“Ped Plan” Proves Controversial, Shields Recommends Extending Review Period
By FALLS CHURCH TIMES STAFF
April 22, 2012
In response to comments received at last Thursday’s town hall meeting, City Manager Wyatt Shields stated Friday afternoon that he would recommend the City Council extend the time for public review and comment on the Pedestrian, Bicycle and Traffic Calming Strategic Implementation Plan past May 29, the date originally scheduled for the plan’s adoption.
City Council members who attended Thursday’s session asked that a motion be prepared for their Monday night meeting to provide additional time for the plan to be modified to address the comments received. Shields said that the goal is to ensure the plan before the Council reflects residents’ priorities.
The city manager said that staff will address residents’ requests to preserve on-street parking on Lincoln Avenue and Hillwood Avenue , and other areas of Falls Church. He added that the purpose of the public-input process is to improve the plan, and help the City to move forward as a community with safe and attractive streets.
“The staff and volunteer committee members are to be commended for their important work on this plan,” Shields said. “Citizens provided critical input at many junctures during the plan’s development and we will take the time necessary to get this right.”
The current “Ped Plan” draft is available at www.fallschurchva.gov/pedplan. The website, which does not reflect the input received Thursday, will be updated by close of business Monday.
By Falls Church Times Staff
April 22, 2012
It was the major topic at the candidate forum today…it was more like a town hall meeting.
I attended the town hall meeting. The primary issue was one of process; many of the residents on Lincoln and Hillwood Aves. were angry that the city was poised to remove on-street parking without adequate notification of the residents. The city seemed to be late in the decision-making process, and many of the residents hadn’t even heard of the issue until one of the Lincoln Ave. residents began to circulate a petition.
That said, the current problem with Lincoln Avenue is that cars often travel 10+ MPH above the posted speed limit. The absence of a bike lane is not a problem, given that the W&OD trail runs 50-100 yds parallel to Lincoln Avenue. The city’s time would be better spent building consensus on a traffic calming plan for Lincoln Avenue than in proposing a redundant bike lane that eliminates all on-street parking.
Bob Martin is exactly correct, Lincoln Ave does not need a bike lane. Like most streets in the City, it’s a safe road already. While I can’t attest to the actual speeds on Lincoln, if it really is an issue the easy way to address that is to start having speed traps there (not just on Broad St. opposite Dulin Church). Of course with those “Your Speed” signs now fully working, it’s only a matter of time before they become camera-equipped and speeding tickets will be issued remotely.
There is no demonstrated need for a dedicated bikelane on Hillwood Avenue either, to the exclusion of on-street parking, nor any cost-benefit analysis that compares the marginal value of bike lanes to the substantial adverse impact of eliminating, effectively, all on-street parking in the entire neighbohood between Rte. 7 and Hillwood, Roosevelt and Annandale Rds. I have lived on Hillwood for 35 years and seldom see more than a very few (3-5, at most, and often none) cyclists on any given day.
It eludes reason that there was apparently little or no serious consideration given to using lesser and undoubtedly equally effective alternative measures — such as sharrows, street markings to indicate that bikes and cars share the street — in lieu of jumping directly to the plan most adverse to property owners who must rely on on-street parking. Some residents qualify for handicapped parking tags, for whom no provision was made.
But now I’ve gotten ahead of myself. The real problem is that, in the first instance, is that the city staff allowed to be published a plan — which they describe as “proposed” but which reads like a fully formed and finalized plan — without ever consulting with city residents and taxpayers, who will be most affected by it. Somebody should have recognized the need for a thorough public vetting of the plan details before any sort of implementation proposal is developed and before scheduling it on the Council’s agenda for a vote.
Huge props to Mayor Baroukh for recognizing the process problems created by the city’s handling of this matter, for taking the lead in vowing not to support any plan that eliminates on-street parking, and for proposing to delay the Council’s vote until an appropriate public vetting process can occur. A pat on the back to Nader, Johanna Barry, and Lawrence Webb for attending the heated public meeting I attended and taking our concerns to heart.
“The city manager said that staff will address residents’ requests to preserve on-street parking on Lincoln Avenue and Hillwood Avenue , and other areas of Falls Church.”………
I was in attendance at Thursday’s meeting, and IMHO, “requests” is far too mild a term. In the interest of accurate reporting, I would substitute the word “demands”.
The $380k 97 page “ped plan” reads like a contractor’s white paper… a wish list of how he would like to help the city spend OUR $21m in tax money. The clear consensus at that meeting was that in regards to banning on-street parking on Lincoln and Hillwood, there was little if any study or consideration given to the impact of the residents and guests of residents on those streets. To propose that residents park their cars down the street and around the corner, thus impacting the residents of those streets is completely preposterous and would only lead to complaints. I find it curious that none of the city council members or city staff charged with monitoring and managing these proposed projects lives on or near either Hillwood or Lincoln. Coincidence?
Do we need cityscape improvements? You bet. There are plenty of streets that have sidewalks and crosswalks in ill repair and money spent to widen, repair, and improve them would be well spent. Putting in dual bike lanes and prohibiting parking on Lincoln when there is a major bike route 50 yards away is a classic case of waste, fraud, and abuse and constitutes our own little home-grown “bridge to nowhere”.
Folks, wake up (or sober up…smile) – - I have not followed this closely, but if this cost anything in terms of dollars/cents to City taxpayers and staff time for that matter- – forget it. And I am a biker and like improvements! But, we simply can’t afford much of anything new – - sadly. The City has too much financial distress, the residential tax rate is too high as it and we have too many priorities….we are about to sell our water system to help. I assume folks have not quickly forgotten the storm management issue and funding needs, funding salary increases for City employees, etc. We don’t have time for “wish” lists at the moment….we are challenged in trying to take care of the essentials.
