Another great article from Greater Greater Washington which I will highlight:
"Our pick for the top threat of 2011: Location decisions made in a vacuum, as highlighted in this Post story. These decisions include BRAC, Science City, and other government, corporate, university and hospital location decisions that lack adequate transit, increase traffic, and are simply unaffordable and unsustainable. Couple this with the push in Maryland and Virginia to spend billions more on highways that don’t reduce congestion, and we have a recipe for more sprawl."
https://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=8674
And a highlight from the Post Story:
"1. BRAC, the Base Relocation and Closure process. "I think it’s the worst land-use decision the federal government has ever made, at least in this region. They’ve taken 20,000 to 30,000 jobs out of the core of the region, away from transit-accessible locations, and put them in non-transit-accessible locations at Fort Meade, Andrews, Belvoir, Quantico and Charlottesville. They’ve created billions of dollars of transportation infrastructure demand that we don’t have funding for. The state and local governments in this region are going to spend years trying to fix the problems created by this BRAC move.""
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/11/AR2010061105756.html
I encourage all of you to keep an eye out for local road projects this upcoming year and make sure our current bike friendly roads stay that way and new improvements include being bike friendly. Just because mass transit is getting the shaft in planning does not mean bicycles should too. It should mean that making sure the needs of bicyclists in transportation projects is even more important.
Having transportation options is critical for the quality of life. Bicycles can turn a congested road into one with free flowing traffic (at least for the cyclists.) Bicycles can extend, enhance any mass transit system. Destinations just over a mile from a transit stop? That’s 5 minutes on a bike, turning something that was generally not assessable by mass transit into being accessible.
The State can cut corners on a lot of things but in light of what’s mentioned in these referenced articles bicycling should not be one of them. Accommodating bicycling is cheep and usually offers ancillary benefits to motoring traffic (why do you think the interstates have extra width in shoulders while bicyclists are prohibited?)
Biking in Baltimore