Arlington County has chosen a design (pdf) for its upcoming rehabilitation of the Carlin Springs bridge over George Mason Drive.
The current bridge has five-foot sidewalks and no accommodation for cyclists. The new bridge will have 8-foot sidewalks and 5-foot bike lanes on both sides. The rest of Carlin Springs Drive does not currently have bike lanes, but it is important to plan for the future by including them now. Had the County not included better bike/ped accommodations, then those decisions would have been difficult to change for 30 or more years.
For more information about this project, click here.
=========================
Steve Offutt is a member of the Arlington Bicycle Advisory Committee
The existing bridge accommodates bicyclists quite adequately with four ordinary travel lanes and a relatively low speed limit. Thus, it's not true that the current bridge has "no accommodation for cyclists".
One could accurately state that the existing bridge has no *special* accommodation for cyclists, but whether bike lanes are truly needed or would provide any significant benefit is another matter entirely.
I'm not opposed to these particular bike lanes, but I don't think they make much of a difference either way. OTOH, the wider sidewalks are very much needed, and without the bike lanes, these sidewalks could be substantially wider.
Most Arlington roadways should be designed and operated so that bike lanes are rarely necessary.
Posted by: Allen Muchnick | December 11, 2011 at 11:28 PM
Studies have shown bike lanes like this increase bicycle-automobile collisions by a factor of at least 2. What provisions have been made on this bridge design to prevent these conflicts? Are there underpasses or overpasses for the bike lane at the intersections at each end? Or does this design present the same old dangers (right hooks and left crosses) that the Department of Transportation has managed to avoid confronting for decades?
Posted by: Ian Cooper | December 11, 2011 at 08:18 AM