Advocacy & Safety - bike path is un-environmental in DC region

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/20/AR2008082003756.html?hpid=moreheadlines


An eight foot wide bike path (or sections of it), next to a new six lane highway + shoulders & medians, is un-environmental for footprint reasons. Nice logic, Montgomery County.

Un****ing believable!

I guess dedicating one lane of that six lane freeway to cyclists is just out of the question.

It would probably be cheaper to just put the concrete dividers down the entire length of the road and give cyclists one full lane with a yellow line down the middle. The savings could be taken by using the right lane on one side. Not having to build any exit ramps for the cars would pay for it. After reaching the end, the drivers could loop back around to their destinations(just trying to give cars as much consideration as bikes).

What do you expect from the People's Republic of Montgomery county?

Personally IMO they should scrap the entire ICC project, and just build the path instead.

-D

"That means limiting rainwater runoff from pavement, including asphalt bike paths, that can contaminate streams and other habitat."

You Montgomery County cyclist must use a hell of a lot of chain lube if it is dripping off all over those bike paths.

This just sweeps away any lingering doubt of just how dysfunctional our car-centric transport culture has become. Society's addiction to oil is in no way different to a heroine junkie's addiction.

The Saudi oil sheiks must be laughing so hard they're giving themselves hernias. I would be slowly but surely cranking up the price of oil and milking it for all it's worth if I were them.

The problems, county planners say, started in 2004, when Maryland highway officials conducting a fast-tracked environmental study of the connector dropped plans for an off-road bike path. At the time, highway officials were facing a federal review of the connector proposal, which had been stymied for decades because of environmental concerns. Highway officials said they cut the bike trail because they needed to curb costs and reduce the project's environmental "footprint."

Looks like they took all the 'footprint' they could get and used it for car lanes. Bit hard to now justify increasing the footprint again.

Funny how they'll do whatever it takes to get a road through, but grab any excuse to ditch bike space. In this case they not only stuffed it up for bikes from the start, but stuffed it up for the foreseeable future.

I suspect the analysis is quite biased and fails to adequately balance the long term impact. Also, mitigation is unlikely to have been considered adequately. While I normally find that outraged folks simply didn't get their way in a reasonable process, I suspect there's something amiss here. Participate in the process, anyone up there with standing, and support any local group mounting a legal challenge.

There's likely a minimal assumption on use levels in the long term by commuters. Could well simply count on use estimates as a recreational facility. And fail to account for positive impacts to the larger environment over the long term.

Only when government and industry really grab hold of cycling and promote it will such things waft through easily. I'm not going to hold my breath on that one!

As a transportation planner, Kines said, he believes it would be "shortsighted" not to build a continuous, off-road bike path along the highway. However, he said, parks officials think improving local roads, such as by widening sidewalks to accommodate bikes, would be sufficient.



Since when are bikes supposed to ride on sidewalks. That's against the law in my state and many others. Our car-centric culture amazes me sometimes.

Ah, the Rob Anderson defense!

:rolleyes:

"...parks officials think improving local roads, such as by widening sidewalks to accommodate bikes, would be sufficient."

:rolleyes:

This same bazarre logic used in naming SUV's after the stuff thay have a huge part in
negatively impacting, i.e., Sequoia, Ranier, Sedona, Yukon, etc.....:rolleyes: