Expect more of the same as the unchecked urbanization of Montgomery County continues. It wasn't long ago that a pedestrian was killed on Rockville Pike in the vicinity of the Twinbrook Metro. Rockville Pike is a major County artery, and, unfortunately due to urbanization, it is a clogged artery prone to multi particulate collisions.

The State Highway Administration has plans to add yet another lane to this stretch of 355. We can plan on more traffic and accidents north of Cedar Lane. The SHA will spend 19 million fully understanding the after all is said and done, the Cedar Lane intersection will still have a F rating.

The SHA has plans to add a northbound lane to the Rockville Pike north of Cedar Lane. This will allow additional outbound traffic to pool between Cedar Lane and the beltway entrance, which is exactly where this tragic accident occured.

The SHA will spend 11 million on this project. Their traffic models suggest that this project will decrease traffic wait times by 8 seconds. This project is being funded by the DOD due to the impact of BRAC and the increased number of workers at the Bethesda Naval Hospital.

I live on Bellevue Drive which is just north of the accident site, and have already seen two southbound vehicles jump the median and hit cars on northbound Rockville Pike.

If the SHA pools the cars on northbound Rockville Pike, the cars will be stuck with nowhere to go should this type of accident happen again. Commuters can not reach the beltway or Cedar Lane by turning in to Bellevue Drive or Broadbrook.

The residents of the Locust Hill neighborhood already have safety problems with cut through traffic. Adding an additional lane to northbound Rockville Pike will only make matters worse for everyone, especially when nothing is being done to prevent cars from jumping the median when racing southbound on the Rockville Pike.

The SHA needs to come up with a better plan considers safety first.

Jim Turner
President
Locust Hills Citizens Association

The cause of most accidents in this area is not due to the volume of traffic, but rather to the "entitlement" driving culture, the selfish attitude that so many drivers adopt, and the competitiveness that festers on the road. People drive like that because they know that they can get away with it. I walk across Rockville Pike every day, and almost every single time I cross there's a red light runner, ranging from those who just barely squeak through as the light turns from yellow to red, to those who blatantly blast through the light three or four seconds after it's solidly turned red.

And people will keep driving like that until they know that they can't get away with it. But right now they do know it, and so they take the chance.

I also continue to see lots of people talking or texting on cellphones, despite the fact that this is now illegal.

I read a very interesting book called "Traffic", and the gist of it is that most people think it's OK for them to break the laws because they "know" how to drive, it's other people who can't. And this sense of arrogance is amplified in a place like Montgomery County, which is why we have a reputation throughout the country as one of the most unpleasant places to drive. We're particularly notorious for the fact that, if you signal to move into a lane, the other driver in that lane will invariably block you from merging into the lane.

Let's just say we have a very "high volume" of "entitled" and "arrogant" drivers. A deadly combination for all.
Perhaps more tickets? I almost never see anyone pulled over anymore! Where are all the police? Not sure if this would help anyway?

Yes, overdevelopment is the problem. The solution is to ask anyone who moved to this area after WW2 to leave. That way we can go back and level all the roads, businesses and schools that we will no longer need. No traffic, no people. The nerve of the council and planning board building houses that people want to buy.

If people are concerned about "overdevelopment" they should, in my opinion, do a better job of defining what they mean by that. We live near a very large urban job-creating city. Growth is inevitable. Should we stop growing to accommodate the new jobs and people who want to live here? I would argue no.

Where I'd tend to agree with anti-growth sentiment is on the typical farmland-eating subdivision style growth that defined our country from the late 1940s throught the early 2000s. It's time to revert back to time-tested growth that involves consuming less land (and conserving those trees and farmland left), and building more mixed use transit-oriented developments that put more people within walking distance of more living, working, playing, and transiting options. The benefits of this approach are many, including healthier people, healthier and more engaged communities, more spare time, less traffic, better use of land resources, and lower pollution and carbon emissions (and I note that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but it is a "greenhouse gas" that warms the planet). Also, there are benefits to fiscal budgets which have to construct less supporting infrastructure, and to the tax bases of aging cities that need reinvestment and revitalization.

There are some challenges to making sure higher-density communities are still livable, green, and friendly to kids and pets, but these impacts are easy to mitigate and address using good design and planning.

I'm disappointed that commenters are using this tragedy to advance their own agendas. A car jumping the median and hitting oncoming traffic sounds more like a medical emergency than the result of overdevelopment or entitlement. Let's wait and see what the cause was before prescribing solutions that wouldn't have changed this horrible event.

I don't believe that there's anything wrong with "using" a tragedy to call attention to the factors that may have caused it. When there's an airplane or train or bus accident, the first thing that is done by officials is to investigate and figure out why it happened, so that things can be done as soon as possible to prevent a repetition.

There's no "agenda" in saying that people drive around here drive like jerks. I visited Manhattan a couple of weeks ago, and was shocked that drivers there actually notice and acknowledge pedestrians. In that case, it has nothing to do with overdevelopment, since Manhattan is as developed as you can possibly get. When I was crossing the street at night in Tribeca, I didn't feel as though there was a bullseye painted on my back, which is how I feel whenever I cross Rockville Pike (always in a crosswalk, and on a Walk sign, though that doesn't matter much in the minds of many local drivers). And Manhattanites are way up there with a sense of entitlement in many things, but somehow they have absorbed the message that it's not acceptable to mow down pedestrians.

Just last night, when I cross the Pike at N Washington, as soon as the light turned green one driver shot off like a bat out of hell, squealing his brakes and gunning his engine. It was like something out of NASCAR. For anyone to even presume that this is acceptable behavior in the middle of downtown Rockville is pathetic.

Over-development as the cause of the accident when the truck was going the wrong way down the road? And yet another bender against county leaders and developers...how shameful. Agree with Doug and very sorry for the loss of life and for the injured.

Good grief. Do some people just wake up in the morning for the sake of complaining about the county they live in? Beyond pathetic.

Some people have to dodge cars that fly over the median on the Rockville Pike. I have seen this happen twice. Some people, like my neighbor have to witness buses crashing through their back fence. I also watched a wall of flame that ran from the Bellevue Drive traffic light to the Pooks Hill light. At the end of the wall of flame was a car which was fully engulfed. I watched this car burn for 15 minutes or so from my living room window. This is a very dangerous section of the Rockville Pike. Something needs to be done. We can not change peoples driving habits. We need safer traffic patterns and fewer sudden merges. I am not an activest or someone with an ax to grind. I just want to see the SHA come up with solutions that save lives and don't squander millions of dollars on ineffective band aids.

Over crowding is a contributing factor to auto crashes.

Fictional over-development isn't, and no cause has been cited in this case.

Jag:
Nobody twisted anything. People were offering their opinion and nothing else. If you do not agree with the opinion,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,then well......that's "your" opinion and nothing else. Adding personal attacks and name calling only serves to put into question the age of the offender.

Thank god that I have a 2nd farm home in rural Appomattox, County Va. with 37 acres of land............ when I've had enough of the stress of the overly-populated, liberal, congested, "rat race" in Montgomery County...... I simply go back to my tranquil, rural, peaceful, concervative, lifestyle in rural Va. Hard to believe that it once was peaceful here before "progress" changed it all.

So are we who like it here and don't want the negative folks tearing down Montgomery County while we work to improve it, especially for those of us 99% who can't afford a "country home." Sheesh!

FranK:
"I'm sure that the folks in Appomatox view you as the same "change" that you whine about in Montgomery."

Really, really sure Frank?