Downtown Driving Experience

What will the driving experience in downtown Columbia be like if the proposed street system is approved?

According to the Department of Planning and Zoning here is the proposed number of lanes for each of the downtown streets:



Here are the Department of Planning and Zoning’s street diagrams of the proposed streets:



The first thing that jumps out at me is that most of the streets will be one lane each way streets with parallel parking. Having driven in many cities with streets with one lane each way and parallel parking I know that such roads jam up as people pull in and out of spots and they can not handle very much volume. Generally these types of streets only work when they are alternated in a grid of four lane of more roads that are used to move traffic, while the one lane each way streets with parallel parking are used for parking and not as traffic through streets.

OK, let’s look at the planned through streets in the plan:




The only added two lane each way street is the Hickory Ridge Road extension through the Crescent. In fact, the six lane Little Patuxent Parkway is cut down to a two lane each way street with parallel parking.

As I mentioned before even if people wanted to use the new one lane each way with parallel parking streets as alternates to the reduced capacity Little Patuxent Parkway as through streets they couldn’t. The new one lane each way streets (with the exception of Corporate Boulevard) aren’t through streets. In order, to cut through downtown on them you have to zigzag through town. Who would take these streets and how long would it take? Are we creating a recipe for gridlock downtown? This is not a grid that would achieve the theory of traffic dispersion that the traffic consultant presented at the charrette.