separated lane and priority through intersections. In our present time of fiscal austerity we will need to think creatively about how to finance it — we need a model that larger landowners can pay for.

I helped push the Council to a good compromise on Gaithersburg West, but one of the concerns I raised was that the plan is projected to reduce job growth in East County. We can't let that happen! East County has been given short shrift for too long. We need good planning to create the commercial space, housing, and transit that will get this under-served area moving again.

We also need policymakers who can get new people involved to support the kind of change that we need in the County — people like Councilmembers Valerie Ervin (D-5) and Nancy Navarro (D-4). I hope to join them in this cause and I am grateful for their support of my efforts to get this County moving again.

That's why, when faced with a nice opportunity for a park or community facility on the unused SHA land at the northern intersection of Montrose Parkway and Rockville Pike, McDoT gave us a ... surface parking lot. In White Flint. Where we're trying to replace those. To protect the environment. And make a pedestrian-friendly community. I'm sure they had a good reason.

And just so with the new TPAR. The product of a high-powered consultant's report, the proposal to be issued today is fascinating more for what it does NOT do than what it does. There are some good parts of the proposal, mostly dealing with the techniques for measuring and analyzing traffic.

But you hit the real problem on the very first page of the Introduction: transit and travel demand management (getting people out of their cars) are to be considered "separately" (emphasis in original) from arterial roadways and bicycle and pedestrian improvements. See page 3. Um... why?

Maybe that comes from treating roads out of context. That's reinforced by the wide and differing areas which are treated as if they were the same. Downtown Bethesda, with its urban character, access to Metro, and full streets, is in the same transit access zone with Cabin John, with its more suburban or rural vocabulary and NO transit access. Really, only roads matter to McDoT, not transit access, and not transit-orientation. (And, a wiser analyst than I pointed out, the new TPAR means that McDoT can build what it wants, when it wants, without a lot of outside control, as long as a road is in a master plan.)

So, there's a lot of good in the new proposal, but at bottom, this is a continuation of the "car is king" philosophy. Understandable in a department of Transportation, but not really where the County is going. This is more rearranging the deck chairs, rather than a holistic approach to solving a variety of mobility issues.

And it totally ignores the big gorilla coming down on us all: carbon limitation laws that will begin strangling road construction in just a few years. Sustainability (read demand management) will become the main driver in the future, not congestion. Soon what comes out of the tailpipe will become more important than how fast we can move that pipe.

Perhaps this is the wrong place to do that type of overall "quality of life" analysis, but if this TPAR is intended to replace PAMR and LATR, then TPAR will determine our government priorities and spending. Road construction is, and will be important, but the County shouldn't lock into a system which expressly intends to separate transit and demand management from road needs.

This is, again, the same problem the County faced with the White Flint Plan: how do you use these car-oriented tools in a transit-oriented space? The answer is: not very easily.

Wouldn't we be better served, as a County, if we did what the Planning Board tried to do in White Flint: measure a variety of elements which make up "quality of life," rather than just how fast cars move through intersections? Spend as much time on getting drivers out of cars as on moving them through intersections as fast as possible.