Fairfax County is conducting its first-ever major and region-by-region review of bicycle projects and requirements to make bicycling safer and more appealing. Burke’s was standing-room-only. Annandale’s public meeting and open house is on 15 February 2012 at the , 6507 Columbia Pike, starting at 4:30pm, and lasting until 8pm. There will be a presentation at 6:00pm. The public flyer, with a snow date, is here.
Annandale has a handful of excellent bicycle connections, like the McWhorter Place route parallel to Little River Turnpike and the Cross-Country Trail in Wakefield Park. For an older community like Annandale, with a 1950's era network of cul-de-sacs and traffic-clogged major thoroughfares, it is hard to install brand new multipurpose trails. Unless Fairfax County planners know where locals want to go, however, they will have a harder time with the prioritization of potential projects. Every trip made by bicycle usually means one less car on the road. For more about the project, see http://www.tooledesign.com/fairfax.
Public input is the key to making and improving local connections that only neighborhood residents know about. Only a resident knows to ask for a path and footbridge in that one section of parkland that would allow neighbor kids to ride their bicycles to school more directly, or to prioritize repaving a section of a trail or sidewalk that has severe root or frost damage.
Find out what's happening in Annandalefor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Fairfax County particularly needs input from parents who would hesitate to allow their child to walk or ride a bicycle to a neighborhood school, whether that is because there is no path through a fenceline on the school itself, or because of a crosswalk where drivers have particular difficulty observing the law.
Immediately after the public meeting, the nonprofit volunteer advocacy group Fairfax Advocates for Better Bicycling (FABB) will hold its monthly meeting to review ongoing efforts for advocacy for bicyclist safety, rights, and facilities. Normally that meeting is held in the Vienna library, but this meeting is open to anyone interested.