Falls Church to polish up their section of the W&OD Trail and Park

The City of Falls Church has been working on a new Master Plan for the section of the W&OD Trail and Park that arcs across the northern part of the city. They'll be hosting an open house about the draft version of that plan on Jan. 23 starting at 10:00 at the Falls Church Community Center’s Community Room at 223 Little Falls Street.

The plan includes several proposals that will make the trail more appealing. For starters it proposes providing separate walking and biking trails as seen above, and that the trail to be lit from 5am to 9pm, to match the hours the trail's opening hours since they were expanded in 2013. 

At 6 at-grade crossings the road would narrow down to 22' through the linear park with sidewalks on each and raised crosswalks at the trail intersections. This will slow cars and shorten the crossing distance. 

On the east side of town, a second branch of the trail would be built. The W&OD spur trail along Four Mile Run that currently ends in Isaac Crossman Park would be extended along the stream, crossing over N. Washington (Route 29) on a grade-separated bridge and then reconnecting to the W&OD near Little Falls Street. This would become the primary route for the trail bringing it through the city instead of along its edge; and also away from the current and awful Route 29 crossing near Fairfax Drive. 

To enhance the park feature of the facility, four "activity centers" are proposed for key points along the trail.

Trees would be planted along each side of the trail to create a canopy and define the edges of the 100' wide park and

For most of its length, the W&OD Park is 100 feet wide. However, inconsistent landscaping blurs the line between public and private spaces and hides the full scale of the park. Additionally, several spaces in the park are overgrown with invasive plant species.

The plan also calls for steps to reduce speeds. These include warning signs, designing curves into the trail and - unfortunately - rumble strips. And it all fits into a larger park and trail plan.

This would become the nicest section of the trail by far (and perhaps the nicest trail in the region). One could further hope that it would encourage other jurisdictions to similarly enhance, separate and improve their pieces of the trail. 

Comments

[drumz]

The at grade crossing help would be nice. Reproritizing the trail as the main artery would also be nice and reduce some conflict with people being bad at the crosswalks there.

The whole trail does get fuzzy right at East Falls Church Metro which is a shame for how much of a transfer spot that is but the neighborhoods surrounding the area are easy enough to navigate.

It looks to be outside of the scope of the project and may need to be tied to redevelopment but signing/improving a route behind the Giant shopping center over towards WFC and the schools should also be done and you'd have a nice trail connect to both Falls Church stations and a very direct trail or quiet road route along Falls Church's main commercial areas.

[washcycle]

One thing I should have mentioned is that this piece of the W&OD trail will serve as both the Custis/I-66 Trail and the W&OD Trail once the I-66 trail is completed (between Dunn Loring and Bel Air the two merge). So it's smart to upgrade this portion.

[west ender]

I wasn't going to comment but I wanted to just to vocalize how good a project this seems to be.

[Mike]

@drumz: it won't be fuzzy there at all with the new alignment. Running through Crossman park always seemed like a no-brainer, so I'd assumed there was some kind of serious obstacle to doing so.

[drumz]

Sorry, I meant it was fuzzy. It definitely won't be post-fixes.

[Grant]

Residents of the newly minted Se7en (formally the bland and untenable Seven Corners) approve!