Will the Westbard redevelopment blow up the Whitman cluster?
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Anonymous
No kidding. I'm talking about the new urbanist aspirations to make everything look like Manhattan - get rid of cars, etc. BRT is simply a tool for justifying more dense development where it should not be occurring (esp. Clarksburg, Belward, White Oak). |
Anonymous
No one is saying MCPS should be doing Enron-style accounting of students, but this is different from being part of these development discussions and saying to developers, "if you add 800 units to this community, our projections would show, based on comparable past experience, that this would add X students, and this cannot be accomodated unless we have an additional school or redistrict and build X number of additions at X schools. This would cost X dollars and this should be a factor in the development plans." As far as I can tell from attending numerous meetings so far, this is not happening. MCPS is completely passive, to the point that it is activingly telling the developers and planning commission that no new resources are required at all and that no land should be set aside. That is short sighted. |
Anonymous
You got that right. |
Anonymous
Who is telling people to get rid of their cars? As for your examples -- the master plans at Clarksburg and Belward Farm both predate the county's BRT plan by years. In fact, the Clarksburg master plan predates the county's BRT plan by over 20 years. |
Anonymous
They could always bus kids out to Silver Spring, Wheaton, etc... |
Anonymous
Straw man responses. One concept of the new urbanists is to build dense developments with limited parking near transit stations to discourage automobile dependency. Tysons is doing that. MoCo is building dense exburb clusters that will dump more cars on the road - BRT or not. Belward's phased development staging is tied to CCT funding. Agree that the damage is already done with Clarksburg an development is continuing to creep up to Frederick. Since we already have 10s of thousands of new houses there, why cut back on all the new development and use transit funding to improve their access to existing metro stations - or better yet - expand metro to include 2 additional stops in Northern Gaithersburg and Clarksburg? |
Anonymous
Please note the distinction between "making it possible for people to get around without cars" and "forcing people to get rid of their cars". The former gives people transportation choices. This is a good thing. I agree with you that there are staging requirements for funding the CCT in the Great Seneca Science Corridor Master Plan. This is also a good thing: no funding for the CCT (from Shady Grove to Metropolitan Grove), no development at Belward Farm. Or would you prefer no staging requirements? What transit funding do you want to use to improve transit access for Clarksburg and northern Gaithersburg? How much would it cost to build these 2 additional Metro stops, and how would you pay for it? |
Anonymous
For BRT in upcounty like Clarksburg, I'd agree with you -- Metro will never make it that far, so that's a good solution. However it seems like BRT has expanded way beyond that. From my understanding, it's going to take one of 3 lanes away from Rockville Pike, and basically run parallel to the Red line all the way into Bethesda. So it reduces car capacity while being redundant with an existing Metro line. I don't think taht's a good idea. Run BRT from Clarksburg to Shady Grove, then have people jump on the metro. The two big projects the county should take on, though I doubt they have the guts to do it, is a second Potomac crossing (outer beltway) and the Rockville Freeway (M-83). Both were in the master plan years ago, and would make a big dent in addressing congestion. http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/11656/zombie-road-rises-from-the-dead-in-upcounty-montgomery/ |
Anonymous
The two big projects the county should NOT take on are a second Potomac crossing and M-83. A second Potomac crossing would go through the Agricultural Reserve and increase traffic. M-83 would go through parks, wetlands, and existing communities and dump people on roads that already have too much traffic. Both of them (as the Greater Greater Washington post says) reflect the way people thought about transportation in the 1960s. Building roads to reduce congestion is what got us into the mess we're in today. It doesn't work. Not to mention, how much would those projects cost, and who would pay for them? M-83 alone, from Montgomery Village to Clarksburg, would probably be well over $500 million. Is that really the best thing the county can find to spend its money on? |
Anonymous
Right now the only way to get from MoCo to NoVA is 4 lanes each way on the American Legion Bridge. It's been that way for years and years, while traffic volume has increased tremendously. How do you propose solving the need to transport people and goods between those two regions? M-83 would be a similar price to BRT and likely transport more people per day. |
Anonymous
In total agreement. If Montgomery County finds itself awash in money, it needs to build more schools. I doubt my son's kindergarten teacher knows anything more about my child than his name 6 months into the year. |
Anonymous
Where do you get those numbers from? And what will all those people M-83 will transport do, when they get to the already overloaded intersections at the end of the highway? Then should we make those intersections bigger too, at whatever cost? For 60 years, we've tried to solve congestion by building roads, which led to more driving, which led to more congestion, which led to more roads, which led to... It hasn't worked, it won't work, and we need to stop doing it. |
Anonymous
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OP, back again.
In terms of where a new elementary school could go, how about the site of Washington Waldorf School, next door to the Defense Mapping Agency site on Sangamore? Years ago it was an MCPS elementary school (Brookmont Elementary). The existing building would have to be knocked down and the school rebuilt. But you could send Sumner and Glen Echo Heights kids to that new school, relieving Wood Acres of enough pressure to make room for the new arrivals in Westbard. Has this been mentioned as a possibility (the site, if not who would go to the school)? |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
BRT bill comes in at $5 billion: http://robertdyer.blogspot.com/2013/11/fact-checking-montgomery-county-brt.html More roads isn't the solution to all the problems, but I think it's part of the solution, along with public transport. The population in this area is going up, and that's nothing we can change. More people means not only more need for people to get around, but also goods and products, because we have more consumers. Not expanding road infrastructure seems like a poor decision -- it hinders both people and goods from moving easily. I see no change in there being plenty of trade and jobs between MoCo and NoVA. How else will people and goods move around? All we have right now is 4 lanes on 495, and it's been that way for 20+ years. So far, I have heard no talk of adding a public transport link, and the current option (red line into DC, then silver line back out) isn't that feasible for most people. What do you propose instead? |