Posts about Clarksburg

The parking lots are full at the Germantown Transit Center, where there is a RideOn shuttle bus to the Shady Grove Metro Station. There is also an express bus to Bethesda with a higher fare, at the nearby Milestone Shopping Center park-and-ride in Germantown.

At the Germantown MARC train station, the parking lots are also full, and expansion will probably require construction of a parking garage. The planned Corridor Cities Transitway is as yet purely notional and would not go all the way into Clarksburg, ostensibly a transit-oriented community.

So much for the bad news. The good news, at least potentially, is that the MARC train station in Boyds could help meet the growing regional demand.

Boyds is a county-designated historic district, a few miles west of Germantown and south of Clarksburg, in the Agricultural Reserve. Trains have been stopping there since 1873.

In 2006, the Maryland Transit Administration tried to close the Boyds station, along with another station on the Brunswick Line and two stations on the Camden Line. But community protest and emergency legislation introduced by State Senator Rob Garagiola kept all of the stations open. Three eastbound and four westbound trains now stop at Boyds daily.

At the moment, the parking lot has room for only 19-20 cars and is often full. The nearest bus stop is over a mile away. And pedestrians and bicyclists face high-speed commuter traffic on dark, winding roads with no shoulders.

But the county government could fix these problems with a few relatively simple improvements to bicycle, transit, and car access.

Improvements for bicycle access could include:

• Installing a bike rack. (MARC only allows folding bicycles on the train.)
  
• Adding bike facilities to MD-117 between the Boyds train station and the Germantown Community Center, consistent with the County bicycle master plan.
  
• Extending the planned bike paths along MD-121 in Clarksburg south from West Old Baltimore Road to MD-117.

Improvements for transit access could include:

• Extending RideOn bus #71 or #78 from western Germantown to the train station. (Indeed, there are already Boyds MARC riders who live in the neighborhoods served by these buses.)
  
• Extending RideOn bus #75 from Clarksburg to the train station, when the planned commercial and office space at Cabin Branch is built. This would connect Clarksburg residents to the Boyds train station, as well as people who live further west along the Brunswick Line to jobs in Clarksburg.

Improvements for car access could include:

• Leasing spaces in a church parking lot 500 feet south of the station. However, people would have to walk along a narrow, dark road on which a sidewalk is not allowed.
  
• Buying or leasing a vacant quarter-acre lot next to the station (once occupied by a house a freight train derailed on in 1986) and/or a vacant half-acre lot across the tracks (where the station was until the 1950s).
  
• Leasing land for parking on the future site of the Boyds Local Park, 500 feet east of the station. The lot would be integrated into the park, if the park were developed. In addition, putting in a bicycle/pedestrian crossing at the intersection of MD-117 and MD-121, as well as a sidewalk from the intersection to the station. This crossing would also improve the Hoyles Mill trail connection from South Germantown Recreation Park to Black Hill Regional Park, next to the future Clarksburg development at Cabin Branch.

Parking lot expansion would include a bus turnaround, as well as pervious surfaces because Boyds is in the Agricultural Reserve. Also, as a historic district, Boyds probably could not accommodate more than 75 parking spaces. This emphasizes the need to improve non-car as well as car access.

Yes, there would probably be objections that Boyds would no longer be a "home in the country," that people should just drive 5 miles west to the Barnesville station or 3 miles east to the Germantown station, that stopping at Boyds makes the trip from Brunswick or Frederick longer, and that small stations are inefficient and take away from service to the big stations.

However, the current and planned future growth in Clarksburg and Germantown will inevitably make Boyds less rural, regardless of train station access. If people can get to the train more conveniently, more people will choose the train. Stopping at Boyds adds only a minute or two, which is not a meaningful difference for a 90-minute trip. And future expansion on the Brunswick Line will allow MARC to improve service to both big and small stations, by running more expresses and locals.

Of course, these small improvements by themselves cannot solve the big problem of insufficient regional transit in the upper county. But, together with lots of other small improvements, they would be a good start.

In 2005, Clarksburg residents discovered a string of site plan violations that led to the appointment of an ombudswoman and the resignation of the Planning Board chairman.

Clarksburg Town Center still doesn't have its Town Center retail district, and there's a new working group to help figure out who will pay for the roads and parks in the parts of Clarksburg that have already been built.

Nonetheless, some 14,000 people now live in Clarksburg, and they need services nearby. Daycare is an obvious priority among these services, and so a planned day care center and after school program, at the intersection of MD 355 and West Old Baltimore Road, just north of Germantown, is welcome.

Unfortunately, it might not get built, due to the recent Planning Board decision which effectively prioritizes the needs of future Clarksburg residents for wider roads over the needs of current Clarksburg residents for nearby day care.

The reason for this backward logic is the Local Area Transportation Review (LATR) part of Montgomery County Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance (APFO). The LATR is based on "critical lane volume" (CLV), a measure of the number of vehicles moving through an intersection's through or left-turn lanes in an hour.

The logic of the Planning Board's decision goes like this:

1. The Planning Board has already approved a lot of new housing in the area. (The Planning Board staff report does not name the approved developments, but they probably include Miller & Smith's "Gallery Park" and Winchester Homes's first development at Cabin Branch.)

2. When this housing has been built and people move in, they will drive through the intersection next to the site of the proposed day care.

3. When they drive through the intersection, it will become unacceptably congested.

4. Therefore, if the day care wants to operate at capacity, it needs to "improve" (i.e., widen) the intersection to account for one and a half times the number of car trips the day care will generate. The widening is to consist of three turn lanes: a southbound right-turn lane on MD 355, a northbound left-turn lane on MD 355, and an eastbound right-turn lane on West Old Baltimore Road. And it may cost $360,000.

Ross Flax, the owner of the day care, points out that day care providers are not experts in road construction and that the day care will account for only 20% of the total additional trips the day care, plus the approved but unbuilt developments, will generate. He has therefore offered to put 20% of the costs ($72,000) in escrow to fund later construction.

But the LATR guidelines say that "improvements" must be "permitted and bonded, under construction, or under contract for construction" before building permits can be issued. Therefore, the day care must pay the whole cost, now. Miller & Smith and Winchester Homes will pay their shares back to the day care later, when they begin building.

However, the day care cannot afford the whole $360,000, Flax has told the Gazette. And operating at half capacity, as would be allowed without the turn lanes, may not be economical. As a result, it is "likely" that he won't open the day care at all unless the Planning Board reconsiders the decision.

In short, the Planning Board first approved large housing developments, whose residents must drive everywhere. Then, they approved more large housing developments, whose future residents will also have to drive everywhere. And now they're requiring a day care, which is intended to serve the current residents, to pay for the wider roads all those extra cars will need.

Memo to the Planning Board: There must be a better plan.