Posts about Columbia

I have nothing but respect for these hardy individuals I observed over the past week (all photos by the author):

A couple in matching coats tries to cross Route 50 at Pickett Road in Fairfax City. It took me three light cycles to make a left turn here, but they had to wait much longer for a right-turning driver who'd stop for them.

A bicyclist waits between trucks and SUVs to cross Route 175 at Dobbin Road in Columbia, a massive intersection bordered by the even bigger Columbia Crossing shopping center. This is probably the most inconvenient bicycling environment imaginable: fast roads, no sidewalks, and nearly every building is on a hill and facing away from the street, making each trip a long, tiresome trek.

I found this bicyclist at the intersection of Rhode Island Avenue and Route 1 in Beltsville. Unlike the last two examples, the streets here aren't as broad. But since it's a mile north of the Beltway, this intersection can get very congested. Rhode Island Avenue also doesn't have sidewalks for much of its length, meaning bicyclists don't have a choice but to "share the road."

I have happily pedaled around Philadelphia and the District for a year and a half now, but I haven't enjoyed many forays outside the city. Arlington, for all of its bike lanes, is quite hilly and has some really confusing intersections. The Capital Crescent Trail is pretty, but frequented by super-serious, capital-B Bicyclists who thought nothing of shoving me or my 12-year-old brother out of their way when we biked it last summer. Nor have I had a pleasant time biking in downtown Silver Spring, where the bike network is so lacking that a route on Cedar Street was once declared the "Stupidest Bike Lane in America."

When the District can't build its planned bike lanes, it's hard to believe that surrounding suburban communities will do much better. It is heartening that Montgomery County, Alexandria, College Park and even Columbia are trying to join Capital Bikeshare or looking to start bike sharing programs of their own. Yet these remain, for the most part, inhospitable places to ride a bike, discourage their residents from choosing a healthier, greener, and much cheaper way to get around.

Despite unsympathetic drivers, spread-out communities and unaccommodating infrastructure, a considerable number of outer suburbanites get around by bike. Better planning and simple policy fixes are needed so that a safe, enjoyable experience awaits those who choose to take to two wheels.

The youth cafe reminds me of an experiment at Wilde Lake High School in Columbia twelve years ago, in which teachers found a way to give students business skills while creating a cool after-class hangout, and filling a vacancy in an adjacent shopping center all at once. The school-run Wilde Times Cafe became a local institution, drawing teens from across Howard County. Though it didn't last long, it shows that we can give young people a place in East Montgomery County while teaching them to care for it as well.

Wilde Times Cafe occupied a space rent-free in the Wilde Lake Village Center, which had been struggling to fill vacancies for years and will soon be redeveloped. When it opened in 1999, the Washington Post noted that it filled an important role in the community in an article titled "Students Strive To Open Business; Wilde Times Cafe Takes Much Work":

The idea is to be Al's from "Happy Days," Central Perk from "Friends" and the Peach Pit from "Beverly Hills 90210." It's something that exists on screen but rarely in real life: the single cool, see-and-be-seen gathering place for all the kids in a community.

"Don't make fun of me, but I always see it as the school hangout on 'Saved by the Bell,'" said Shayna, 17. "But a 1990s version, not the 1985 one."

In suburbs like Columbia, there's a ton of stuff for teenagers to do, and at the same time nothing at all. There's bowling, movies, dinner, jaunts to Baltimore or the District, and getting chased from the Wawa off Hickory Ridge. "If we sit there and list them," said Kim, 17, "there's lots of things to do, but we've exhausted them." Been there, done that, need a new scene.

Wilde Times was open weekday afternoons and Friday evenings until 10pm; lacking a proper kitchen, they sold only prepackaged drinks and snacks. The cafe was staffed by Wilde Lake students who received class credit for their efforts. They served customers, selected what items to sell, and handled finances. An adult was always present to ensure that nothing got out of hand.

It was successful, drawing hungry students during the day and hosting concerts and open mike nights at night. Community leaders embraced the cafe, which was highlighted in Howard County's winning bid for All-American City in 2001.

Unfortunately, neighboring shopkeepers complained that the cafe's teenage patrons were running their customers away, and Wilde Times closed temporarily in March 2001 after a fight following a Friday night concert. It reopened with a sold-out battle of the bands a year later before closing permanently once Kimco, the shopping center's owner, found a paying tenant.

I'm curious how the Wilde Times Cafe model could be applied to Montgomery County's nascent youth cafes program. We may not be able to run restaurants out of community centers, but there's certainly no shortage of vacant retail space in East County that could be repurposed. It's also worth exploring how youth cafes could have programming at different times. Could they be open afternoons some days, and evenings on other days? With parents in Briggs Chaney afraid to let their kids outside due to fears of crime, having safe activities throughout the day is important.

