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@Mongo 212148 wrote:

Let me rephrase that from being no trail connections to any connections of any type. It seems to me that there would be no way to get off in Virginia after crossing the bridge.

hmm. maybe there are too many bridges being discussed in this thread. assuming we’re talking about the legion bridge IIRC the design documents had it dumping onto surface streets (Live Oak Dr?) and/or a planned 495 trail. which is fine as far as it goes–the MD side is a bigger face palm, since there’s an actual trail along the potomac there, which a lot of people want to get to, that you simply won’t be allowed to access because reasons. (with the ferry gone, that’s the only opportunity to get to the C&O from virginia between chain bridge & point of rocks, and in the planned future the only plausible safe cycling route to take your kids from northern virginia to the C&O [assuming a 495 trail gets built from the legion bridge to Tysons].)

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@Steve O 212354 wrote:

Unless he was walking his bike in the marked crosswalk, VA’s contributory negligence law, discouragingly, will almost certainly find him to be at least 1% at fault.

There’s no legal requirement to walk a bike in a crosswalk. VA’s contributory negligence law could easily find fault if you were hit while walking your bike through a crosswalk preceded by a flag man and followed by a marching band, with fireworks going off overhead, so worrying about what contributory negligence will do is just a depressing exercise in futility.

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@Kbikeva 212191 wrote:

Why is that now people cry out, “It’s the fault of the infrastructure?” rather than, “We need speed limit enforcement”?

Because properly designed infrastructure tends to solve the speed problem, while adding additional benefits. Also, because “speed enforcement” without automation is just the kind of thing that’s said to make discussion about real substantive changes go away, without actually doing anything. At most the cops will be there a few more times over a couple of weeks, then they’ll move on to the next spot where people are complaining about speeding cars.

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@Mongo 212140 wrote:

Am I missing something, or is there no connection to any trail on the Virginia side of the bridge?

there are no bike trails on the virginia side of the bridge. they’re supposed to build one along 495, but seeing how quickly the i66 trail was downgraded I’ll withhold judgment on that. in theory you could connect to the PHT but I don’t really see much value in doing so (it’s a long walk to there from anywhere, so the number of people doing that would probably be really low). given the nature of the PHT you could always just put in a big ladder down from the bridge sometime in the future if it seemed necessary.

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@Meh 211834 wrote:

No one likes the Soapstone to Foxclove to Stuart Mill redirect, keeping OP off Lawyers Rd? Depending on the W&OD departure point, there’s a bit of Sunrise Valley to deal with but it might be less whizz-by hairy than Hunter Mill?

Hunter Station, not Hunter Mill. (Important distinction.) I agree that the Lawyers/Hunter Mill intersection is hideous, but Hunter Station and Lawyers to the west are much better (IMO). If the concern is the no-shoulder nature of Stuart Mill then a Soapstone detour isn’t going to avoid that (and probably puts you on a relatively busier section of Stuart Mill with somewhat worse visibility). Stretches of Soapstone are nice, but overall I think the intersections are worse and getting to Soapstone from the W&OD is pretty ick. (Around rush hour I don’t even like to be in a car on those roads.) It’s the usual VDOT thing where they make a half-hearted attempt at multi-use infrastructure, but as soon as it gets hard/would require impacting vehicle LOS, they default to stroads with disconnected bits of “what could have been”. I do think it’s nice that they’ve done some road diets, but the real issues (again IMO) are at the conflict points rather than in the middle of long stretches of quiet road, and they’re completely unwilling to change how they build intersections (why have 2 lanes when you could have 6, and why put in 4 crosswalks when nobody can make you put in more than 1 or 2?)

Edit to add: most of this stuff is, of course, subjective. Different people have preferences for different kinds of roads, familiarity can really affect perceptions, and time of day/day of week can dramatically change how a road feels.

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@wheels&wings 211809 wrote:

Hi all,
I’m wondering if anyone is familiar with the Oakton, VA area. I need to get from Arlington to Coulter Lane in Oakton. It will be dark out in both directions, and I’m a bit spooked by fast winding roads with no shoulder.
Google maps puts me on the WOD, then a left on Hunter Station Road, a right on Lawyers Road, a left on Birdfoot Lane, and a right on Stuart Mill/669.
I am guessing these roads are not so safe for bicycle riders (?). Any intelligence or advice would be greatly appreciated. I’m always happy to take a longer route if it’s safer, and I don’t mind hills.
I have a week to figure this out. If it’s too risky I will use a car, but who wants to drive when you can bike.

