Take Action: Extend the Quincy St PBL / A Critical Link to Fairfax County / eScooters

[chris_s]

Support an extension of the Quincy Street Protected Bike Lane, bike facilities on 5th St S (a critical connection to Fairfax County) and give feedback on e-scooters, e-bikes and other shared use mobility devices.

Here are three things you can do for better biking in Arlington this week.

Want this in your inbox each week? Sign-up here at Sustainable Mobility for Arlington County.

[Judd]

I attended this meeting tonight along with several other forum members. It doesn’t look like the materials from tonight are on the project page yet. There were a handful of people there that were there to defend parking spots and were not very kind to staff.

There was a nice handout about how kids get to school at Washington-Liberty. About 25% of them do it by bike.

There were three concepts presented. Concept A and B had improvements for pedestrians including additional crosswalks and stop lines and also some paint (and maybe flexposts?) at some some the intersections to create wider turning radiuses. There was not too much difference in either of these concepts for bikes other than creating a 4 foot wide bike lane north of Washington Blvd where the bike lane currently disappears into sharrows.

Concept C included a paint buffered bike lane along with several pedestrian improvements.

It was good to see several friends there and have a drink with them afterwards.

[sjclaeys]

Was planning to attend but work ran late. Just extending the bike lanes so they connect at Washington Blvd would have a high return on investment for safety.

[Judd]

@sjclaeys 191333 wrote:

Was planning to attend but work ran late. Just extending the bike lanes so they connect at Washington Blvd would have a high return on investment for safety.

There will be opportunity to comment online which I hope you will do. I filled out a form yesterday but I always think of things afterwards. All three of the concepts would provide a full bike lane. Concept A and Concept B had just a four foot wide bike lane at the part north of Washington Boulevard where the bike lane currently drops out. We’ll benefit from lots of feedback that the bike lane should not be less than a minimum 5′ wide which is the NACTO recommended width, although 6′ is the preferred width.

[zsionakides]

@Judd 191326 wrote:

I attended this meeting tonight along with several other forum members. It doesn’t look like the materials from tonight are on the project page yet. There were a handful of people there that were there to defend parking spots and were not very kind to staff.

There was a nice handout about how kids get to school at Washington-Liberty. About 25% of them do it by bike.

There were three concepts presented. Concept A and B had improvements for pedestrians including additional crosswalks and stop lines and also some paint (and maybe flexposts?) at some some the intersections to create wider turning radiuses. There was not too much difference in either of these concepts for bikes other than creating a 4 foot wide bike lane north of Washington Blvd where the bike lane currently disappears into sharrows.

Concept C included a paint buffered bike lane along with several pedestrian improvements.

It was good to see several friends there and have a drink with them afterwards.

If they are following the NACTO guidelines, then a buffered or protected bike lane would be the recommended treatment along Quincy St depending on the traffic volume. If the traffic volume is above 6k, which it may be, then a PBL would be warranted.

[sjclaeys]

@zsionakides 191348 wrote:

If they are following the NACTO guidelines, then a buffered or protected bike lane would be the recommended treatment along Quincy St depending on the traffic volume. If the traffic volume is above 6k, which it may be, then a PBL would be warranted.

This answered a question I had about what are the criteria for installing a PBL. If the cite is handy, that would be great. Otherwise, I can search for it. My subjective impression is that the current strategy is to push for PBLs almost wherever there is road resurfacing. Having objective criteria to identify where PBLs would be most effective seems to be a better approach.

[dasgeh]

@sjclaeys 191355 wrote:

This answered a question I had about what are the criteria for installing a PBL. If the cite is handy, that would be great. Otherwise, I can search for it. My subjective impression is that the current strategy is to push for PBLs almost wherever there is road resurfacing. Having objective criteria to identify where PBLs would be most effective seems to be a better approach.

May I refer you to page 47 of Arlington’s own Bicycle Element of the Master Transportation Plan, adopted unanimously by the County Board in April of this year. Conveniently, the Board added language saying that those NACTO guidelines are the MINIMUM acceptable facility (see page 49). The current repaving seems to be part of project 3-05 in the plan, which specifically calls for a PBL on Quincy (page 57).

So yeah, none of the plans are 100% compliant with the new Bike Element, though it seems like option C is with the exception of this one side of this one block.

