Post #478: Bus strike

Above:  Fairfax Connector 463 bus route.

Just in case you hadn’t heard, the Fairfax Connector bus workers are on strike.  You can read about it at this link.

Per Fairfax County, it looks like the main Maple Avenue bus (the 463 route, Vienna Metro to Tyson’s Metro via Maple Avenue) should run on a Sunday schedule (hourly, 8 AM to 8 PM).  But if you read the details, that’s not guaranteed.  It will depend on how many drivers show up for work despite the strike.

According to Fairfax County’s Facebook page, the bus tracker website will show incorrect information.  It will continue to show a weekday schedule, so you can’t rely on it to tell you when the next bus is coming.

None of the other Connector routes in Vienna will be running.

Post #474: 11/26/2019 Transportation Safety Commission meeting

I attended part of the TSC meeting last night.  There was a total of three people in the audience.

I brought the situation at the Chick-fil-A drive through to their attention (see just-prior post).  They seemed to understand that this might be hazardous and asked Department of Public Works to look into it.

Otherwise there were just a few things of note.

Rental electric scooters (Post #472 and earlier posts).  They made some small amendments to the “memorandum of understanding” that would govern any rental scooter agreements here in Vienna.  Mostly, they wanted language added that would specifically mention the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), in the sense of banning any scooter parking that would impede ADA-mandated access points.

They also had extensive discussion of the geofencing of Maple, Nutley and possible other streets to limit speeds, with the idea being that scooter users would likely be on the sidewalk on those streets.  There was some discussion of limiting speed to 6 MPH on those roads, but they stuck with the DPW recommendation of 10 MPH.

So, in a nutshell, if rental electric scooters are offered here in Vienna, the rules will look something like this, unless the Town Council changes them at their next meeting:

  • It is legal to ride on the sidewalk (but riding in the road is encouraged where it is safe to do so).
  • Speed limit of 20 MPH, except Maple and Nutley speed limit of 10 MPH (under the assumption that they’ll be most on the sidewalk on those street).
  • You can park them anywhere, but you can’t block any right of way (e.g., sidewalk) and in particular you can’t block any ADA access.  (And obviously, you can’t park them on private property without the property owner’s permission or acceptance.)
  • To enforce that, they are going to ask the vendor to require that each user send a picture of the parked scooter (or some equivalent technology).  Apparently, that system — you need to send a photo of the parked scooter in order to end your trip — is commonly used as a way to enforce reasonable parking of the scooters.

My opinion is that it’s probably wishful thinking to believe that a vendor would offer rental scooters here.  But you never know.  In particular, our Metro ridership (based on Census survey data) tends to be an older, high-income population.  I doubt that rental scooters are likely to generate many trips to Metro.  But again, you never know.

My (scant) observation in Fairfax City was that these were used by most college-age kids, and that the Fairfax City ban against using these on the sidewalks was routinely ignored.  (Per Fairfax City:  “City Code currently prohibits e-scooters, e-bikes, and other vehicles from sidewalks and trails (except on certain designated routes). “)  So even if you don’t like the idea of rental electric scooters on the sidewalks, my guess is, if they are going to be used here, there’s no practical way to keep them off the sidewalks.

One last tidbit:  Apparently, and news to me, electric scooters are allowed on the W&OD.  That was announced by DPW staff at this meeting.  I could find nothing on-line to validate this, not even on the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority website.  Their website notes that e-bikes are allowed, but as far as I can tell, there’s no mention of electric scooters.

Separately:  Unsafe conditions on Kingsley and Tapawingo.  DPW met with citizens regarding unsafe intersections on Kingsley and Tapawingo, on November 19 and 20.  The had a total of about 22 citizens show up to discuss potential changes to those roads and intersections to improve safety.

Post #473: No standards for pedestrian sight lines

This post is a courtesy for the Vienna Transportation Safety Commission (TSC).

The first point is to provide a convenient reference to Post #424, which is my summary of the Chick-fil-A drive-through exit hazard.  In a nutshell, I think that the obstructed view of the sidewalk there constitutes a clear hazard to pedestrians and bicyclists, on what is now a walk-to-school route thanks to the Madison HAWK light.

At tonight’s (11/25/2019) TSC meeting, I’m going to ask the Town to do something about that.

