@Tim Kelley 81574 wrote:
Pro-Tip: It doesn’t work when you report it to the wrong people!
I assume you took it to VDOT then? What’d they say?
Dave Goodman is the wrong person?
The County Board being notified are the wrong people?
The guy in charge of streetlights is the wrong person?
The Arlington County app is the wrong place?
Parks Department are the wrong people?
Being an active member of the citizen’s Bicycle Advisory Committee and raising it on multiple occasions in our meetings, attended by staff, is the wrong place?
If all those are wrong, then who the f*&^$k is right, and how am I supposed to know that?
Why is it my responsibility to figure out how Arlington County staff needs to interact with VDOT staff to accomplish some sort of project that requires multiple jurisdictions? Is it my responsibility to do staff’s job? The whole point of the Arlington app is to give citizens the ability to report issues without having to understand the intestines of government. Or even worse, have to do their job for them, which is what you are suggesting, if I’m not mistaken.
But, I have, in fact, spent some time learning about this. However, to be fair, after a certain level of fatigue set in, I gave up. Feel free to pick it up where I left off. (And I would also appreciate not being condescended to with “I assume you took it to VDOT then?”)
From what I have learned, the lights are ArlCo’s to maintain, but the bridge is VDOT’s. They won’t let us touch their bridge without their permission. Their permission requires some sort of engineering study. They want ArlCo to pay for the study. ArlCo says they don’t have the money. I can’t remember anymore, but it may require Dominion to get involved, too (no, I have not contacted them). Also, the streetlights guy tends to want to slough this off onto Parks, and Parks doesn’t really want to have to deal with it either. Hence the lights sit there with no one taking any action, ever, to fix them.
That’s how bureaucracy works, because they are trying to answer the wrong question.
The question is not, “How do we fix these lights?”
The more appropriate question is, “How do we provide safe and adequate lighting to the users of the trail at this spot?”
That’s a different question, and is more likely to result in creative solutions instead of bureaucratic gridlock.
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