No thank you, Fairfax County

[eminva]

There is a street crossing there (Painted Daisy Drive, per Google maps) — I usually cross Hunter Village at that intersection and take the lane to where the trail picks up again. And we had all 14 Boy Scouts do it, too, as part of their road test.

Liz

[lordofthemark]

@eminva 62825 wrote:

There is a street crossing there (Painted Daisy Drive, per Google maps) — I usually cross Hunter Village at that intersection and take the lane to where the trail picks up again. And we had all 14 Boy Scouts do it, too, as part of their road test.

Liz

Yes, thats the crosswalk I meant. Using google maps, its about 140 ft from where the trail emerges onto Hunter Village, to the Painted Daisy crosswalk. If you are riding south bound, that’s going in the opposite direction to traffic (once you cross over Hunter Village, you have the option of riding in the lane with traffic or using the sidepath)

So right now, AFAICT, the official route of the CCT southbound is illegal. They would have to add an additional crosswalk 140 ft north of the Painted Daisy Drive crosswalk to fix that.

https://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=Hunter+Village+Dr&daddr=Hunter+Village+Dr&hl=en&ll=38.762831,-77.210714&spn=0.000836,0.001206&sll=38.762445,-77.210517&sspn=0.001671,0.002411&geocode=FaN5TwIdgttl-w%3BFTd4TwIdMNxl-w&t=h&dirflg=w&mra=ltm&z=20&layer=c&cbll=38.762882,-77.210737&panoid=cyPsdCR1NbckKz3hfPy3Xw&cbp=12,179.61,,0,0

I mean its not very long, but it was surprising to me that Fairfax County Parks’ premier multi use trail has an illegal section. Maybe they technically consider that a sidewalk and not a shoulder?

[eminva]

Now I see what you mean. We had the scouts get off their bikes and walk to the intersection, now that I think of it. It is awkward. But there is a lot about the CCT that is less than perfect, I suppose.

Liz

[DismalScientist]

I hate to be a pedant, but there is an implied crosswalk at every intersection. The addition of painted white lines does not matter.

[mstone]

I think it’s fairly clear that it is intended to be a path, they just ran out of money to do it right. It would take a police officer with a really big grudge to ticket someone there. As far as safety, just watch the road. It’s hardly the only badly connected spot on the CCT–really, it’s a wonder it all works as well as it does considering that they put together a bunch of disconnected trails with basically no funding.

[eminva]

@DismalScientist 62840 wrote:

I hate to be a pedant, but there is an implied crosswalk at every intersection. The addition of painted white lines does not matter.

True, but there is a gap of 140 feet between where the trail ends at the street and the intersection. There is not a sidewalk there (there is kind of a shoulder part of the way). You can see it in the street view of his map above. I think that is what he was referring to.

Liz

[mstone]

@eminva 62843 wrote:

True, but there is a gap of 140 feet between where the trail ends at the street and the intersection. There is not a sidewalk there (there is kind of a shoulder part of the way). You can see it in the street view of his map above. I think that is what he was referring to.

Yeah, I understand what he’s talking about, I just don’t understand the big deal. What’s the difference between a sidewalk and a double wide shoulder on a road with no curb that’s paved all the way to a rock-lined drainage ditch? It would be nice if it were a protected path, but that would take some money.

[lordofthemark]

@mstone 62844 wrote:

Yeah, I understand what he’s talking about, I just don’t understand the big deal. What’s the difference between a sidewalk and a double wide shoulder on a road with no curb that’s paved all the way to a rock-lined drainage ditch? It would be nice if it were a protected path, but that would take some money.

A curb would I guess be the proper treatment. If thats too expensive, how much would a line of flex posts cost?

[lordofthemark]

@DismalScientist 62840 wrote:

I hate to be a pedant, but there is an implied crosswalk at every intersection. The addition of painted white lines does not matter.

thats okay, since this whole thread is pedantry.

To clarify the problem is not crossing from the north side of Painted Daisy (with the implied crosswalk) to the south side of Painted Daisy (with the painted crosswalk) since you can cross Painted Daisy itself on a painted crosswalk (and were it not painted, on an implied crosswalk). Its getting from the CCT to Painted Daisy. Even if one said that the emergence of the CCT created an implied crosswalk where it emerged (????) there’s a median in the middle of Hunter Village Drive that would prevent crossing there.

