Stakeholders in Wheaton: Bicyclists and Pedestrians

As the redevelopment committee and the planning board meet this fall to work through the Wheaton Sector Plan's new draft, Patch is checking in with residents, advocacy groups and businesses that have an interest in what the next twenty years of Wheaton looks like.

First up, Casey Anderson of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, who testified at the July draft meeting.

I was a few minutes late meeting Casey Anderson, because my GPS had mislabeled a one-way street.

"See? You should have gotten on your bike!" Anderson said.

Anderson is a board member of Washington Area Bicyclist Association, an advocacy group for community planning that includes safe trails for bikers. His association is working with the Wheaton Redevelopment Committee and the Montgomery Parks and Planning Board to create a better and safer biking infrastructure in downtown Wheaton.

What exactly are you advocating for?

We are trying to make biking more attractive as a real and practical way of getting around, as a viable way of transportation. We are not just people who love to ride their bikes, are obsessed with it, and we are trying to evangelize others to enjoy riding their bicycles. The point is that a place that is bicycle friendly is a place that offers high quality of living even for people that aren't interested in getting on their bicycles.

How would Wheaton, or any neighborhood, benefit from a more bicycle friendly infrastructure?

For example, riding your bike around Georgia Avenue is not a lot of fun. Really, Georgia Ave is not for anything other than driving your car really fast. You wouldn't want to eat on the sidewalk, outside of a restaurant, because you would have all these cars going by you would be breathing their exhaust fumes. I'm interested in bicycles because if you make Montgomery County more bike-friendly, you can make this county more livable for everybody.

What Anderson and other bikers that work with him propose is basically a redesign of suburban shopping areas into an urban street grid, with various small retail shops, restaurants, movie theaters and other amenities.

This design, says Anderson, would revamp the neighborhood's economy, but most importantly, it would encourage pedestrians and bikers to shop, eat and enjoy a better quality of living.

What are some of the plans for Wheaton?

One of the ideas that runs through this Wheaton Sector Plan Proposal is that we want to make Wheaton a lot more like this grid style street shopping model. Trying to connect the parallel streets [to Georgia Avenue] so it looks more like a grid and has less cul-de-sacs. That way the local business traffic can get off Georgia Avenue. The streets would connect with each other and release the pressure off the arterial road.

What does your work with the Planning Board entail?

One of the things we do is we go out and ride our bikes around and we find these little connections. Or we tell them that there is no connection there but here is a place where it would be easy to do one.

In a Google map, Anderson points out a ramp that connects the back of the parking lot of Westfield Shopping Town with Torrance Court.

None of these streets go through, they are all cul-de-sacs. But for instance, trying to connect Amherst Ave, where it is interrupted (between Dayton St. and Evans Pkwy). Even if you don't build a road there, you can build a bike path through the park. That way you make it a lot easier and safer for people to get around on their bikes.

What steps could the county take to make bicycle commutes more accessible? 

I think the key thing is to build safe infrastructure to connect the same destinations that people want to rich in their car. Everybody understands that you need to be able to drive safely and conveniently to the places where you live and work or to go out to the movies or go out to dinner. Those are the same needs that bicyclers have or pedestrians have.

Where are the best places to ride around Wheaton?

Wheaton Regional Park and south of the park, [where] you can get into Sligo Creek Trail and that can take you down to Silver Spring. It goes all the way into Takoma Park and you can get into Hyattsville.

What do you think about bringing Costco into the Westfield Shopping Town?

We propose a dense mixed-use development oriented around transit. If you do that you can really intensify the land use and provide a lot of amenities that people like without adding a lot of traffic. And something like adding a Costco there is the opposite of that idea.

Costco is an intensely auto-oriented place. The mall is literally on top of a metro station. So you are putting an intensely auto oriented retail on top of this huge investment in transit. Residents are for Costco, I am for Costco too, but to put it right there it is the most preposterously stupid idea, honestly.

What would be your proposal for Wheaton and particularly for the redesign of the mall?

I think the residents of should be pushing Westfield Shopping Town to build more residential housing, like the condominiums on the other side of Georgia Ave., to soak up some of that torpid parking. Encourage them to redevelop that space with more intensive land use – offices and housing -  that would put people there both to live and to work. It is pretty clear that there is a real estate market for housing near the Metro, which would create less traffic then a Costco there.