Getting A Mixed Message?

[Razors Edge ★]

...or is it just that folks are idiots?

A small stretch of new sidewalk along one of Northern Virginia’s busiest roads officially opened Thursday, completing a connection from Alexandria to the Dulles Toll Road.

The work is one more step in urbanizing Tysons, making it safer for pedestrians and hopefully reducing some vehicle traffic.

“Bit by bit, Tysons is becoming a walkable place, and that’s our goal,” Fairfax County Supervisor Linda Smyth said.

The new sidewalks on either side of Virginia Route 7 under Virginia Route 123 provide a safer place to walk or bike, besides eight lanes of traffic, in a place people had previously worn a tightrope-width path on a grassy area.

It connects a number of businesses to the Greensboro Metro, and means there is some type of sidewalk or path along Route 7 all the way to Alexandria, Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Sharon Bulova said.

“What looks like a little project … is a big deal because it is a missing link that will now allow someone to be able to walk or to bike all the way from the Toll Road all the way into Alexandria,” Bulova said.

She described the situation of people walking along this part of Route 7 in the past just to get a few hundred feet to the Metro as “taking your life in your hands.”

The sometimes-narrow sidewalks are not a perfect solution to car-free travel in the area, however. Cycling could mean a tight squeeze for both pedestrians and bike riders.

As part of the broader plans to continue turning Tysons into more of a citylike environment, Fairfax County plans to add 30 more Capital Bikeshare stations around Tysons, Dunn Loring and Merrifield this year.

[Longjohn ★]

I’d rather have a mixed massage.

[JerrySTL ★]

I think that the writing is bad. I wish that article had a photo of the sidewalk. Maybe it's wide enough and marked for walking and cycling.

[TrentonMakes]

20 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

... a missing link that will now allow someone to be able to walk or to bike all the way from the Toll Road all the way into Alexandria

This makes it sound like the intent is to be able to go from A to B.  Measured along Route 7 that appears to be about 14 miles.  I suspect there will not be a lot of takers.

I am hoping that when they call this new segment a "sidewalk" they mean a path at least 8 feet wide.  But the article references narrower sections of sidewalk along 7 as part of this link... I'm sure your point is that biking on these sidewalks are surely illegal.

I hate being a pedestrian in that area - almost as much as I hate being a driver in that area.  

[Razors Edge ★]

32 minutes ago, TrentonMakes said:

I hate being a pedestrian in that area - almost as much as I hate being a driver in that area.   

And being a cyclist is worst of all!

I used to occasionally ride from the W&OD and up Gallows - ON THE SIDEWALK - to my office in Tysons.  It was awful, and I didn't do it often.  Fast forward a decade or more, and there is a bike lane on Gallows, so it wouldn't be awful anymore.  Some day, for lunch, we would walk to nearby restaurants, and if they happened to be on the other side of Route 7, it was a clusterf#$% getting across that road.