BRAC Bricks Bikes
BRAC = Base Realignment and Closure, adding 28,000 new households to Maryland.
Bricks = To wall up with brick, to create a barrier.
Bikes = To travel under ones own power, the lest expensive to accommodate and most efficient mode of travel, also promotes health and clean air (on the later 16 Maryland Counties are in non-compliance with clean air standards.)
By Angela Atwood-Moore -
As Barry, Huck and Jack have hinted, we (NIH and Naval Medical) are in a very interesting situation here, since we are in some ways almost uniquely positioned to appeal to cyclists (our demographics include many young, healthy professionals, some of us must meet ongoing health and fitness requirements, and we also employ foreign visitors from countries where cycling is the preferred method of cheap, healthy, efficient transportation). Oh yeah, and some of us are the very researchers whose work has shown the effectiveness of daily physical activities (like riding a bike) at staving off an early death.
Literally thousands of cyclists daily utilize the major intersections that serve NIH and Naval Medical, the same intersections that are up for BRAC specific re-design. Yet the first proposed designs show absolutely ZERO accommodations for cyclists. Keep in mind, these are intersections on roads that are masterplanned for multiple important bicycle amenities from shared-use paths to bike lanes.
Even if you don't choose to join our NIH/NAVAL BRAC list-serve, stay tuned for continued info from LAB, WABA, MoBike and others. Cyclists everywhere should be OUTRAGED that employees at the National Institutes of Health and Bethesda Naval Medical Center not to mention local citizens who also should have a choice of whether to drive or bicycle are so far being ignored, squeezed off the roads and bull-dozed. There will certainly be requests for letters to support the need for safe and adequate cycling accommodations in intersections that are already among the most congested with the lowest possible level of service in the state of Maryland!
Google group specifically to deal with BRAC and bicycles around the Naval Medical Center
MoBike
WABA
LAB
If you are part of a cycling advocacy group dealing with the problems of BRAC please let us know.