Arlington Stil Silver For Bicycle Friendly Community

[Judd]

The League of American Cyclists announced that Arlington remains a Silver level. From Arlington’s press release:
https://newsroom.arlingtonva.us/release/silver-level-bicycle-friendly-community/

The report card is here: https://bikeleague.org/sites/default/files/bfareportcards/BFC_Fall_2019_ReportCard_Arlington_VA.pdf

[sjclaeys]

That seems about right, particularly about enforcement. I would’ve added the failure of Arlington DES to give the maintenance of bicycle-related facilities much priority or to require safe accommodations during road construction. Arlington continues to do a good job talking the talk, but not walking the walk.

[arlcxrider]

Yeah, like reducing street cleaning to three times a year.

Many of the flexi-bollards are coming loose on the Pershing PBL east of Washington Blvd. No one seems to care (or notice). The Quincy PBL is on my regular route, and is a sad joke. I’ve started using the regular traffic lanes southbound. Between the Residence Inn, the Domino’s Pizza franchise, and the Mercedes dealer, there’s always some sort of blockage to contend with.

[Steve O]

@Judd 196858 wrote:

The League of American Cyclists announced that Arlington remains a Silver level.

Good, and thanks to the League for its fair and objective rating.
@sjclaeys 196872 wrote:

Arlington continues to do a good job talking the talk, but not walking the walk.

Agreed. Every year Arlington submits its application arguing for gold. But there is no way Arlington deserves to be gold. As I have said in the BAC meetings for years, if Arlington wants to be gold, then it’s got to step up its game and earn it.

[rcannon100]

Agreed. Arlington is pretty great – and we should celebrate what arlco has accomplished.

But there are holes in the system – and arlco has essentially a deaf ear re fixing those. Enforcement is a problem. The popo is out of sync w arlco. and when you ask arlco and popo to go off and talk amongst themselves – and come back with the arlington position, you get crickets. infrastructure problems outside the main drag – you might as well bang you head against a wall. arlco pushes out info about the problem of speeding on wide residential streets – and then wont do squat for traffic mitigation. and then there is the clusterf that is school drop off zones.

The trails are wonderful. Getting to the trails is perilous.

[wheelswings]

I’m curious about the Bicycle Friendly Laws and Ordinances category. The League rates Arlington “Good.” Yet Virginia (and three other states, AL, NC, and MD) still follow the outdated and often-punitive Contributory Negligence doctrine, and still allow Right-Turns-on-Red with minimal exception. Arlington simply follows the state laws, but if leaders had back-bone I think they would be fighting these issues at the state level. And then there are Arlington-specific rules like the one requiring home builders to install one and sometimes two driveways for cars, with no exception – not even for public bicycle parking. I’m not convinced Arlington’s laws deserve the “Good” rating.

[dasgeh]

What’s tough is that I see Arlington getting *better* but, the pace is very slow, and they’re not getting good enough fast enough. That’s a hard line to walk — “thanks for installing a PBL on Quincy, but please fix it so it’s entirely protected” is hard than “we need protection on Quincy”.

Anyway, onward and upward.

Oh, and Parks is so much worse with their maintenance (bridges are still out, with no timeline for fixing, from the July 8, 2019, storm) and MOTs (e.g. detouring the Custis to Lee)

[zsionakides]

Looking at the silver list, it’s mostly a bunch of mediocre cities to ride in, which fits Arlington well. The only place in the DMV to get gold was DC, which is probably right as DC is on a much better building path than Arlington despite setbacks.

[Judd]

@wheels&wings 196890 wrote:

I’m curious about the Bicycle Friendly Laws and Ordinances category. The League rates Arlington “Good.” Yet Virginia (and three other states, AL, NC, and MD) still follow the outdated and often-punitive Contributory Negligence doctrine, and still allow Right-Turns-on-Red with minimal exception. Arlington simply follows the state laws, but if leaders had back-bone I think they would be fighting these issues at the state level. And then there are Arlington-specific rules like the one requiring home builders to install one and sometimes two driveways for cars, with no exception – not even for public bicycle parking. I’m not convinced Arlington’s laws deserve the “Good” rating.

I looked at Arlington and Alexandria’s (also a Silver) scorecard last night and the law section is tough for both of them since there’s a lack of local control. Municipalities do recommend legislative items every year. There’s some quiet efforts at the moment to try to align the northern Virginia advocates to ask their municipalities to support a common legislative agenda.

