New bike lane on Old Georgetown Rd in Bethesda

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Setbacks are not government property, it is private property. It is not for the government to use as they wish without compensation.

It’s clear the problem here is that there are a bunch of really foolish people advocating for something without having basic understanding of how the world works. Decision making based in ignorance never leads to good outcomes.

Guess what guys and girls, the traffic is not going to magically “evaporate” without the rain evaporating the downtown Bethesda economy. Even more ridiculously, the County Council purposefully did not identify Old Georgetown Rd as a “growth corridor” in Thrive so it will not have significantly increased density to support whatever car free dream that you have for at least the next 50 years.

The practical effect here is that reduced capacity on Old Georgetown Rd will end up discouraging further urbanism in Bethesda because it now strands the downtown sector in a moat of congestion. Well done people!

If only there were ways to get to downtown Bethesda without driving yourself on Old Georgetown Road during peak weekday car travel times.

There are very few ways that involve freeway access and downtown Bethesda lacks direct freeway access which will always be a big problem for further development. Even Manhattan has a couple freeways. Downtown Bethesda is only sustainable as an urban center if it can be an activity center that can accommodate intra-suburban travel. Looks like the county has decided to purposefully shift their attention to White Flint. Watch retail in downtown Bethesda start to suffer.

Utterly silly and misinformed.

Bethesda is booming right now despite all of the ills you cite and after the Purple Line opens will be as well served by public transit as most downtown DC neighborhoods while also being much closer to the Beltway.

Montgomery County gets it and thankfully isn't listening to chest beating exurban drivers like you.

And once people decide that it’s not worth it to go there because traffic is too awful (thanks idiots), they will just go to Pike n Rose instead.

Nobody goes to Bethesda anymore, it's too crowded.

Less people can go because there is less road capacity. The streets in downtown DC have crushing congestion and yet half the retail shops are closed. You’re not as clever as you think.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These lanes are racist. We know exactly who uses them. Rich white men. It’s a garage to say it has anything to do with the environment. It’s called green gentrification.

We know exactly who had to be injured/killed to get them: a 13-year-old, a 17-year-old, and an 18-year-old.

Four bicyclists have been killed in Montgomery County this year: an immigrant woman in her 60s in Gaithersburg, an 18-year-old college student in Bethesda, a US diplomat in her 40s in Bethesda, and a 19-year-old recent high school graduate in Wheaton. So take your bigoted "rich white men" nonsense somewhere else.

I take it that you are a white guy then. Because only white guys are so insensitive yet carry such victimhood as to go around calling people “bike bigots”. You folks spend too much time talking to yourselves in an epistemically closed environment to understand how dumb you sound.

I think you need to acquaint yourself with the meaning of "bigot". No one particular group gets exclusive rights to the term.

People who spread stereotypes about cyclists are as bigoted as those who spread stereotypes about people from other groups.

While this may give you cognitive dissonance, it happens to be true.

I encourage you, aggrieved white man, to keep calling people bigots. It discredits whatever point you’re trying trying to make because you sound totally insane.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
if the promoters of the Purple Line are correct, that it’s about equity, then the intended users will not be people paying $8 for a croissant at Paul. Not sure how that helps Bethesda businesses.

The promoters of the Purple Line are correct that it's about transportation.

But yes, I think downtown Bethesda will do fine without people who insist that if they can't drive on 6 lanes of Old Georgetown Road without traffic back-ups at 7:30 am on a weekday, they just won't go to downtown Bethesda.

Narrator: It won’t.

Remember how that Target in downtown Bethesda was going to close within 3 months because it was too hard for people to drive there and park, and they would just go to the one in North Bethesda? How did that turn out?

I’m not sure the point? Trader Joe’s has opened a new location with more parking and will probably abandon that location as soon as their lease is up.

