Crossing over Dulles Toll Rd on Fairfax County Parkway Trail is dangerous!

[kcb203]

I bike the same route and it’s indeed terrifying. I especially dislike the one on the entrance to the eastbound toll road because there are multiple lanes, and if you get a polite driver, someone inevitably tries to go around in the other lane.

[hozn]

I agree; those are absolutely terrifying crossings (esp. northbound). I went that way twice (once each direction) to add a few miles to my commute, but decided that is excessively dangerous and it would only be a matter of time before I got hit by a car there. You might want to consider detouring down the path along Reston Parkway for that section (e.g. W&OD to Reston Pkwy and then back to the FFX trail from Sunrise Valley or something?), though that’s not exactly great either. My one close call at a “trail” crossing was at the Sunset Hills & Reston Pkwy intersection; a car stopped for the guy riding front of me, but apparently hadn’t realized I was following right behind — and stepped on the gas right as I moved in front of the car. Luckily their brakes worked; that was a good lesson in “don’t assume” and “eye contact”. Getting across/around the major arteries in Herndon/Reston is pretty terrible.

[jabberwocky]

Pretty much all the fairfax county parkway trail crossings suck. Those are especially awful though, as you noted. Sightlines are poor and cars absolutely fly around those ramps.

Crossing signals would be nice, but I suspect a lot of cars would ignore them. The intersection just north of the W&OD (New Dominion) was part of my old commute, and while it has both a crossing signal and a no turn on red for cars coming onto 286 from New Dominion, cars would routinely ignore both (often at very high speeds).

[mstone]

Yes, they suck. It’s the trail we have, not the trail we might want or wish to have.

[PotomacCyclist]

I just looked at the Street View of the crossing on Google Maps. Wow. It’s almost designed as if the intent was to enable cyclists to get plowed over.

Could the County or VDOT at least move the crossing farther down that ramp, to the east? While it still wouldn’t be ideal, at least you would have a little more warning time before a car approached. The alteration wouldn’t be as expensive as building a bike bridge and it could be built relatively quickly. I guess they would have to add a fair amount of soil to support an extension of the bike path to the east though. Tough situation.

But I see that it’s not too far from one of the future Silver Line Metro stations, and Fairfax Co. has paid lip service to making it easier to bike and walk to the Silver Line Metro stations. Maybe this provides enough incentive for Fairfax or VDOT to build a true solution there, such as a bike bridge. There will be Metro stations along the Toll Road near Reston Town Center and just to the west of Monroe St.

It just so happens that Fairfax Co. is currently seeking input for how to improve bike routes to and from the Silver Line Metro stations. I think they have a crowdsourcing map or other method of collecting input. I would highly recommend that everyone post about this and other specific problem spots. Emphasize that these are major bike routes and point out that these crossings are relatively close to the future Silver Line Metro stations. They say that they want the Metro stations to be more accessible by bike and by walking. If they really mean it, then they should fix problems like this crossing, which does not appear to be adequate or safe at all.

If you haven’t done so already, stay in contact with FABB (Fairfax Advocates for Better Bicycling), the Fairfax DOT and VDOT. The situation may not improve in the near term, but hopefully those intersections can get improved at some point. There have been some dangerous intersections in Arlington that have been improved over the years, although some dangerous ones still remain.

This is the Fairfax Wikimapping Project link: http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/fcdot/bike/wikimapping.htm

FABB: http://www.fabb-bikes.org/

FCDOT: http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/fcdot/

Dulles Metro: http://www.dullesmetro.com/silver-line-stations/herndon/

[scloke]

@PotomacCyclist 114827 wrote:

If you haven’t done so already, stay in contact with FABB (Fairfax Advocates for Better Bicycling), the Fairfax DOT and VDOT. The situation may not improve in the near term, but hopefully those intersections can get improved at some point. There have been some dangerous intersections in Arlington that have been improved over the years, although some dangerous ones still remain.

This is the Fairfax Wikimapping Project link: http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/fcdot/bike/wikimapping.htm

FABB: http://www.fabb-bikes.org/

FCDOT: http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/fcdot/

Dulles Metro: http://www.dullesmetro.com/silver-line-stations/herndon/

Thanks for the links. I just added a problem spot on the Wikimapping map.

[mstone]

@PotomacCyclist 114827 wrote:

Could the County or VDOT at least move the crossing

In general the county has no power to do anything at all. It’s VDOT, always VDOT.

[dasgeh]

In additional to what PotomacCyclist said, have you looked at the relatively new Bike Master Plan for FFX County says about this area?

[mstone]

@dasgeh 114881 wrote:

In additional to what PotomacCyclist said, have you looked at the relatively new Bike Master Plan for FFX County says about this area?

