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Highway Officials Urge Patience As Pike Project Gets Underway
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At $70 million, the parkway is the most expensive road project undertaken by Montgomery, county spokeswoman Esther Bowring said.
State highway officials said they are building the interchange at the county's request to help better handle the area's rapid growth and improve east-west traffic flow. About 60,000 vehicles travel through the Randolph Road and Rockville Pike intersection daily, according to state figures. The traffic volume is expected to soar to nearly 100,000 daily by 2030.
High-rise condominium and apartment buildings have popped up nearby in recent years, county officials said, and North Bethesda contains about 40 percent of Montgomery's employers. They include two major shopping centers, where consumers seeking big-box stores such as Toys R Us and Barnes & Noble fill parking lots.
"For Montgomery County, Rockville Pike is already our Tysons Corner," Anderson said. "Traffic on a good day already barely moves. Unfortunately, construction is a necessary evil" to improve travel times in the long term.
Ira Ludwick, who owns Progressions Salon on nearby Nebel Street, said his customers have learned to work around the Montrose construction delays, but he wondered how well a detour around Rockville Pike would work.
"That's a potential nightmare because of the sheer volumes," he said. "Where do you put the cars?"
Ludwick said he is more concerned that neither the parkway nor an interchange will fix what he sees as the area's biggest problem: the railroad crossing on Randolph Road east of Rockville Pike that often brings traffic to a halt for several minutes while trains pass. State highway officials said they plan to construct a bridge over the tracks when the county builds the eastern portion of Montrose Parkway.
Even fully opening the parkway's western section should help, county officials said. Traffic volumes on Montrose Road are expected to drop by nearly half once the parkway is completed, they said.
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