TheWashCycle

New Army Navy design widens the protected bikeway, adds protection

The northern half mile of Army Navy Drive could sport a 12-foot wide protected bikeway, with protected intersections by late 2023 according to new plans presented this week by the County. The new 30% design makes several improvements over a prior design that already had a lot to like. 

The road diet design presented in 2018 created a bi-directional bikeway on the south side of the street, transit lanes in the Joyce to Hayes section and landscaped medians. The new design makes a host of changes to make the bikeway better. For starters, the bikeway, a bidirectional protected bike lane, will be 12 feet wide instead of 10, thus bringing them up to the width recommended by NACTO. 

At Joyce, they created a protected intersection for most traffic (bikes going south on Joyce are not protected, but there are no bike lanes on Joyce north of Army Navy). 

At the Pentagon City Mall they also added a protected intersection corner island and protected the bike lane in the SE corner.

At Hayes, they moved the NB Hayes bike lane to the outside, to the right of the right turn lane; added an island and bend-out to the SW corner and started the protected SB bike lane on Hayes.

At Fern they added a bend out and island to the SW corner and to the east of that they've added trees to the PBL buffer (not shown)

Eads is basically the same for cyclists, but they are working on a protected bike lane on Eads as part of a separate project. 

East of Eads the buffer between the PBL and road traffic is changed from a striped buffer to a raised one with trees in it and it's made much larger to allow cars to queue there when turning. Drivers would cross the bikeway and then wait in the buffer to turn on to Army Navy treating them like two separate roads. 

This is so much better than the previous plan, IMO. But still there's opportunities to make more improvements, as this twitter thread notes. 

Even though the meeting is over, they're still looking for comments. 

Army Navy road diet would make room for a PBL

Shortly after I wrote about this project in January, Arlington County had a public workshop about the Army Navy Drive Complete Streets project.  Some more material from that meeting is now available. Nothing official has changed about the concept so far, and yet it's possible that the workshop results in some changes. 

On the bike network map above, you can see how Army Navy connects so many of the facilities together and becomes part of the Columbia Pike to 14th Street Bridge route. 

The project will create a bi-directional Protected Bike Lane on the south side of the street, transit lanes for the Joyce to Hayes section and landscaped medians. It will make room for this by reducing travel lanes. No word on which lanes will be for Navy and which for Army.

On the west side, the bike lane will pass behind a floating bus stop, but won't extend the bike lane on Joyce to connect to it...

and on the east it will have bike boxes and a connection to the shared lanes on 12th.

There are quite a few driveways on this stretch so careful attention will need to be paid to how these cross the PBL. The PBLs will only be 10' wide, which is 2' less than NACTO recommends. And then I have a lot of questions about how cyclists will transition to and from the PBL, but I like the general idea of this for sure. 

Construction is expected to begin in spring 2020, and be complete in spring 2022. That's roughly the time that the new Army Navy Country Club Access Road, which will provide cyclists access from the Columbia Pike area to Pentagon City, goes forward.

April 2010 Arlington BAC Meeting Notes

As always, I didn't attend the meeting, so this is based on the draft minutes. My Arlington BAC notes often have errors.

County and VDOT paving and Bike Lanes - David Goodman with Arlington County Staff reported that he is working with the paving planners to try include bike lanes and sharrows in upcoming paving projects. He found there there is a lot of commonality and overlay between cyclist needs and upcoming paving projects. This could bring additional mileage to the bike network. Goodman mentioned a few examples during the meeting including:
- N. Sycamore Street from Williamsburg Blvd. to 19th in East Falls Church
- S. Eades From Glebe to Army/Navy
- Arlington Blvd service road from Rhodes to Arlington Blvd
- Quincy Street (Military Road – around the library and high school)
- S. Walter Reed Drive
- Walter Reed from Four Mile Run to Pollard
- N. Harrison Street from Lee Highway to the Custis Trail
- N. Jackson Street
- S. 23rd Street
- Army-Navy Drive from Joyce up the hill to the country club
- S 28th street
- Shirlington Rd and Kenmore up to Nauck
- Fairfax Drive (“parking lot” area near church)
- S. 12th Street from Quincy to Cleveland
- N. Highland to Lee Highway
- Westmoreland Street from the WO&D Trail to Williamsburg Blvd
- A section of Military Trail (North)
- Eades to Army/Navy Drive (bike lanes need to be “refreshed”)

These projects could add at least 10 miles of new lanes and sharrows. 

David Goodman also reported that VDOT will be paving all of Lee Highway from Fairfax Drive from Glebe to
Kirkwood. Possible bike lanes may be added.

After all of this paving is completed there will be an additional 18 miles in the bike network (sharrows/lanes),
½ of that will come from VDOT paving.

Pentagon Trail Update – There is a Federal Study of alternatives to driving across the 14th Street Bridge currently underway. This study is funded by a $200,000 earmark secured by Representative Jim Moran and it includes study of a bike connection to the bridge under the new Humpback Bridge. The proposed trail would go from the Mt. Vernon Trail, under the Humpback Bridge, along the south side of Boundary Channel (where the marina is), past the Pentagon pumping station on a VDOT easement where it would connect to Boundary Channel Drive. This would create a path to Long Bridge Park without having to go over the parkway. Building Humpback Bridge with space for a trail, but no connection to Boundary Channel Drive would fail to realize the bridge's entire potential and create a trail to nowhere.

This project is on the fast track and the 100% plans are due soon. David Patton asked for input on the Phase II of this project, which studies how to connect cyclists from the west side of the Pentagon to the new connector. He proposed that the most likely solution would come from the new Columbia Pike redesign, and would take a route along Joyce Street, Army Navy Drive, 12th street and the bike lanes on Jefferson Davis. However, all of these streets have their own unique issues including: safety issues under the network of bridges, little space for bike lanes, streetcar locations, etc. There are funds, in addition to the 14th Street Bridge funds, for this project. The BAC responded that they can not provide feedback until there is some understanding of where the street car tracks are going to be.