[Fairlington124]

@Judd 202018 wrote:

Sweet! I tacked this on to the thread. Interesting to read that he and Nixon lived in Park Fairfax. I’ll have to see if there’s enough online to do an Alexandria Presidential Homes bike ride.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Not the best place to live as a rider, unless the super-steep Valley Drive hill is your thing.

Maybe Nixon’s “I have never been a quitter” line was coined after pedaling his way to the top…

[Fairlington124]

Capacity constraints in term of trail widths, tight corners, etc have become all the more clear.

And don’t even get me started on a “trail” which is basically a 5-foot sidewalk, reduce a bit by puddling water and an uneven surface due to tree roots. A 5-foot sidewalk is borderline adequate for two passing pedestrians, to say nothing of bikers, or reduced widths due to the mentioned hazards.

[Fairlington124]

Saw this on foot; the section of the Holmes Run Trail in Alexandria under the railroad bridge (near Eisenhower Ave) was loaded up with sand and sediment following the rains earlier this week. A small kid wiped out on his bike, fortunately it was at slow speeds, and the sand was thick!

[Fairlington124]

Work has (finally) started on the Arlington Mill Dr & S. Walter Reed Dr improvement project near Shirlington.

In addition, and I don’t know if it’s related or not, there was finally an upgrade of the crosswalk and access ramp (or lack thereof) at Arlington Mill Dr and the Windgate Condo community. In lieu of what’s currently there, they’re building a mid-cross refuge and an ADA-compliant access ramp from the 4MR trail up to the street-level crosswalk.

[Fairlington124]

Protected bike lane on Quincy Road in Ballston.

https://ggwash.org/view/68723/quincy-street-in-ballston-has-a-new-protected-bikeway

[Fairlington124]

Open bike lanes on Wilson Blvd in Arlington between Rosslyn and Courthouse have been upgraded to protected bike lanes.

https://www.arlnow.com/2018/08/27/new-protected-bike-lane-opens-connecting-rosslyn-and-courthouse/

[Fairlington124]

Anything new? Seems like it’s been a slow year with respect to infrastructure improvements, even low-cost approaches like bike lanes. Alexandria hasn’t been updating their webpage for it (Go Alexandria, the name of their non-car transportation program) and I’ve been riding almost none anymore (indoor rock climbing and grad school).

Anyone got anything to report?

[Fairlington124]

Google Earth measurement ~3.0 feet

[Fairlington124]

I was wondering that too…will the new right-of-way (for either road or MUP at this point) eat into the dry cleaners parking lot? Seems like an odd abrupt end, as opposed to widening it all the way to Hampton, where there is the automobile slip lane and bike lane.

It looks like the “6 ft sidewalk” will indeed cut across the front of the parking lot and go all the way to Hampton.

https://www.alexandriava.gov/uploadedFiles/tes/info/King-Beauregard%20Improvement%20Project%20Design%20(3.3%20MB).pdf

[Fairlington124]

I hate to ask this, but I wonder if the cyclist was going at a sufficiently slow speed to be able to react to the presence of the pedestrians. Speaking for myself, I take steep and/or blind curves very slowly.

[Fairlington124]

I believe recalling that the trucks and buses which call at the nearby Trades Center (between Shirlington and the AWLA) were a reason for maintaining the slip lane.

[Fairlington124]

Arlington County has apparently taken initial steps in their project to reconfigure the intersection of S. Arlington Mill Drive and S. Walter Reed Drive, near Shirlington (https://projects.arlingtonva.us/projects/south-walter-reed-drive-improvements-arlington-mill-drive-four-mile-run-drive/)

White plastic flex posts have been installed which appear to mimic how the future enlarged concrete “porkchop” island will be. Walkers and bikers can now safely take refuge in the area immediately south of where the current concrete island is. There is now a single left-turn lane, down from two.

There is also a marking for a bike lane heading northbound on S. Walter Reed Drive….this will allow bikers heading north to stay in a bike lane while traversing the intersection.

No photos yet but I made a mockup from Google Maps.[ATTACH=CONFIG]15017[/ATTACH]

[Fairlington124]

Yeah I noticed that too. It’d be a travesty if they didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to extend the sidepath along there, which would provide connections to the bike lane on northbound Hampton, or onto the wide sidewalk further east along King.

[Fairlington124]

I think we should make an effort to rename Union Street in Old Town south of King as the “Hal Hardaway Community Bikeway”.

[Fairlington124]

I should add that there is an impressive retaining wall plainly visible on that side of King. Work on the opposite side of King has not yet started.

Separately, work on the adjacent “Alexandria Gateway” project (Retail+Housing) is well underway with a lot of heavy earthwork.

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