A Look Back at the Rockville Pike Charrette

Last month, the Rockville Pike: Envision a Great Place process culminated in a Design Charrette, which was a concentrated effort to pull all the ideas together and draw up plans for the Pike. Although I attended every meeting during this process including each day of the Charrette, it’s taken me a while to talk with people and gather my thoughts.

If you missed the Charrette, you can visit the City’s website and see all the presentations, pictures, and a detailed summary. Make sure to look at the map of all the vehicle crashes included in the Studio Display Boards, which demonstrates why traffic on the Pike needs to be fixed.

All in all, the grand boulevard design proposed would be an enormous improvement. The plan is to move people not just cars by incorporating transit and bikes, and “greening” the Pike to become a signature street. There would be three lanes in each direction with one additional lane in the middle for turns, as well as service lanes on the sides in both directions. These service lanes would be for bikes and buses and include angled front-end parking. A 58% reduction in driveways would occur when the existing 81 driveways are reduced to 34 entrances to the service lanes. Inexperienced bikers could use the sidewalk while the service lane would allow speed for experienced bikers. Since there would only be right turns into the service lane, it would be safer for pedestrians to cross. Pedestrian connections would be improved at the current bridge crossings at Twinbrook and Edmonston because these are the sections of the Pike people will want to visit. One current traffic signal would be removed. Trees would line the Pike and the service lanes. The boulevard design would produce a 10% increase in capacity but even with all this we were told to accept congestion as our destiny.

The consultants proposed some changes for existing cross streets. Realigning Edmonston would allow the addition of a right turn lane onto the southbound Pike. One of the tables at the Saturday morning Charrette session proposed redesigning Twinbrook Parkway to straighten it out directly across to Federal Plaza and the consultants agreed. The entire southern portion of the Pike around Congressional would be transformed into a grid network of streets. At my table we wanted to know where a proposed street was located and we were immediately told that it was just a proposal. But still, we wanted to know where it was proposed and had to figure it out ourselves. It runs straight through Congressional North’s Circuit City, Petco and Michaels. The consultants did not have a rough cost to realign the Pike or put in the trees. The changes would need to be made on the property owners’ terms and it would need to be a pubic decision to green the Pike.

The density proposed on the ground along the Pike is a lot less than is allowed under today’s code and there is development demand. Obviously all the properties along the Pike are privately owned and the decision to redevelop belongs to these owners. The consultants designed three catalyst sites with the owners’ permissions: Congressional Plaza, across from Congressional on Halpine (Fuddruckers), and the Koon’s Ford by Mt. Vernon Street. Together these properties total 29 acres. These plans would frame the Pike by bringing buildings up to the street which is a fundamental principle of place making. All of the designs are on the City’s website. If you have read this far, you should look at them. The mixed-use proposals are too massive to describe with housing, retail, office, and even hotel components. The Halpine site by the metro would mass up to 12-story buildings. The idea would be to keep the national chain stores in the southern portion and add some mixed-use in the northern portion. Artwork up by Richard Montgomery High School could create a grand entrance. Since the middle section by Woodmont Country Club is constrained by connectivity and size, it would stay neighborhood oriented with small retail and services. The environmental benefits of the Country Club were recognized and the entrance could be modified and enhanced with nice landscaping. All of the development proposed would take time. It is not all or nothing.

Since we are changing the zoning, we really could do anything we want with the Pike. We could go along and agree that since the County is building big right on our border, we should build big too. We could still decide that this is just way too much for our City and scale down the density. All I know is that I still want to be able to go to stores to do my shopping without going up 270, causing pollution and greater fuel expenses. My “great” Rockville Pike would be a useful Pike. Everyone I talk to would like a hardware store in Rockville. People want to buy the basic necessities like socks. I like Rockville Town Center and frequent the restaurants and shops, but I’m not going to be doing my back-to-school shopping there. Will I be able to do it on this future Rockville Pike? I hope that market demand will bring the types of stores we really need. Stores we will frequent without incentives because they sell what we can’t live without.

The community meeting scheduled for July 29th has just been cancelled. Instead, small informal meetings with citizen groups will be held. The Fourth and last Report to the Community on the draft plan will be held on Tuesday, October 7, 2008.