Wilson Bvd to get bike lanes

@bobco85 98719 wrote:

To avoid any confusion, the restriping will be applied from North Manchester Street (W&OD trail) to North Frederick Street (behind the Safeway) and will not reach George Mason Drive.

Yes, thanks for the clarification.

This is an interesting project, if not for the fact that the set-up with bike lanes was asked for by the Bluemont neighborhood association and not a bike-advocacy group.

As a Bluemont resident, I’m proud to say there’s not much difference sometimes.

The goal of the plan is to make the sidewalks safer for walking. That said, the neighborhood association requested to have the utilities moved underground, but that was denied due to budget constraints, so unfortunately the telephone poles in the middle of the sidewalks will remain. The only positive for pedestrians is that the bike lanes will provide a buffer from vehicular traffic. As someone who has walked on those sidewalks, that extra gap of 4-5 feet from traffic will make a difference, though.

Yes, and it may make it safer for pedestrians to cross Wilson.

@Steve O 98744 wrote:

I’m also ashamed that we Americans still use the quaint, 19th century practice of nailing metal strings to poles to distribute our utilities. If you open your eyes to what I call “sky litter” you will soon be constantly annoyed at how hideous most of our neighborhoods look. Unfortunately, most people have become immune to it and don’t even notice the constant and enormous aesthetic blemishes inflicted on us.

If you live in Arlington, next time you are traveling eastbound on Washington Blvd., notice how much more pleasant it suddenly feels after you cross Glebe. West of Glebe there are wires everywhere; east of Glebe, they are underground. Once you notice this change you cannot help but see it everytime.

It’s about $1 milliion per mile to bury the lines, not including the cost to every homeowner to bury their service line. Not a small number.

I actually like my neighborhood and its overhead wires. It feels more, to use your word, quaint.

@jrenaut 98756 wrote:

That’s not true. The weird Comcast guy who tried to set up my service says there are magical tunnels underground that you can put the cable wires in. You just need to know how to find the right hole and the wires can go anywhere you want. If his supervisor had been in the office that day he could have had my service hooked up in no time with the magical tunnels, but unfortunately his supervisor was NOT in the office and no one else on earth has the magical map to the magical tunnels and they don’t have anyone on staff with the magical map memorized (I would imagine this is a really valuable thing to know).

I should switch to Comcast. Verizon sent a guy out to connect my neighbor, and my connection went out at the same time. The guy insisted it couldn’t possibly be his fault. Two days later, they sent another guy out to fix my connection and he confirmed that it was indeed the first guy’s fault. Idiots. If Verizon had magic tunnels like Comcast, that would never have happened.

@Steve O 98765 wrote:

Seems like it’s about a mile, so a million. Not a big number.

Sure, if you’re only going to do that one mile. But what about the rest of the county? That’s alot more miles. And they will all require digging up the streets to do it.

Particularly since it would also get rid of the utility poles that are RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of the sidewalk. Seriously, one has to literally turn sideways to get past them.
Amortize over 50 years divided by the number of pedestrians who will be convenienced and it’s less than a penny per. Sounds like a worthwhile investment to me.

I wouldn’t have a problem with that, especially since its (I presume) a trunk line, and burying it could reduce power outages for lots of people in storms. I was referring to your comment about all poles everywhere, not just on a mile of George Mason.