Community Update

At the June 19 meeting of Greenbelt's Advisory Planning Board (APB), city planner Celia Craze displayed drawings of a possible FBI complex at the Greenbelt Metro station. If I heard correctly, she indicated that we should know by later this summer whether the FBI is coming to Greenbelt.

I have mixed feelings about the potential FBI development. On the one hand, any sort of development near Metro seems like it would be more beneficial use of that valuable space than a huge surface parking lot. I certainly would have preferred a modern "mixed use" development that included more retail, residential, and commercial space rather than a government office fortress.

However, the biggest problem with a huge office complex for the FBI is whether it will give the state and county another excuse to widen highways through Greenbelt and the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC). One of my main goals for Greenbelt's planning and development is to improve biking, walking, and bus access for Greenbelters. Another key goal is to preserve the BARC as much as possible in its rural layout. In my opinion, it would be tremendous loss for Greenbelters if the BARC were paved over in new highways and suburban-style strip and parking lot development.

The whole idea of building new developments at transit locations is that you don't have to build more highways and sprawl. However, Prince George's county highway department already has plans to widen the Sunnyside Avenue bridge and road segment between 201 and the CSX tracks to 4 lanes in width. The ABP thinks a new 2 lane bridge would be better, and the ABP's Matt Johnson deconstructed the county's misleading proposal to build a "2 lane" road that is actually 4 lanes wide in a post at GreaterGreaterWashington.org.

Basically, the county wants to build a new 2-lane bridge alongside the current bridge, then tear down the old bridge and put 2 more lanes in its place, for a 4-lane bridge overall. However, the county swears it only wants to actually use the 4-lane bridge as a 2-lane road even though it would be wide enough for 4 lanes. Got it?

What's really happening here is the county wants to build highways throughout the BARC, including widening Route 201 through the BARC as a 4-lane highway up to Maryland's giant $3 billion boondoggle highway that pretty much nobody uses (the ICC) and the potential giant suburban development of has been on the planning books forever and may never be fully built (Konterra).

In my opinion, these are pretty serious issues. Traffic engineers often assume that that background traffic is increasing by 2 percent a year (actually, it's not increasing at all according to regional studies) when they want to build more roads. We'll be sorry, they say, when traffic starts to back up!

Well, maybe. I'd prefer to take a wait and see attitude. More people are working from home and biking and walking to work, all over the Washington Area. Transit oriented development has been hugely successful in DC and Arlington, and even in Silver Spring, all without widening roads or creating new highways that divide neighboorhoods and make biking or walking more difficult and waiting for bus less pleasant.

There is little doubt in my mind that if the FBI comes to Greenbelt Station, traffic on the beltway would increase, especially at first. Many FBI employees from DC or northern Virginia would probably commute by Metro, some may come by MARC, but many would drive, and I have no problem with building a new beltway interchange for them. But that doesn't mean we should let the state and county widen all our roads.

Over time, I would expect some FBI employees to move to new housing proposed near the station or other nearby neighborhoods to shorten their commutes. They could take the bus, walk, or bike to work under the right conditions.

However, widening more of our local roads to highway width would be creating exactly the wrong conditions. It would encourage FBI employees NOT to move nearby and NOT to join the community. It would create more traffic, especially fast-moving traffic that thwarts community connectivity. It would make our roads more difficult for cyclists and pedestrians, and more unpleasant for people waiting at bus stops. High speed suburban roads are deadly (sometimes literally!) for communities and their residents alike.

Even in cases where there are tradeoffs, such as on Sunnyside Ave., where the county is proposing to expand the roadway to 4 lanes but also add bike lanes and sidewalks, I think the expanded roadways could be more deadly if they are designed for high speeds. In these times of distracted driving, a bike lane next to a 45 or 50 mph traffic lane is not safe. To be sure, the current situation on Sunnyside isn't great, either in the two-lane section east of the train tracks or in the 4 lane western section between the tracks and Route 1. Those are old, ugly roads with no sidewalks or bike lanes or shoulders in most spots. However, sometimes an old ugly road is safer than a new highway-style road if the sightlines are OK and speeds are kept reasonable.

The idea of transit-oriented development -- which has worked extremely well to spark new development in Silver Spring, parts of Washington DC, and Arlington VA -- is that you DON'T need to create ever-wider local roads and highways to accommodate the new growth. Greenbelt has already allowed itself to be carved up by difficult-to-cross, neighborhood dividing roadways. Our current roads, like Routes 193 and 201, are ugly, unpleasant, and dangerous. They discourage economic development, except perhaps for gas stations and drive-through fast-food joints. They discourage walking and taking the bus. Heck, I don't even like to drive on them!

Of course, with proper landscaping, pedestrian havens, bike and bus lanes and dropoff lanes, it is theoretically possible to build wider roads that are actually nice. However, we don't have experience with nice multi-mode boulevards in our area -- instead, we have gross and ugly traffic sewers, designed to flush through as many cars as fast as possible, and the consequences on the adjoining neighborhoods be damned.

Greenbelt's ABP is asking the county for more information about the Sunnyside Ave. road widening, and whether there are plans to protect the bike lanes with physical barriers or high-vis road features, such as flexposts. We also hope to learn more about the Greenbelt Station development as soon as possible.

If you are interested in learning more about the proposed Greenbelt FBI and Sunnyside Ave projects, and engaging in the discussion and the city planner and city council's views, the next APB meeting is on Wednesday, July 24th at the Greenbelt Community Center at 7:30pm. A city council meeting to discuss bike and pedestrian issues is tentatively scheduled for July 29th at 8pm.