My second point is that there does not seem to be any technical guidance on this issue whatsoever, from either the Virginia Department of Transportation or from Federal sources.  The issue being, specifically, when a driveway meets a sidewalk next to a public road, what constitutes adequate sight lines between drivers in the driveway, and pedestrians on the sidewalk.   (So, not an issue of driver-to-driver sight lines, but driver-to-sidewalk-pedestrian sight lines.)

Best I’ve seen, so far, from VDOT or federal sources, is a vague statement that one should have adequate sight lines.  And that’s in the context of roadway intersections, not driveways entering a roadway.

After considerable searching, I found a handful of municipalities that addressed this exact issue.  Near as I can tell, all of them ask for the area to be kept clear of visual obstructions 10 feet or more back from the sidewalk, when a driveway enters a roadway.  This should be contrasted with the 1-foot distances between the sidewalk and the obstruction (a 5′ tall transformer box) at the Chick-fil-A drive-through exit. 

So, if you were looking for solid evidence that the situation at the Chick-fil-A drive-through exit is hazardous, here are four cities that would have banned it.  These are all standards for vehicle-pedestrian sight lines.

Lincoln, NE (.pdf) says you can have no obstructions with 10 feet of the sidewalk where a driveway enters a street.  Like so:

City of Kirkland, WA requires a 22′ setback, as measured along the sidewalk, but they assume that cars will be moving 10 MPH down a driveway.  Not sure this is relevant.

Bellevue, WA says 14′ from the back edge of the sidewalk must be kept clear, but that’s measured in the middle of the travel lane.

City of Albuquerque requires 11′ be kept clear around residential driveways.

I think this is enough to show that where this issue of pedestrian visibility at driveways is explicitly addressed, the required setbacks from the sidewalk that must be clear of visual obstruction vastly exceed what we have at the Chick-fil-A drive through exit.

Post #472: CORRECTED: Rental electric scooters tonight

Correction:  I attended the meeting and found that my original draft of this was wrong.  Councilman Noble’s idea of geofencing some sidewalks for slower speeds is included in the Town’s plan for this.  As of last night, the idea was to limit scooters to 10 MPH on Maple and Nutley, with the idea that scooters were likely to use the sidewalk on those streets.  The concept was that other streets might be added if “scooters on the sidewalk” became an issue elsewhere in Vienna.

Tonight (11/26/2019), at 8 PM, the Transportation Safety Commission will discuss the Town’s proposed pilot program for rental electric scooters (and other issues).  As I see it, the two key unresolved issues are whether you want to allow rental electric scooters on the sidewalk, and whether you want to allow them to park anywhere (as long as they don’t block the right-of-way.) 

If you need to know the background, see Post #377.  Briefly, repeated from that post:

due to a change in Commonwealth law, the Town needs to have some sort of program in place to regulate the use of rental scooters and bikes.  If not, then on 1/1/2020, the rental and use of such devices is deemed legal, including, if not explicitly barred, use on the sidewalk.  We probably don’t want that …

So it’s not like the Town is going out of its way to attract rental electric scooters.  It’s more a matter of self-defense.  (Though, I must say, my interactions with scooters in the City of Fairfax has been positive so far — see Post #393).

The meeting materials on this topic may be found at this Town of Vienna web page.  The term of art here is SMD for shared mobility device.

After skimming the documents, near as I can tell, this is just a pro-forma adaptation of the same contract that most other jurisdictions are using.  More-or-less, this appears to be the same “cookie-cutter” draft that was presented to Town Council earlier.  It outlines the framework for contracting, and nothing else.

In particular, I’m still uncertain about two key details, sidewalk use and location of “corrals” for parking scooters.   As I recall, these are both issues that the Town Council needed to resolve.

The “corrals” don’t appear to be mentioned in the legal documents.  In fact, the only mention of parking of these scooters, in general, appears to be this:

Defined response times for removing devices for critical issues designated by the Town

I think that means that the Town will ask this company to pick up scooters that are reported as blocking a sidewalk or entrance.  And, based on these documents, it’s up to the company to determine the standard for quickly they plan to pick those “mis-parked” scooters up.  But otherwise, there’s no indication that there are any parking rules at all (beyond what is specified in the Commonwealth statute above).