For Fairfax, those are basically bicycle luxury roads. If you check out the strava heat map you’ll see that they’re pretty heavily used (they’re part of one of my go-to loops). There are hills. There are definitely no better options. The most dicey part (IMO) is the “dark”. If you’re really lit up it should be ok, but I can certainly see being hesitant to ride these in the dark if unfamiliar. And if “dark” coincides with “rush hour” that does change the traffic profile.

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After 10 years I’d run the drive train on my old “everything bike” into the ground. I tossed around the idea of just adding a new bike but I really like how it fits and trying to buy a bike during the pandemic seemed…not fun. So after months of assembling parts from a half dozen different sources I turned my old 8×3 mechanical disk bike into a RX400-based 2×10 hydraulic disc bike with 46/30 up front and 11-32 in the back. Original range was 32-117 gear inches, new range is 25-112 gear inches. So a little off the top that I never used, and a low that can take a full load up a pretty serious slope at about the slowest speed that’s practical without falling over or being easier to just walk. Perfect range to spend the whole day on the big ring if I’m out by myself on the road, or on the little ring if I’m toodling along with the family on trails. Also added inline levers for the bar top, highly recommended for a bike that spends a lot of time on shared trails. Shifting is crisp, brake feel is smooth, gearing is just right–shimano finally made what I was looking for when they put together the GRX line, without having to agonize over what combination of road & mountain & non-series components will work properly together.

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@accordioneur 211622 wrote:

The road crossings of the nearby W&OD frustrate me. In many places bikes have stop signs while the cars do not, which means we should stop for them. Still, many drivers will stop for trail traffic – but since one can never be sure what drivers will do, if I see cars approaching a crossing I will stop at even if they appear to be stopping, which leads to this “After you”, “No, after you”, “No, after you” kind of standoff. Sometimes a car in one direction or one lane will stop for me but I still won’t go because I’m not sure what other vehicles hurtling towards me from the other direction, or in the adjacent lane, or both, will do. Then, just when I see the second car giving enough indication of stopping that I feel confident entering the intersection, the first one will give up on waiting for me and will start to roll.

I almost like it better in the western section of the trail, where I find that cars don’t stop for trail users unless they have stop signs – at least there’s no ambiguity.

It’s better than the fairfax county parkway trail where there are no stop signs for trail users, cars don’t stop for peds/cyclists in a crosswalk with a walk signal, and the cars are often overtaking at high speed so you can’t even see them coming. Also note that most of the stop signs on the W&OD are unenforceable, and are just there to make things more confusing and less safe.

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@dbb 211614 wrote:

Maybe some political leaders might be able to encourage the local police departments to do more that an two afternoons twice a year enforcement effort. I’d expect it would be somewhat like fishing in a stocked pond. Ideally it would include citations and fines but I suppose queuing up the violators for a half hour or so and giving them a warning might have some effect. Maybe the timeout would have some value.

I mean, sure, if you want them to hand out tickets to cyclists for not stopping at the trail stop signs.

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I used to think that maybe through education and outreach we could change things so we didn’t have roads entirely oriented around moving cars through an area. Now I’ve seen that we can’t even get people to wear masks during a pandemic without that turning into a ridiculous political culture war, and have no hope for improvements in something as controversial as human-oriented infrastructure in my lifetime.

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The number of drivers who run into parked cars, buildings, etc., is mind boggling. Couple weeks ago a guy drove into a parked car across the street under a streetlight on a perfectly straight stretch of road. (I suspect speed and phone may have been factors…)

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@JorgeGortex 211559 wrote:

What can we do to put pressure on those in charge of the MVT trail and other areas to get real fixes done in a reasonable amount of time?

reallocate an itty-bitty portion of the road maintenance budget?

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@ctankcycles 211430 wrote:

There is no potable water

Did the visitor center close?

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@huskerdont 211326 wrote:

Correct, of course–I was being a bit facetious.

I mean, if we really want to make fun of overkill on the C&O, let’s talk about the number of fat bikes popping up there these days…

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@Steve O 211320 wrote:

In my experience when I have encountered cars on trails they have been more like comic relief than any sort of danger. Some confused driver has gotten lost and is either stopped or crawling along trying to figure out what to do. These cases would almost always have been avoided with better design and signage – no bollard required.

This. For some reason most of the local jurisdictions are convinced that a bollard is the only possible thing to do at an intersection. They’ll point to various instances of cars on the W&OD or other trails, and if you go and look at where the cars went on the trail you’ll see what looks like a road or a driveway, maybe with a little 8×10 inch sign off to the side saying “motor vehicles prohibited”. The possibility of painting the surface with a giant NO CARS or somesuch is seemingly unimaginable.

And the idea of making the trail wider but split with a median so that cyclists & pedestrians don’t have to squeeze into a tiny space between bollards at just the point where there is a maximum of complicated and rushed maneuvering is completely out of bounds.

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