The Montgomery County Commissioners recently announced two new county policies.
The “Complete Streets Policy,” developed by Montgomery County Planning Commission (MCPC) and its partners, applies to county-owned roads, bridges, and facilities and calls for MCPC to advocate for a Complete Streets design approach when working with partner agencies on their projects.
The Bicycle Coalition participated in the steering committee that helped shape the policy, which requires the consideration of all road users for all county-funded road projects.
The new “Health in All Policies Implementation Policy” calls for the county to consider the inclusion of health in all future policy development and implementation, budgeting, and delivery of services.
Both policies can be found here.
It is nice that the Commissioners have a policy to ” advocate for a Complete Streets design approach when working with partner agencies on their projects.” But the operative term here is “advocate”. How likely will it be that this advocacy will materially affect new roads, bridges and other county-owned facilities?
Wynnewood Road between City Ave and Lancaster Ave in Lower Merion has recently been re-surfaced. I believe it is county-owned. Unfortunately it is not wide enough to accommodate bike lanes and has discontinuous sidewalks.
How will this new policy address this and other major routes in Lower Merion – an area where biking and walking could be important modes of transportation if the roads actually were made safe for pedestrians and cyclists?
This is great news for our area.
Elizabeth: this will be the official policy for any county-owned projects, or those that receive any county funding. Unfortunately, the County owns only a small percentage of the roads in Montco. County funding broadens the parameters a bit.
Wynnewood Rd is owned and maintained by PennDOT. Hopefully this policy can be used as an advocacy tool when we discuss future road projects in the county. As you point out, there is much work to be done in Lower Merion, as well as many other areas of the Philly suburbs in PA.
This map shows PennDOT roads in red: http://www.dot7.state.pa.us/BPR_pdf_files/Maps/GHS/Roadnames/Montgomery_GHSN.PDF