Two Grants to Help with Pedestrian/Bicycle Safety in Rockville
PHOTO | City of Rockville
Two state grants totaling more than $300,000 will help Rockville improve safety for children walking to school and for bicyclists on city streets.
A $269,122 Safe Routes to School grant will be used to construct a sidewalk along Harrison Street, from N. Van Buren Street to Forest Avenue, according to city officials.
Along with a sidewalk being completed on Anderson Avenue this fall, the Harrison Street sidewalk will create a continuous east-west sidewalk route through the West End neighborhood. The project is included in the City’s Capital Improvements Program for Fiscal Year 2015, which began July 1. City staff is evaluating design proposals. Construction is planned for summer 2015.
Administered by the State Highway Administration, the Safe Routes to School program provides funding for infrastructure and programs that help children get to and from school safely using non-motorized transportation. The Harrison Street sidewalk was eligible for funding due to its proximity to Beall Elementary School.
A second grant, of $33,950, from the Maryland Bikeways Program, will be used to add “sharrows” along several streets. Sharrows mark bicycle routes on roadways by using a bicycle symbol with two arrows.
The sharrows will complete a bicycle network appearing on Rockville bike maps as two yellow and orange “through-city routes.” Once sharrows are added, the entire length of the routes will have either bike lanes, a shared-use path parallel to the road or sharrows in the roadway. The addition of sharrows will have no effect on on-street parking, road widths or the number of lanes, according to the city’s press release.
For more information on sidewalks, visit www.rockvillemd.gov/sidewalks. To learn more about sharrows visit www.rockvillemd.gov/bicycling and select “sharrows” from the list on the left.
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