It’s perhaps the first thing drivers and pedestrians see when entering downtown Bethesda and it could soon be history.
The red “Welcome to Bethesda” sign that graces a flower-filled pedestrian refuge at Woodmont Avenue and Wisconsin Avenue on the north side of town could be removed if designs for a State Highway Administration project come to fruition.
SHA wants to reconfigure the high-speed merge area from southbound Wisconsin Avenue to Woodmont Avenue to make the crosswalk easier to navigate for pedestrians.
Bethesda Urban Partnership Executive Director Dave Dabney said early talks with SHA revolved around bumping out the existing pedestrian refuge to take away one of two lanes of the Woodmont Avenue merge area. That would allow pedestrians to cross one lane of merging traffic instead of two.
But a new proposal from SHA involves bumping out the opposite curb, which would have roughly the same effect but take away much of the existing pedestrian refuge.
Dabney and Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Center Director Ken Hartman are set to meet with SHA next week to express their concerns. Slimming down the pedestrian refuge would mean losing the sign, taking out the decorative stone wall, getting rid of green space and reducing the space pedestrians have on the island.
“The new proposal caught us by surprise,” Dabney said. “We feel the island is important to creating the sense of place by welcoming constituents to the Bethesda Urban District.”
Drivers often veer off southbound Wisconsin Avenue at high speeds.
Despite the absence of a traffic light for those merging onto southbound Woodmont Avenue, that part of the intersection is a pedestrian crosswalk.
The sign and landscaping is maintained by the Bethesda Urban Partnership, the nonprofit charged by Montgomery County with maintaining and promoting Bethesda’s Central Business District.
Images via Bethesda Urban Partnership