[Judd]

@dasgeh 191372 wrote:

May I refer you to page 47 of Arlington’s own Bicycle Element of the Master Transportation Plan, adopted unanimously by the County Board in April of this year. Conveniently, the Board added language saying that those NACTO guidelines are the MINIMUM acceptable facility (see page 49). The current repaving seems to be part of project 3-05 in the plan, which specifically calls for a PBL on Quincy (page 57).

So yeah, none of the plans are 100% compliant with the new Bike Element, though it seems like option C is with the exception of this one side of this one block.

Thank you for saving me some time on locating this for my email comments.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[sjclaeys]

@dasgeh 191372 wrote:

May I refer you to page 47 of Arlington’s own Bicycle Element of the Master Transportation Plan, adopted unanimously by the County Board in April of this year. Conveniently, the Board added language saying that those NACTO guidelines are the MINIMUM acceptable facility (see page 49). The current repaving seems to be part of project 3-05 in the plan, which specifically calls for a PBL on Quincy (page 57).

So yeah, none of the plans are 100% compliant with the new Bike Element, though it seems like option C is with the exception of this one side of this one block.

Cool, so where does one go to determine the “Target Max. Motor Vehicle Volume (ADT)” for a given street or portion of a street?

[zsionakides]

@sjclaeys 191410 wrote:

Cool, so where does one go to determine the “Target Max. Motor Vehicle Volume (ADT)” for a given street or portion of a street?

From VDOT’s estimated counts, that part of Quincy St is 12k per day – https://www.virginiadot.org/info/resources/Traffic_2018/AADT_000_Arlington_2018.pdf. By NACTO that should require PBLs.

[Henry]

Sharing the follow-up email from the County sent to to those interested in the project. On a personal note, I went early to the public meeting at W-L on Wednesday May 29 and witnessed pretty strong home-owner opposition to the project. If you support these, I suggest you weigh in at every opportunity, because I am confident they will.

From the County:

Hello there,

I wanted to follow-up with you about the Ballston-Cherrydale Mulitmodal Improvements project. As noted, N Quincy Street between the I-66 overpass and Fairfax Drive will be repaved and remarked in Summer 2019. Arlington’s routine maintenance and repaving program offers a low-cost opportunity to improve the safety of our streets, and staff have developed three concept plans for the Ballston-Cherrydale Multimodal Safety Improvement project.

If you or other community members were unable to attend the open house last week, the proposed concepts and meeting materials are posted on the project page. We invite you to review the materials and provide your feedback via our online tool until June 28.

I appreciate your help in sharing this information with your community and neighbors. Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions,

Erin

[dasgeh]

@Henry 191618 wrote:

Sharing the follow-up email from the County sent to to those interested in the project. On a personal note, I went early to the public meeting at W-L on Wednesday *June 5*and witnessed pretty strong home-owner opposition to the project. If you support these, I suggest you weigh in at every opportunity, because I am confident they will.

Thanks Henry (and FTFY)

It’s really frustrating that this is how the County makes decisions. We just had an extensive public process for the Bike Element, where the County Board weighed in to tell staff they weren’t going far enough. And then in the first test, staff doesn’t even propose one option that is consistent with the Bike Element that was just adopted. And in not doing so, they have skewed public perception — the public thinks that a compromise would be something between A and C, when C is already a compromise down from what the County Board adopted as policy in the Bike Element.

[Steve O]

Shall the Board be informed, then? Let them know that staff is not following the policies they just adopted?

[sjclaeys]

Below are the comments that I provided:

“As an Arlington resident cyclist that regularly commutes along this route, Concept C is the best because it provides the most separation between vehicle and bicycle traffic. However, all three options are an improvement by providing continuous protection. I do not think that bollards or any other kind of protected bike lane is needed as long as sufficient traffic calming measures are incorporated into the plan and there is sufficient enforcement of speeding and parking restrictions.”

[mstone]

@dasgeh 191683 wrote:

Thanks Henry (and FTFY)

It’s really frustrating that this is how the County makes decisions. We just had an extensive public process for the Bike Element, where the County Board weighed in to tell staff they weren’t going far enough. And then in the first test, staff doesn’t even propose one option that is consistent with the Bike Element that was just adopted. And in not doing so, they have skewed public perception — the public thinks that a compromise would be something between A and C, when C is already a compromise down from what the County Board adopted as policy in the Bike Element.

Fairfax does the same thing. It makes it seriously hard to justify the effort of getting a pike/ped plan put together in the first place, since it ends up not actually meaning anything at all.

[Author]

Posts