About a hundred Montgomery County families showed up for Cycling in the Circle at Warner Circle Park in Kensington on Sunday June 29th to give some of our littlest residents a chance to navigate MCDOT’s first pop-up “traffic garden.” A traffic garden is a miniature network of city streets that is designed as a safe practice environment for children to learn the rules of the road and how to bike and walk safely. The scenic child-sized street plan that encircled the historic Warner home included a traffic circle, intersections and a railroad crossing, all marked with pint-sized traffic signs and signals.
In addition to the traffic garden, children experienced Montgomery County Parks’ “pump track,” a small, looping trail system with banked turns that require momentum to master. There were bike skills classes, helmet and bike safety checks, and bike map and pedestrian safety giveaways. A “traffic jam” area offered children a chance to navigate a tabletop streetscape from the perspective of all modalities— people who bike, walk, and drive as well as people with disabilities and people who take the bus. Children took home miniature traffic garden kits to build their own paper roadways at home.
While the temporary Kensington traffic garden was designed in chalk paint for the purposes of Sunday’s event, MCDOT is hoping to find a site to develop a permanent traffic garden for the children of Montgomery County to visit with their school classmates or families.
Comments are closed.