Improving the Bike infrastructure in Arlington

[Tim Kelley]

When you are driving on I-95 and you see a sign for New York, do you think that you’re already in New York?

[Steve O]

@Erin Potter 129077 wrote:

but once I learned the language, they were more helpful.

Signs, by definition, should not need instructions to be understood nor require effort to understand. They should be self-explanatory and unambiguous. If they can be interpreted more than one way, they fail in their function. This one fails for that very reason.

It is counter-intuitive. Think of virtually any sign with just words on it (no arrows or other explanatory graphics): “Parking,” “Madison Manor,” “Coffee shop,” “Arlington,” “Empire State Building,” “Restroom,” etc. I can’t think of any examples of this kind of a sign that does not refer to the thing it is actually at. One would not see a sign that just said “Arlington” somewhere out in Fairfax County. If it had an arrow or a “5 miles” or something, then that would indicate it’s somewhere to go, but if it’s just the word without context, then it means “this is where I am” or “this is the thing the words say.”

@Erin Potter 129077 wrote:

Also, I had a buddy visiting from Philly who I gave careful directions on how to get from my new apartment in Cherrydale to the metro (which I thought would be somewhat confusing)…and he ignored them, in favor of the signs.

What if he had wanted to go to DC? And he didn’t have you to instruct him? Strangely, there are no signs that say “Washington DC” in Arlington. Not along the Custis anyway, which is essentially the main corridor to get there.

@Erin Potter 129077 wrote:

But this is an interesting conversation about how folks get around and navigate through a space, something that is super important for everyone, but especially for people riding bikes, as lordofthemark points out.

Which raises the question about why this conversation did not occur before the signs were designed. Arlington has an active Bicycle Advisory Committee with members who have literally decades of experience riding bikes around here. Yet they were never included in this kind of a conversation. Clearly the designer of this sign did not do user testing or focus groups or they would have instantly learned that it fails in its fundamental objective to be clear and unambiguous.

I just showed this sign to about 20 people in my workplace with the question, “If you came across this sign, what would it tell you?” About 2/3rds said what ginacico said (“I’m in Rosslyn and this is how I get to these places”). About 1/4 couldn’t figure out what the top part meant at all other than it had to do with bikes and maybe there’s a bike path in Rosslyn?, and a couple interpreted it kind of the way the way it is intended, but not quite. Not a single one understood the sign exactly the way it was intended to be understood as described in the blog.

[Steve O]

@Tim Kelley 129086 wrote:

When you are driving on I-95 and you see a sign for New York, do you think that you’re already in New York?

Touche, although the sign right before it is better, and almost certainly less ambiguous. Plus the Interstate sign and the “South” put it in context a lot better than just a picture of a bike.
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(Edit) Actually, your sign is a sign for I-95 South, which tells me where I am (which is always good information on a sign), supplemented by the information, “New York,” which tells me where it goes. It’s more like the signs along the Custis, which have the blaze “Custis Trail” and the fingerboards that point to destinations. Those signs make sense.

The point, however, isn’t what it means to you or what it means to me, but what it means to everyone who needs it. Based on my small sample size of 20 people in my office, it fails to convey the meaning it was intended to convey and can be interpreted in several different ways. A sign that means different things to different people and can be easily misinterpreted fails in its fundamental task.

[Erin Potter]

@Steve O 129087 wrote:

Signs, by definition, should not need instructions to be understood nor require effort to understand. They should be self-explanatory and unambiguous. If they can be interpreted more than one way, they fail in their function. This one fails for that very reason.

There are different sorts of signs, so understanding what kind of sign you are looking at is key. So on Metro, Franconia/Springfield is a place that means pretty much nothing to me other than I follow the signs and get on the train that says “Franconia/Springfield” because it will take me to Crystal City along it’s route. In the metro station, the sign that says “Rosslyn” is not useful to me–the one that says “Franconia/Springfield” is because it tells me where to go and where the train will go, but I still had to learn a bit to understand how to use the signs when I moved here.

The bike wayfinding signs are operating as the same sort of signs–marking bike routes with start and end points. Which I think is more useful to someone trying to navigate space than a sign that says “Virginia Square” in Virginia Square.

[DismalScientist]

The Custis Trail sign (the other photo on the blog) does not follow that convention. Custis Trail is not a destination, but rather a designation. This makes sense to me.

As far as Metro goes, the lines are designated by colors, followed by destinations, I suppose because people can’t handle cardinal directions.

[Erin Potter]

@DismalScientist 129092 wrote:

As far as Metro goes, the lines are designated by colors, followed by destinations, I suppose because people can’t handle cardinal directions.

I do kinda like the idea of colors to differentiate main routes…

And I wonder if cardinal directions would actually work. The metro routes are pretty wiggly, with multiple lines. North of one stop wouldn’t necessary be north of another station along the same route–so is that actually helpful information for navigating?

[DismalScientist]

I think some subway systems use inbound and outbound.

[Steve O]

@Erin Potter 129091 wrote:

There are different sorts of signs, so understanding what kind of sign you are looking at is key. So on Metro, Franconia/Springfield is a place that means pretty much nothing to me other than I follow the signs and get on the train that says “Franconia/Springfield” because it will take me to Crystal City along it’s route. In the metro station, the sign that says “Rosslyn” is not useful to me–the one that says “Franconia/Springfield” is because it tells me where to go and where the train will go, but I still had to learn a bit to understand how to use the signs when I moved here.

