The WashCycle blog has summarized the Bike Projects listed in the Mont. Co. FY11-16 CIP budget proposal. The summary reminds me that there are some bright spots in the Montgomery County Bikeways Program, even though the Met Branch Trail is doing badly.
I posted this extended comment at Washcycle:
Thank you for sorting through the MoCo Bikeways projects and giving this summary. There are some bright spots, and I sometimes overlook them because I get caught up with the dismal treatment the Met Branch Trail is receiving. I am especially encouraged that the BRAC projects can make cycling easier north of Bethesda.
But the Met Branch project has made little progress at MC DOT since 2005, even though it has strong support with the County Council. In 2005 the DOT project designers had completed facility planning to the point where they had a concept plan that had the strong support from the community group meetings and that followed the Master Plan alignment approved in 2001. It was ready to go to the Council for approval and transition to detailed design.
But then the Met Branch project engineers were told by their DOT management that the project was too expensive, and that no one would want to bike on a trail through the Ripley and Fenton Village areas. Project engineers were directed to go back and develop low cost options that did not have a new trail bridge over Georgia Avenue.
The project has made very little progress since then. In 2006 the Planning Board and Council T&E Committee rejected the low cost options as not being responsive to the need, and directed MC DOT to build the trail on the Master Plan alignment with the new bridge over Georgia Avenue. MC DOT did very little until 2008, then recommended the project not be funded until project coordination could be completed with CSX and WMATA. But then in 2009 the Council T&E Committee learned that no project coordination with CSX and WMATA could be completed because MC DOT had not done enough design work to be able to present substantive plans to CSX and WMATA for discussion. Now we have this – MC DOT recommending that the needed design work not resume until 2013.
I don’t fault MC DOT design engineers. They started out by doing a good job, and then were cut off at their knees by MC DOT managers in 2005. The project has been in disarray since. I doubt this project will get back on track until the County Council and Executive show some leadership over MC DOT.