At its monthly meeting on October 18, members of the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (TPB) approved $250,000 in funding for three local transit access planning projects as part of its Transit Within Reach Program.
According to the TPB selection memo, “over the next decade, more than half of the region’s job growth and over 40 percent of the region’s new households are forecast to be located within a half-mile of high-capacity transit. Yet, even where transit is physically close, it often is not within reach for people who walk and bike. Sidewalks are missing, crosswalks are unsafe, trails and paths are yet to be built.”
The TPB created the Transit Within Reach Program in 2021 to help address this issue by offering consultant services for design and preliminary engineering of small, high-impact bicycle and pedestrian projects. The program helps advance goals in the TPB’s Visualize 2045 regional transportation plan, recognizing the importance of investing in nonmotorized access to transit on a regional scale to better connect people to Metrorail, commuter rail, light rail, streetcar, and bus rapid transit stations.
The following projects were approved for funding:
Prosperity Avenue Safety Project
Fairfax County, $80,000
Prosperity Avenue is a wide road with fast-moving traffic that residents, visitors, and workers must cross to reach the Dunn Loring Metro station. This project will create designs for a road diet that will reduce the number of lanes, from four to two, and create 30% design for protected bike lanes. The project will also include designs to convert existing buffered bike lanes into protected bike lanes on Prosperity Avenue west of the study area and ending at Hilltop Road.
Olde Towne to Washington Grove Shared-Use Path
Gaithersburg, $85,000
This project will fund 30% design for a shared-use path connecting the city’s amenity-filled downtown area – including a MARC station – to the Town of Washington Grove, where it would link to another path (currently in design by Montgomery County) connecting to the Shady Grove Metro Station.
9th Street NW Sidewalk
Washington, DC, $85,000
This project will develop a 30% design package to widen an unsafe stretch of sidewalk that is currently less than two feet wide in multiple locations. This preliminary engineering will narrow the cartway to provide a 6-foot sidewalk and a 4-foot furniture zone with tree boxes. In addition, the project will develop recommendations for a redirection of one-way traffic flow, from southbound to northbound, to improve safety.
COG and TPB planning concepts, which identify optimal locations regionwide for investment and growth, informed the selection process. All three projects are in or near High-Capacity Transit Stations (HCTs) and Equity Emphasis Areas (EEAs).