Road Diets Coming to Fairfax County

[Anonymous]

"Road diet": is a ridiculous concept. Roads were built in the first place to meet a need. That need did not just go away, allowing road capacity to be reduced without affecting road users. Adding additional pedestrian/bicycle/scooter capacity is one thing, but it's destructive if done by eliminating existing road capacity at the expense of existing road users who don't/can't use those alternative modes of transportation. Wishful thinking about green and healthy bicycling doesn't magically create thousands of new daily bicycle riders who happily abandon cars for bicycles for long commutes in bad weather, wearing business attire.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"Road diet": is a ridiculous concept. Roads were built in the first place to meet a need. That need did not just go away, allowing road capacity to be reduced without affecting road users. Adding additional pedestrian/bicycle/scooter capacity is one thing, but it's destructive if done by eliminating existing road capacity at the expense of existing road users who don't/can't use those alternative modes of transportation. Wishful thinking about green and healthy bicycling doesn't magically create thousands of new daily bicycle riders who happily abandon cars for bicycles for long commutes in bad weather, wearing business attire.

If a road is unsafe, because people drive too fast on it, then a diet can be beneficial even if no alternate capacity is added.

If you preserve intersection capacity, which is usually the real bottleneck, then dropping a lane may not even negatively impact through-flow. Part of this is because each additional lane is less useful than the one before it. People start weaving in and out of traffic, changing lanes and its harder to turn across multi-lane roads. This magnifies conflict points and leads to accidents. Accidents tend to bring roads to complete standstill. Single lane roads have far fewer accidents.

This is why road widening rarely "works."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Road diet": is a ridiculous concept. Roads were built in the first place to meet a need. That need did not just go away, allowing road capacity to be reduced without affecting road users. Adding additional pedestrian/bicycle/scooter capacity is one thing, but it's destructive if done by eliminating existing road capacity at the expense of existing road users who don't/can't use those alternative modes of transportation. Wishful thinking about green and healthy bicycling doesn't magically create thousands of new daily bicycle riders who happily abandon cars for bicycles for long commutes in bad weather, wearing business attire.

If a road is unsafe, because people drive too fast on it, then a diet can be beneficial even if no alternate capacity is added.

If you preserve intersection capacity, which is usually the real bottleneck, then dropping a lane may not even negatively impact through-flow. Part of this is because each additional lane is less useful than the one before it. People start weaving in and out of traffic, changing lanes and its harder to turn across multi-lane roads. This magnifies conflict points and leads to accidents. Accidents tend to bring roads to complete standstill. Single lane roads have far fewer accidents.

This is why road widening rarely "works."

The single minded focus on "safety" also has diminishing returns. Our roads are already quite safe and further reducing fatalities comes at an ever increasing cost in the form of congestion, frustration and a reduced quality of life. It would also be better if our nanny state government just focused on trying to get people around more efficiently and stop attempting (and failing) to micromanage how people drive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Road diet": is a ridiculous concept. Roads were built in the first place to meet a need. That need did not just go away, allowing road capacity to be reduced without affecting road users. Adding additional pedestrian/bicycle/scooter capacity is one thing, but it's destructive if done by eliminating existing road capacity at the expense of existing road users who don't/can't use those alternative modes of transportation. Wishful thinking about green and healthy bicycling doesn't magically create thousands of new daily bicycle riders who happily abandon cars for bicycles for long commutes in bad weather, wearing business attire.

If a road is unsafe, because people drive too fast on it, then a diet can be beneficial even if no alternate capacity is added.

If you preserve intersection capacity, which is usually the real bottleneck, then dropping a lane may not even negatively impact through-flow. Part of this is because each additional lane is less useful than the one before it. People start weaving in and out of traffic, changing lanes and its harder to turn across multi-lane roads. This magnifies conflict points and leads to accidents. Accidents tend to bring roads to complete standstill. Single lane roads have far fewer accidents.

This is why road widening rarely "works."

Transit planners are always spouting these embarrassing aphorisms. Y'all need to get out of the sociology department and study economics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Road diet": is a ridiculous concept. Roads were built in the first place to meet a need. That need did not just go away, allowing road capacity to be reduced without affecting road users. Adding additional pedestrian/bicycle/scooter capacity is one thing, but it's destructive if done by eliminating existing road capacity at the expense of existing road users who don't/can't use those alternative modes of transportation. Wishful thinking about green and healthy bicycling doesn't magically create thousands of new daily bicycle riders who happily abandon cars for bicycles for long commutes in bad weather, wearing business attire.

If a road is unsafe, because people drive too fast on it, then a diet can be beneficial even if no alternate capacity is added.

If you preserve intersection capacity, which is usually the real bottleneck, then dropping a lane may not even negatively impact through-flow. Part of this is because each additional lane is less useful than the one before it. People start weaving in and out of traffic, changing lanes and its harder to turn across multi-lane roads. This magnifies conflict points and leads to accidents. Accidents tend to bring roads to complete standstill. Single lane roads have far fewer accidents.

This is why road widening rarely "works."

