It’s not even rush hour, but traffic is at a full standstill on Old Georgetown Road. As my car crawls towards JDS, cars around me are honking, desperately trying to maneuver across the road to turn. Glancing to my right, I see a totally open lane reserved exclusively for cyclists, yet it is completely empty.
The bike lanes from Ryland Drive to Rockville Pike on Old Georgetown Road were added on Dec. 22, 2022 as a response to two cyclist deaths in 2019, according to the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT). Though these deaths were tragic, I believe that the bike lanes are not an appropriate solution and may put Montgomery County citizens at greater risk. Since their installation, it is evident that there has been a significant increase in traffic on Old Georgetown Road.
According to MDOT, roughly 40,000 to 55,000 drivers utilize Old Georgetown Road per day, and now there are only four drivable lanes instead of the six that there used to be. The two bike lanes take away 33% of the driving capacity on the state highway that could have been used for driving.
In spring 2024, prime time for biking, the State Highway Administration’s (SHA) District Three traffic engineering team recorded the number of cyclists that crossed two major streets that intersect Old Georgetown Road on a given day. I received their findings through the Freedom of Information Act. They found that 53 cyclists crossed Tuckerman Lane, and 37 cyclists crossed Democracy Boulevard…