Sep 17 FABB meeting to cover FFX county parkway repaving plans

[lordofthemark]

Looks like it will be an interesting meeting – a lot going on with the bike master plan moving forward. Unfortunately I will be unable to attend.

[FFX_Hinterlands]

It was a good meeting. Always nice to see the County/VDOT interaction in real-time. Long story short – VDOT and the County are digging up some money to repair the entire Parkway Trail. They won’t be repaving the entire thing, but fixing the damage where it exists. This all started last year with FABB documenting every trail defect/issue on the entire trail when someone asked the question, “How bad is the parkway trail?”
We also heard from Potomac Pedalers. Did you know that hold over 1000 rides a year?

[mstone]

I personally left depressed. After 30 years of neglect, VDOT and the county (maybe–the county hasn’t committed to funding their share yet) will come up with around $1M to do basic spot maintenance on the trail. Not even to repave it. Out of something like $300M over the next three years, VDOT has committed to $3M total for trail maintenance for the 4 counties in our district, with no commitment of any funds after 3 years. Yeah, it’s better than nothing, but it’s really hard to feel good about table scraps. Oh, and they said that much of the damage is caused by utility trucks using the trail (which isn’t designed to support that much weight) and they can’t do anything about that, so it will get destroyed again. Remember, no ongoing funding commitment.

And it sounds like the NVRPA board is planning to push harder on enforcing the W&OD stop signs. We need to somehow alter the composition of the board to change this, but that means influencing the public officials in each jurisdiction to change who they’re appointing to a patronage position. So 6 (12) political fights for something that will be darn near impossible to generate much interest in.

[FFX_Hinterlands]

Yes, OK mstone, it’s depressing. I get it. The conversation has changed
from:
“We did you a favor by putting in this trail”
“We have to put in trails, but don’t even think about asking for funding to repair or maintain it”
To:
“We’re doing you a favor by fixing the broken parts of the trail. Yes it’s at 1/100th the level of care we give roads, though.”

The part about how Utility companies are causing trail damage and not paying to repair it really urked me though. Easement, schmeesment! Make them pay!

I left happy after seeing the exchange between two FABB members. Amber was thanking John for letting her mother ride on his e-bike for a group ride. Amber’s mother purchased an e-bike soon after and has been biking every day since. It has changed her life. John is leaving shortly for a year in Afghanistan.

[lordofthemark]

So, the jurisdictions that FABB deals with are 1. Fairfax County, including FCDOT, FCPA, FCPS and FCPD 2. NPS 3. NVRPA 4 VDOT? Am I missing any?

Of those is it fair to say that VDOT and NVRPA are the more problematic in terms of getting biking issues?

[mstone]

@lordofthemark 64658 wrote:

So, the jurisdictions that FABB deals with are 1. Fairfax County, including FCDOT, FCPA, FCPS and FCPD 2. NPS 3. NVRPA 4 VDOT? Am I missing any?

Of those is it fair to say that VDOT and NVRPA are the more problematic in terms of getting biking issues?

I think it depends on what you’re looking for. If you want a place with a budget for basic maintenance (or stupid stop signs), NVRPA is the place to go. If you want staff who really focus on making great trails but have enormous funding issues, then FCPA. FCDOT has the dedicated bike staff that are really good at finding value wherever they can. VDOT has some people who really care, and their spare change dramatically affects the funding picture, but their policy direction sucks.

There are a lot of people doing really good work. The source of my depression is that it does take so much work, and there is very little systemic change; if someone new comes along, it can all go away. The fundamental changes need to happen at a political level (especially in Richmond), and I just don’t see that happening anytime soon.

[lordofthemark]

@mstone 64660 wrote:

VDOT has some people who really care, and their spare change dramatically affects the funding picture, but their policy direction sucks.

http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/breaking_ground/2013/09/shared-use-path-a-casualty-of-the.html

You know your state DOT doesn’t “get it” when even members of the Board of Supervisors of one the least bike supportive local jurisdictions think there’s a problem.

