Congratulations to Alexandrai and Reston

[lordofthemark]

http://www.thewashcycle.com/2013/10/bicycle-friendly-cities-alexandria-is-silver.html

City of Alexandria is now ranked Silver as a bike friendly community by the LAB – catching up to DC and Arlington.

Reston, now considered as an independent community, is ranked Bronze.

Is anyone taking odds on whether Arlington or DC make it to Gold first?

Whether Fairfax County will make it to Bronze before I reach retirement age?

Topic

[Rootchopper]

Well, I agree to disagree on the bike friendliness of the roads in the west end. I do agree that most of Fairfax County (where I live) is a cyclists nightmare.

[lordofthemark]

When I’ve ridden from Annandale to Old Town the part I enjoyed was the part in Alexandria, but then I’ve never ridden that route in the rain.

I’m not fond of riding on Beauregard, but the Beauregard Small Area Plan is supposed to address that.

Eastern Alexandria has lots of useful infra, from the E-W sharrows in Old Town, to the MVT and the connecting bike lanes in Old Town, to he path between the two metro stations, to the Commonwealth bike lanes, to the sharrows down Mt Vernon Ave in bike friendly Del Ray.

I am not familiar with the current state of Potomac Yards though.

Alexandria has many places with much to be desired, but given that DC is a silver level community, as well as Boston and Philadelphia, I don’t think LAB considers that a disqualifier for Silver status.

[NicDiesel]

@Rootchopper 66962 wrote:

I agree that Potomac Avenue is fine for cycling now during the off peak. I imagine that many streets are great if you only want to ride on them when most people are in bed.

Wait until Potmac Yard is fully developed and all those new residences have cars. A silver level city doesn’t shove bike traffic off to the side on a path; it encourages them to be an integral part of the flow of people. From this perspective Potomac Yard is designed to fail.

This summer Potomac Avenue was my morning and afternoon quick circuit since riding the MVT to Hains Point was an exercise in masochism and frustration. The road was (surprisingly) clean (for a construction site), flat, and, thank g-d, had no pedestrian and very little car traffic. Of course, that’s with only 2/3 of those slapped together $800K townhouses built and occupied. The second that place is fully built up and occupied it’s going to be another car and pedestrian clogged hellhole. It’s going to be very difficult to keep areas “bicycle friendly” that are overcrowded and reliant on automobile transportation.

[Terpfan]

@Rootchopper 66963 wrote:

Well, I agree to disagree on the bike friendliness of the roads in the west end. I do agree that most of Fairfax County (where I live) is a cyclists nightmare.

Ha, yes, if we do a relative comparsion between Alexandria and most of FFX, Alexandria wins hands down. Agree with you on work needed for any non-OT/Del Ray parts of Alexandria. Disagree some on Potomac Yards. I actually found that area pretty easy for cyclists–road and trail, with the asterisk that the turn from the Rt 1 Bridge is horrendous.

On the FFX side, they did recently build the trail from the library at Belle View/Beacon Hill up along Ft. Hunt Rd to Quander. It’s not really a level increase and could be challenging for some, but it’s a nice connector that means folks can avoid the steep hill of Westgrove or sidewalk/road of Beacon Hill. The big negative to it is that they didn’t connect the actual path to Ft. Hunt Rd at all so you have to ride into the library’s area to get over to it (kind of baffling to me). Although, when I wrote an e-mail inquiring, they were fairly prompt and earnest in response. So progress. Small, but progress.

[Rootchopper]

The new trail on Fort Hunt Road seems to be designed for billy goats with a granny gear. It is a vast improvement over what was there before. Better solution would be to build a shoulder into FHR on the incline instead of ditch with tree branches protruding out into the edge of the road. Of course, such a solution would pretty much requre paving the shoulder all the way down FHR to Hollin Hall, but we couldn’t do that because it would violate VDOT’s erratic shoulder policy. Gotta keep them guessing.

[Terpfan]

@Rootchopper 67019 wrote:

The new trail on Fort Hunt Road seems to be designed for billy goats with a granny gear. It is a vast improvement over what was there before. Better solution would be to build a shoulder into FHR on the incline instead of ditch with tree branches protruding out into the edge of the road. Of course, such a solution would pretty much requre paving the shoulder all the way down FHR to Hollin Hall, but we couldn’t do that because it would violate VDOT’s erratic shoulder policy. Gotta keep them guessing.

A billy goat with a granny gear–ha, that’s got to be one of the best lines i’ve read in a while. And it’s true.

Yah, I would prefer your option, but I don’t expect it to ever occur. I suspect some of the folks living along FHR wouldn’t approve of it changing. The other thing that I wouldn’t mind is a stoplight at Quander given how many people come out of there turning right onto FHR when I’m trying to cross it. But I don’t want to dream too big.

[Author]

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