Town of Vienna, VA – Page 30

Post 215: Accidents involving bicycles along Maple

This is a continuation of my prior post, same data source. Bicyclists who get hit by cars along Maple mostly do so when riding in the roadway. Secondarily, while riding in a crosswalk. Over the period 2015-2019 (to date), there was one reportable accident involving injury to a bicyclist who was on the sidewalk, crossing a driveway along Maple Avenue.

As in the prior post, the blue dot marks the accident scene. Same minor caveat applies: The DMV only plots the accident location when they have GPS latitude and longitude data but they appear to have that information for most if not all accidents in Vienna.

Sidewalk, Chipotle shopping center driveway

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Post 214: Accidents involving pedestrians along Maple Avenue

This page is an introduction to some easy ways to view traffic accident data in Virginia, including interactive maps showing the exact location of each accident via Google Street View. The point is that you can look at at all pedestrian injuries along Maple for the past five years to see that the sidewalks along Maple are not dangerous. You incur some small risk when you cross the road. The risk of vehicular injury while walking down the Maple Avenue sidewalk appears to be negligible.

Continue reading Post 214: Accidents involving pedestrians along Maple Avenue

Post #211: Bicycle Advisory Committee meeting, 3/26/2019

I attended the 7 PM 3/26/2019 meeting of the Town of Vienna Bicycle Advisory Committee (BAC). The BAC reports to the Town’s Transportation Safety Commission (TSC), and from there to the Town Council.

This BAC matters, in the context of MAC zoning, due to the Town’s much-hyped multi-modal transportation study, aka, the traffic study. “Multi-modal” means that in addition to cars, that study will include travel by bus, bike, foot, and possibly other means. Our Town government bike experts should matter in the ensuing discussion.

I recorded the meeting, and if you click this Google Drive link, your browser should open up an audio player. (If not, you can download it and listen to it.) Many parts are unintelligible as speakers frequently did not use microphones. Click here to get to my index of that recording (what was being discussed, when) is in this post, below.

In theory, the Town will post its own recording, but if so, I have yet to figure out where they are going to post it. Click here to see my final section on Town governance for a further discussion.

Otherwise, the first part of this post is about Capital Bikeshare. Continue reading Post #211: Bicycle Advisory Committee meeting, 3/26/2019

Post #205: Some data on assisted living

Edited 3/22/2019 to soften my conclusions about Sunrise and 100 beds. Edited late 3/22/2019 to explain what all those eight-bed assisted living facilities are.

On this page, I assemble, map, and tabulate some fairly hard-to-find data on a) location of all licensed assisted living facilities in Fairfax County, and b) the base monthly rates charged by most of them (2017 data).

Surprisingly, the table of monthly rates goes a long way toward explaining Sunrise’s behavior at the last Planning Commission meeting. When questioned about five floors in their building, they were prepared. They whipped out several other sets of building plans, all of which had more-or-less the same number of beds as their original plan. And now I see that the Sunrise buildings in Fairfax (or, at least, for which I could find monthly price data) mostly cluster tightly between 100 and 120 beds. It looks like they build these for a standard operating model. So, one way or the other, I would guess, they’re going to get their 100 beds.

Continue reading Post #205: Some data on assisted living

Seriously?

Seriously, we pay them to do this? Part 2 (Part 1 is here.)

The Department of Planning and Zoning is going to have two “Community Workshops” on MAC zoning. Originally, at the 2/11/2018 Town Council work session, these had been discussed as if they were, in part, legitimate attempts to gauge community sentiment about MAC. But anyone who looks at the details of these workshops should realize that’s nonsense. I’ve already covered that here. Continue reading Seriously?

“Public” meetings and a Town that still just doesn’t get it, 3/13/2019, updated 3/14/2019

This evening, I went to Town Hall to attend and record the 5:30 PM meeting of the “Maple Avenue Commercial (MAC) Design Guidelines Working Group“. I am fairly sure this constitutes an open public meeting, under the definitions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. And it was, in fact, announced on the Town Calendar.

Continue reading “Public” meetings and a Town that still just doesn’t get it, 3/13/2019, updated 3/14/2019

Reston rethinks increased density. Vienna doesn’t. 3/13/2019

Just in case you may have missed it, there’s been quite a controversy going on in Reston over increased building density. The County was on a roll to rewrite the zoning there to allow higher density (more persons and dwelling units per acre). They got a lot of pushback from the citizens. And now, that plan for increased density has been indefinitely deferred.

It’s not clear at this point whether that deferral will be the sort of sham that the Vienna MAC moratorium is shaping up to be. But there is at least the possibility that they may genuinely try to rethink higher density in Reston. (See this page for my talk with a Board of Supervisors candidate Parker Messick, whose main platform plank is opposition to excess development in the Hunter Mill district.)

You may wonder why I call the MAC moratorium a sham. Well, there are a lot of reasons. Unlike my usual writing, I’m not even going to provide citations as to source (links) here. If you’ve been reading my website, you’ll know that I have been pointing out these facts (with a handful of guesses) for some time.

Continue reading Reston rethinks increased density. Vienna doesn’t. 3/13/2019

Board of Supervisors candidate Parker Messick, 3/7/2019

I had the privilege of chatting with Parker Messick earlier this week, at Caffe Amouri. He’s one of four candidates seeking election to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors from the Hunter Mill district, following the announced retirement Supervisor Catherine Hudgins.

This was a first for me, in many ways, so let me share a few things that I learned. Continue reading Board of Supervisors candidate Parker Messick, 3/7/2019

Somebody is confused about the Town’s traffic study, 3-4-2019

Maybe I’m confused. Maybe Town Council is confused. Either way, one of us has to be wrong about this.

The Vienna Town Council has made much out of a “traffic study” that Town staff commissioned. But it sure sounds to me as if none of them has actually read the scope of work for the study they voted to fund. (here, as a .pdf.)

I wrote a page almost two months ago, where I analyzed the description of the proposed traffic study. (Read it, in blue, halfway down this page.) My opinion then was that it would be useless from the standpoint of assessing the long-run impact of MAC on traffic. Instead, the point of the study appeared to be to speed up development by helping the Town to develop a standard transportation “proffer” that it would expect all MAC developers to pay. Continue reading Somebody is confused about the Town’s traffic study, 3-4-2019

Pedestrian-friendly? 3/4/2019

(This map was generated by walkscore.com. You can check out the walkability of your neighborhood by visiting their website and typing in your address.)

Town government has repeatedly said that MAC will make Maple Avenue more “pedestrian-friendly”. But that’s … questionable, at best. And in some key cases, I am almost sure that MAC-redeveloped property will make Maple less safe for pedestrians. Continue reading Pedestrian-friendly? 3/4/2019