[consularrider]

@lordofthemark 64777 wrote:

http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/breaking_ground/2013/09/shared-use-path-a-casualty-of-the.html

You know your state DOT doesn’t “get it” when even members of the Board of Supervisors of one the least bike supportive local jurisdictions think there’s a problem.

And as they point out another Metro station only accessible by car, but it’s sooooo important to acquire more land so that sometime in the unknown future they can widen the road to worse than superhighway width. 😡

[rcannon100]

@lordofthemark 64658 wrote:

So, the jurisdictions that FABB deals with are 1. Fairfax County, including FCDOT, FCPA, FCPS and FCPD 2. NPS 3. NVRPA 4 VDOT? Am I missing any?

Of those is it fair to say that VDOT and NVRPA are the more problematic in terms of getting biking issues?

I had the impression that NVRPA is very supportive. They recently “revised” their rules to make clear that the WOD is open to cyclists until 9:00pm, even after dark. And while that may seem almost funny to us, we have had a problem in the past of local jurisduction’s po po harassing cyclists commuting on the WOD after dark. This was in fact a big help.

Have dealt with NVRPA on some other issues and they always seem very responsive.

[Terpfan]

@rcannon100 64803 wrote:

I had the impression that NVRPA is very supportive. They recently “revised” their rules to make clear that the WOD is open to cyclists until 9:00pm, even after dark. And while that may seem almost funny to us, we have had a problem in the past of local jurisduction’s po po harassing cyclists commuting on the WOD after dark. This was in fact a big help.

Have dealt with NVRPA on some other issues and they always seem very responsive.

The 9pm rule still cracks me up.

I decided to see if the MVT said the same given NPS runs it, but they do 6am-10pm with the notation that commuters may use it at any time.

[mstone]

@Terpfan 64900 wrote:

The 9pm rule still cracks me up.

I decided to see if the MVT said the same given NPS runs it, but they do 6am-10pm with the notation that commuters may use it at any time.

Yes, if NVRPA really wanted to “work with” cyclists they’d simply make official the fact that the trail is used for commuting and drop the harassment-only time restrictions. They’d also drop the harassment-only stop sign policy[1], stop putting in bollards in Vienna and try more effective treatments, etc. The impression I get is more that dealing with cyclists is just an annoyance that takes time away from their real purpose, which is maintaining orderly parks.

[1] That is, their policy that they will put a stop sign wherever two pieces of asphalt intersect, without any regard to the actual danger at the intersection and with no justification for any sign other than “policy”. There’s at least one spot where they’ve got a stop sign at a merge with another trail(!) which is so low-volume that I think I’ve seen one person there, ever.

[mstone]

@Terpfan 64900 wrote:

I decided to see if the MVT said the same given NPS runs it, but they do 6am-10pm with the notation that commuters may use it at any time.

NPS doesn’t have anything to do with NVRPA.

[jabberwocky]

Do the police actually enforce the time restrictions? Because I commuted year-round from Tysons to Reston from 2005-2010 (when it supposedly closed at dark) and never had any trouble whatsoever with cops. I rode by police cruisers on a pretty regular basis after dark, and I don’t think they ever gave me a second look.

Is it only certain jurisdictions that have an issue with it, or was I just lucky?

(Obviously, that doesn’t mean the rules aren’t stupid, because they are; the W&OD is a major commuting route and should be treated as such. I’ve just never heard of them actually being enforced before).

[consularrider]

There have been postings on other threads about issues more in the early morning hours than evening hours.

[mstone]

@jabberwocky 64910 wrote:

Do the police actually enforce the time restrictions? Because I commuted year-round from Tysons to Reston from 2005-2010 (when it supposedly closed at dark) and never had any trouble whatsoever with cops. I rode by police cruisers on a pretty regular basis after dark, and I don’t think they ever gave me a second look.

Generally, no–which is the issue. There have been cases where people were stopped on that pretext, making it a rule that opens the possibility of harassment or profiling.

[Author]

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