The bike wayfinding signs are operating as the same sort of signs–marking bike routes with start and end points. Which I think is more useful to someone trying to navigate space than a sign that says “Virginia Square” in Virginia Square.

Out of towners find the metro signs very confusing for that very reason. How much better it would be if they included “to DC” “to Virginia,” etc. Just because Metro’s signs are suboptimal does not make it smart to make others less than excellent. The fact that it took you a while to figure them out just proves that they could be better. How many times have you been on a platform and had someone ask if this is the train into DC?

I was riding through Ballston this evening, and all of the directional signs (and there are many) are great. They point to places and give symbols for Metro and distances: useful and clear information. Non-ambiguous.
The sign in question, though, would work better if the top were just removed entirely. Or replaced with one of the directional signs: “Rosslyn 2.2”
Or if we are designating some sort of route, then something like “Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor” would make it similar to the ones on the Custis Trail. The top sign is designating what you are on and the directional ones are directing you.

But with this sign, it just raises questions: How is Rosslyn different from Courthouse and Clarendon? These signs present Courthouse and Clarendon as destinations with directions and distances. But Rosslyn is clearly different somehow. It’s in bigger print and has a bike by it. So it must be different than these others?

Don’t get me wrong. The vast majority of these new signs are really good and helpful. With a few tweaks (like including Washington DC on the Custis), it’ll be even better.

That all said, even if you and I totally understand what the signs mean, my small poll both here and with a group of others indicates that most people understand the sign to mean that you are in Rosslyn. That’s a problem. Wishing that people would somehow interpret the sign the way you want them to does not make it so. You cannot change the people. So you must change the sign.

[Steve O]

If you are even the slightest bit interested in my thinking about these signs and signs in general, I have posted several blog posts on the topic:

Rethinking Trail Signage

Arlington County Begins Posting New “Wayfinding Signs
(posted when the first pilot signs were put up)

Arlington County’s New “Wayfinding” Signs Going Up
(posted when the full program got rolling)

[lordofthemark]

@DismalScientist 129095 wrote:

I think some subway systems use inbound and outbound.

In Brooklyn it was “from City” and “to City “, generations after Brooklyn had become part of NYC (in 1904 I think)

[lordofthemark]

If I see a bike way finding sign, at least I know I am not in Alexandria. Other than on the MVT I don’t think I have seen any. Maybe a couple on Holmes Run? But I think none on Eisenhower, or on the bike lanes.

[scoot]

Actually I’ve seen quite a few of these little signs around Alexandria. Not super easy to read (and this example should really be before the intersection rather than after it), but they do exist.

[mstone]

@lordofthemark 129113 wrote:

In Brooklyn it was “from City” and “to City “, generations after Brooklyn had become part of NYC (in 1904 I think)

Well, part of London is still called The City because Romans. If anything, New Yorkers change too quickly.

[Steve O]

Moving from the conditions thread:
@Tim Kelley 132043 wrote:

In Arlington if you want to see more attention and funding going to trails, they need to be treated more as a transportation option and not for recreation.

And for at least six or seven years I have been advocating for this exact thing in the ABAC meetings. I remember recommending it to Jay Fisette when he visited our meeting years and years ago. IMO, the main car-less arteries, like the Custis, should be transferred to streets from parks. Maybe they’d even repair the lights that have now been out for more than three years, with no likelihood of being repaired before at least two more winters have passed. Oh, and let’s take the little bit of funding that was specifically dedicated to complete streets, bikeshare, etc. and raid it for the general fund. Aspirational gold community, indeed.

[dasgeh]

So about the turn in the Custis behind the Lyon Village Shopping Center (O.G. Italian Store):

• Yes, this is substandard design
• No, this isn’t a priority to fix
• Yes, it makes sense to talk about what a solution would look like:
o (1) we’ll be talking about the “ideal bicycling network” at the ABAC over the next year and hopefully will be updating the Bicycle Element of the MTP very soon: the fact that this should be fixed should be in both discussions and
o (2) this matters for efforts like the Lee Highway Alliance’s planning for the future of the area – at the charrette last year, there was work done on what this shopping center/intersection could look like, which did impact the trail.
o A full solution would probably involve a big change, which would realistically be done in conjunction with a redevelopment of Lyon Village. Once we have more of blank slate, we have more options.
o An improvement could include improving the transition from the sidewalk along Lee to the trail, or taking a few parking spots to change the radius.
• In the meantime, there are multiple things DPR could do to make this safer – mirrors, signs to indicate that folks should really, really slow down and, more importantly, stay on the f*ing side of the trail (all my close calls have been peds walking 2-4 abreast, and I slow to a near stop on this corner). But given that DPR gives no indication that they care about the trails or make them a priority, I’m not holding my breath.

Oh, and yes, there are substandard roads in Arlington (see e.g. Quebec north of Lee), but they are not the main arteries (I won’t comment on FFX). This kind of turn would not be tolerated on Lee, or Wilson, or Quincy, or even Barton.

About about DPR: After years of being met with the attitude of “it doesn’t matter where trails are in our management structure”, I have taken to pointing out what a TERRIBLE job Parks is doing with the Trails. TERRIBLE. It took over a year to even have a meeting to figure out what is wrong with the substructure of the Custis that is failing. Asphalt problems (potholes and the like) routinely take over a year to be fixed. DPR makes no effort to evaluate where to make repairs based on a plan or object analysis of need. And the kicker: in the presentations I’ve seen for DPR (e.g. to the FAAC to discuss their budget requests) they do not even mention trails. No mention. {fart noise}

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