Monday, April 24, 2006
Montgomery County's Agricultural Preserve - who are the roads for?
As some readers of this blog no doubt know, Montgomery County, Maryland has set aside a large section of its land area for use as something called the Agricultural Preserve. One of the things that the county allows in the Agricultural Preserve is, well, agriculture (the Ag Preserve is also a de-facto urban growth boundary, though it's never called that and has had little or no impact on growth and development of areas beyond Montgomery County).
But agriculture and farming (at least in my mind) normally means tractors, combines, trucks and the like (some Maryland counties have farms owned by the Amish, who do not generally use such equipment, but as best as I can tell, there are no Amish farms in Montgomery County). Many roads in the Ag Presrve have been designated as so-called Rustic Roads, which means no widenings, no new shoulders - no improvements at all. But this has produced a conflict between those that want no changes to the rustic roads, and the farmers that the Ag Preserve is intended to "protect."
This conflict is described in a Washington Post article today (Monday, April 24, 2006) by Nancy Trejos, Where the 'Rustic' Clogs the Road.
A map of the county's Rustic Roads can be found here (Adobe Acrobat .pdf, 2.31 MB).
See also a presentation on the Rural Rustic Roads Improvement Program (714 KB) by the Virginia Department of Transportation, which is based on the Montgomery County, Maryland program.
But agriculture and farming (at least in my mind) normally means tractors, combines, trucks and the like (some Maryland counties have farms owned by the Amish, who do not generally use such equipment, but as best as I can tell, there are no Amish farms in Montgomery County). Many roads in the Ag Presrve have been designated as so-called Rustic Roads, which means no widenings, no new shoulders - no improvements at all. But this has produced a conflict between those that want no changes to the rustic roads, and the farmers that the Ag Preserve is intended to "protect."
This conflict is described in a Washington Post article today (Monday, April 24, 2006) by Nancy Trejos, Where the 'Rustic' Clogs the Road.
A map of the county's Rustic Roads can be found here (Adobe Acrobat .pdf, 2.31 MB).
See also a presentation on the Rural Rustic Roads Improvement Program (714 KB) by the Virginia Department of Transportation, which is based on the Montgomery County, Maryland program.
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