[smb9600]

@arlcxrider 196878 wrote:

Many of the flexi-bollards are coming loose on the Pershing PBL east of Washington Blvd. No one seems to care (or notice). The Quincy PBL is on my regular route, and is a sad joke.

Just curious if anyone was reporting these issues? I was biking on the Custis earlier this week bitching to myself about all the leaves on the trail & then realized they may not know about the trail conditions through there. (They can’t fix what they don’t know, right?)

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Judd]

@zsionakides 196964 wrote:

Looking at the silver list, it’s mostly a bunch of mediocre cities to ride in, which fits Arlington well. The only place in the DMV to get gold was DC, which is probably right as DC is on a much better building path than Arlington despite setbacks.

I think Arlington is pretty great to ride in. I feel much safer riding in Arlington than I do in DC. Compared to other places I’ve lived riding in Arlington (and even DC) is waaaay better than most cities I’ve lived or visited. It could be much better.

[arlcxrider]

@smb9600 196967 wrote:

Just curious if anyone was reporting these issues?

Done. Via the portal: https://topics.arlingtonva.us/reportproblem/

[zsionakides]

@Judd 196968 wrote:

I think Arlington is pretty great to ride in. I feel much safer riding in Arlington than I do in DC. Compared to other places I’ve lived riding in Arlington (and even DC) is waaaay better than most cities I’ve lived or visited. It could be much better.

I grew up biking in an a smaller city (about 100k population) that got bronze on this list, which apparently just requires existing. I felt safer riding there, as the traffic volumes on roads are much lower and drivers aren’t in such a rush and so aggressive.

I agree the trails in Arlington and DC are far better than a lot of areas, but the roads themselves are a mix of bad and really bad. DC is definitely ahead of Arlington in protected facilities such as 15th St, K/Water, and Pennsylvania Ave. Arlington has nothing of that quality nor seems to have much in the pipeline except in long term plans.

[rcannon100]

@smb9600 196967 wrote:

Just curious if anyone was reporting these issues?

That is core to Arlco culture. There will be a huge dog and pony show about the new *thing* that DES is doing. Isnt Arlco marvelous. Isnt Arlco bike or walk friendly. And I should not be too jaded because truthfully a lot of these things are fabulous and do make huge improvements.

But they are ad hoc or whack-a-mole – not solving systemic problems

And yes, once the dog and pony show is over and the headlines are gone, the improvement tends to decay, rot, and fall into Four Mile Run (hey but at least we have art along the sewage treatment plant fence).

We have engaged Arlco literally from day one about the Intersection of Doom. Has it been 25 years? Now what they have done… its an improvement… but thats about it. Its still Intersection of Doom. A Phoenix Kid got hit there recently and had his bike destroyed.

I got into my neighborhood conservation plan in 2000 the need for traffic mitigation. When the money came, I was busy raising small kids and not engaged in the civil assoc. So the money went to whatever favorite son project of whatever person was in the room. Yeah, I am no fan of the Arlington way. 20 years later – repeated engagements – crickets.

The latest. Arlco has a policy of replacing yield signs with stop signs. Like that will make any difference to drivers. But, when all you get is morsels – I’ll take morsels. Next set of requests have been submitted.

Okay, pop quiz. My neighborhood has no sidewalks – it is also a wide road which leads to speeding per the info that Bike Arl has circulated (an Arlco contractor). My street is used as a through street to get to the next neighborhood over. There are also few cars parked along the curb which normally would push traffic to the center. The result is cars fly through the neighborhood – far to the side along the curb – creating a conflict with pedestrians and cyclists who have no alternative, no sidewalk, on which to be safe. I petitioned Arlco for some mitigation – sidewalks, street narrowing – whatever. Arlco did a traffic study. The result of the study was, and I quote, Arlco did not find that cars on average speed through the neighborhood and therefore mitigation is not necessary. End quote.

Pop quiz: How did Arlco fail statistics?

It gets really tiring for Arlco to be chanting the mantra of car-free living, bike friendly, walk friendly – and then get stonewalled when you talk to arlington – and come up with stupid ass excuses for inaction.

[Crickey7]

I feel your pain, dude. MoCo isn’t even up to the point of paying lip service yet.

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