Poor Trader Joe's, nobody is going to shop at this new store on the ground floor of a 17-story, 322-unit apartment building in downtown Bethesda, where you have to park in a garage off a street that will have separated bike lanes, now that there are separated bike lanes on Old Georgetown Road.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These lanes are racist. We know exactly who uses them. Rich white men. It’s a garage to say it has anything to do with the environment. It’s called green gentrification.

We know exactly who had to be injured/killed to get them: a 13-year-old, a 17-year-old, and an 18-year-old.

Four bicyclists have been killed in Montgomery County this year: an immigrant woman in her 60s in Gaithersburg, an 18-year-old college student in Bethesda, a US diplomat in her 40s in Bethesda, and a 19-year-old recent high school graduate in Wheaton. So take your bigoted "rich white men" nonsense somewhere else.

I take it that you are a white guy then. Because only white guys are so insensitive yet carry such victimhood as to go around calling people “bike bigots”. You folks spend too much time talking to yourselves in an epistemically closed environment to understand how dumb you sound.

I think you need to acquaint yourself with the meaning of "bigot". No one particular group gets exclusive rights to the term.

People who spread stereotypes about cyclists are as bigoted as those who spread stereotypes about people from other groups.

While this may give you cognitive dissonance, it happens to be true.

I encourage you, aggrieved white man, to keep calling people bigots. It discredits whatever point you’re trying trying to make because you sound totally insane.

DP. Not a white man. Your anti-"cyclist" bigotry is bigotry. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/bigotry

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Less people can go because there is less road capacity. The streets in downtown DC have crushing congestion and yet half the retail shops are closed. You’re not as clever as you think.

Meaning you can't drive in downtown DC like you can drive on Midcounty Highway in Gaithersburg. Yes, that's true. You can't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Bicycles should stay on the sidewalk. Sidewalks should be larger and have a painted bike portion so they don't run into pedestrians. The road is incredibly unsafe for cyclists, and a cycling path doesn't change that. I drive on Old G daily, and while I, as a car user, have no issues at all with the new cyclist portion, I don't think it makes cyclists safer.

This. The current setup looks thrown together by an SHA that's too cheap to build a proper functional bike path. They should have torn out the existing sidewalk, taken a portion of a roadway lane, built a properly surfaced bike+walk way, and used the remaining portion of the roadway lane to build transitions at the intersections.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Bicycles should stay on the sidewalk. Sidewalks should be larger and have a painted bike portion so they don't run into pedestrians. The road is incredibly unsafe for cyclists, and a cycling path doesn't change that. I drive on Old G daily, and while I, as a car user, have no issues at all with the new cyclist portion, I don't think it makes cyclists safer.

This. The current setup looks thrown together by an SHA that's too cheap to build a proper functional bike path. They should have torn out the existing sidewalk, taken a portion of a roadway lane, built a properly surfaced bike+walk way, and used the remaining portion of the roadway lane to build transitions at the intersections.

Yes, they should have built properly separated, protected bike facilities plus better sidewalks (which would still require shifting the road from 6 general lanes to 4), but you can't do all that as part of a previously-scheduled repaving project. I hope that they will do it in the future.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These lanes are racist. We know exactly who uses them. Rich white men. It’s a garage to say it has anything to do with the environment. It’s called green gentrification.

We know exactly who had to be injured/killed to get them: a 13-year-old, a 17-year-old, and an 18-year-old.

Four bicyclists have been killed in Montgomery County this year: an immigrant woman in her 60s in Gaithersburg, an 18-year-old college student in Bethesda, a US diplomat in her 40s in Bethesda, and a 19-year-old recent high school graduate in Wheaton. So take your bigoted "rich white men" nonsense somewhere else.

I take it that you are a white guy then. Because only white guys are so insensitive yet carry such victimhood as to go around calling people “bike bigots”. You folks spend too much time talking to yourselves in an epistemically closed environment to understand how dumb you sound.

I think you need to acquaint yourself with the meaning of "bigot". No one particular group gets exclusive rights to the term.

People who spread stereotypes about cyclists are as bigoted as those who spread stereotypes about people from other groups.

