Planning Board fails to fix the ICC Trail

From our good friends at WashCycle:
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Marc Fischer starts it off

Nay to Maryland's builders of the Intercounty Connector, who have bizarrely decided that while a massive highway is no threat to the environment, a little separate bike path alongside the new highway would be, and therefore the bike path--long promised as a sop to those who were appalled by the prospect of the new highway--must die.

a 10-foot wide bike path is a menace to the critters, but a six-lane superhighway is man's latest gift to nature.
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So, there wasn't $10 million in the budget for the trail, but there was $100 million for the overrun? Oh yeah, that was just one segment too. But I'm sure they can recapture the overrun in other segments.
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The testimony to the Planning Board (emails and letters) in June was overwhelmingly pro-bike trail. There were around 100 pro-trail emails sent, but I saw only one against the trail. The writer of that letter supported "trees over trails" which at first I took literally ["I too enjoy a good tree canopy over my trail" I thought] but then realized he meant "don't cut down trees to build trails". But all the others I skimmed seemed to be in favor of not changing the plans.
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So they decided to go with the alignment no one wanted except for that guy who prefers trees to trails [I need to reread that letter, it must've been very convincing].
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The last time the planning board submitted a substandard plan to the county council, MoBike fought it and won

we went to the County Council in 2005 and they unanimously overruled the Planning Board decision and said the trail should be built within the ICC right-of-way from Needwood Road to the county line. So we'll do that again if we have to.

It looks like they will.

<a href="http://www.thewashcycle.com/2008/09/md-icc.html">http://www.thewashcycle.com/2008/09/md-icc.html</a>;