City Reacts to News of Bike Trail Improvements

[Subby]

Bike trail improvements good! Increased enforcement actions against cyclists bad! Wait? No? WTF?

https://fcnp.com/2018/12/13/city-reacts-news-bike-trail-improvements/

PS. Jan rules.

[n18]

I think Vienna or Herndon areas have more traffic. Even the Custis trail gets more traffic, but we don’t hear much about widening it. So throwing money at FC seems to be for the purpose of enhancing tourism, with the exception of the bridge over Lee HWY, which to me; the only reasonable improvement. What FC done to cyclists in the past other than enforcement?

[LeprosyStudyGroup]

It’s so embarrassing to be a person named anything but Jan with regards to this article, it churns the stomach

[mikoglaces]

““City of Falls Church residents don’t just walk or bike that one small portion of the trail and then turn around and go home,” ProBikeFC owner, Nick Clark, said. “It just doesn’t make sense to make those kinds of changes to a small section of a [45-mile] trail.”

“Clark is adamantly impartial on what happens to the trail since, as a professional cyclist, the public thoroughfare is too casual for him to want to ride on it regularly. “

So a self-proclaimed pro cylist (must be ex-pro, if anything) who doesn’t ride on the trail (does he ride on 29? 7? at all thru FC?) dumps on the rest of us. I mean, I commute through FC every day, usually 2X/day, and after dark especially it would be good to have a separate trail for pedestrians. Lights might be even better IMO.

Doesn’t make me want to try Clark’s shop. I didn’t even know it existed before this article.

[hozn]

ProBikeFC probably doesn’t look for business from W&OD users; from what I understand, it’s a fairly boutique shop. Now, if you want a fancy new Factor with a custom-spec carbon build kit …

But I agree. That comment just sounds ill-informed. I don’t bike that part of the trail on the weekend, but I would definitely welcome anything that sets a precedent for widening trails. And lights would be a huge improvement there. This has to be one of the worst sections for trail ninjas.

I think it’ll be a great improvement to the trail.

[lordofthemark]

The reality is we don’t have a committee of W&OD municipalities and City of Falls Church alone got this grant. Piecemeal is the way it is for bike infra. BTW a small section in Vienna WAS widened, and IIUC a small piece of the Custis is being widened.

[dcv]

I don’t agree with PBFC and won’t support them.

Sent from my SM-G930T using Tapatalk

[Birru]

Falls Church is only going to get denser with looming projects on the horizon. As someone who uses this section of the WOD on wheels and on foot quite a bit, I welcome these improvements. I’d love to see improvements elsewhere too, but I’ll take what I can get. Except COPS: WOD Edition.

[mstone]

@Birru 183900 wrote:

Except COPS: WOD Edition.

And cones. Lots of cones.

[huskerdont]

He is “adamantly impartial.”

Um, no, he clearly isn’t.

[n18]

@lordofthemark 183895 wrote:

a small section in Vienna WAS widened, and IIUC a small piece of the Custis is being widened.

In Vienna case, the town of Vienna paid for the small W&OD widening as part of their Community Center Renovation and Expansion Project(See details at this link). The Custis trail gets more traffic, and was partially funded with grant from the Federal Highway Administration Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Program, managed by VDOT, and in the IoD case, 20% of the grant amount comes from the county.

[n18]

It doesn’t make sense to widen a small segment with 6 stop signs. Almost everyone is not stopping or slowing down now, are they going to stop or slow down when the trail widen? Most likely we would get complaints from drivers calling for enforcement. So why widen it at all? My concern though is not the stop signs, but unsafe passes, and keeping on doing it outside the small wide segment. For FC, it’s all revenue.

[huskerdont]

“So why widen at all?”

To get the mode separation on an overcrowded trail and improve safety.

Cyclists not stopping at the stop signs is a separate issue.

[Tania]

@n18 183936 wrote:

It doesn’t make sense to widen a small segment with 6 stop signs. Almost everyone is not stopping or slowing down now, are they going to stop or slow down when the trail widen? Most likely we would get complaints from drivers calling for enforcement. So why widen it at all? My concern though is not the stop signs, but unsafe passes, and keeping on doing it outside the small wide segment. For FC, it’s all revenue.

“As Feuchtner mentioned, however, he hopes that the success of the split lanes will cause the changes to spread east and west of the City, making the improvements uniform rather than unique.”

Emphasis mine.

[Judd]

@n18 183936 wrote:

It doesn’t make sense to widen a small segment with 6 stop signs. Almost everyone is not stopping or slowing down now, are they going to stop or slow down when the trail widen? Most likely we would get complaints from drivers calling for enforcement. So why widen it at all? My concern though is not the stop signs, but unsafe passes, and keeping on doing it outside the small wide segment. For FC, it’s all revenue.

Robert Kennedy has got this covered. “Some men see things as they are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not.”

[Author]

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