Subscribe free to our daily email newsletterContributor Opinion by Herb Winkler: A Strategy For Earth Day
Apr 22, 2010 7:00 - 2 Comments
>The 40th anniversary of Earth Day provides the opportunity to change some behaviors that can prolong our existence, individually and collectively. We’ve been made aware of climate change, but a less publicized danger is that CO2 forms carbonic acid in the ocean, which will further stress the coral reef, and dissolve the bottom of our food chain. Maybe when we can’t feed ourselves, behavior modification will be easier.
In the meantime, let’s plan a strategy. The Rockville Bicycle Advisory Committee wants to promote safe cycling. The issue is that many of our roads aren’t safe enough to ride on. The Millenium Trail is nice for recreation, but many destinations aren’t on there, so people resort to using their cars to traverse the Pike. Stores naturally want to be on high traffic areas, but that doesn’t make for a safe bike trip. Let’s develop a parallel path a block west of the Pike that links Town Center with the existing path behind Richard Montgomery HS, and continues south through Woodmont’s front lawn and links to the Bethesda Trolley Trail. The old Indian trail that once was is now clogged with hazards, which won’t go away unless we take action. The present plan is to route bikes to the east of 355 on Lewis Avenue, but that requires our cyclists to cross at very busy intersections.
These obstacle were previously tackled with fiscally and environmentally costly overpasses on 270 and 586 (Veirs Mill). Let’s instead keep people on ground level, and west of the pike, and continue up through the college and into King Farm. Then Gaithersburg can do the same, and we can finally get out of our cars and still get to where we need to go. This will finally be a nice gift to our descendants, as opposed to the debt and carbon we’ve been known to accumulate.
Another idea is to lobby for some climate friendly actions, like turning off the TC escalator at night, and dimming some lights. If you have to squander, make sure you use renewables. I don’t take kindly to killing polar bears just because you’re too lazy to turn off an appliance. I did notice the CFLs there in the stairwell, but the energy savings is negated by the fact that there are 28 of them. There is an elevator for those who can’t use the stairs. Must the escalator run 24/7? No wonder we can get a grocer to move in if the rent has to cover avoidable expenses like that. This is our town, and we have to make it livable. The sooner we get stated, the easier it will be. The present prediction is that the reefs and everything that depends on them won’t survive the century.
Herb Winkler
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The notion of connecting the path in front of RM over to the Bethesda Trolley trail is a powerful idea. For those who don’t know, the Bethesda Trolley trail is officially a bike trail that connects Twinbrook Metro to the Capital Crescent Trail. In reality the trail is pretty much just on paper from Twinbrook to near White Flint. But from White Flint to points south it is a high quality trail using the old trolley right of way, with dedicated bridges over the 270 spur and 495. It provides an off road bike route from Rockville to NIH Campus and on into Bethesda.
Herb,Thank you for advocating for increased cycling infrastructure. As a healthy, environmentally friendly form of transportation, cycling reduces traffic congestion for everyone on the road network and should definitely be supported in this and other ways.