Of course, youth programs at the rec center are only part of the solution, and the county certainly can't afford to entertain teenagers all the time. But I hope we can explore creative ways to engage young people, and teach them a few skills while they're at it, rather than just sending them home to sit in front of the TV.

We worked in the also automobile-centric community of Columbia, which we drove to daily. Cars were as much a part of our lives as food and water.

I ended up getting a job in downtown DC, which was precisely the moment when both of our lives changed. We'd never been too familiar with the DC area, so we started to explore the neighborhoods after work every day.

We were especially struck by downtown Silver Spring, which seemed vibrant and diverse beyond anything we were used to in Anne Arundel County. The mix of proximity to DC (and our families in central Maryland) and the affordability, combined with the transit options to downtown DC sealed the deal.

As soon as we were financially established enough to make the leap, we found an apartment right downtown in Silver Spring, a block from the Metro.

We consolidated our cars, and own only one now. We started taking Metrorail to work (my girlfriend got a job downtown as well), but soon found the bus routes and exploited them as well. It wasn't long before we started thinking of the possibility of cycling to our jobs.

After finding that we could easily cycle to work, we purchased a couple of road bikes. Now, we each have four different modes to choose from (rail, bus, bike, or car) any particular day. I'd say that any given week, my choices are almost evenly distributed between the first three.

The first time I rode my route to work (which involves going around Walter Reed then down 14th street, utilizing the bike lanes), I almost threw up from exaustion. Now, a year and a half later, the commute barely fazes me, and I'm in the best shape I've ever been in. My girlfriend would easily state the same about herself. (She uses the Capital Crescent trail).

I couldn't have imagined the change my life would take just a few years ago. My car sits in my apartment's garage, barely getting any use at all. When once I saw a car as an indelible, constant part of every day life, kind of like underwear, or music, I now could never see myself living in an area that required me to use it in order to get the groceries, go to work, see a movie, or any of the countless other things that I can walk to in my immediate neighborhood.

Your blog embodies the values that I now hold. I just wanted to state my appreciation for your mission, and hopefully my story will play itself out again and again as people in situations similar to ours realize that car dependency is a burden.

Thanks for your time. It's Friday night, and my neighborhood beckons!

David Fronapfel
Silver Spring

In addition to the great use of mixed-use development, stores and a library, he pointed to the size of the plaza as important for not being oversized, unlike Boston's awful and much-maligned City Hall Plaza. Programming the space with activity is also key, said Lewis.

Public spaces have been moving to private spaces like shopping malls, Lewis explained. In Houston, as with many other cities, the main place to see other people is the mall. Columbia, Maryland was built around a shopping mall in the 1960s, but wouldn't be today (and, in fact, the developers want to change that). A caller brought up the way our grocery buying behavior, of purchasing large amounts of bulk groceries, fosters less public space and street interaction than the Europeans who buy at local markets.

Columbia. Columbia was built as a planned community with a diversity of housing types and income levels, though the town center is dominated with a large mall. It's governed by an elected group that's basically a large homeowner's association, though the commercial areas area outside the association's control. The company that basically purchased the downtown wants to redevelop the area.

A charrette process over the last few years generated a community vision document which has a lot of great themes around creating a "diverse, mixed-use, livable" place, though it's also short on specifics, some of which can be gleaned from a traffic study that reveals more elements, some of which look good and others that worry community activists there.

Rockville Pike. This major commercial strip is almost entirely full of the classic strip mall (a rectangle of shops facing a central parking lot), yet the Red Line runs under it and in recent years condo developments have sprouted up. There's definite potential to turn the area into something more like the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor (which it could have been from the start, but for short-sighted decisions by Montgomery County in the 1970s).

Rockville is conducting community meetings to solicit input on the corridor; the presentation makes it clear they are thinking in the right direction. As usual, residents had a mix of perspectives; "suggestions ranged from encouraging mixed-use development to stopping it altogether," and while many people wished to make the Pike more pedestrian-friendly, others wanted to solve traffic congestion by adding lanes and separating modes, which is harmful to an overall sense of place.

14th Street Bridge Corridor. This looks mainly like a standard department-of-transportation study to fix some ramps and improve some pedestrian and bike access (mostly good things). The original public comments included some requests to go further, including exploring congestion pricing, which did make it into the alternatives presentation, and converting some of the freeway into at-grade boulevards (especially a good idea in Southwest/Southeast DC, but also could be very nice in parts of Arlington), which didn't. The inclusion of congestion charging is interesting, though I wonder if it's just there for completeness and won't actually get much serious thought right now. Nonetheless, I include it as one to watch for this reason.

But even if it doesn't go beyond small changes, they're mostly good ones, including bus-only lanes, expanding HOV lanes, connecting bike lanes and pedestrian paths across the bridges, improving bike signage (a big problem on federal lands where many bike routes aren't marked at all), and parking management (though there are few details here). There are also some classic though minor traffic-flow changes, like reducing bottlenecks, that could encourage even more driving as well.