ICC TRAIL ALERT!

[Note I am placing this in the Bike Metro section as the Laural trail head is just a few miles from the B&A Trail and the Full ICC Trail will be a wonderful resource for Balto area bicyclist just as the B&A trail is.]

Please make your voices heard at the July 10th Montgomery County Planning Board hearing on the Intercounty Connector Trail! Let them know you do not want any sections of the trail to be eliminated from the county master plan! If you can\\\'t testify, please send letters and emails to the Planning Board and cc the County Council. See contact info at the bottom of this message.

In what would be a very short-sighted decision, the Planning Board may forever eliminate important sections of the planned trail along the Intercounty Connector highway by removing them from the county master plan. The Planning Department (led by the Board) is making the argument that the trail would cause irreparable environmental damage in natural park areas, despite the six-lane highway next door! Incredibly, this is the same Planning Board that endorsed the highway in 2005. Staff is saying the trail may be the \\\"straw that breaks the camel\\\'s back\\\", ignoring the tons of highway the camel will already be carrying.

The Planning Board would replace the removed sections of trail with sidepaths along busy roads, including New Hampshire Avenue, East Randolph Road, Fairland Road, Briggs Chaney Road, Bonifant Road and Notley Road. The detours are circuitous and force trail users to cross several major intersections and countless streets and driveways where cyclists must be extremely careful. That is inappropriate for a trail meant to serve inexperienced riders and families, and it undermines the promised transportation value.

Removing this trail from the master plan would be a death knell, making it extremely difficult to ever finish the trail even 20 years from now, when gas prices have hit $12 a gallon and global warming has ruined sensitive areas the size of Alaska. Even if the ICC trail isn\\\'t built right away, we MUST keep the entire route in the master plan. Highways attract development and employment sites that must be served by good bike routes. Just imagine if I-270 had a parallel bike path. That highway was also planned to have a path, but it too was canceled -- by the state -- 20 years ago.

Trails through parks and along highways were planned to be the skeleton of the county bike trail network, providing efficient mobility for cyclists by virtue of their length and location away from street crossings and traffic lights. The ICC trail was meant to be the backbone of that skeleton, linking together many north-south trails. Unfortunately the Planning Board has removed several park trails from the master plan over the years. This trend must stop.

The worst and longest detour being discussed is the one circumventing the Paint Branch Stream Valley Park. This would eliminate three miles of trail and replace it with five miles of detours. But trail impacts in that region have not even been studied. Changing a master plan should never be done without adequate study. Please insist that the Planning Board fully study the trail (how to build it, not just why we shouldn\\\'t) for ALL the detour sections. Let us offer our gratitude to bike planning staff, especially Chuck Kines, for supporting and studying the ICC trail with diligence and creativity. But trail decisions are ultimately made at a higher level...

So to prevent loss of this trail, cyclists need to show up in force at the public hearing on July 10 at 7:30 pm, at Planning Department headquarters at 8787 Georgia Avenue. Tell the Planning Board you oppose the master plan amendment regarding the trail. Sign up to testify by calling the Planning Board at 301-495-4600 or use the online form at <a href="http://www.daicsearch.org/planning_board/testify.asp">http://www.daicsearch.org/planning_board/testify.asp</a>; . If you can\'t testify, please write to the Planning Board. Here is their contact info:

Montgomery County Planning Board
8787 Georgia Ave.
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Email: MCP-Chairman@mncppc-mc.org
Fax: 301-495-1320
<a href="http://www.montgomeryplanningboard.org">http://www.montgomeryplanningboard.org</a>;

Please also cc the Montgomery County Council, at:
county.council@montgomerycountymd.gov

For further information and points to consider, see WABA\\\'s ICC trail page,
<a href="http://www.waba.org/takeaction/ICC.php">http://www.waba.org/takeaction/ICC.php</a>;