The bike plan wouldn’t get into that level of detail. It’s focused on defining necessary routes & connectivity, not on implementation. In this case, it’s listed as “existing off street trail” with no other recommended facilities. (Which makes sense–I don’t see putting sharrows on the parkway.)

[dasgeh]

@mstone 114886 wrote:

The bike plan wouldn’t get into that level of detail. It’s focused on defining necessary routes & connectivity, not on implementation. In this case, it’s listed as “existing off street trail” with no other recommended facilities. (Which makes sense–I don’t see putting sharrows on the parkway.)

That’s disappointing. I would think existing “infrastructure” that’s too dangerous to be useful should be flagged in the plan.

[mstone]

@dasgeh 114892 wrote:

That’s disappointing. I would think existing “infrastructure” that’s too dangerous to be useful should be flagged in the plan.

1) it’s not too dangerous to be useful, I use it on a fairly regular basis. I hate that VDOT couldn’t deliver something better, but it’s still the safest and most useful way to cover long north/south distances in western fairfax county

2) it’s out of scope for the plan. the purpose of the plan to was to publish a strategy for creating connected routes throughout fairfax county, so that future development/upgrades/lifecycle replacements could align to a thought-out grid rather than being entirely ad-hoc and disconnected. Just doing that took years, and expanding the scope to include a detailed engineering assessment of every existing facility would have meant that the plan never would have been delivered (because the money to do so didn’t exist). It does include guidelines that would presumably be considered when evaluating facilities in the future. (If you’ve never seen it, check it out: http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/fcdot/bike/county_bike_master_plan.htm It’s a pretty big document.)

3) as crappy as the trail is, I still wouldn’t prioritize bike/ped money for redoing it over using bike/ped money to expand connectivity somewhere it doesn’t exist at all. There are huge chunks of fairfax county with much worse infrastructure. Expanding the scope of the infrastructure does more to bring in new users and make the whole program more viable than tweaking the little that already exists.

4) the proper place to try to fix this is when vdot rips up the road for car purposes. getting them to tweak the bike part at that time is chump change. that doesn’t happen very often, so hopefully we’ll have enough organization and enough support when it does. (see point 3)

[jabberwocky]

@mstone 114896 wrote:

1) it’s not too dangerous to be useful, I use it on a fairly regular basis. I hate that VDOT couldn’t deliver something better, but it’s still the safest and most useful way to cover long north/south distances in western fairfax county

I do use it a lot (I live right across the street from the path north of the W&OD and ride around Reston often). There are only so many places to cross 267 in Reston, and the path is better than trying to ride on the parkway (though I should note that I do occasionally see cyclists riding the shoulder or even taking the lane on the parkway). Its usable, but its quite obvious that it was a total afterthought. The road intersections are universally awful, and many of them are deceptively dangerous. The path itself is poorly maintained and often covered in dirt and gravel. I’ve only ridden as far south as Stringfellow, don’t know what its like past that.

[kcb203]

@jabberwocky 114906 wrote:

I do use it a lot (I live right across the street from the path north of the W&OD and ride around Reston often). There are only so many places to cross 267 in Reston, and the path is better than trying to ride on the parkway (though I should note that I do occasionally see cyclists riding the shoulder or even taking the lane on the parkway). Its usable, but its quite obvious that it was a total afterthought. The road intersections are universally awful, and many of them are deceptively dangerous. The path itself is poorly maintained and often covered in dirt and gravel. I’ve only ridden as far south as Stringfellow, don’t know what its like past that.

Most of the trail between Sunrise Valley and the W&OD was repaved in the fall, but it’s totally covered with sand and debris now.

[jabberwocky]

@kcb203 114912 wrote:

Most of the trail between Sunrise Valley and the W&OD was repaved in the fall, but it’s totally covered with sand and debris now.

They did a really bad job repaving. They did the section north of the W&OD near my house, but they didn’t totally repave, they just picked sections (that vary from a few hundred yards to a few dozen feet) and repaved those. And the new sections are very uneven. The old trail was frankly better, at least up near me.

[scoot]

@dasgeh 114892 wrote:

too dangerous to be useful

But usefulness is all relative, right? It’s useful if it’s less dangerous than taking the lane on the Parkway. For instance, I’m not overly fond of riding on Columbia Pike, but it is especially useful from S. Orme to S. Courthouse. Further west, not so much, because there are other nicer options.

My experience with the Ffx Co Pkwy trail is the part south and east of Burke Lake. That and the Franconia-Springfield Parkway trail have similar issues (or at least they did when I last rode there in the fall): awful signage, poor pavement, some very rough bridge joints, inoperable beg buttons, etc.). Vegetation almost completely blocked the trail in a few spots. Yet it’s still quite usable compared to the alternatives.

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