S Eads Commuting

[tnelson]

Rode on S. Eads just last night and was thinking the same thing about all the road debris. Traffic and driver behavior can’t be fixed overnight, but I wish the county would send a street sweeper! I’m tempted to just fasten a couple brooms to my bike and do it myself.

[KLizotte]

Have you tried cutting over on to 26th St then Fern? Much quieter residential street. You will still have to put up with S Eads for a ways though.

[bobco85]

Document it. If you have a smartphone and a Twitter account, you’ll be able to stop, take a photo, and post it on Twitter so it immediately goes out to the Internet (and your fellow cyclists who will tweet it at various Arlington County government folks). Gather the evidence that can be used to prove enforcement is needed.

[dasgeh]

Thanks for sharing your story. I don’t have an immediate answer, but in advocacy, it’s helpful to have these sorts of testimonials when we here “but people on bikes can just use [insert alt route that doesn’t work well if you’re towing kids]”. As someone who also tows kids, that answer frustrates me to no end.

[jsperson]

@KLizotte 143456 wrote:

Have you tried cutting over on to 26th St then Fern? Much quieter residential street. You will still have to put up with S Eads for a ways though.

Thanks for the suggestion. I actually stay on a bit longer and use 25th. I’ve got about 90 pounds behind me between the kids and the trailer. That little rise in 26th is harder than it looks with my load. Unfortunately I still hit the worst parts – construction w/ cars and tour buses w/ cars. This morning a driver mistimed the road narrowing and gave their ABS system a test to avoid rear ending us.

[jsperson]

bobco85 suggested that I take photos of the various obstacles on S. Eads. Normally I’m hauling my kids in a trailer so stopping isn’t an option. Tonight I detoured on my way home to gather some evidence. I also sent these and others to Bike Arlington via email. This type of thing has been going on since at least July 2015.

Anyway, thanks for looking

Pothole that’s been there for months. This forces me into the car lane due to the width of the trailer.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]12592[/ATTACH]

Excavator taking up the whole bike lane. Note even a single bike is forced to block the lane. There is a lot of north bound traffic here in the morning due to congestion on Route One.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]12593[/ATTACH]

Roller taking up the bike lane with a metal plate on the outside. Note that it’s rough enough that cars are avoiding driving over the plate. After the plate, the surface is not safely rideable for several hundred feet.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]12594[/ATTACH]

[paulg]

jsperson

I agree and have contacted the Arlington project manager for the ART bus facility who seem to have caused all the mess. There were some large potholes that appeared and they did kind of fix those.

Anyway he was very responsive so I would send him an email with pictures. I know they are planning to resurface the entire road from Glebe to fort Scott sometime this fall. Jeremy Jenkins is the Arlington PM and his email is below.

jrjenkins@arlingtonva.us>

He probably won’t be able to help with the buses and I’m not sure that the steel plates and other temporary but hazardous road surfacing might be another group. Perhaps the treatment plant?

Let me know what you find out and I can send an email too.

Paul

[paulg]

I contacted Jeremy at Arlington to say what a mess the street was currently in and how it was hazardous to cyclists and here was his prompt reply:

Paul,
*
The current work going on in the roadway is being performed by Arlington County Water Sewer Streets and is unrelated to our project.* However I do know the people running that work and I will take this up with them right away.* I will also walk this today and make sure there is nothing my contractor needs to do in order to make this safe due to their work.*
*
Schedule:
We should be paving within the next 4 weeks (waiting on the WSS crew to finish up).* It will be 100% complete by the end of November and you will have the permanent plans per our design at that time.* You should have no further issues from that point on.
*
Thankfully we only have a few for weeks to deal with the construction in the road and then the biking community will have brand new separated biked lanes.
*
Thank you
*
Jeremy R. Jenkins
CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT SPECIALIST

[jsperson]

That is a great reply! Thank you very much for making the contact and sharing.

[paulg]

No problem jsperson.

Jeremy also followed up with me this AM which I appreciated:

Paul,

Did you see an improvement yesterday? I spoke with the contractor performing the work and they were supposed to do a much better job sweeping, and making sure that the bike lane was not obstructed.

Schedule Update:
We went ahead and scheduled the new paving for the week of 11/7/16.

We thank you for your patience as we try and get these upgrades ready for the public.
Thank you
Jeremy R. Jenkins

CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT SPECIALIST

I replied that the road did seem to be swept which does remove the debris and I thanked him for that but the steel plates and patches for the sewer work were still a major problem. But I guess we only have to survive for 2 more weeks and South Eads should be surfaced from Glebe all the way to fort scott. with new bike lanes to match those to the north.

I can’t wait.

[paulg]

I contacted Jeremy at Arlington County yesterday just to make sure they were going to start paving this week.

reply here:

Paul,

There was a water line break last week that put the operation behind a few days. You might have noticed they were still doing work down by the S. Eads Fort Scott intersection. My projects paving crews should be jumping over to Route 1 and then getting back to S. EADS Thursday/Friday. The Arlington Water Sewer Streets contractors advised me they would be done Thursday.

I will ask that my contractor sweep the bike lane today.

Thank you

and then he made a further reply:

Paul,

Looks like they were able to get back to S.Eads. Should be a few days and you will have brand new asphalt.

Sent from iPhone

Jeremy R. Jenkins

CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT SPECIALIST

So the long wait might soon be over!!

[jsperson]

Paul, thanks for the update! This morning they were working in the Bike Lane itself. They had barrels set up so I just took the northbound lane (riding with a double trailer). It was a better than normal experience. Cars were quite polite in passing. It’s pretty rough through there, but the kids love the roller coaster ride.

I’m certainly looking forward to new pavement!

[Harry Meatmotor]

@paulg 148695 wrote:

So the long wait might soon be over!!

Man, S. Eads has been under construction for as long as I’ve been around here…

[vern]

S. Eads has been milled so hopefully it gets repaved in the next couple of days.

[paulg]

I noticed the milling on South Eads doesn’t go all the way down to Glebe Road. It stops at about the boundary between the ART bus facility and the WMATA depot.

My issue with that is the new complete streets plan

https://projects.arlingtonva.us/projects/south-eads-street-complete-street/

shows the new bike lane arrangement for Eads of which a lot is installed already i.e. to the North from Arlington Ridge Road, and I thought this current project would finish the job off by extending new paving and striping all the way to Glebe Road. Which it isn’t. The road surface is in very poor shape in the remaining section of Eads just north of Glebe so it really needs some large patching or milling and paving just like the entire road to the North.

So I swapped some emails with Jeremy (Very responsive Project Manager for Arlington County). and he said that no the current paving done as part of the ART bus facility does not go to Glebe and nor does the striping.

I’m going to contact the complete streets rep and see what they say.

Does anyone at Bike Arlington know about this project and when the last section will be completed?

[Author]

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