Making East Falls Church more bikeable and walkable

The draft version of the East Falls Church Plan is available for viewing. There was an open house on this last Monday (if someone attended and has thoughts to share that would be great). From the plan:

To better serve cyclists and pedestrians, the East Falls Church Task Force recommends:

1. Installing bicycle racks on the street at entrances to stores, offices, and other residential and commercial locations.
2. Providing indoor storage and changing/ showering facilities in new developments.
3. Examine prohibiting “right turn on red” and consider providing an advanced “Walk” signal before potentially conflicting crossing vehicular traffic is allowed to proceed.
4. Marking a connected bicycle lane/boulevard network.
5. Adding and improving selected shared use trails.
6. Assure that all pedestrian curb cuts  are perpendicular to curb and inline with the crossing, not diagonal, where feasible.
7. Provide for lane sharing by both vehicles and bicycles in curb lanes (“Sharrow”) where they are an appropriate substitute for a bicycle lane.

Further they recommend that the county

• Provide bicycle lanes along both sides of Sycamore Street, Lee Highway, Fairfax Drive, Westmoreland (west of 25th) and Washington Boulevard throughout and adjacent to the study area within Arlington County.
• Provide generous facilities in and adjacent to the Metrorail Station to accommodate bicyclists including but not limited to bike racks, covered bike storage, bike lockers and bike sharing services.
• Designate on-street bicycle routes for the segments of Westmoreland Street, Winchester Street, Little Falls Road, 16th Street, 18th Street, 19th Street and 19th Road.

For the W&OD Trail, they recommend that the county

• Undertake, in cooperation with Falls Church and the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority, a study of options to connect the W&OD Trail from west of Lee Highway to east of Sycamore Street including grade separations at both roads. Several alternatives should be studied excluding any shared use trail within Isaac Crossman Park.
• The East Falls Church Task Force recommends studying the feasibility of implementing one or more bicycle demonstration projects (such as bike boxes, bicycle boulevards or Cycle Tracks) in East Falls Church.

They also discuss the Oil Company Site which is east of Lee Higway and south of the W&OD. Apparantly there is part of an old rail trestle there (I've never noticed it) and that is recommended for historic designation. Any development of the site would include facilities to support trail users.

Comments

[Shawn]

I'd love to see that area developed a bit more (including a bike facility where you could get flats fixed) but I'm concerned that the area on washington blvd as it crosses 66 and the metro tracks is so unfriendly to peds now, that no one will want to walk across it. I think you'd need development ON the overpass to make it feel less like a spaghetti on-ramp interchange. Right now it's very car friendly and one of the worst parts of my commute.