N. Quincy St. Protected Bike Lanes are not going to be easy

Last year, the Arlington Action Committee, with support from the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, launched a campaign called Bike Friendly Ballston to try to get Arlington County to install a protected bike lane (also called a cycletrack) to connect the Custis Trail to the heart of Ballston.

Since then, Arlington County staff have been studying the idea between Fairfax and Glebe. In September they had a meeting with the Action Committee and other advocates and recently noted in a memo that the project is more difficult than other such facilities in the county. 

The road width and possible impacts to parking are the main problems staff need to overcome. The width varies widely between 44 and 70 feet which makes a single, standard cross section challenging. As a result urrent and future planned curb lines will need to be modified to fit the PBLs in. The PBLs will have a significant impact on street parking, which will impact existing and planned developments such as Mosaic Park. Construction on Mosaic Park will start this year, which will impact adjacent sections of the road. 

In addition previous public meetings have created an expectation of curbside parking and some frontage has been locked in by some developments.

They aren't giving up though, and a retrofit may coincide with the repaving and striping of N Quincy St currently scheduled for 2017. 

  Implementation of protected bike lanes will have a significant impact on available on-street parking. This will impact existing developments as well as other planned developments such as Mosaic Park.  Mosaic Park is expected to begin construction in late 2016, which will impact the section of N Quincy adjacent to the project with construction staging and operations. Community and Development  Previous outreach efforts to the community may have set an expectation for parking along N Quincy St and intersecting side streets.  Some curb frontage is “locked in” by existing site conditions for some of the adjacent developments

Comments

[South Arlington]

The 'concerns' about parking are a joke, considering there's a massive public parking garage (with under-priced rates to boot) all of 2 blocks away...