[Note I am placing this in the Bike Metro section as the Laural trail head is just a few miles from the B&A Trail and the Full ICC Trail will be a wonderful resource for Balto area bicyclist just as the B&A trail is.]
Please make your voices heard at the July 10th Montgomery County Planning Board hearing on the Intercounty Connector Trail! Let them know you do not want any sections of the trail to be eliminated from the county master plan! If you can\’t testify, please send letters and emails to the Planning Board and cc the County Council. See contact info at the bottom of this message.
In what would be a very short-sighted decision, the Planning Board may forever eliminate important sections of the planned trail along the Intercounty Connector highway by removing them from the county master plan. The Planning Department (led by the Board) is making the argument that the trail would cause irreparable environmental damage in natural park areas, despite the six-lane highway next door! Incredibly, this is the same Planning Board that endorsed the highway in 2005. Staff is saying the trail may be the \"straw that breaks the camel\’s back\", ignoring the tons of highway the camel will already be carrying.
The Planning Board would replace the removed sections of trail with sidepaths along busy roads, including New Hampshire Avenue, East Randolph Road, Fairland Road, Briggs Chaney Road, Bonifant Road and Notley Road. The detours are circuitous and force trail users to cross several major intersections and countless streets and driveways where cyclists must be extremely careful. That is inappropriate for a trail meant to serve inexperienced riders and families, and it undermines the promised transportation value.
Removing this trail from the master plan would be a death knell, making it extremely difficult to ever finish the trail even 20 years from now, when gas prices have hit $12 a gallon and global warming has ruined sensitive areas the size of Alaska. Even if the ICC trail isn\’t built right away, we MUST keep the entire route in the master plan. Highways attract development and employment sites that must be served by good bike routes. Just imagine if I-270 had a parallel bike path. That highway was also planned to have a path, but it too was canceled — by the state — 20 years ago.
Trails through parks and along highways were planned to be the skeleton of the county bike trail network, providing efficient mobility for cyclists by virtue of their length and location away from street crossings and traffic lights. The ICC trail was meant to be the backbone of that skeleton, linking together many north-south trails. Unfortunately the Planning Board has removed several park trails from the master plan over the years. This trend must stop.
The worst and longest detour being discussed is the one circumventing the Paint Branch Stream Valley Park. This would eliminate three miles of trail and replace it with five miles of detours. But trail impacts in that region have not even been studied. Changing a master plan should never be done without adequate study. Please insist that the Planning Board fully study the trail (how to build it, not just why we shouldn\’t) for ALL the detour sections.
Let us offer our gratitude to bike planning staff, especially Chuck Kines, for supporting and studying the ICC trail with diligence and creativity. But trail decisions are ultimately made at a higher level…
So to prevent loss of this trail, cyclists need to show up in force at the public hearing on July 10 at 7:30 pm, at Planning Department headquarters at 8787 Georgia Avenue. Tell the Planning Board you oppose the master plan amendment regarding the trail. Sign up to testify by calling the Planning Board at 301-495-4600 or use the online form at https://www.daicsearch.org/planning_board/testify.asp . If you can’t testify, please write to the Planning Board. Here is their contact info:
Montgomery County Planning Board
8787 Georgia Ave.
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Email: MCP-Chairman@mncppc-mc.org
Fax: 301-495-1320
https://www.montgomeryplanningboard.org
Please also cc the Montgomery County Council, at:
county.council@montgomerycountymd.gov
For further information and points to consider, see WABA\’s ICC trail page,
https://www.waba.org/takeaction/ICC.php
Links:
– Planning Department recommendation to the Planning Board:
https://www.montgomeryplanningboard.org/agenda/2008/documents/20080522_staff-report_ltd_functional_mp-amendment_icc.pdf
– Planning Department\’s trail study page:
https://www.mc-mncppc.org/transportation/icc/icc_bike_path.shtm
– More detail from Planning Department:
https://www.montgomeryplanningboard.org/agenda/2008/documents/20080522_icc_staffdraft.pdf
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This alert sponsored by Montgomery Bicycle Advocates (www.mobike.org).oldId.20080707125930603
Here was MoBike’s official testimony on the ICC Bikeway, handed out & partly
read to the Planning Board at the July 10th hearing.
