Nebel Street One-Way Separated Bike Lanes Project

About the Program

Category: Transportation (Best in Category)

Year: 2017

The Nebel Street One-Way Separated Bike Lanes Project is a half mile long separated bike lane project along Nebel Street between Randolph Road and Marinelli Road in the White Flint area of Montgomery County, Maryland. This retrofit project partially completes a segment of the bikeway connection between the Bethesda Trolley Trail and the Randolph Road/Montrose Parkway shared-use path, and helps to bridge an important north-south bikeway gap in White Flint. The purpose of the project is to encourage bicycling by providing residents and employees access to a comfortable, low stress and connected bicycle network between activity centers, transit facilities and neighborhoods in the White Flint area. A separated bike lane is an exclusive facility for bicyclists that is located within or directly adjacent to the roadway and creates less stress for users because it is physically separated from vehicular traffic and pedestrians. Separated bike lanes can operate as one-way or two-way facilities. The Nebel Street One-Way Separated Bike Lanes Project provided for the design and construction of the first one-way separated bike lanes in Montgomery County. This gives Montgomery County Department of Transportation (MCDOT) and cyclists using these bicycle facilities a chance to observe how paired one-way separated bike lanes operate compared to the two way separated bike lanes implemented in the County in 2014. The retrofit design included 6-foot-wide bike lanes placed against the curb on either side of the street, physically separated from traffic, with vertical delineators called flexible posts and included a striped buffer area. To create the bike lanes, parking was removed from the west side of Nebel Street and relocated to the east side. The road’s travel lanes were also reduced from 15 and ½ feet wide to 11 feet.