Rethink College Park

(Fawna Xiao of the University of Maryland is ready for the next round of visitors at the 2007 Solar Decathlon on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 15. The Maryland team took second place in the architecture portion of the competition. Credit: Kaye Evans-Lutterodt/Solar Decathlon)

The U.S. Department of Energy inaugurated its biennial Solar Decathlon on Friday, bringing online a neighborhood of twenty solar-powered houses on the National Mall. The University of Maryland School of Architecture’s entry, the LEAFHouse (interior pictured above), already picked up second place in the architecture contest, which compared the houses on firmness, utility, and delight. (Ironically, though the competition highlights new technology, the architectural criteria are derived from three ancient Roman architecture principles).

The decathlon will judge the houses in nine more categories, the results of which will be tabulated on Friday, October 19. A quick tour of the house today proved that environmentally conscious architecture can also be beautiful.

Though the school’s 2005 entry was sadly scrapped after the competition, we certainly hope this year’s superb entry will return home to College Park intact for for public display and enjoyment.

Website: Department of Energy Solar Decathlon
Schedule: The Solar Decathlon houses are open for public tours through Saturday:

• 11 am - 3 pm on weekdays (all houses will be closed Wednesday).
• 10 am - 5 pm on Saturday.

Location: On the National Mall, south of the Museum of Natural History, north of the Smithsonian Castle.
Metro: Smithsonian

This coming weekend the city of Greenbelt will open its doors to local residents, business owners, design professionals, and architecture students by hosting a three day charrette focusing on current and future challenges faced by the city on its 70th anniversary. The session is a component of the “Greener Greenbelt Initiative”, a working partnership between the Potomac Valley Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA-PV) and Greenbelt Homes Inc. (GHI), the housing cooperative that owns and operates Greenbelt’s original New Deal-era homes.

Officials hope the three day charrette, or interactive brainstorming and design session, will foster a creative dialog and result in the development of a long-range plan to help ensure old Greenbelt will continue to serve as a national model for livable communities as it has since its dedication in 1937.

Specifically, a list of prepared goals on the initiative’s website include maintaining the appeal of families, enabling older residents to remain at home in the city, making original housing more energy efficient, and protecting Greenbelt’s nature and open spaces while preserving the community’s character. The “Greener Greenbelt” charrette will occur between Friday, September 28 and Sunday, September 30 at Greenbelt Elementary school, located at 66 Ridge Road.

For more information or to get involved, visit http://www.greenergreenbelt.org.

Rethink College Park will have their own booth at the First Look Fair this Thursday, September 20, from 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. on McKeldin Mall at the University of Maryland campus. Come meet the contributors, learn more about what we do, and find out how you can get more involved. We will be located in the Community Service section of the fair. We look forward to seeing you there!

We’ll have a full recap of last night’s transportation meeting as well as our official list of suggestions to the consultants within the next few days. Until then feel free to read the Draft of the report (PDF) and comment on anything you please.

In preparation for tonight’s Route 1 Corridor Transportation Study special meeting (7 pm, College Park City Hall), we will share with you the design tips we gleaned from a lecture we attended last night on pedestrian safety through good street design.

Last night’s lecture Designing Complete Streets: How to create safe and efficient streets for pedestrians, bicyclists and drivers hosted by the National Capital Planning Commission featured a presentation by Michael King, a principal at Nelson\Nygaard planning consultancy. King is widely considered the nation’s preeminent pedestrian crossing expert and has worked on projects for various cities worldwide.

King provided some good insights on designing streets to enhance pedestrian safety, a concern particularly relevant to Route 1 in College Park. Since issues of pedestrian safety usually involve walking along streets or crossing streets, King’s design advice applied mostly to crosswalks and sidewalks. As more development projects emerge in College Park, citizens, planners, and developers should keep in mind these recommendations for sidewalk design:

• Sidewalks should provide at least three feet of passing room at all times (even the occasional utility pole reduces the width of the passing room).
• Sidewalks should be intuitive and straight (whimsically serpentine walkways may amuse newcomers, but become a nuisance to regular users).
• Parked cars, planters, trees, or a strip of grass should buffer all sidewalks from travel lanes.
• Bus shelters should never be placed so as to obstruct or divert the flow of pedestrian traffic.