Links:
- Planning Department recommendation to the Planning Board:
<a href="http://www.montgomeryplanningboard.org/agenda/2008/documents/20080522_staff-report_ltd_functional_mp-amendment_icc.pdf">http://www.montgomeryplanningboard.org/agenda/2008/documents/20080522_staff-report_ltd_functional_mp-amendment_icc.pdf</a>;
- Planning Department\\\'s trail study page:
<a href="http://www.mc-mncppc.org/transportation/icc/icc_bike_path.shtm">http://www.mc-mncppc.org/transportation/icc/icc_bike_path.shtm</a>;
- More detail from Planning Department:
<a href="http://www.montgomeryplanningboard.org/agenda/2008/documents/20080522_icc_staffdraft.pdf">http://www.montgomeryplanningboard.org/agenda/2008/documents/20080522_icc_staffdraft.pdf</a>;
----------------------------
This alert sponsored by Montgomery Bicycle Advocates (<a href="http://www.mobike.org">www.mobike.org</a>;).

by B' Spokes

Like most people I live a hectic life and who has the time for much exercise? Thanks to xtracycle now I do. By using my bike for daily activities I can get things done and get an hour plus work out in 15 minutes extra of my time, not a bad deal and beats taking the extra time going to the gym. In case you are still having trouble being motivated; the National Center of Disease Control says that inactivity is the #2 killer in the United States just behind smoking. ( http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/bb_nutrition/ ) Get out there and start living life! I can carry home a full shopping cart of groceries, car pool two kids or just get lost in the great outdoors camping for a week. Well I got go, another outing this weekend.
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Here was MoBike's official testimony on the ICC Bikeway, handed out & partly read to the Planning Board at the July 10th hearing.
- Jack
Testimony on the Intercounty Connector Limited Functional Master Plan Amendment
Montgomery Bicycle Advocates (MoBike) July 10, 2008
I represent Montgomery Bicycle Advocates, or MoBike. We are one of the three organizations that requested the recently completed study of the planned bikeway along the Intercounty Connector.

MoBike strongly opposes amending the county master plan to eliminate or significantly weaken any sections of the ICC trail. The amendment being considered today would severely compromise the trail's transportation value and suitability for users of all types.

We remain baffled and dumbfounded by the relentless efforts of M-NCPPC to remove large sections of the ICC trail from consideration. These efforts continue despite three years of strong, although vague, comments from the Planning Board in support of the trail. When the Board first voted against key trail sections in 2005, we thought there must have been some mistake. But they stood by their decision. Fortunately the County Council voted 8-0 to overrule that decision a month later, but now planning staff is again chopping away at the trail, even citing the overruled Board decision as justification for carving up the trail, as if overturned decisions retain validity.

Given the mix of positive M-NCPPC statements and negative results, we've concluded that planners and park staff perhaps do not grasp the enormous difference, in terms of mobility and safety, between a trail that avoids at-grade crossings and one that crosses street after street, driveway after driveway. That is the essential difference between the master planned trail and the detours now being proposed by planning staff. Separation from crossings is what makes park trails, trails along highways and rail trails so valuable. The detours lack this trait.

To put it in perspective, imagine if key segments of the Capital Crescent Trail were built as wide sidewalks along Massachusetts and Wisconsin avenues. It would make the CCT, if you could even call it a trail, inconvenient, uncomfortable, slow, and full of hazards. The trail would easily get less than 10% of its current use and be 100% less effective for bike commuters.

Perhaps another explanation for the Planning Department's mixed messages is that it doesn't recognize the importance of this particular trail. I'll try to fill you in. First, the trail represents the east-west backbone of the upcounty bikeway network. Together with the Midcounty Highway trail, it creates a 25-mile long high quality bikeway from Beltsville to Clarksburg, with a spur to Rockville called the Matthew Henson Trail. It would link together several major north-south trails into a coherent network.

Second, the trail would serve an important new transportation corridor. Major highways attract major growth, and that growth must be accessible to bikes, not just cars. Look at I-270. Every job I've ever had in Maryland was located within a half mile of I-270, and so is my house. Imagine what a boon it would be for bike transportation to have a path along I-270, avoiding cross streets and traffic lights and connecting so many workers to employment sites. Such a path was once in the master plan, but it was canceled by the State. That was an extremely short-sighted decision, made at a time when gas was $1 per gallon. Now it's a burden for cyclists to zigzag along local streets that are pretentiously called the "I-270 bikeway".

Cyclists strongly support efforts to protect the environment. But building a major highway through sensitive areas while forcing an important trail to take the long way around is not environmentally defensible. Your staff is citing the need to prevent trail impacts in stream valley parks, despite the overwhelming and irreparable damage the highway will cause. Ordinarily sane staff has told us that the trail may be the "straw that breaks the camel's back", ignoring the tons of highway the camel will already be carrying.

