Bel Pre Road Safety Improvement Project

 

Improving Safety Along Bel Pre Road

This project will provide safety improvements to help mitigate crashes involving pedestrians and bicyclists along a 1.9-mile stretch of Bel Pre Road between Georgia Avenue and Layhill Road. This segment of roadway is as a Vision Zero High Injury Network with higher number of crashes (at least one crash per mile per year).
After conducting Pedestrian Road Safety Audits and studies of the corridor in 2015 and 2022, we are moving forward with a project design which will include a variety of safety improvements to the corridor. Bel Pre Road serves as a crucial transit corridor with a mix of residential and commercial spaces, but unfortunately, experiences higher-than-average crash rates, specifically those involving pedestrians and bicyclists. The corridor features several bus stops with uncontrolled crossings, lacking traffic control measures like stop signs, yield signs or traffic signals.
Montgomery County seeks public feedback on proposed safety upgrades, offering various options to enhance the existing streetscape and improve roadway safety in the area.  Please click the 'Project Survey' tab above to provide feedback.

The project team has assembled several options for the new typical section of Bel Pre Road. Beginning with three different options for how to lay out the lanes of the roadway, the design team proposed:

  • a full road diet, which eliminated one travel lane in each direction,
  • a lane diet with curb adjustments, which reduces the lane widths on the roadway to the minimum recommended widths for this roadway category and moves the southern curb to accommodate a wider shared use path on the south side of Bel Pre Road.
  • A lane diet which maintains existing curbs and uses the extra space to add protected, on-street bike lanes.

 

We want to hear from you! MCDOT invites you to take our project survey by clicking this link: Survey

Preliminary design for the corridor is scheduled to be complete in Summer 2024. Stay tuned for more details.

Area Map