The sidewalk issue is, I think, critical, because as I understand it, the default under Commonwealth law is that these things are legal on the sidewalk And certain Town Council members (Majdi, at least) really objected to that.  So if the Town wants to keep them off the sidewalk, I think Town Council has to pass an amendment to Town Code to do that?  I’m not a lawyer, but that’s how I read it.

Commonwealth of Virginia law says this, emphasis mine:

The governing body of any ... town may by ordinance prohibit the use of ... personal delivery devices ... on designated sidewalks or crosswalks ... Unless otherwise prohibited, electric personal delivery devices may be operated on the sidewalks ... of any locality of the Commonwealth. ...No person shall park a ... scooter in a manner that impedes the normal movement of pedestrian or other traffic or where such parking is prohibited by official traffic control devices.

So I think that if Town Council wants to keep these off the sidewalks, they must actively say so.  And (from a part of that statute that I omitted), they are required to post signs saying so.  So this isn’t trivial.

Near as I can tell, the only mention of “mobility devices” in Town of Vienna code is section Sec. 21-8. – Prohibited or restricted activities.  That prohibits certain activities (e.g., riding two abreast in the roadway) and requires riders 14 and under to wear helmets.

To be clear, then unless the Town passes ordinances to the contrary, as it stands, rental electric scooters can be used on the sidewalk, and can be left anywhere that does not literally block the use of the sidewalk or road.

I certainly hope that the TSC is preparing to make recommendations to the Town on these key issues.  It’s a tough call.  On sidewalks:  Without sidewalk use, you pretty much can’t get to Metro or use Maple Avenue.  Councilman Noble’s suggestion of geofencing those streets to enforce lower speed limits (while allowing sidewalk use) appears to have fallen by the wayside.   So somebody needs to make the call here, otherwise the defaults (in red above) apply.  On parking:  If the Town designates a handful of areas for legal scooter parking, that pretty much negates the use of the scooter as a disseminated transportation modality.  (Or, in English, then you can get to where you want to go.)  But no rules means that these might be parked anywhere as long as they literally don’t block the sidewalk right-of-way.

Aside:  This 8 PM meeting will be preceded by separate meetings of the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committees, starting at 7 PM.  Having attended the last one of those, I can state that if you are thinking of attending those, just realize that they don’t expect or make accommodations for citizens to attend.  Typically, there’s no agenda posted in advance (which is true for tonight’s meeting).  The last BAC meeting consisted of Committee members standing around a table in the front of the room, commenting on a paper copy of a proposed bike map.  There was literally no use in attending the meeting as a citizen.

 

Post #456: Fairfax County’s 527 Plan for Maple Avenue

Source:  Linked from terminator.fandom.com

I am not yet done posting about all the interesting items that popped up at the 11/7/2019 Town Council work session.  This post is about an offhand remark that Councilman Noble made, regarding the “Tysons 527 plan” for Maple Avenue.

I have to admit my ignorance here, because I had no clue what he meant.  But it sounded somewhat important.  So, after some digging, this turns out to be the long-rumored Fairfax County plan that calls for widening parts of Maple Avenue.  If you plan to be in Vienna a decade from now, it will be well worth your time to have a look at that.  The time frame for this report is the year 2030.

I cannot over-emphasize that this is all theoretical.  This is about dealing with somebody’s guess (projection) of traffic in the year 2030, based on a guess (projection) of additional development at Tysons.  As far as I can tell, nobody has any actual plan for doing any of this to Maple Avenue.  At least, for now.

So, first caveat:  These are not firm plans for anything.  Hence the picture at the top of the page.  I have no clue as to whether or not anyone could actually require that Route 123 be changed in this fashion.  I believe this is merely Fairfax County’s way of showing might be done, to certain Maple Avenue intersections, in response to the additional traffic load that Tysons development might create.

And, second caveat:  We may not get all this projected traffic after all.  Public discussion about this Chapter 527 filing brought up some opinions that the additional traffic wouldn’t flow down Maple at all.  These projections were made more than a decade ago.  And, for the last decade, there has been no increase in actual Maple Avenue traffic (Post #398).  In fact, if you download the spreadsheet, you can see that average daily traffic on Maple has declined slightly over the last decade or so.  So what you are looking at below is based on the opinion, of one set of traffic engineers, as to the impact that Tysons development would have on Maple.  Don’t get the impression that this is the only opinion, or that there isn’t a lot of uncertainty about that opinion, or that the projected additional Maple Avenue traffic must materialize.  So far, it hasn’t.

