The Silver Spring Penguin

Two of downtown Silver Spring’s big roadways will go through the pedestrian-safety wringer — when construction of the transit center wraps in two years, a transportation official said Monday night.

“The problem we have with Colesville Road and Georgia Avenue is that this whole area is about to go under construction for the Silver Spring Transit Center,” Jeff Dunckel, pedestrian-safety coordinator with the county’s transportation department, told Silver Spring’s transportation, pedestrian safety and neighborhoods (transpedhood) committee.

Construction at the transit-center site on Colesville and Wayne Avenue will reroute cars, buses and people. And that makes it tough to gauge how people and cars normally interact in that area, Dunckel explained.

Both streets were identified in the county’s pedestrian-safety initiative as accident hot spots, along with Piney Branch Road in the Long Branch area, and further up Georgia in Wheaton. Earlier this month, MoCo exec Ike Leggett christened ped-safety studies in Long Branch and Wheaton but didn’t kick it in downtown Silver Spring.

Also missing out on the ped-safety studies are roadways in the central business district’s west end, where the Falkland Chase, Blairs, Lenox Park and Summit Hills apartments rock. (Technically, Summit Hills is outside the central business district, but I’ll holler at ‘em.) However, spots like East-West Highway at 16th Street could get some study love in two or three years, Dunckel said.

Other downtown spots away from the transit-center site — like the stretch of Colesville between Fenton and Spring Streets, and the intersection of Georgia and Spring Street — could be studied early next year. That’s if the ped-safety initiative gets the full $8.5 million backing out of this fiscal year’s budget, Dunckel said.

The county council has already put up $2 million, and $4.8 million could stream from revenues generated every time a red-light or speed camera snaps my picture, Ben Stutz, legislative analyst for council member Valerie Ervin (D-District 5), spelled out. That would leave a $1.7 million gap in the ped-safety initiative’s budget, one that could be whittled down with revised cost predictions, Stutz added.

The initiative’s full budget proposal drops in late October, Dunckel said.

Photo: A temporary pedestrian detour on Colesville Road last summer didn’t exactly work as planned. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP.