Little Falls Parkway Trail Crossing
The Action Committee for Transit strongly supports the recommended conversion of Little Falls Parkway at the Capital Crescent Trail crossing to a two-lane road with a speed table crossing in order to improve safety for trail users while minimally affecting traffic and urges the Planning Board to adopt it. The two lane road diet, the crossing markings, and the shift in the trail approach to the road that were put in place after the cyclist fatality in 2016 have helped increase awareness of the presence of cyclists and pedestrians and have improved safety from the personal experience of our members, both as drivers and cyclist/pedestrians.
The permanent changes, speed crossing table, and improved lighting will further raise awareness of drivers as well as create a positive reason for slowing down for the crossing. Similar incentives for cyclists to slow down at the crossing should also be incorporated.
The worries that traffic has been slowed significantly are not borne out by the data, and personal experience of driving the parkway confirms this. In fact, when drivers keeping to the speed limit are often passed by cars and vans that end up stopped at the light at Dorset or at River Road, so faster speeds do not translate into faster trips. After all, Little Falls is a parkway, not a speedway.
And the recommended plan has the advantage of being relatively low cost, and rapidly implementable. The Department of Parks and the Department of Transportation are to be commended for devising the plan and moving together to implement another piece of infrastructure that meets the County’s Vision Zero goal of a comprehensive multidisciplinary approach leading to safer communities and benefitting all users of the travel infrastructure.