November 2020 Road and Trail Conditions

[Judd]

@Starduster 202795 wrote:

A week ago, I rode (or tried to ride) the Holmes Run Trail in Alexandria. There are still bridges out, and the “tube” under I-395 is still closed, all of which force multiple detours onto the other side of Van Dorn St. And into the traffic I was trying to avoid. What are Alexandria’s plans to repair this by-now old flood damage?

The city recently allocated 6 million in capital funds to perform repairs. Not sure when work will occur.

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[CaseyKane50]

@Judd 202796 wrote:

The city recently allocated 6 million in capital funds to perform repairs. Not sure when work will occur.

Here’s a bit more detail on the $6 million

Q: Is funding available to restore the trail?
A: Yes. As part of the FY2021-FY2030 Approved Capital Improvement Program (CIP), $6 million was allocated to repairing Holmes Run Trail. $1 million is available for design in FY2021, and the remaining $5 million is available beginning in FY2022.[/quote]. Currently, the city is projecting the trail won’t be fully opened until 2023.

More information on the detour with some pictures can be found at the Holmes Run Trail Closures page.

The city has recently been installing better detour signage.

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[Starduster]

The images are telling. Thank you for posting. 2023 it *must* be then.

[Starduster]

From Saturday. Guess what is finally open?

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[Judd]

@Starduster 202821 wrote:

From Saturday. Guess what is finally open?

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I like the statue of the guy giving a thumbs up that was installed in the circle.

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[dbb]

I went up to the circle today and watched a cyclist just ride to the left of the circle and go under 66. I think that is likely to become the route for most cyclists that ride this often.

[Henry]

@dbb 202789 wrote:

Observed along the bike lane on Potomac Ave this morning.

Don’t see a cake along the trail often (ever?)

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Did you cut into the tree to make sure it wasn’t a cake as well? Seems to be a thing on the interwebs. Henry

[accordioneur]

@Starduster 202821 wrote:

From Saturday. Guess what is finally open?

Such a poor design. If you have to paint lots of arrows to explain how the intersection works, it’s probably not an intuitive design. And if you decide to paint double-headed arrows pointing in weird directions, it probably doesn’t help. But most of all, instead of providing extra turning room for people coming downhill/westbound as promised, you’ve squeezed them into a hairpin turn where they’re likely to run head-on into eastbound riders cutting the corner around the left of the circle.

Hopefully the mysterious Utah monolith is on its way east to be installed in the middle of the circle to pretty it up a little

[bentbike33]

@dbb 202824 wrote:

I went up to the circle today and watched a cyclist just ride to the left of the circle and go under 66. I think that is likely to become the route for most cyclists that ride this often.

@accordioneur 202827 wrote:

Such a poor design. If you have to paint lots of arrows to explain how the intersection works, it’s probably not an intuitive design. And if you decide to paint double-headed arrows pointing in weird directions, it probably doesn’t help. …

That double-headed arrow basically tells eastbound Custis riders to go around the circle the wrong way! Such a stupid design. The original drawings of this rebuild looked much more promising in that the main trail from under I-66 was looped away from the retaining wall with nice sweeping curves making the trail down from the detour footbridge a T-intersection with a better sightline to the main flow of traffic.

[rcannon100]

It would be a shame if someone went Banksy and repainted the arrows

[zsionakides]

Just pave over the center circle and leave the yield signs at each entry point. There isn’t so much traffic that a roundabout is needed to manage traffic flow – 95% of the time I travel through there isn’t any traffic as opposed to say the MVT/4MR intersection. The main safety issue was the blind turn coming off the Custis trail, but that is fixed by moving the intersection point further out. As long as cyclists aren’t flying through there, everyone can navigate by basic rules of the road and don’t need a circle to “improve” the situation.

[dbb]

Would be nice if they had done something about the fire hydrant and sign posts just off the trail. Lurking there, waiting to strike.

[dbb]

The design appears to have been developed with no actual consideration of the likely traffic patterns (almost all under the interstate and almost none continuing up the trail). SteveO suggested a longer island that would have permitted a clean left turn when heading east. Instead the cyclist staying on the right side gets to make a shallow right to get into the circle, a left in the circle and then a right to leave the circle. Three turns rather than one.

[ShawnoftheDread]

Silly design. Everyone in DC knows traffic circles need traffic lights.

[DrP]

So this morning I went by this circle and there were plantings all around it. Looks really pretty now and those shrubs are tiny now, but they will soon block any views trail users might have. This new traffic “feature” is a set of crashes waiting to happen. The circle is much too tight for any reasonable speed (three paths are downhill to the circle, so coming to a near stop is just super annoying). If the east bound users keep cutting to the left rather than going around to the right (I have seen school buses do this on the roads too, so no one knows how to use these circles. great), that is going to get bad.
Can we force the designers to use this regularly?

[Author]

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