That said, as I have been hearing about this terrible report for years, I’m going to summarize what it says.  At the least, it shows you what some set of traffic engineers thought it would take to fix a couple of difficult intersections on Maple Avenue.  But keep the caveats above in mind.  The sections of this post describe:

Continue reading Post #456: Fairfax County’s 527 Plan for Maple Avenue

Post #450: Audio recording, the 11/7/2019 Town Council work session on the traffic study

The minus one still cracks me up.  See Post #364.

Town Council met last night to have their third briefing from Kimley-Horn on the Maple Avenue Corridor Multimodal Transportation and Land Use Study.  I’m using this post just to get my audio recording up, in case anyone wants to listen to it, at this Google Drive link.  There’s no accompanying “index” file for the recording. Continue reading Post #450: Audio recording, the 11/7/2019 Town Council work session on the traffic study

Post #444: MAC-related public meetings this week

There are several public meetings this week with some relevance to MAC zoning.

Monday, 11/4/2019, at 8:00 PM in Town Hall, Town Council will hold a meeting that includes several MAC-related items. 
1)  They will hold a public hearing on extending the MAC moratorium through June 30 2020.  Citizens are invited to speak.  Three minute time limit.
2)  They will consider a resolution to request grant funding for a three-story parking garage/library to replace the current Patrick Henry library.
3)  They will examine (and likely approve) the modified rear facades of the Marco Polo/Vienna Market MAC project.

The relevant materials can be found here:
https://vienna-va.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=716363&GUID=DC46C9A8-009B-49C0-93BE-A2BB7BFFB61B&Options=info&Search=

Thursday, 11/7/2019, at 7:30 PM in Town Hall, Town Council will hold a work session to obtain their final briefing on the Kimley-Horn “Maple Avenue Corridor Multimodal Transportation and Land Use Study”.

The relevant materials can be found here:
https://vienna-va.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4213345&GUID=7038D400-8A10-4B9D-AE3D-8F5E05930CAB&Options=&Search=

 

Friday, 11/8/2019 at 8:00 AM (AM), the Board of Architectural Review will hold a work session on the new building proposed for 380 Maple West, a Sunrise assisted living facility.

The relevant materials can be found here:
https://vienna-va.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=735324&GUID=CEE00DFC-1728-44FD-B567-C1B14E4BA0D5&Options=info&Search=

The Town reserves the right to change or cancel meetings on short notice, so check the Town’s general calendar before you go, at this URL:
https://www.viennava.gov/Calendar.aspx?NID=1&FID=220


Commentary:

On the Monday Town Council meeting, I would have expected the extension of the MAC moratorium to be cut-and-dried.  Would have, except that it was anything but that at the preceding Planning Commission meeting.  The actual discussion was in fact for more convoluted than I said in my brief writeup (Post #440), and included some legal arguments to block any consideration of an extension of the moratorium

Also, the Town Council is being asked to approve a grant request for funding the largest parking structure option that the Town’s consultant offered them.  I had not realized that the Town had made the affirmative decision to go with that option.  If that’s a done deal, I certainly wish they would reconsider (e.g., Post #367, Post #369, Post #371).

Separately, the Town is also going to ask for about $240K in grant funding for Capital Bikeshare bike racks.  I’ve already expressed the sentiment that this is almost sure a near-total waste of money, given the lack of use of these rental bikes in Tysons and other remote suburban near-Metro locations (Post #387).

On the Thursday Town Council work session, to me the big question is how they’ll deal with the estimated traffic impact of MAC development.  The rest of the items — the proposed projects for the Town to undertake — seemed fairly weak to me.  You can see can see my analysis in Post #358 and subsequent posts to Post #364.  It is worth bearing in mind that the traffic impact analysis does NOT use current traffic as baseline, which is why (e.g.) redevelopment of the currently empty BB&T site was estimated to reduce traffic on Maple in that study.