While this may give you cognitive dissonance, it happens to be true.

I encourage you, aggrieved white man, to keep calling people bigots. It discredits whatever point you’re trying trying to make because you sound totally insane.

Those who peddle bigotry are bigots. Hence, you are a bigot. If you don't want to be one, stop spreading bigoted stereotypes about groups you don't like. Even if you oppose bike lanes, there is no need to make ill-informed, invidious generalizations about cyclists as a group. Unless of course you are prone to bigotry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These lanes are racist. We know exactly who uses them. Rich white men. It’s a garage to say it has anything to do with the environment. It’s called green gentrification.

We know exactly who had to be injured/killed to get them: a 13-year-old, a 17-year-old, and an 18-year-old.

Four bicyclists have been killed in Montgomery County this year: an immigrant woman in her 60s in Gaithersburg, an 18-year-old college student in Bethesda, a US diplomat in her 40s in Bethesda, and a 19-year-old recent high school graduate in Wheaton. So take your bigoted "rich white men" nonsense somewhere else.

I take it that you are a white guy then. Because only white guys are so insensitive yet carry such victimhood as to go around calling people “bike bigots”. You folks spend too much time talking to yourselves in an epistemically closed environment to understand how dumb you sound.

I think you need to acquaint yourself with the meaning of "bigot". No one particular group gets exclusive rights to the term.

People who spread stereotypes about cyclists are as bigoted as those who spread stereotypes about people from other groups.

While this may give you cognitive dissonance, it happens to be true.

I encourage you, aggrieved white man, to keep calling people bigots. It discredits whatever point you’re trying trying to make because you sound totally insane.

DP. Not a white man. Your anti-"cyclist" bigotry is bigotry. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/bigotry

Sorry, white woman. You folks are nuts. Absolutely nuts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These lanes are racist. We know exactly who uses them. Rich white men. It’s a garage to say it has anything to do with the environment. It’s called green gentrification.

We know exactly who had to be injured/killed to get them: a 13-year-old, a 17-year-old, and an 18-year-old.

Four bicyclists have been killed in Montgomery County this year: an immigrant woman in her 60s in Gaithersburg, an 18-year-old college student in Bethesda, a US diplomat in her 40s in Bethesda, and a 19-year-old recent high school graduate in Wheaton. So take your bigoted "rich white men" nonsense somewhere else.

I take it that you are a white guy then. Because only white guys are so insensitive yet carry such victimhood as to go around calling people “bike bigots”. You folks spend too much time talking to yourselves in an epistemically closed environment to understand how dumb you sound.

I think you need to acquaint yourself with the meaning of "bigot". No one particular group gets exclusive rights to the term.

People who spread stereotypes about cyclists are as bigoted as those who spread stereotypes about people from other groups.

While this may give you cognitive dissonance, it happens to be true.

I encourage you, aggrieved white man, to keep calling people bigots. It discredits whatever point you’re trying trying to make because you sound totally insane.

Those who peddle bigotry are bigots. Hence, you are a bigot. If you don't want to be one, stop spreading bigoted stereotypes about groups you don't like. Even if you oppose bike lanes, there is no need to make ill-informed, invidious generalizations about cyclists as a group. Unless of course you are prone to bigotry.

You really need to reassess your life choices, because these four sentences are absolutely crazy.

Poor, oppressed white cyclists having to deal with such rampant bigotry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Bicycles should stay on the sidewalk. Sidewalks should be larger and have a painted bike portion so they don't run into pedestrians. The road is incredibly unsafe for cyclists, and a cycling path doesn't change that. I drive on Old G daily, and while I, as a car user, have no issues at all with the new cyclist portion, I don't think it makes cyclists safer.

This. The current setup looks thrown together by an SHA that's too cheap to build a proper functional bike path. They should have torn out the existing sidewalk, taken a portion of a roadway lane, built a properly surfaced bike+walk way, and used the remaining portion of the roadway lane to build transitions at the intersections.