I think there should be flexible posts along the section to Painted Daisy. It would fix a problem on the CCT, and would get the County thinking about flex posts and cycle tracks.

[lordofthemark]

@mstone 62842 wrote:

It’s hardly the only badly connected spot on the CCT–really, it’s a wonder it all works as well as it does considering that they put together a bunch of disconnected trails with basically no funding.

Actually much of the CCT has the advantage over the W&OD of not having to deal with traffic at intersections. And one of the reasons I choose to ride south from LRT on the CCT rather than north is that going north its not that far before I hit the mess around Pickett.

I suppose if its worse south of FFX County Parkway (I’ve never ridden beyond that point) than this is probably a lower priority fix. I was just curious if folks (more particularly the County) were even aware of this particular issue.

Plus it was to add balance to by thread of praise (and yeah, it was striking – my ride began with a section where FFX County had made a big improvement, and ended with this)

[jabberwocky]

I think the issue is that the CCT is largely treated as an off-road trail, not a MUP/commuter route. The county is muuuuuuuch looser about road crossings on off-road trail.

[lordofthemark]

@jabberwocky 62852 wrote:

I think the issue is that the CCT is largely treated as an off-road trail, not a MUP/commuter route. The county is muuuuuuuch looser about road crossings on off-road trail.

I guess the reason I am perhaps over sensititive to this is that so many cyclists where I live (in Annandale) salmon. Its less that I am afraid of getting a ticket there, or that I feel terribly unsafe there. It just seems to be sending the wrong message.

[jabberwocky]

@lordofthemark 62853 wrote:

I guess the reason I am perhaps over sensititive to this is that so many cyclists where I live (in Annandale) salmon. Its less that I am afraid of getting a ticket there, or that I feel terribly unsafe there. It just seems to be sending the wrong message.

I understand what you’re saying; I guess I’ve never really noticed because I’ve always been on one of my MTBs when I’ve ridden through there. Strange road crossings are the norm for off road trail. Theres no obvious safety issue, since there is a massive shoulder connecting where you come out of the woods to the crosswalk. It may not be technically 100% strictly speaking kosher, but the CCT is basically 60 miles of (very) loosely connected weirdness in my experience, so its not like it stands out. :p

[mstone]

@lordofthemark 62848 wrote:

A curb would I guess be the proper treatment. If thats too expensive, how much would a line of flex posts cost?

Probably not that much in the grand scheme of things, but what problem would it solve? (Other than the problem of bike advocacy pedants not liking the current scheme?) If you’re going to do it right, you’ll need to extend the sidewalk over the grass from the existing sidewalk, to provide intersection access. Then you delineate the path along the road with some kind of barrier. The end result won’t increase the level of real protection, but may improve visibility. (Though I’m curious whether there’s some kind of documented problem with that at this intersection–do cars routinely veer off the road onto the shoulder there in the absence of a more visible delineation?) The far side of the crosswalk lacks a curb cut, and it looks like the near end isn’t ADA compliant (though it’s hard to tell from a picture). I don’t know how much work they can do before they trigger the requirement to upgrade everything to current accessibility standards. Standing in the street on the far end waiting for the second crosswalk would be unpleasant at best and unsafe at worst, but putting in a sidewalk on the curb there would definitely mean digging up the flowers and disturbing the wall at the community entrance and probably taking the nearest tree. Maybe within the current public right of way, or maybe even an eminent domain fight, definitely a noisy fight with the residents either way. Also hard to tell from the picture, but you might need to rebuild the drainage ditch on the near end, to either bury it or add a guard rail (I’m not sure there’s even enough width for the latter option). So I would guess the cost would be anything from a thousand or two to 10s of thousands. And at the end of the day you have no real change, except maybe you can feel better about it. Might even be worse from a cyclist standpoint, in practical terms. You can see why the county didn’t bother.

[mstone]

@jabberwocky 62852 wrote:

I think the issue is that the CCT is largely treated as an off-road trail, not a MUP/commuter route. The county is muuuuuuuch looser about road crossings on off-road trail.

That’s because it’s so varied. Some parts are easily rideable, some are barely suitable for bikes. Little of the system was really planned, and there’s a lot of tension between cyclist interests and walker/hiker interests in terms of improvements.

[Author]

Posts