– Jack
Testimony on the Intercounty Connector Limited Functional Master Plan
Amendment
Montgomery Bicycle Advocates (MoBike)
July 10, 2008
I represent Montgomery Bicycle Advocates, or MoBike. We are one of the
three organizations that requested the recently completed study of the
planned bikeway along the Intercounty Connector.
MoBike strongly opposes amending the county master plan to eliminate or
significantly weaken any sections of the ICC trail. The amendment being
considered today would severely compromise the trail’s transportation value
and suitability for users of all types.
We remain baffled and dumbfounded by the relentless efforts of M-NCPPC to
remove large sections of the ICC trail from consideration. These efforts
continue despite three years of strong, although vague, comments from the
Planning Board in support of the trail. When the Board first voted against
key trail sections in 2005, we thought there must have been some mistake.
But they stood by their decision. Fortunately the County Council voted 8-0
to overrule that decision a month later, but now planning staff is again
chopping away at the trail, even citing the overruled Board decision as
justification for carving up the trail, as if overturned decisions retain
validity.
Given the mix of positive M-NCPPC statements and negative results, we’ve
concluded that planners and park staff perhaps do not grasp the enormous
difference, in terms of mobility and safety, between a trail that avoids
at-grade crossings and one that crosses street after street, driveway after
driveway. That is the essential difference between the master planned trail
and the detours now being proposed by planning staff. Separation from
crossings is what makes park trails, trails along highways and rail trails
so valuable. The detours lack this trait.
To put it in perspective, imagine if key segments of the Capital Crescent
Trail were built as wide sidewalks along Massachusetts and Wisconsin
avenues. It would make the CCT, if you could even call it a trail,
inconvenient, uncomfortable, slow, and full of hazards. The trail would
easily get less than 10% of its current use and be 100% less effective for
bike commuters.
Perhaps another explanation for the Planning Department’s mixed messages is
that it doesn’t recognize the importance of this particular trail. I’ll try
to fill you in. First, the trail represents the east-west backbone of the
upcounty bikeway network. Together with the Midcounty Highway trail, it
creates a 25-mile long high quality bikeway from Beltsville to Clarksburg,
with a spur to Rockville called the Matthew Henson Trail. It would link
together several major north-south trails into a coherent network.
Second, the trail would serve an important new transportation corridor.
Major highways attract major growth, and that growth must be accessible to
bikes, not just cars. Look at I-270. Every job I’ve ever had in Maryland
was located within a half mile of I-270, and so is my house. Imagine what a
boon it would be for bike transportation to have a path along I-270,
avoiding cross streets and traffic lights and connecting so many workers to
employment sites. Such a path was once in the master plan, but it was
canceled by the State. That was an extremely short-sighted decision, made
at a time when gas was $1 per gallon. Now it’s a burden for cyclists to
zigzag along local streets that are pretentiously called the “I-270
bikeway”.
Cyclists strongly support efforts to protect the environment. But building
a major highway through sensitive areas while forcing an important trail to
take the long way around is not environmentally defensible. Your staff is
citing the need to prevent trail impacts in stream valley parks, despite the
overwhelming and irreparable damage the highway will cause. Ordinarily sane
staff has told us that the trail may be the “straw that breaks the camel’s
back”, ignoring the tons of highway the camel will already be carrying.
Clearly some planners are forgetting the fact that quality bikeways are a
critical component of efforts to improve air quality, reduce the use of
fossil fuels, reverse global warming, and prevent the loss of natural green
space to roads and sprawl. Meanwhile global warming will ruin sensitive
areas the size of Alaska. In this county, where almost a million people
live and drive, supporting non-motorized transportation should be one of our
highest environmental priorities. That means making bicycling easier, not
harder.