Yes, they should have built properly separated, protected bike facilities plus better sidewalks (which would still require shifting the road from 6 general lanes to 4), but you can't do all that as part of a previously-scheduled repaving project. I hope that they will do it in the future.

They won’t because it would need to be a part of the capital budget and planning process. Only options going forward are the keep the bike lanes and re-strip to undo the “road diet” or to remove the bike lanes entirely, like they previously did on University.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Less people can go because there is less road capacity. The streets in downtown DC have crushing congestion and yet half the retail shops are closed. You’re not as clever as you think.

Meaning you can't drive in downtown DC like you can drive on Midcounty Highway in Gaithersburg. Yes, that's true. You can't.

Are you saying that downtown DC does not have congestion? Is that what you are saying?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
if the promoters of the Purple Line are correct, that it’s about equity, then the intended users will not be people paying $8 for a croissant at Paul. Not sure how that helps Bethesda businesses.

The promoters of the Purple Line are correct that it's about transportation.

But yes, I think downtown Bethesda will do fine without people who insist that if they can't drive on 6 lanes of Old Georgetown Road without traffic back-ups at 7:30 am on a weekday, they just won't go to downtown Bethesda.

Narrator: It won’t.

Remember how that Target in downtown Bethesda was going to close within 3 months because it was too hard for people to drive there and park, and they would just go to the one in North Bethesda? How did that turn out?

I’m not sure the point? Trader Joe’s has opened a new location with more parking and will probably abandon that location as soon as their lease is up.

Poor Trader Joe's, nobody is going to shop at this new store on the ground floor of a 17-story, 322-unit apartment building in downtown Bethesda, where you have to park in a garage off a street that will have separated bike lanes, now that there are separated bike lanes on Old Georgetown Road.

I am not sure what your point it but it is pretty clear that you are a crazy person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Bicycles should stay on the sidewalk. Sidewalks should be larger and have a painted bike portion so they don't run into pedestrians. The road is incredibly unsafe for cyclists, and a cycling path doesn't change that. I drive on Old G daily, and while I, as a car user, have no issues at all with the new cyclist portion, I don't think it makes cyclists safer.

This. The current setup looks thrown together by an SHA that's too cheap to build a proper functional bike path. They should have torn out the existing sidewalk, taken a portion of a roadway lane, built a properly surfaced bike+walk way, and used the remaining portion of the roadway lane to build transitions at the intersections.

Yes, they should have built properly separated, protected bike facilities plus better sidewalks (which would still require shifting the road from 6 general lanes to 4), but you can't do all that as part of a previously-scheduled repaving project. I hope that they will do it in the future.

They won’t because it would need to be a part of the capital budget and planning process. Only options going forward are the keep the bike lanes and re-strip to undo the “road diet” or to remove the bike lanes entirely, like they previously did on University.

I am 100% certain that the Maryland State Highway Administration is capable of undertaking capital projects with budgeting and planning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Bicycles should stay on the sidewalk. Sidewalks should be larger and have a painted bike portion so they don't run into pedestrians. The road is incredibly unsafe for cyclists, and a cycling path doesn't change that. I drive on Old G daily, and while I, as a car user, have no issues at all with the new cyclist portion, I don't think it makes cyclists safer.

This. The current setup looks thrown together by an SHA that's too cheap to build a proper functional bike path. They should have torn out the existing sidewalk, taken a portion of a roadway lane, built a properly surfaced bike+walk way, and used the remaining portion of the roadway lane to build transitions at the intersections.

Yes, they should have built properly separated, protected bike facilities plus better sidewalks (which would still require shifting the road from 6 general lanes to 4), but you can't do all that as part of a previously-scheduled repaving project. I hope that they will do it in the future.

They won’t because it would need to be a part of the capital budget and planning process. Only options going forward are the keep the bike lanes and re-strip to undo the “road diet” or to remove the bike lanes entirely, like they previously did on University.

The latter is clearly the only solution.