Transportation – Page 11

Post #228: Maple Avenue Corridor Multimodal Transportation and Land Use Study

For those of you who are already confused, merely by the title, I’m talking about the Maple Avenue traffic study. That official title is why I keep referring to it as the (thing formerly known as the) Maple Avenue traffic study. For the official title, I literally cannot remember all the buzzwords in the correct order.

I’m eventually going to have a lot to say about this, but here I’m just going to say two things. First, the study, as scoped, is fundamentally inconsistent. Briefly, if taken at face value 1) it’s impossible to predict traffic 10 years ahead, so we’re not going to do that and instead 2) we’re going to talk about “multi-modal strategies” that could only have significant impact decades into the future. Second, I’m going to do my own analysis of these issues. That part will take a while.

Continue reading Post #228: Maple Avenue Corridor Multimodal Transportation and Land Use Study

Post 226: #closethecurbcutsnow

The Town has made much about closing curb cuts (parking lot entrances) along Maple, under MAC. And the consultants for the (thing formerly known as the) Maple Avenue traffic study (post #223) duly echoed this with extended reference to the many curb cuts on Maple.

At various times, these curb cuts have been blamed for a) slowing traffic, b) increasing vehicular accident rates, and c) endangering pedestrians on the sidewalk. For the moment, let me put aside truth versus fiction in these claims, and ask a simple question:

If these Maple Avenue curb cuts are such a clear public menace, why hasn’t the Town already started getting rid of them? The Town owns the sidewalk. How can our elected officials idly stand by, when the menace of excess curb cuts stalks the Town, threatening our prosperity and our very lives?

That was sarcasm. But it’s a legit question. It’s a question that I naively asked. Seriously, if curb cuts are so bad, why don’t they close some of them? And the answer to that shows you exactly how proponents of MAC zoning will tell you only what they want you to hear. And not the full story.

After some research, my conclusion is that, practically speaking, the only way the Town can close a curb cut is to stuff a whole bunch of high-density housing on the lot behind it (i.e., MAC rezoning). And so, the only practical way to close a curb cut is to have a more people turning on and off of Maple, during the rush hour periods.

Once you figure that out, then it’s clear that the full effect of “closing curb cuts on Maple” is not the rosy picture painted by the Town. You have to pay for that curb cut closure by adding to traffic turning on and off Maple. Anyone who tells you that “getting rid of curb cuts” is an unalloyed positive for the Town is pulling your leg. To put it politely.

In fact, I’ll up the ante on this. If a property owner voluntarily agreed to allow it, the Town could close a Maple Avenue curb cut. So, with all the mayhem now being attributed to curb cuts, has the Town done anything at all about them? Has the Town systematically pressured Maple Avenue property owners about closing Maple Avenue curb cuts? Has it offered (e.g.) a property tax incentive for closing off curb cuts? Has it identified the ones apparently associated with high accident rates and developed policies targeting those specific locations?

In short, if this is such a problem, then has the Town done anything whatsoever to address it? Other than to use it to flack MAC?

Detail follows.

Continue reading Post 226: #closethecurbcutsnow

Post #225: Take the bus, edited PM 4/3/2019

I took the Fairfax Connector bus down Maple Street last night, to run an errand at the other end of town. I was pleasantly surprised, to say the least. I’m hooked. This is not your grandfather’s city bus.

In this post, I am first going to go through the mechanics of it. E.g., link to the website that does the real-time tracking of the buses. Then give you my impressions.

Continue reading Post #225: Take the bus, edited PM 4/3/2019

Post 216: Accidents involving cars and trucks along Maple

This is a continuation of the prior two posts, same data source. I’m just going to put up three maps showing 2018 reportable accidents along Maple. The number of reportable accidents involving bicycles or pedestrians is tiny compared to the total number of car crashes annually on Maple. As with the prior maps, a “reportable” accident is one involving injury or at least $1500 in property damage.

All (blue = injury, green = property damage only)

Facebook

Tumblr

StumbleUpon

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

Facebook

Tumblr

StumbleUpon

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

Capital Bikeshare, trip flow visualizations 3/11/2019

Links to a flow map of the entire Capital Bikeshare system added 3/14/2019.

Reston and Tysons Bikeshare Flows

The links below take you to maps showing the average daily flow of trips, for the Reston and Tysons Bikeshare network, for 2018. I only show the 20 most-frequently-used origin-destination pairs, separately for Reston and Tysons, separately for each map. Continue reading Capital Bikeshare, trip flow visualizations 3/11/2019

Dockless Bikes as an alternative to Capital Bikeshare, 3/10/2019

After analyzing the data and writing extensively on Capital Bikeshare — a bike sharing system using dedicated bike “docks” — I decided to take a quick look at dockless bike rental alternatives.

In a nutshell, dockless systems — where the bikes can be parked anywhere, and you can rent them using an app on your smart phone — have some huge advantages over docked systems like Capital Bikeshare. I summarize those advantages below. But they can cause a mess if people park them willy-nilly. Most of the cities that have allowed dockless bike rental have ended up passing significant laws to regulate them — particularly, to regulate where you can leave them parked.

Detail follows. Drop down to the paragraph in red to see my summary. Continue reading Dockless Bikes as an alternative to Capital Bikeshare, 3/10/2019

Capital Bikeshare rack location, data analysis, 3/8/2019.

On this page, I describe the issue facing Vienna, and then profile the typical Capital Bikeshare user and analyze data on Capital Bikeshare use in Tyson’s ~~Corner~~ and Reston. See a separate page for a quick summary of dockless bike alternatives.

Edited 3/9/2019 to correct minor errors in the data analysis. Gray pins in the map below indicate racks with less than one bike trip per day, on average, in 2018. Edited 3/10/2019 to add an analysis of growth trends for newly-opened Bikeshare stations.

Facebook

Tumblr

StumbleUpon