Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Funds Diverted from Street Paving to Expensive Walter Reed 'Traffic Calming'

Hello Yupette,

Many streets and roads near the intersection of Walter Reed Drive and South Four Mile Run needed to repaved like 3 years ago. So where is the money for repaving going? To an extravagant and expensive 'traffic calming' project for South Walter Reed hill (between S. Four Mile Run Drive and South Pollard Street). As described during an April 27th 'community meeting' (which nearby communities only learned about from local blogs) between $600,000 and $2 million (depending on which transportation staff member you spoke with) will be spent to narrow South Walter Reed Drive with planted medians and nubs. The project will also paint bicycle lanes on South Walter Reed Drive hill (which does not need repaving).

What is really appalling - presently one small speed limit sign is visible going up Walter hill and there are no speed limit signs on the downhill lanes.

Transportation Planning Director Dennis Leach dismissed residents' concerns about traffic from Columbia Pike redevelopment and from BRAC in Alexandria. Several residents are greatly concerned about the effect of street narrowing upon the response time for fire and EMS vehicles from Fire Station 9.

Members of nearby communities who expressed their concerns were ignored, except for representatives from Arlington's bicycle organizations.

The laundry list of streets and roads in South Arlington within a mile of South Walter Reed and South Four Mile Run Drive that need repaving includes portions of S. 16th Street and South Quincy Street in the Douglas Park neighborhood where County Board Chairman Chris Zimmerman lives.

S. Quincy Resident

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

More Arlington 2-Step:

Step 1 - No Speed Limit signs so people speed.

Step 2 - Bloated County bureaucracy installs expensive and elaborate 'traffic calming' to keep people from speeding and to keep itself enployed.

Anonymous said...

Same thing occurred in Chain Bridge Forest and on Pershing Drive between Washington Blvd. and Glebe Road.

T.Y. said...

You would think that Zimmy would care that the streets in his own neighborhood are looking shabby.

Anonymous said...

Shabby looking streets? Seen Wilson Blvd. near the Artisphere lately?

Anonymous said...

16th St near George Mason and Four Mile Run isn't just a re-paving issue- there is a water line problem that's undermining the road - which means it desperately needs a complete redo(after the water line repair) - but no the board like's it's vanity projects.

Anonymous said...

Traffic calming, my ass. This is a Chris Zimmerman/John Snyder road beautification project with the normal sell out to bicycle interests. There are perfectly adequate bike routes mapped and marked travelling through Douglas Park that don't conflict with arterial, motorized through traffic on Walter Reed. Arterial roads are for travel County doofuses.

Anonymous said...

Reckless Endangerment? Like when a narrowed Walter Reed Drive is jammed with traffic and the units at Fire Station 9 are dispatched to an emergency in Shirlington?

Anonymous said...

Dennis Leach and his good buds Bob Brosnan and Terry Holzheimer need to retire to where they're desperately needed - Route 1 south of Ft. Belvoir.

Duh said...

Duh

The bicycle groups are another of Fisette's pet interests that he will spend tens of millions of tax dollars on.

It was 45 degrees and raining hard this morning. I was supposed to get on a bicycle and commute 6 miles to work? Because Jay Fisette, Alan Muchnick, Randy Swart, and Charlie Denny think it's a good idea?

Same people who are totally silent when the developers propose a mega-infill building with 500 parking spaces under the building.

Duh

Anonymous said...

Next step is the biketards want to make the residential neighborhood of single family homes adjacent to the mega infill building with 500 parking spaces underneath a 'bicycle recreation area'.

Anonymous said...

Ms. Donnellan, Mr. Holzheimer, Mr. Brosnan - Can we designate your exclusive single-family home neighborhoods in Fairfax County "bicycle recreation zones" for Arlington residents?

Anonymous said...

Reckless Endangerment? They want our children to ride bicycles to school over cracked and broken streets.

Reality Check said...

Reality Check - Arlington Government is a bloated bureaucracy which stays fully employed dreaming up new ways of squandering tax dollars when it isn't dreaming up new ways of destroying the quality of our lives through massive urbanization.

Arlington's primary decision makers don't live in Arlington, e.g. Barbara Donnellan, and will be gone within 10 years, as will be the County Board and the County Board's pet people who rubber-stamp the County Board's mega-fantasies. Leaving those of us in our 30's and 40's to clean up their mess and suffer the consequences.

Anonymous said...

Can we have a thread about the County Board's agenda for the next 5 years? Massive urbanization and massive borrowing to construct a massive amount of vanity infrastructure?

anon. county staff said...

Terry Holzheimer? He supposedly lives at the end of a dead end road in McLean adjacent to a Fairfax County park with limited access.