Heather Curtis
WMAL.com

WASHINGTON (WMAL) – Montgomery County’s proposed bicycle master plan is designed to get cars off the road by making it safer and more convenient for people to bike places instead, but the council’s deputy director, Glenn Orlin, said the good intention comes with a prohibitively expensive price tag.

After crunching the numbers, Orlin estimates the plan would cost $6.5 billion dollars, which he said it unaffordable. To put it in perspective, the current five-year plan for all pedestrian expenses – mostly sidewalks – is $225 million according to a report. Orlin will present to the council’s transportation committee Monday.

Orlin said the bike plan would take up a huge chunk of the money the county has to spend on capital improvements.

“If it were $6.5 billion, there really wouldn’t be money left over for much of anything else, and I don’t mean just transportation, I mean also schools, police stations, fire stations, libraries rec centers etc,” Orlin said.

Orlin will go before the council’s transportation committee Monday and recommend the plan be scaled back significantly.

The council will also hear from the chair of the county’s planning board, Casey Anderson, who disagrees with Orlin.

“I don’t think those cost estimates are realistic because they assume, number one, that every single one of the bike facilities that’s identified in the plan will get built,” Anderson said.

Anderson adds the plan also assumes the bike infrastructure – which includes shoulders for bicyclists on roads – will be built on its own and not as part of another road project.

Anderson is confident that if the plan is adopted as is, the amount of money the county and state would wind up spending on bicycling infrastructure would be nowhere near Orlin’s estimates.

The plan’s fate is ultimately up to entire county council, Anderson believes there is a growing consensus that the county needs to catch up on bike and pedestrian infrastructure.

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