Yet Another Montrose Parkway Maze

Beginning tomorrow, you can’t get there from here. At least you can’t get from east-bound Montrose Road directly to Randolph Road in White Flint. That’s when the last section of the newly-constructed Montrose Parkway opens to traffic.

 The Montrose Parkway is probably the last major road project undertaken in this part of Montgomery County for many years; it took decades to iron out the route and construction details. And “iron out” is probably too strong a description.

The resulting intersection of Montrose Parkway and Rockville Pike is looking more like a tangle of wires behind somebody’s home computer. To go south on Rockville Pike from Montrose Parkway, you’ll have to turn north, then make a quick U-turn around the new surface parking lot which graces the northeastern tip of the White Flint Sector just above Montrose Blvd at the Pike, and then you can go south. At Tuesday’s Council committee discussion of the White Flint Sector Plan, County Fire and Rescue officials opposed a new fire-EMS station on that triangle of land because they wouldn’t be able to go north without going south, then east to reach the Pike.

And now, to go east on the old Montrose Road, you will first have to turn onto “Old” Old Georgetown Road (that little stub of a street that runs behind Mid-Pike Plaza), turn onto the Montrose Parkway, and then continue on to Randolph.

Was that clear? Hmm. Think of it this way: Montrose Parkway is supposed to carry the east-west traffic that used to go on the old Montrose Road, so the Parkway becomes the only way to go directly east-west across the Pike.

Here’s an article from today’s Gazette which “explains” this:

http://www.gazette.net/stories/11182009/rocknew212533_32525.shtml

Barnaby Zall