With Reston Roundabout Proposal, Our Glorious Transit-Oriented Future Looking Like a Combination of New Jersey and Amsterdam

V. v. exciting news about the future of Wiehle Avenue. No, silly rabbits, they're not going to bulldoze the whole thing and turn it into a maglev loop for Elon's robot taxis, but this week Fairfax County settled on the next best thing: a traffic circle!

That's right. If county planners get their way, the traffic-clogged, pedestrian-defying intersection where Wiehle dead-ends at Sunrise Valley Drive will be replaced with a traffic-clogged, pedestrian-defying roundabout. Sadly, the original proposal included a second traffic circle at the intersection of Wiehle and Sunset Hills, but planners deleted it from the newest version of the proposal, denying us the chance of slingshotting back and forth across the Toll Road at speeds so high they could reverse the flow of time and take us back to a more idyllic era before parallelogram-shaped skyscrapers and woonerf and whatnot, as demonstrated scientifically here.  Cowards!

Planners also proposed a sweeeet protected two-way "cycle track" going down one side of Wiehle, allowing spandex-wearing cyclists moving in different directions to high-five each other as they zip by stalled traffic awaiting the opportunity to approach the roundabout and slingshot their way over to South Lakes.

A final community meeting to present the updated plan will be held on Oct. 28 at Langston Hughes Middle School, so be sure to bring up the time-travel thing; county planners love that. Give us some sweet transit-oriented blockquote, BFFs at Reston Now:

The third public meeting will share information on the revised concept, including updated analysis, planning-level cost estimates and implementation schedule, considerations for the bridge over the Dulles Toll Road, and a 3-D rendering of the corridor. FCDOT will also note the trade-offs with the design, particularly at the roundabout intersection, and offer a second option.

NO SECOND OPTION. SAVE THE ROUNDABOUT. Not to well-actually, but traffic circles tend to handle traffic flows better until they hit a certain volume, at which point... (looks out the window at the current intersection). But we digress! The design proposal also calls for an "opportunity for creative pavement design," as illustrated in this blurry rendering from the proposal:

We haven't been this excited since similar plans called for fanciful concrete bollards and rad 80s art on the Wiehle Metro station pedestrian bridge, and we all know how well those turned out, the end.