It is interesting how the main person responsible for this Proposal “Suddenly” is taking a back seat , who not only does not live on Lincoln or Hill wood…but that person DOES NOT EVEN LIVE IN THE CITY and is telling us where we can & cannot park. ??? Something is Very wrong with this ENTIRE picture.
I support a complete house cleaning. Those City employees that are now doing several people’s jobs, should be betting a higher increase considering their new workloads….Others should be eliminated. With the amount spent on this study that could have gone to those City employees that deserve it or to our help with the major problem of our sewers….
Additionally considering the Huge amount the city Lost in the lawsuit with Fairfax County regarding the Water Prices..one would think that the city management would certainly be walking on eggshells
with regards to how the money in the City is being spent…
So is there anything worthwhile in the Ped Plan? The proposed on-street parking bans for Hillwood and Lincoln are preposterous and cause me to question the credibility of everything in the plan. By not taking the time to carefully review the contents of the plan and discussing the plan details with the affected neighborhoods, it looks to me like the city staff and the Ped Plan committee abdicated their responsibilty to the community and to their neighbors. I suggest we re-populate the Ped Plan committee at a minimum. And please tell me we will not be going back to the same consulting firm to fix the plan. As Einstein said, (and pardon my paraphrase), “Our problems cannot be fixed at the same level of thinking at which they were created.”
This may be in the attachments. But does anyone know what this has cost the City taxpayers, thus far? What is cost if implemented? There are no grant funds paying for any of this, correct?
Until the City provides for many more parking places in the City, anything that increases parking needs (condos, apartments) or decreases existing parking availability (Ped Plan) is a waste of time and money.
Honestly – - you have to wonder if the City has any sense of priority-setting and living within its financial means….given its finances. I guess it is alright to study this a bit – - but someone, somewhere needs to put the brakes on things like this and remind folks of the priorities..and therefore we are not going to spend much time and we are going to spend the minimum amount. We are going thru a bruising battle over storm water and salaries. I have a City water problem near my property that is unfunded….I am sure there are others. Again, it is great to look at “nice to haves” and have “wish lists”…..but we have no funding for them anytime soon….make note of these items and put them at the bottom of a list somewhere……and do more priortizing. Plus based on the posted comments this is controversial to begin with.
On May 10, 2010, The Council passed a resolution authorizing an amount not to exceed $336,704 to complete the Pedestrian Bike and Traffic Calming Implementation Plan. There is no indication of how much of this was city funds and how much was grant funds. No matter, it appears to be a colossal waste of money based on the so-called final product.
When city staff revises the plan, they must eliminate projects such as new sidewalks across the street where they already exist in residential neighborhoods and the removal of on-street parking to allow for bicycle lanes. Emphasis should be placed on fixing existing sidewalks to comply with Americans with Disability Act requirements and ensure Safe Routes to School for our students. Changing the existing sidewalk policy as called for on page 39 of the plan with end up costing the city millions for years to come.
Man, this is a hot topic! I’m not going to make any sweeping accusations or draw any huge conclusions because I haven’t followed it very closely. However, some of the things people are asking about are in the document – so people could read it and get some of the answers.
I think most (if not all) of the money spent on this plan came from grants. I realize that federal or state money isn’t free money (comes from somewhere) and so shouldn’t be spent wastefully – but I don’t think much (if any) of the cost of this plan came from our local budget. I might be wrong about that.
Clearly folks want more time to talk about the plan before finalizing anything, and it sounds like that will happen. Some mistakes were made when putting this plan together and presenting it to folks (clearly, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many upset people), but I personally think that most of the people who worked on this plan (like Wendy Block Sanford) care about the City and the citizens and work hard to help make this a better place. These are folks who haven’t had a raise in years and often get little praise or support from the citizens and I think that’s unfortunate.
So yeah, this could have been done better and hopefully the City staff will regroup and evolve this plan into something that more people can support. In the meantime, I think some of the people complaining about it should find more time in their schedules to participate more in how the City operates.
There are several funders listed on pages 89-91 that come from federal and state grants, Metropolitan Councils of Government and other agencies and departments within government that specialize in roads, trails, congestion mitigation, community development block grant fund usage, safe routes to school, environmental issues, etc. The broad range of funding sources leads me to believe the City has done an excellent job gathering expertise that will, in the long term, work towards enhancements to diversify transportation as we currently know it. This study is a first step and I suggest everyone read it. There’s excellent research and ideas within it to get beyond just kicking it to the curb over a few speculative examples. I realize there will be discord when re-thinking how we move beyond dealing solely with cars and car traffic. I agree with an earlier post that mentions sharrows as the likely answer to balance neighborhood on-street parking needs. I’m willing to give this plan a chance to evolve to the next level. Places that diversify transportation uses are thinking broader about community livability. They too happen to be winning the competition for economic development.
Sounds like this is another case of the City getting ‘free’ money, and so we have to spend it, regardless of the impact on the citizen-taxpayer and the residents directly affected. I have never seen a biker on Hillwood, nor would I consider a bike lane there to be a transportation diversification enhancement. Really? For whom? Stop the waste of City time and disregard for the citizens of FCC.
http://www.streetfilms.org/
Anyone who wishes to learn more about how bike lanes are part of a livable streets strategy please visit streetfilms.org. Their newest video looks at how planning is taking into account seniors using transit oriented development in Arlington.