County Seeks Input on Bike Paths at Clifton Meeting

Marilyn Stoney of Clifton often travels to Burke Lake or Fountainhead Regional Park to enjoy recreational bicycling. Closer to home, the Clifton area’s winding roads are less kind to cyclists.

“It’s really narrow,” Stoney said. “It’s very dangerous. … Those people who want to enjoy the hills and the countryside and this area by bike, they put their lives at risk really, doing so.”

Stoney was one of dozens of local residents dropping by Clifton Town Hall Thursday afternoon for the first of eight open house input sessions for the Fairfax Countywide Bicycle Transportation Plan. Bob Patten, senior planner with Toole Design Group, the consultancy working with the county on the plan, said the next seven sessions will be held in different regions of the county during the fall and spring.

“One, we wanted to get out closer to where people live, and two, we recognize that most people, when they bike, are not biking across the entire county,” Patten said. “It’s a big place. And a lot of places are not very bike-friendly. So we wanted people to understand that we’re concerned about biking on a small scale, because if more people are going to bike, it’s going to be shorter trips, neighborhood-oriented trips. So we wanted to meet with people in the places where they live and talk about places where they’d like to bike to.”

Some “fixes” are relatively inexpensive, he said. Those include connecting existing bike trails by pavement to crosswalks and installing bike sensors to trigger light changes at intersections. Other measures, such as creating new trails or bike lanes in areas such as Clifton, are pricier.

“We know an issue in this area is there are a lot of recreational cyclists who come from the county and neighboring areas and go through the Clifton roads, especially on weekends, because it’s pretty and enjoyable,” Patten said. “You can come to Clifton and have food and ice cream. But there are no shoulders on any of the roads, so safety is an issue. So we want to hear what people have to say about that.”

Jeff Palmer, a Vienna resident and cyclist, attended the open house to put in his two cents on possible improvements. He wants to see bike lanes introduced in the Clifton area and also bike racks installed in appropriate locations.
 
“When you get where you’re going, there are no bike racks or anywhere to lock your bike up,” Palmer said. “So if you want to go to the store or the library, you cannot lock your bike up.”

Nelson Kile, a cyclist who lives in Fairfax Station, said he wanted to see a comprehensive, up-to-date map of all bike trails in Fairfax County. “There’s nothing that you can look at today that says, 'I want to go for a bike ride, where could I go?' You can bicycle down some of the major roads, but they don’t really necessarily have a good bike lane,” he said.

Patten said the bicycle transportation plan study includes mapping trails and helping the county update its master trails plan. He and his associates will be collecting information from local residents and doing fieldwork for the next six months and hope to have draft maps and proposed improvements available by the spring. The study should be complete by next summer, Patten said.

Charlie Strunk, bicycle coordinator for the Fairfax County Department of Transportation, said the study builds on the Tysons Corner Bike Plan.

“The new Tysons will be bikeable,” Strunk said. “They’ll be bike lanes. They’ll be wide curb lanes and all sorts of things. And other than the actual bike lanes, bike trails, things like that, we’re also addressing bike parking needs, education and things like that. So the study pretty much covers everything.”

The study will cost approximately $600,000. After completion, it will need to be adopted by the Fairfax County Planning Commission before being brought before the Board of Supervisors, a process that could take six additional months, Strunk said.

The next open house will be Oct. 20 in Reston. For more information on the Fairfax Countywide Bicycle Transportation Plan, visit the project webpage.