I’ll quote former County Council member Marilyn Praisner because she was so
knowledgeable about the ICC even while opposing it, and she cared very much
about the parks in her district. In voting for the full trail in 2005, she
said, “Where the line is drawn as far as environmental impacts is almost
laughable when you start to look at a bike path as being a problem and not
the whole road itself… the bike path should be part of the equation and
should be part of what one responds to environmentally, not that you look at
the bike path and say oop, we can’t do it because of environmental problems…
It doesn’t pass the laugh test.”.
I can’t say it any better. Yet on the same day that the Planning Board
voted against the full trail, incredibly they voted in favor of building the
ICC highway. One of the Board’s stated reasons was that the highway is in
the master plan. So why is the trail being sacrificed? Incidentally, gas
prices averaged $2.10 per gallon that week in 2005.
Meanwhile we have seen no quantitative analysis of the path’s impacts to
sensitive areas already impacted by the highway, or any study of how to
reduce the impervious impacts of the trail. This year’s trail study seemed
predisposed to simply avoid the parks. The Paint Branch section was not
even part of the study, although the study is being cited as justification
for amending the master plan. An amendment shouldn’t even be considered
without appropriate study. The study also failed to consider boardwalk,
which has been extensively and very effectively employed for the Matthew
Henson Trail. We believe there are several trail routes and technologies
that could minimize whatever impact the trail may have, either now or in the
future.
I’ll just spend a minute on our own quantitative analysis. The
master-planned ICC route is about 13.5 miles long between Shady Grove Road
and the county line. Of this, planning staff is proposing to replace
roughly 6.2 miles of trail with 8.7 miles of detour. This would result in a
Montgomery County trail that is 7.3 miles of trail + 8.7 miles of detour, or
55% detour. The trail would also be lengthened by 20% just in Montgomery
County. The detour routes would force trail users to cross more than
hundred streets and driveways, including busy shopping center and gas
station entrances. The trail would essentially cease to exist east of New
Hampshire Avenue, and probably west of Needwood Road as well. Trail users
would be rerouted onto sidepaths along Muncaster Mill Road, Needwood Road,
Bonifant Road, Notley Road, New Hampshire Avenue, East Randolph Road,
Fairland Road and Briggs Chaney Road.
Removing this trail from the master plan would be a death knell, making it
extremely difficult to ever finish the trail even 20 years from now, even
when gas prices have surely hit $12 a gallon. Even if the ICC trail isn’t
built right away, we MUST keep the entire route in the master plan. It’s a
broader problem that far too many trails have been removed from the master
plan over the past several years. We love the Matthew Henson Trail, but for
every Matthew Henson that is built, two more trails are canceled or rerouted
beyond recognition. The Northwest Branch paved trail is among the most
recent to suffer. Two-thirds of the Muddy Branch Trail has been rerouted.
Not every park should have a paved trail, but we are very dismayed over the
county’s willingness to sacrifice the very best planned trails, as if it had
no intention of following the master plan. We appreciate the fact that your
agency has done a great deal to support bicycling over the years. Without
your efforts the county would surely be a less bike-friendly place. But on
important trail projects, M-NCPPC’s record has been troubling.
We do support three staff recommendations regarding this trail. They are 1)
creating a continuous connection between Matthew Henson Trail and the ICC
trail, 2) retaining the Emory Lane-Georgia Ave. section of trail, and 3)
establishing an acceptable route between Layhill Road and Bonifant Road.
But these decisions still leave large and unacceptable gaps in the trail.
Finally we would like to express our gratitude to bike planning staff,
especially Chuck Kines, for studying and supporting the trail with diligence
and creativity.
So we ask for your help. We believe you have cyclists’ best interests at
heart, and I hope I’ve made it clear why it is so important to leave this
trail in the master plan. Thank you.
Jack Cochrane
Montgomery Bicycle Advocates