Flashbacks:
The RNGC Caddyshackpocalypse
Bollards!
Hey, remember that time Personal Injury Lawyers Road was transformed into a bike-friendly haven loved by motorists and cyclists alike? Now a similar approach is being planned for Soapstone Drive, home to endless parallel parking by
Plans are in the works to give Soapstone Drive between Glade Drive and South Lakes Drive a new look that would enhance safety and make it more pedestrian- and bike-friendly.What about a special Super Big Gulp turn lane allowing drivers to zip in and out of the 7-11 parking lot and pick up their precious bodily fluids without getting out of second gear? Priorities people!
The new plans call for a "road diet" for the street, meaning it will not be widened to accommodate the new features. Instead, the current width will be reconfigured, said David Whyte of Kimley-Horn.
The east side of the road would be the first part to change, with a thru lane, a turn lane, a bike lane, drainage, a three-foot grassy section and a five-foot sidewalk. The goal is to also retain parking on asphalt along Soapstone.
Eventually, the west side of the street would have a similar configuration.
All of this started several years ago, when the idea of adding fancy "side walks" to Soapstone was first proposed. Somehow, that didn't fly, in part because of trees and the DRB, so now we're going with this more elaborate option, which provides sidewalks and parking and bike lanes and a safer, slower traffic flow. Assuming, that is, that the county can find the money to pay for it.
The makeover is is expected to be completed in two phases. Phase 1, the east side, is expected to cost $1.5 million and would not get underway until 2013, said Todd Minnix, incoming chief of transportation design for Fairfax County. Total cost of the project to complete both sides: about $3 million, he said.Maybe they could levy a special Super Big Gulp tax? Charge an extra penny per ounce of carbonated corn syrup and they'd have the money to build this splendid cylowalkersdriverdrome in weeks!
Hudgins said Tuesday that the county has only about half of the funding it needs for the project.
Someone was worried about a backup at South Lakes with traffic reduced to a single lane going north along Soapstone when all the high school traffic turns right to go to the high school in the morning.
ReplyDeleteNot to worry: in the Brave New Reston high school kids won't be driving cars. They will be required to walk or take the bus to and from school. Think I'm joshing you? Go ask Cathy Hudgins.
According to Patch, this boondoggle is only half-funded. How 'bout taking the half-funds and using them to get our bus service back? Ms. Hudgins? Huh?
ReplyDeleteSo, in order to park along Soapstone, you'll need to cut across the bike lane. I suppose that, whether or not there's a bike lane, you're doing that anyway.
ReplyDeleteDoes this mean that the new bridge-to-nowhere from Soapstone across the Toll Road/Access Highway/Metro right-of-way will also be configured with two bike lanes, two through lanes and a suicide lane?
Of course she is -- and she's a racist too.
ReplyDeleteAnyone 60-ish and older will recall that in the 1950s and 1960s DC and the suburbs were supposed to be paved over with freeways to everywhere and to everything. Most of those DC freeways were to go through black neighborhoods under the moniker of "urban renewal." Most of them were eliminated and we got the busted-down metro instead that WE pay, through all sorts of taxes, fees, assessments and now your decaless decal fee, for and for which we receive few, if any, services let alone benefits.
Well, though the freeways so desperately needed now were never built, the black neighborhoods were mostly eliminated anyway and that nightmare of liberalism failure speaks for itself, and now, we are finally getting it right with most the "renewed" SW DC will be redone this time with private industry rather than liberal government dollars on failed "housing" projects that no one, black or white, wants to live in.
Now, Hudgins, who is black, wants to run Soapstone (thinner as it may be) with a road through white-land Oakton at the south end and to managed-by-Hudgins, crash-and-kill metro on the north end. Yes, these are her plans, and yes, they are still all on the books of the county, Good luck finding them on the county website, because she wants no one to know about them!
So the idiot that Hudgins is comes up with a half-funded abortion called a Soapstone road diet? I thought I had heard it all, but this one is a new low for the soon to be taught a lesson democrats.
VOTE FOR CHANGE on November 2 get RID of the tax and spend liberals at ALL levels of government. If not, they will certainly bankrupt the few of us who still do have jobs since the 10 percent who are still unemployed after their trillion-dollar "stimulus" stimulated nothing will have their slimy hands out for yet more of the dole.
What an abomination and what a disgrace!
"The goal is to also retain parking on asphalt along Soapstone." ...Doesn't something have to exist before you can retain it? My guess is we're going to end up with a bike lane full of parked cars.
ReplyDeleteHopefully they'll at least add left turn signals at the South Lakes intersection.
Good luck with that --- been requested and denied despite at least two terrible crashes at that intersection and new traffic lights that one cannot see when stopped at the stop lines.
ReplyDeleteYour tax dollars not in action.
There is no asphalt parking on Soapstone. It's a Tobacco Row of Shadohood's rejects. At best, it's an open drainage ditch -- not much better than a third-world country.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the private sector makes everything good and whole! Just look at how great a job the banking sector did with mortgages.
ReplyDeleteThere's been movements to ban parking, but Hudgins has not listened to the group of Soapstone neighbors. There was a guy who met with her and she ignored them. What I find shocking is that people blame Shadowood, but I also know the Board was in support of that.
ReplyDeleteThe bank mess was at the direction of the GOVERNMEN -- you moron -- whose idea it was to get a mortgagee in every house. Those GOVERNMENT entities were the ones who made the rules and the banks followed them.
ReplyDeleteHudgins ignoring people? Those who's pockets she picks? Imagine that!
ReplyDeleteI went to a meeting Hudgins hosted some months ago. She sat there like stone while some truly mentally ill person ranted and raved about UFOs and dark skies and street lights and 20 other things. Everyone, but her, was sick of listening to this dude rant and rave and Hudgins did nothing to stop him or otherwise control her meeting.
ReplyDeleteShe listened, all right, but not to anything that was relevant to the meeting which had to do with Metro access -- to which Hudgin's somehow thinks that everyone from Loudoun County and points west will be walking, hitchhiking biking and not driving. I guess all of those monster vehicles will park on the dieted Soapstone Drive?
It was the first, and last, Hudgnis meeting I will ever attend. That woman is as clueless as anyone.
The bizarre part of the plan is the lack of southbound shoulder/bike lane on the west side of the road. I bet they will shrink the lane widths by a foot to make some room for it, unofficially, but the "half funded" part is a bit misleading: it's just that they can do the sidewalk and drainage on the east side while ignoring the west side. It could be worse. As for the road diet, Lawyers is fine and it does double or triple the Soapstone volume, I'd wager. But I'm a sucker for turn lanes. But 2013? Isn't our magical metrorail tour arriving by the time they finish this? This project takes just as long to approve and build?
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot of anger, justifiably, at Cathy Hudgins...but many of you Restonians keep voting her back in. Every time there's an opportunity to vote something other than Democrat, even when you know Hudgins like you do, you can't stand to man up and do it. You're getting what you're paying for. Unfortunately, those few of us who vote against her are getting that same shaft.
ReplyDeleteHeck, at this point, I'd vote for Rod to replace her! At least he's "our" kind of crazy.