Very cool!
[Not my photo: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...ype=1&theater]
Very cool!
[Not my photo: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...ype=1&theater]
Does this mean the road has been repaved? Great place for a station.
Better than repaved. Bike lanes on both sides. Street lighting. Landscaping to be added soon.
The 395 interchange is a separate road project. The entire interchange will be redone but not immediately. The most recent update is that work will start in late 2014 or early 2015. That project will remove one of the ramps to 395 and shorten another one. This could leave enough space for a bike trail from Boundary Channel Drive to the Humpback Bridge, far enough from the small DOD structure on the Boundary Channel to satisfy DOD security concerns, whatever those may be. It would be a short bike ride from Long Bridge Drive to the Humpback Bridge underpass and the MVT, if everything goes as planned.
http://www.crystalcity.org/area/tran...ve-interchange
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Last edited by PotomacCyclist; 11-15-2013 at 12:50 PM.
There will also be a bike station at the Boeing HQ building, to the south of the park. The concrete pad for the station has already been built. The station will be installed after the courtyard and building are finished. That is scheduled for the 2nd half of next year, maybe in the fall?
I'm guessing that the Marine Corps Marathon will head up Long Bridge Drive next year. The race organizers had included that road as part of the 2012 route, because the road had been scheduled to be completed by mid 2012. They had to change the course when the road reconstruction was delayed.
Now that the road is finished, I think the MCM will include it for the 2014 race. It's better than running through the Pentagon parking lots. The road will look nice, once the landscaping is finished.
[I'm thinking about signing up for the 2014 race. If I do, I'll have to train properly for it this time. I ran the 2012 race on relatively low run mileage. Triathlon training helps, but you still need to run a lot more than I did last year. My last 5 or 6 miles were pretty ugly. I didn't run it this year, though I watched some of it.]
Just for comparison's sake (and for nostalgia, because we know everyone misses those old potholes so much).
This is what Long Bridge Drive used to look like just a couple years ago, when it was known as Old Jefferson Davis Highway:
(From ARLnow: http://www.arlnow.com/2011/12/20/rec...-set-for-2012/)
***
This is how Yelp reviewers described the road in 2008 and 2009 (from reviews of the self storage business there: http://www.yelp.com/biz/public-storage-arlington-2):
"I can handle the fact that this place is located in [the] most industrial "place to dump the body you just murdered" area. I can handle the fact that just driving there will kick up enough dust to give you an asthma attack."
"I was here over the weekend helping a friend move stuff to storage [...] when I realized that I had been here before. The previous trip was an accident - we had taken a wrong turn off the highway (this is why I can't drive in VA!) and it is SKETCHHHHY!!
Jefferson Davis Hwy turns to this half-dirt-stone road and you just keep going down it before you actually see anything. It'd be super creepy to drive there at night so I'm really glad we were going in daylight hours. ... Decent place to store stuff in...just make sure you come during daylight hours and bring a friend."
Last edited by PotomacCyclist; 11-15-2013 at 03:25 PM.
So glad the crappy road surface has been taken care of. I rode this way after snowmaggedon as part of my route to avoid the MVT and occasionally since then, and it was always less than pleasant, though it was at least different.
Also glad the old name is gone. Now if only we could rename Rte. 1 where it's called Jefferson Davis Highway and officially drop the state's Lee-Jackson designation for Martin Luther King Day (says I, a carpetbagger)... I won't hold my breath.
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