The end result of this project includes a big win for biking in the region: a paved, grade separated trail from Bethesda to Silver Spring. But the construction phase will include unavoidable disruptions—the entire Georgetown Branch Trail from Bethesda to Stewart Avenue will be completely closed starting September 5. It will remain closed for the duration of construction.
There are a number of workable on-street routes, many low-stress and relatively direct, but things get a bit complicated here because the town of Chevy Chase has so far refused to allow the county to sign a trail detour on its roads.
At present, the official signed detour is on Jones Bridge Road, which is a busy thoroughfare with narrow sidewalks and no bike infrastructure. If you’re a confident bicyclist, it may be fine. If you’re not, it will be a stressful experience.
Note that “duration of construction” is estimated to be five years. This one affects me. A lot. I bike regularly, and about 60 percent of my rides use this route. It would be less than that, but another multi-year construction project, which closes Beach Drive/Rock Creek Parkway, had been forcing me down the now-closed trail.
As for the official detour, Mr. Browne greatly under-states its problems. As you know, I think that the term “city bike lane” is an oxymoron. But the road we are being asked to use not only has no bike lane. It has zero shoulder. No white stripey thing at all. Just the curb. Plus it has curves that are difficult for drivers to see around. And lots of cars, regularly exceeding the 35 MPH speed limit. If you want to engineer a road as a no-go zone for bikes, this is what you would design. Mr. Browne, I may not meet your definition of a confident cyclist, but I am confident of one thing: as a cyclist, I want no part of that road.
So I tried the sidewalk. Not as dilapidated as some of the sidewalks I use, but pretty uneven and quite narrow. With the usual crowd of joggers, strollers, dog-walkers, and so on, it would tempt many cyclists (not me) to try the road.
But to add insult to injury, you end up nowhere near where the bike trail picks up again! Instead, you are left with about a mile of urban traffic to navigate through to get back to the path. Yes, there is a bike lane, but I already told you what I think of those.
Anyway, I called this post “green on green” because it reminded me of what a commenter wrote recently.
I occasionally notice what I think of as “bobo wedge issues,” disputes that divide bo from bo. For example, I live near a regional airport with ambitions to expand. This has set the bourgeois faction’s desire for travel convenience against the bohemian faction’s desire for natural quiet. Which bo you are depends on whether you live in the flight path.
The bike trail is being closed because the Washington DC Metro (our subway system) is building a new line. Of course, Metro, which loses money in spite of generous subsidies and exorbitant fares, is the poster child for “green means unsustainable.” And then, to top it off, Chevy Chase is packed with smug, green progressives, so of course they would NIMBY-veto any signage that would help cyclists deal with the trail closure.
Not that they especially deserve it, but the discussion of many of the residents of Chevy Chase does not seem to be “taking the most charitable view of those who disagree.”
This is a regular feature of transport decision-making here in Los Angeles.
Divert funding from buses to build out light rail. Add “traffic calming” and bike lane infrastructure to roads to “increase safety” while increasing congestion. Then wonder why overall transit ridership keeps declining.
(The answer would be: because buses serve a much larger number of riders, and the number of routes have been cut back, and the buses are now stuck in the newly-created congestion making them consistently late. People then find other options, like Uber.)
That’s when you get clipped by a car, and the driver yells out “And yer ugly, too.”
Chicago tried to close a section of its lakefront bike trail this summer and route people way off across on the other side Lakeshore Drive. While I was there, I was heartened to see that bike riders were universally ignoring the closures and pedaling past the barricades and through the construction zone.