Comments on: Future library on track, with or without Purple Line

By: wileyone

wileyone — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 19:17:58 +0000

I vote no free parking.

Have you ever tried to get into DTSS by car on Friday night? Fenton is already a parking lot. The last thing we need to do is invite 120 MORE cars into DTSS.

This is not so much about the library as it is about traffic planning for the DTSS boom. With the additional mixed-use development (more residents) planned heading down Fenton it's just going to get worse. If we're teetering on traffic annoyance now, adding 1000 more residences (total guess) is going to make it even more crazy. I say walk, bike, transit, etc., but no more parking spaces.

And I'm all for new-urban planning, smart growth, or whatever you want to call it, but just adding people to a congested area without increasing infrastructure capacity to deal with them is short sighted. If Fenton isn't widened to 2 lanes each way with no street parking it's going to be impossible. And why isn't there a left turn arrow from Fenton (N) onto Wayne (W)? What a cluster-flub.

By: paul_silver_spring

paul_silver_spring — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:19:45 +0000

DMZ – All I’m saying is that our widespread fears of trains on streets is not founded in reality, and europe is a clear example of that. I don’t know from personal experience, but I believe there are numerous US examples as well, including seattle and st louis maybe??? I don’t know for sure, which is why I cite the european cities that I have been to as examples. There are many things Europeans do better than us and we can learn a lot from, and plenty we do better than one. However, I would defintely put our overall urban development plans on the first list.

By: pj

pj — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:32:52 +0000

Let’s follow the process that the Rockville library uses and have people park in the county parking gargages. According to the press release, it appears that those who use the library are afforded free parking at the local county parking garages. I vote for eliminating all parking on site and having folks who want to drive to the library park in the County parking lot that will be located right across the street. Maybe they can build a pedestrian bridge that would link the Wayne Ave. parking garage with the new library. With the amount of space saved by eliminating the parking, we could then expand the size of the library.

By: DMZ

DMZ — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:07:44 +0000

Paul, this isn't Europe. I know you love the system there, but our society is just not built around the same set of cultural assumptions, especially vis a vis transportation. Saying "I like the way they did this in Amsterdam" doesn't mean it's actually feasible to do it here. I would warn against overgeneralizing.

Editor's note: This comment was edited for content. -- JD (Mar 3, 2008)

By: b

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:35:41 +0000

paul_silver_spring is right. Those bicycles in Amsterdam come at you in all directions. And if you spend too much time looking out for bicycles, you eventually step in dog doo. In the Leidsplein you have narrow streets with 2 way tram tracks, cars, bikes, and pedestrians, and the traffic moves better than it does on Georgia Ave.

By: paul_silver_spring

paul_silver_spring — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:11:50 +0000

Nancy… I’ll forgive you for obviously not being up to date on my usual rants on these comments sections .. you said “I must be a driver”. While I own a car, it spends most of it’s life in the garage beneath the building. I am TOTALLY in favor of tweaking every last traffic light in town until it is totally pedestrian efficient, even at the detrement to traffic. Yes, I indeed think it should take more than 5 minutes to get through an urban center. Anywho… not sure where “You must be a driver” comes from based on what I said…

As for the dangerous railroads on the streets, however… Amsterdam, Dublin, Paris, Budapest…. just the beginning of a long list of VERY successful urban streetcar programs. Some (Amsterdam and Budapest) are there because they’ve been there for 50+ years. Some (Dublin) are brand new, because it worked so well everywhere else on the continent they realized it was more cost effective and they could afford to connect 10’s of times more citizens than with a overpriced underground subway. Are we really that much stupider than the rest of the globe that we can’t manage to not get hit by a giant bus, that runs a guaranteed route on a track, with bells whistles and lights?? Not getting hit by a BICYCLE in amsterdam, now THAT’s a whole different story!

By: Vagrarian

Vagrarian — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:33:50 +0000

Yeah, the pay-parking is looking better to me as a solution for that area. Just do the building and leave the parking for the Wayne Ave Garage.

I do have a knee-jerk desire for free parking, I admit. But I am driving less, from a mix of a small amount of cracked environmental idealism and a large amount of economic necessity, as gas is flippin’ expensive….

By: SoCo

SoCo — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:11:08 +0000

I like the cheap-but-not-free parking in the Wayne Av garage concept.

Speaking of fast food, I wonder if a drive-thru window for picking up reserved books will be included.

By: Nancy

Nancy — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:52:09 +0000

Hey, Paul, you said “But DTSS, specifically, is a national posterchild for New Urbanism…Pedestrian friendly and transit oriented.” You must be a driver! I was nearly hit on Sat. afternoon by a car blowing through a red light on Ga. at Thayer. Can site many similar incidents on Ga. and other streets. A railroad on the street would be more thing to dodge. And they keep adding projects, which both cars and delivery & trash trucks will drive to.

By: Springvale Roader

Springvale Roader — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:39:16 +0000

Whoops, forgot to add that FWIW, I wouldn’t call Ghar-E-Kabob or the Crescent Cafe fast food restaurants. Come to think of it, aside from some stuff on Ellsworth and the McDeath’s near the metro, there aren’t too many fast food restaurants in DTSS, fortunately.