Make Crystal Drive Suck A Little Bit Less

Done.

Submitted. I was pleased that the focus was on the SB side of Crystal Drive. That is a door zone bike lane, one with very high density and parking turnover, therefore worse than most of the door zone bike lanes in the region.

Need to keep pushing.

Ladies and gentlemen, your Professional County Transportation Staff:
As this was raised with the review of the retail portion of the Crystal Square project and the SPRC meeting in September, Staff has looked at this issue and based on several discussions with over the past 9 months, a protected bike lane (cycle track) is not recommended in this location. County staff does not recommend this as there is not enough room to provide the protected bike lane with all the constraints within the ROW. Trying to balance the need for travel lanes required for vehicles and buses, the Crystal City Sector Plan specified streetscape, and maintaining some of the existing building footprints does not provide flexibility to revise the proposed on-street bike lane to a protected bike lane. There is currently a portion of the streetscape area near the proposed grocery store on Crystal Drive that does not meet the Sector Plan standards and this would become further narrowed if a protected bike lane is provided. With the proposed development, the amount of on-street parking is greatly reduced and the interaction with bicyclists and parking vehicles will be minimized. Additionally, as part of a County project, an off-street trail is being constructed adjacent to Clark-Bell Street that will provide an option for pedestrians and cyclists to traverse the area that is protected from all vehicle traffic.

The concept introduced by Chris Slatt, was shared with staff and JBG Smith after the September SPRC meeting. Staff asked JBGS to review the concept and provide a more refined drawing for additional review. Staff can review this issue further with JBGS but I at least wanted to make you aware of the constraints from staff perspective for consideration approaching the upcoming hearing.

The part they’re talking about is on Crystal Drive, near 15th Street. Here’s the “pinch point” as currently proposed with an unprotected bike lane:

Here’s my PBL version, which basically keeps the sidewalk the same width by just moving the bushes over to between the bike lane and the cars. By my math, it’s still an 8′ clear width sidewalk.

And at the end of the day, if for some reason that’s not feasible…are shrubs more important than lives? Than enabling carbon-neutral transportation?