As for crosswalks, King made several good points:

• Each crosswalk should connect on opposite sides of the street to ramps at least as wide as the crosswalk itself. “Why should we need to trip?” King asked, referring to the unnecessary curbs.
• Wide medians actually slow drivers (as a psychological reaction) and provide adequate crossing refuges for slower pedestrians such as young children and the elderly. (Fortunately, the state’s plan for reconstructing Route 1, as we have reported, includes tree-studded medians.)
• Though one car may stop for a pedestrian at a non-signalized crosswalk (as is the law), other drivers will often dart around the stopped car, nearly running down the crossing pedestrian who has the right-of-way. Thus, even mid-block crosswalks require traffic signals.
• Crosswalks should line-up with existing sidewalks and pedestrians paths; pedestrians rarely detour from the most direct path to cross at inconveniently placed crosswalks.
• Unnecessary delays annoy pedestrians just as much as drivers; crosswalk signals should be designed to eliminate any unnecessary wait-time for pedestrians. A long wait-time for a short cross signal should earn an intersection a failing “level of service” grade with government transportation authorities.

This last point is especially useful for College Park, where light cycles are unnaturally long for both pedestrians and drivers and where the need to press a button to elicit a crossing signal further frustrates the hundreds of pedestrians who cross Route 1 downtown each day. The lights on Route 1 are timed clearly to prioritize traffic passing through College Park to the detriment of the pedestrians (and drivers) within College Park. Facilitating cross traffic and accounting for pedestrian behavior are necessary steps in transforming Route 1 from the its current role as “traffic-sewer” into a pleasant pedestrian-friendly boulevard that all residents desire.

King, like many other architecture lecturers, sprinkled his presentation with photo examples from all over the world, including such places as China, Brazil, Mexico, the UK, Cape Town, Seattle, New York, DC, and— drumroll— College Park! Unsurprisingly, both College Park examples featured bad pedestrian designs, including a picture of an overly wide driveway entrance on Route 1 as well as the ramp between eastbound University Boulevard and southbound Route 1. King used car-pedestrian crash studies to show how the ramp design enables car travel at speeds that would surely kill a pedestrian in a collision at the poorly placed crosswalk (below, green arrow) on the ramp. Thus, even New York-based architectural consultants are well-aware of the sorry state of Route 1! Hopefully, tonight’s Route 1 Corridor Transportation Study special meeting at City Hall at 7 pm will help bring these desperately needed improvements closer to fruition.

Hope you can make this very important event. See our past announcement on it.

Thanks everyone for passing along these great lectures (text taken from the event announcements):

Rumors sometime become reality - or so it seems given the potential redevelopment of the “Cafritz Property” (Developer Website) which we first talked about last month. Public workshop meetings are planned for early June. County councilman Eric Olson and College Park city councilwoman Stephanie Stullich are encouraging meaningful/rigorous public participation at these events. Such preliminary community input, Olson notes, is rare for development projects.
All workshops are to be held at:
RIVERDALE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL,
5006 RIVERDALE ROAD

- SATURDAY, JUNE 2ND
(10am-2pm, come any time)
- THURSDAY, JUNE 7TH
(7-9pm) [identical to the first meeting]
- THURSDAY, JUNE 14TH
(7-9pm) [wrap-up meeting]

The first two initial workshops on the 2nd and 7th are intended to give all attendees a forum to share ideas and concerns about the project. The third meeting on the 14th will synthesize the public opinion shared at the first two meetings into principles to guide potential development on the Cafritz Property. The development team will then come up with a more complete proposal for more community meetings in the fall.

The 40-acre Cafritz Property is located in northern Riverdale, just south of College Park’s Albion Road (Great interactive map - snapshot to the right). Route 1 runs lengthwise along the property and train tracks running adjacent to the Metro pass along the back length of the property. The proposed Rhode Island Trolley Trail extension (now a hobo path) runs through the middle of the property, parallel to the tracks.

What is now dense forest on the Cafritz property was once the site of a post-WWII military housing project. The property has since flirted with development possibilities numerous times while under the ownership of the Cafritz Family, and has also been considered as a site for public schools in the past.

Contemporary development possibilities that the public will discuss in said meetings will likely include mixed use residential and retail development. Possibilities include senior housing, a community arts center, and a Whole Foods grocery store. County Councilman Eric Olson has stressed the importance of a buffer of trees between neighborhoods and the development, green building techniques, high-quality commercial establishments, and a pedestrian/bike-friendly inter-connective transit orientation. Olson also encourages any housing be designed to minimize added pressure to local school enrollment, and accommodate active retirees and senior citizens. According to Olson, there is no interest in developing university student housing.

>> Read Eric Olson’s letter sent to the local community.