The Friday BAR session is a bit of a puzzler to me, as it is not clear to citizens that (e.g.) Sunrise has actually signed a contract with the current owner of 380 Maple West, and so on.  This is due, in part, I think, to the fact that this isn’t a MAC application.  Formally, it’s a request for changes to the existing, approved MAC building.  (I.e., new building, new owner, new purpose, new conditional use permit and so on, and yet all done within the context of the land already having been rezoned to MAC instead of standard commercial development.)

Post #416: Vienna’s too bougie for a bus.

This was my college-age daughter’s summary judgement about the potential for public transit in Vienna.

I had to look it up.

Bougie (also spelled bourgie), pronounced BOO-zhee, is a slang shortening of “bourgeoisie”.  The Urban Dictionary offers several definitions.  I’ll stick with “upper middle class” for this posting, although it typically has a more negative connotation when used.

Unprompted, she went on to say “They’d ride a trolley, but they’d never ride a bus.”  Which left me scratching my head a bit, as, mechanically, a trolley is literally the same vehicle as a bus.  It’s just a cute, somewhat dysfunctional bus.

My daughter grew up in modern Vienna, so she has a more intuitive grasp of the culture of Vienna than I do.   But I was a little taken aback because  she didn’t even have to think about it.  I described a couple of my recent posts (i.e., microtransit).

And the response was: Eye roll, followed by two short declarative sentences.

So, just to finish up:

First, maybe the cultural barriers are so strong that no local bus system will be viable in Vienna.  Duly noted, the existing Fairfax Connector buses are a delight (Post #225), but largely empty.

I’ve been thinking about this as an economist.  But maybe we need an anthropologist.  One can plausibly dismiss low Vienna  ridership of the Connector buses to lack of convenience.  (What economists would term the “time cost” of use.)  But would more convenient public transport would lead to greater ridership?  Not if the true barrier is cultural.  If Vienna is too bougie for a bus, you can make public transit as convenient as you want, make it free, heck, make it pay you to ride it (Post #414).  And it will still fail.

Second, this dovetails with what I’ve called the Mcleanification of Vienna (Post #308).  When I moved here in 1993, much of southwest Vienna was “workers’ housing”, for want of a better term.  My immediate neighbors were, by profession:  Nurse, retired military, tile setter, school teacher, insurance salesman.   But with the tear-down boom, the price of admission to Vienna has gone up.  People with those professions may still live here, but it’s a fair bet that they would not be able to move here, given that the median new-house sales price looks to be somewhere around $1.5M.  For sure, I would not have been able to move here, given the (inflation-adjusted level of) my salary at the time.

As with any stereotype, I don’t mean that this applies across-the-board.  I don’t mean to say that every new home buyer in Vienna is “bougie”.  But I would say that it’s a fair bet that with the current high price of admission, Vienna is probably shifting in a “bougie-er” direction.

That certainly seemed apparent in the last election.  Typically — though not universally — the bigger the new house, the less likely you were to get traction on the MAC issue.

Third, and looking inward, maybe I don’t quite get the drive for Maple Avenue redevelopment because I’m insufficiently bougie.  I grew up in a culture where (e.g.) people were prideful about how many miles they had on their car, not how new it was.  And maybe I find the Vienna downtown to be OK as-is because of that.  But that puts me out-of-step with some portion of Vienna, and as the Mcleanification continues, that probably puts me out-of-step with an increasingly large portion of Vienna.

Finally, if that analysis is correct, then we should neither build a downtown that displeases the current majority, nor lock in a downtown that will displease a future, bougie-er majority.  Which argues for one of two types of strategy, if, in fact, the Town is becoming increasing bougie under the relentless pressure of high new home prices.

One, it argues for proceeding slowly, so that more of the open (that is, under-developed) space on Maple is preserved for the next generation to deal with.  You don’t want to set off a land rush, and lock in the preferences of the current generation of residents, if there is a reasonable expectation that this will not be viewed as optimal by future generations.  You don’t want your successors, in Vienna, to look at MAC buildings, shake their heads, and say “what were they thinking”.