Clearly some planners are forgetting the fact that quality bikeways are a critical component of efforts to improve air quality, reduce the use of fossil fuels, reverse global warming, and prevent the loss of natural green space to roads and sprawl. Meanwhile global warming will ruin sensitive areas the size of Alaska. In this county, where almost a million people live and drive, supporting non-motorized transportation should be one of our highest environmental priorities. That means making bicycling easier, not harder.

I'll quote former County Council member Marilyn Praisner because she was so knowledgeable about the ICC even while opposing it, and she cared very much about the parks in her district. In voting for the full trail in 2005, she said, "Where the line is drawn as far as environmental impacts is almost laughable when you start to look at a bike path as being a problem and not the whole road itself… the bike path should be part of the equation and should be part of what one responds to environmentally, not that you look at the bike path and say oop, we can’t do it because of environmental problems… It doesn't pass the laugh test.".

I can't say it any better. Yet on the same day that the Planning Board voted against the full trail, incredibly they voted in favor of building the ICC highway. One of the Board's stated reasons was that the highway is in the master plan. So why is the trail being sacrificed? Incidentally, gas prices averaged $2.10 per gallon that week in 2005.

Meanwhile we have seen no quantitative analysis of the path's impacts to sensitive areas already impacted by the highway, or any study of how to reduce the impervious impacts of the trail. This year's trail study seemed predisposed to simply avoid the parks. The Paint Branch section was not even part of the study, although the study is being cited as justification for amending the master plan. An amendment shouldn't even be considered without appropriate study. The study also failed to consider boardwalk, which has been extensively and very effectively employed for the Matthew Henson Trail. We believe there are several trail routes and technologies that could minimize whatever impact the trail may have, either now or in the future.

I'll just spend a minute on our own quantitative analysis. The master-planned ICC route is about 13.5 miles long between Shady Grove Road and the county line. Of this, planning staff is proposing to replace roughly 6.2 miles of trail with 8.7 miles of detour. This would result in a Montgomery County trail that is 7.3 miles of trail + 8.7 miles of detour, or 55% detour. The trail would also be lengthened by 20% just in Montgomery County. The detour routes would force trail users to cross more than hundred streets and driveways, including busy shopping center and gas station entrances. The trail would essentially cease to exist east of New Hampshire Avenue, and probably west of Needwood Road as well. Trail users would be rerouted onto sidepaths along Muncaster Mill Road, Needwood Road, Bonifant Road, Notley Road, New Hampshire Avenue, East Randolph Road, Fairland Road and Briggs Chaney Road.

Removing this trail from the master plan would be a death knell, making it extremely difficult to ever finish the trail even 20 years from now, even when gas prices have surely hit $12 a gallon. Even if the ICC trail isn't built right away, we MUST keep the entire route in the master plan. It's a broader problem that far too many trails have been removed from the master plan over the past several years. We love the Matthew Henson Trail, but for every Matthew Henson that is built, two more trails are canceled or rerouted beyond recognition. The Northwest Branch paved trail is among the most recent to suffer. Two-thirds of the Muddy Branch Trail has been rerouted. Not every park should have a paved trail, but we are very dismayed over the county's willingness to sacrifice the very best planned trails, as if it had no intention of following the master plan. We appreciate the fact that your agency has done a great deal to support bicycling over the years. Without your efforts the county would surely be a less bike-friendly place. But on important trail projects, M-NCPPC's record has been troubling.

We do support three staff recommendations regarding this trail. They are 1) creating a continuous connection between Matthew Henson Trail and the ICC trail, 2) retaining the Emory Lane-Georgia Ave. section of trail, and 3) establishing an acceptable route between Layhill Road and Bonifant Road. But these decisions still leave large and unacceptable gaps in the trail.

Finally we would like to express our gratitude to bike planning staff, especially Chuck Kines, for studying and supporting the trail with diligence and creativity.

So we ask for your help. We believe you have cyclists' best interests at heart, and I hope I've made it clear why it is so important to leave this trail in the master plan. Thank you.

Jack Cochrane
Montgomery Bicycle Advocates