Bethesda, After the snow

The snow stopped Saturday night. I waited until midday Monday to walk around downtown Bethesda, MD and see how it held up. Bethesda has a reputation for being a good place to walk around, a big snow storm is the perfect time to put this to the test.


90% of the sidewalks were at least mostly shoveled, you would now and then come across one or two stores that hadn't shoveled (unfortunately, some of them were on Arlington Rd which is pretty major). Intersections and curb cuts were pretty hit and miss, lots of them had been poorly cleared or not cleared at all.

Twitter user @gellmania summed it up nicely:

Dear Bethesda, learn how to shovel sidewalks. It's not that tough. Also, plow more than one lane on the major roads. That would be great.

Old Georgetown Road and parts of Wisconsin Avenue were missing lanes. Particularly noticeable was Old Georgetown between Arlington Rd and Woodmont Ave (southbound) only one lane of two was clear, backing up traffic.



Veteran's Park was just tables in a field of snow, no chance of walking through there.

The Capital Crescent Trail was actually a bright spot. There was a narrow path cleared going down towards DC. I didn't follow it to see how far down it was cleared.

I'll give the cleanup a B- because it really should have been better by now. I went easy on them because it was such a large storm.


At the top of Bethesda Metro station is a line of newspaper racks. They all had about four feet of snow in front of them and none had been refilled, not even the USA Today and Washington Post. The lone exception was the Rock Creek Free Press which had not only been refilled, it had a path shoveled to it. If you have never read it, grab a copy one day, its free.


One spot that did give me a pause was this store. The snow was slowly sliding off the roof and was hanging over the sidewalk. Look up while you are walking too.