Lynn/Lee Intersection of Doom Medium-Term Fixes

[mstone]

@Terpfan 112851 wrote:

While we’re fixing this intersection, at least hypothetically in our minds, can we do something about the utility pole and sign posts right there by the MVT turn-on? Everyone planning to cross there just seems to hover at the very junction those few of us going down the trail or coming off of it need. It’s not too bad now, but come summertime it’s literally a bottleneck.

I don’t know the details of this specific case, but I wouldn’t be tremendously surprised if it cost the equivalent of Arlington’s bike budget. In a zero-sum funding environment, is it worth that much?

[dasgeh]

@mstone 112853 wrote:

I don’t know the details of this specific case, but I wouldn’t be tremendously surprised if it cost the equivalent of Arlington’s bike budget. In a zero-sum funding environment, is it worth that much?

While it’s not a change that’s being consider on its own, we have been pushing for it in the Lynn Esplanade/Custis Trail project — a larger project that will effect the entire intersection. It’s definitely worth adding your voice to the importance of having a safe waiting area and traffic flow on that corner in the redesign. Tom Hutchings is the project manager: thutchings@arlingtonva.us

[mstone]

@dasgeh 112854 wrote:

While it’s not a change that’s being consider on its own, we have been pushing for it in the Lynn Esplanade/Custis Trail project — a larger project that will effect the entire intersection. It’s definitely worth adding your voice to the importance of having a safe waiting area and traffic flow on that corner in the redesign. Tom Hutchings is the project manager: thutchings@arlingtonva.us

Yes, if you can get it into a road project then it disappears into the road budget. I was only talking about the cost of just doing it as a standalone improvement.

[Steve O]

@Terpfan 112851 wrote:

While we’re fixing this intersection, at least hypothetically in our minds, can we do something about the utility pole and sign posts right there by the MVT turn-on? Everyone planning to cross there just seems to hover at the very junction those few of us going down the trail or coming off of it need. It’s not too bad now, but come summertime it’s literally a bottleneck.

As mentioned, this has been raised on numerous occasions (here’s one). But we need to keep harping, so don’t take this remark to suggest we shouldn’t keep talking about it.

The argument that this cannot be done because it costs too much doesn’t work for me. If that pole were struck by a wayward truck, Arlington would find the money within 24 hours to replace it, because, well, cars. But to serve the thousands of people on bikes and on foot? No money for you! And that esplanade project is already at least 3 years late. Maybe it’s time to have an office pool predicting when it will actually get done.

BTW – Anyone got an old truck?

[Terpfan]

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Rosslyn,+Arlington,+VA+22209/@38.898983,-77.070655,3a,75y,11.77h,76.89t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sJLIu_rXVfozys3tTZDrzgA!2e0!4m2!3m1!1s0x89b7b6592a31b0ab:0xa1dedac7b22ffec4

There is the link if you just turn the camera to look right from Lee Highway (well it’s really the ramp off 66 there). I can’t foresee this costing all that much. They can leave the big light post that’s already there and then either mount the bike directional signs right below the crosswalk or move that sign behind the junction box. Then they can toss down a little asphalt in that gap. That literally would solve half the problem.

I think the real ideal would be to simply make a small trail cut-off onto that utility road a little further back, but I realize that would require more money and approvals.

If it weren’t illegal, I would just get a digging bar and move that bike location sign myself. I mean, it’s hit me in the head a good dozen times at like 2mph.

[ShawnoftheDread]

They asphalted the gap between the pole and the junction box already, late last summer I think. It helps a lot.

[BTC_DC]

@Terpfan 112872 wrote:

There is the link if you just turn the camera to look right from Lee Highway (well it’s really the ramp off 66 there).

How appropriate in this Google street view that the person in the car is looking left intently, waiting to make a quick right turn, just as a cyclist is entering the crosswalk!

[Steve O]

@ShawnoftheDread 112876 wrote:

They asphalted the gap between the pole and the junction box. It helps a lot.

