A post about MD-193 (University Blvd) in Wheaton, that probably doesn't need its own thread:
https://mdot-sha-md193-amherst-to-arcola-shared-streets-maryland.hub.arcgis.com/I attended a public hearing on Wednesday night. Back in June-December, the MD State Highway Authority (SHA) did a 6 month pilot installing bike lanes along 1 mile of University Blvd, between Amherst and Arcola Avenues. The road is 3 lanes in each direction, with a median and left turn pockets. The pilot closed the right lane to all vehicles and turned it into a bike lane that was separated by plastic delineators.
Transit buses were also prohibited from driving in the right lane, but could pull into the right lane to make stops to drop off and pick up passengers. Wednesday night's meeting was meant as a public forum to discuss SHA's findings, conclusions, and recommendations with regrad to the bike lane pilot.
At the meeting, the SHA staff members stated that they were not recommending reinstituting the bike lanes because there were not enough people using the bike lanes and there were numerous complaints from the local community with regard to safety and backups with right turns.
They invited folks to email other suggested locations for these hybrid bike lanes with bus stops.
shamd193bikelanes@mdot.maryland.gov
My personal thoughts: The bike lanes themselves did not really worsen traffic along University Blvd to any appreciable degree. But many commented (and I agree) that it is very hard to get an accurate reading on the traffic because so many are working from home due to the pandemic. My own observations from pre-pandemic times indicates that two lanes in each direction would not have been too problematic for traffic along this stretch. This is especialy true westbound, where the right lane has forced traffic to turn right onto Arcola for a very long time, essentially restricting thru traffic flow on Univ WB to two lanes anyway. However, 3 lanes are needed to transverse Four Corners and the Georgia Ave. intersection. [Busy areas that are outside of the pilot corridor boundaries.]
A big source of backups, though were backups on Arcola, because the right turn channel was blocked during the pilot project. A lot of the complaints about the pilot were due to people living or commuting in Kemp Mill who noticed the backups along Arcola, where the block approaching University was shrunk from 3 lanes to 2 and right turners would essentially have to wait for a green light, since the right turn channel was closed. This also led to more difficulties for those on the side streets who wanted to turn onto Arcola.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/1111+University+Blvd+W,+Silver+Spring,+MD+20902/@39.0356734,-77.0261475,67m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x89b7cf6e73c2cf81:0xb8756125c14fdc9a!8m2!3d39.0371712!4d-77.0272102While glad (and somewhat surprised) to see that SHA is not recommending the bike lanes here (despite strong support from most of the local politicians), I feel clearly that they would have been more accepted in the community if more notice were given to surrounding communities before the implementation and if the right turn channel from Arcola was not closed. They received a lot of complaints from the community about Arcola, but oddly never actually studied the effects on Arcola directly. This may be because University is a state highway, but Arcola is local, under the jurisdiction of the county DOT.
This section along University does get a lot of speeding, so it may be a good idea to block off the right lane from traffic. Perhaps if the right lane were reserved for buses and right turning and maybe parking, and no interference was made with the Arcola right turn channel, this would be more successful. A normal bus lane would still allow for people to make u-turns with the full width of the street and would also speed up buses.
Truthfully, the 1.3 mile segment of the pilot was too short to be meaningful for many bicyclists. However, it is pretty clear that Four Corners (US 29 / MD-193 intersection) is too busy and so no bike lane can extend down there, since all of the available lanes are needed for traffic. As it is, there are paths and side streets (Windham, Blueridge) connecting Sligo Creek to Wheaton. Those routes need to be paved up to comfortable standards for bikes and better signage is also needed. Bicyclists could use those routes instead of University Blvd.
Three lanes in each direction are needed to transverse the Wheaton business district and the Four Corners and Beltway intersections, but only two lanes are truly needed along the rest of the street between Langley Park and Connecticut Ave. Given that, perhaps simply making the right lanes into bus only lanes (with right turns also permitted) would achieve the goals of speed reduction and safety, promote bus travel, while still maintaining adequate traffic flow on surrounding streets.
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Topic: Maryland (Read 121983 times)