Second, it argues for something we have never seen here in Vienna (or possibly elsewhere), an explicit phase-in of redevelopment strategy.  It sounds kind of fringe, but maybe the right thing to say is, for the first generation of MAC, the limit is three floors.  For the second generation, the limit is four.  And for the third generation, the limit is negotiable.  Where, just to pull something out of a hat, each generation might last a biblical seven years.  Or, alternatively, where each successive Town Council would have to vote in the next phase of MAC, based on their perception of average voter sentiment.   At some not-to-exceed pace.  That is, create a phased-in set of increasing opportunities for redevelopment.

You wouldn’t do something like that without a lot of forethought, because a strategy like that could easily prove to be destructive.  It could (e.g.) retard redevelopment as land owners held out for the more lucrative future development rights.  (Which may be happening now, with MAC, for all we know.)  But based on the wake-up call that I got from my daughter yesterday,  maybe this is the best way to reconcile the preferences of the existing and projected future Vienna populations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Post #414: Vienna Retail-Oriented Omnibus Microtransit

At the last Town Council meeting, Councilman Majdi asked Town staff to look for grant money to fund startup of a microtransit system in Vienna.

In Post #407, I did my best to explain what microtransit is.  But my discussion missed an important piece of the puzzle.  As Councilman Majdi sees it, Vienna microtransit would be closely tied to Vienna-based businesses.  It’s as much a way to feed customers to Vienna businesses as it is a way to get cars off the road.

That’s a sufficiently different idea that I thought I might update my prior posting.  Here goes.

Continue reading Post #414: Vienna Retail-Oriented Omnibus Microtransit

Post #396: Courthouse traffic trend?

At last night’s Transportation Safety Commission (TSC) meeting, there was a lot of complaint about rising levels of traffic on Courthouse.  And I have to say, that matches my perception.  I see afternoon rush hour backups at the Maple/Nutley light that reach past Meadow Lane playground.  And … I just don’t recall seeing that a few years ago.

Long story short, VDOT data show no upward trend in traffic on Courthouse Road.  This probably comes as a surprise to the people who live on Courthouse.  It certainly goes against my perception of traffic on Courthouse.  But the numbers are what they are.

VDOT traffic counts are available on this page.  Please note that while they show a count for every year, for every monitored street, it looks like they only do an actual measurement (for Courthouse) every third year.  In-between, it looks like they just just gap-fill by trending the data forward.

Here’s the VDOT count of average weekday traffic, every third year from 2003 to 2018, in cars per day:

So I just thought I’d throw that out there.  I have a few ideas of what might be causing this, but it’s hard even to guess as to how to support or refute any proposed explanation.

Just to forestall one possible argument, the peak hour traffic is no more concentrated now than it was back in 2003.  Throughout this period, just under 10% of the daily traffic occurred during the peak hour of the day.

So what’s the explanation? One way to explain it is that everybody is wrong.  Traffic hasn’t picked up.  Traffic was actually worse in 2003, on Courthouse, than it is today.  Perception and memory can be flawed, so you can’t rule that out.

Otherwise, I’m stumped.  I just can’t quite picture a plausible scenario where an increasing number of cars is getting onto that street, but evading the VDOT traffic counter.

Perhaps traffic is more concentrated for very brief periods of time, leading to brief (but extreme) backups.  Those “micro-bursts” of traffic would then make an impression that we would tend to remember.

Could the recent (2016?) re-timing of the Maple Avenue lights have anything to do with this?  Could that have bunched traffic up more effectively on Courthouse?

 Here’s my best guess.  I noted earlier that we really have a large number of tear-downs going on in the Town of Vienna (Post #308).  Could the deep PM backups at the Courthouse/Nutley light be a “quitting time” phenomenon?  In effect, we now have a large local workforce of construction workers.  My vague recollection (from one summer working as a carpenter’s helper) was that, come 5 PM, that’s quitting time.  And everybody knocks off.  So I wonder if we have enough of a local construction labor force now that it is affecting the “peakiness” of traffic on Courthouse.  Not enough to materially raise the daily counts, say.  But just enough, added at around the same time, into the existing PM rush hour, that it materially boosts the length of the backup at the Nutley/Maple light.  And I then  perceive those long (but short-lived) lines of cars as “traffic sure has gotten a lot worse”.

No way to validate that one way or the other.  But for sure, the hard numbers in this case are strongly at odds with the common perception.