In the sense that before it was:
– ridiculously, incredibly difficult whenever there were more than a couple people there (or if you had a bakfiets or trailer)
and now it is:
– badly inconvenient.

[ShawnoftheDread]

Yes, exactly. Like when I remodeled a tiny kitchen and went from 24″ of counter space to 48″. Double of almost nothing.

[Terpfan]

@ShawnoftheDread 112876 wrote:

They asphalted the gap between the pole and the junction box already, late last summer I think. It helps a lot.

Now that I think about it, they definitely did. I just can’t really go through it unless I can duck my head at a weird angle due to that sign. But maybe I’m the only one with the height problem (6’3 or so.. hair shorter).

[mstone]

@Steve O 112870 wrote:

The argument that this cannot be done because it costs too much doesn’t work for me. If that pole were struck by a wayward truck, Arlington would find the money within 24 hours to replace it, because, well, cars.

Replacing a pole is easy, it just goes back in the same spot. They often don’t even replace the pole in that situation, they just brace it with a new one. Moving a pole means coordination with every utility hanging off the pole, and generally involves moving the cables on all of the adjacent poles up to each point where a utility coiled some slack or rerunning cables if there isn’t enough slack. That can all take months (or years in pathological cases). I have no idea how complicated it might be in this case–it could be cheap & easy–but in general “just moving a pole” is not as simple as “just moving a pole”. And it is a zero sum budget game: where does the pole fall on the priority list? Is it more important than the wayfinding project, or repaving the custis, or adding new access somewhere, etc?

(And all of this is moot if it can latch onto a major street reconfiguration. We may want there to be more bike/ped funding, but reality is what it is.)

[dasgeh]

@mstone 112890 wrote:

(And all of this is moot if it can latch onto a major street reconfiguration. We may want there to be more bike/ped funding, but reality is what it is.)

It’s not moot, because even if it CAN latch onto a major reconfiguration, we have to convince the powers that be that it SHOULD be latched on. I think it will help to have people write Tom (Tom Hutchings is the project manager: thutchings@arlingtonva.us) and prod: when is this getting done? where’s the 90% design? what’s the hold up? and what’s the plan for this pole/box in the design?

Yes, this project is majorly delayed. No, there’s no chance this pole and box are going away tomorrow. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth prodding the County to keep moving and to get the design right so it gets done and gets done right (even if it doesn’t get done when we want it to).

[dasgeh]

@dasgeh 112895 wrote:

It’s not moot, because even if it CAN latch onto a major reconfiguration, we have to convince the powers that be that it SHOULD be latched on. I think it will help to have people write Tom (Tom Hutchings is the project manager: thutchings@arlingtonva.us) and prod: when is this getting done? where’s the 90% design? what’s the hold up? and what’s the plan for this pole/box in the design?

Yes, this project is majorly delayed. No, there’s no chance this pole and box are going away tomorrow. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth prodding the County to keep moving and to get the design right so it gets done and gets done right (even if it doesn’t get done when we want it to).

Update: you can also talk to Tom directly at Monday night’s ABAC meeting — 7pm 2100 Clarendon Blvd; 3rd floor. He’s just been confirmed on the agenda.

Your Arlington Bicycle Advisory Committee, working for you.

[KWL]

@Terpfan 112851 wrote:

While we’re fixing this intersection, at least hypothetically in our minds, can we do something about the utility pole and sign posts right there by the MVT turn-on? Everyone planning to cross there just seems to hover at the very junction those few of us going down the trail or coming off of it need. It’s not too bad now, but come summertime it’s literally a bottleneck.

Perhaps we could get a “Don’t Block the Box” sign and yellow stripes there? Though my idea of the sign to post would be “Don’t wait for the light there you idiot.”

[rcannon100]

kwl;112905 wrote:

perhaps we could get a “don’t block the box” sign and yellow stripes there? Though my idea of the sign to post would be “don’t wait for the light there you idiot.”

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