Politics & Government

Anger Unleashed Against 'Alternative 4'

Montgomery Village and Goshen residents are crying foul over the prospect of an expanded Wightman/Brink Road tearing through their communities.

An idea mired in a 20th Century mindset. A contradiction of the Smart Growth principles county leaders purport to embrace. Certain devastation of one of Montgomery County’s most picturesque settings. A betrayal of the public trust.

Given their first chance to speak out against the prospect of Wightman and Brink roads being expanded into a four-lane divided highway, Montgomery Village residents joined with their neighbors in Goshen on Tuesday night to depict the proposal in the worst possible terms, sending county officials a message that for a few brief moments broke out into a chant of protest.

More than 200 irate residents packed into Goshen Elementary School on Tuesday night to blast Montgomery County’s study of five road-based options for handling the projected boom in traffic between Gaithersburg and Clarksburg.

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The object of their ire: Alternative 4, which would turn Snouffer School, Wightman and Brink roads into a four-lane divided highway. Alternative 4 has sparked a wave of protest in the year since it became one of the five final options retained in the Midcounty Corridor Study.

That uproar prompted County Executive Isiah Leggett to arrange Tuesday night’s forum (which was a re-scheduling of an Aug. 8 meeting that drew a crowd so large that the meeting had to be shut down for fear of breaking fire codes.)

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Alternative 4 is, in turn, an offshoot of the long-planned and hotly debated extension of Midcounty Highway. Also known as M-83, the Midcounty extension has been on county master plans for decades. It wasn’t until the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, worried about its environmental damage, ordered the county in 2003 to devise and study alternatives.

The Midcounty Corridor Study started out with 11 alternatives. When that list was winnowed down in November to its final five, the Army Corps—which has sole authority to issue the project’s construction permits—told county officials to keep Alternative 4 in play.

Tuesday’s forum marked the first public discussion since.

Transportation engineers explained that Alternative 4 will have the least environmental impact. But with a footprint more than 25 feet wider than the existing right-of-way, turning Wightman into a four-lane highway promises to wreak the most residential damage.

“You keep talking about environmental impacts, but you don’t talk about people,” said Jane Hatch, president of Northgate Homes Corp., which has 52 homes abutting Wightman Road. “Honestly, as a 51-year, pre-Beltway Montgomery County resident, I have never felt such despair with my government than having this pop up with no master plan. People bought their homes and this wasn’t in it. It’s wrong.”

With such drastic consequences, much of the frustration Tuesday night centered on why Alternative 4 is even being considered.

“This is what it’s going to look like: a total wasteland,” said 20-year Goshen resident George Mencinsky, a former federal engineer. “Whoever brought that up must be a moron. … Let me tell you, someone’s off their rocker.”

The county’s answer: they have no choice but to give Alternative 4 a rigorous and objective look.

“We realize that it has problems, it has issues. But we have to study it. The federal guidelines are clear,” said Paul Wettlaufer, an engineering consultant hired by the county. “We have to do the best job we can to try and make this alternative work.”

Wettlaufer stressed that engineers are only beginning their yearlong process to analyze all the alternatives of the Midcounty study in finer detail, and devise ways to mitigate their impacts. Precise home-by-home details won’t be known for another six to eight months, said Aruna Miller, a county transportation engineer and state Delegate for Dist. 15.

“We don’t want to throw numbers out and scare people off,” Miller said.

The results of that analysis will be disclosed at a series of resident forums, followed by a public hearing. That puts county leaders—who control the project’s purse strings—on a timeline to decide the best alternative in mid-2013.

The Midcounty Corridor Study

Alternative 1: "No-build" scenario. This is not a possible option, officials say: It serves only to give transportation planners a baseline against which to compare the other alternatives.

Alternative 2: Transportation Management System. A scheme that includes improving 13 intersections.

Alternative 4 (modified): Widen Wightman and Brink roads (which will line up with existing plans to widen Goshen Road and Muncaster Mill/Snouffer School Road).

Alternative 5: Widen Route 355, including the addition of service roads.

Alternative 8: A truncated extension of Midcounty Highway. Build the northern three-quarters of the master plan alignment, from Clarksburg to Watkins Mill Road. From there south, widen Watkins Mill Road until it outlets onto Route 355 and Interstate 270.

Alternative 9: Midcounty Highway extension (the master plan alignment). Extend Midcounty Highway north past Montgomery Village Avenue nearly seven miles to Clarksburg.

(Alternatives 8 and 9 each have three possible northern endpoints.)


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