Rockville’s planning department is soliciting community input on improving Rockville Pike along the corridor from Twinbrook to downtown Rockville. The project’s goals include improving transportation and urban design along the Pike.

Unfortunately, the directions to the next meeting is missing something: directions to get there by transit. There are four sets of driving directions, parking information, and a driving map (showing how drivers from the south have to make a U-turn, even), but not a single mention of Metro, despite the fact that the hotel is only about 350 yards from the Twinbrook Metro station.

It sounds like a silly point, but it’s really not. As long as public officials only think about driving, decisions will be made that only consider driving. In this case, the consultants behind the project do seem to be considering transit, but if even one person in the Rockville Department of Community Planning and Development Services automatically thinks of cars but forgets transit, who knows how many policies forget about transit?

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Tagged: maryland, montgomery county, rockville, transit

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.