Roads are rarely unsafe because of higher speeds. Accidents typically occur at intersections, and are usually due to inattention, ignoring a red light, pulling out in front of oncoming traffic, or other driver errors. Not speed as such. Most drivers drive at a speed they are comfortable with for conditions, which is oftentimes higher than posted speed limits which assume a general level of driving incompetence and likely carnage if speeds are commensurate with road character. That is not to say there aren't some people who do drive at such excessive speeds relative to the rest of traffic that they are per se obviously a danger to everyone - those are edge cases which can be dealt with through directed enforcement.

Reducing lanes of traffic merely increases congestion which in turn increases pollution from ICE vehicles, increases driving times and reduces quality of life for drivers. It doesn't make any difference to "safety". Look at cars going the speed limit or moderately faster on interstate highways - few (if any) spontaneously go out of control due to driving 65 mph or faster.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Road diet": is a ridiculous concept. Roads were built in the first place to meet a need. That need did not just go away, allowing road capacity to be reduced without affecting road users. Adding additional pedestrian/bicycle/scooter capacity is one thing, but it's destructive if done by eliminating existing road capacity at the expense of existing road users who don't/can't use those alternative modes of transportation. Wishful thinking about green and healthy bicycling doesn't magically create thousands of new daily bicycle riders who happily abandon cars for bicycles for long commutes in bad weather, wearing business attire.

If a road is unsafe, because people drive too fast on it, then a diet can be beneficial even if no alternate capacity is added.

If you preserve intersection capacity, which is usually the real bottleneck, then dropping a lane may not even negatively impact through-flow. Part of this is because each additional lane is less useful than the one before it. People start weaving in and out of traffic, changing lanes and its harder to turn across multi-lane roads. This magnifies conflict points and leads to accidents. Accidents tend to bring roads to complete standstill. Single lane roads have far fewer accidents.

This is why road widening rarely "works."

The single minded focus on "safety" also has diminishing returns. Our roads are already quite safe and further reducing fatalities comes at an ever increasing cost in the form of congestion, frustration and a reduced quality of life. It would also be better if our nanny state government just focused on trying to get people around more efficiently and stop attempting (and failing) to micromanage how people drive.

And yet drivers kill 40,000+ people a year. Plus a proportionate number of injuries. And worse, those numbers are actually going up. So it seems micromanaging is in order after all. Which would seem obvious when you observe any road around here for more than 10 minutes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Road diet": is a ridiculous concept. Roads were built in the first place to meet a need. That need did not just go away, allowing road capacity to be reduced without affecting road users. Adding additional pedestrian/bicycle/scooter capacity is one thing, but it's destructive if done by eliminating existing road capacity at the expense of existing road users who don't/can't use those alternative modes of transportation. Wishful thinking about green and healthy bicycling doesn't magically create thousands of new daily bicycle riders who happily abandon cars for bicycles for long commutes in bad weather, wearing business attire.

If a road is unsafe, because people drive too fast on it, then a diet can be beneficial even if no alternate capacity is added.

If you preserve intersection capacity, which is usually the real bottleneck, then dropping a lane may not even negatively impact through-flow. Part of this is because each additional lane is less useful than the one before it. People start weaving in and out of traffic, changing lanes and its harder to turn across multi-lane roads. This magnifies conflict points and leads to accidents. Accidents tend to bring roads to complete standstill. Single lane roads have far fewer accidents.

This is why road widening rarely "works."

The single minded focus on "safety" also has diminishing returns. Our roads are already quite safe and further reducing fatalities comes at an ever increasing cost in the form of congestion, frustration and a reduced quality of life. It would also be better if our nanny state government just focused on trying to get people around more efficiently and stop attempting (and failing) to micromanage how people drive.

Do you actually live in Fairfax county? Outside the beltway in NOVA? If not shut up and go away.

Non biker who f-ing hates the shitty, unsafe, weird combo road highways of outer beltway NOVA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Road diet": is a ridiculous concept. Roads were built in the first place to meet a need. That need did not just go away, allowing road capacity to be reduced without affecting road users. Adding additional pedestrian/bicycle/scooter capacity is one thing, but it's destructive if done by eliminating existing road capacity at the expense of existing road users who don't/can't use those alternative modes of transportation. Wishful thinking about green and healthy bicycling doesn't magically create thousands of new daily bicycle riders who happily abandon cars for bicycles for long commutes in bad weather, wearing business attire.

If a road is unsafe, because people drive too fast on it, then a diet can be beneficial even if no alternate capacity is added.

If you preserve intersection capacity, which is usually the real bottleneck, then dropping a lane may not even negatively impact through-flow. Part of this is because each additional lane is less useful than the one before it. People start weaving in and out of traffic, changing lanes and its harder to turn across multi-lane roads. This magnifies conflict points and leads to accidents. Accidents tend to bring roads to complete standstill. Single lane roads have far fewer accidents.

This is why road widening rarely "works."

Transit planners are always spouting these embarrassing aphorisms. Y'all need to get out of the sociology department and study economics.

I used to find it weird that driving advocates have such a limited understanding of traffic, but it makes sense once you realize they only are driving advocates because they don't understand traffic.

Do you truly believe that when a road goes from 2 lanes to 3 that it increased as much capacity as when it when from 1 to 2? Do you really think cars flow like a fluid in a pipe? You don't see cars bunch up in a lane? You don't see people change lanes resulting in someone having to hit their brakes? Why do multi-lane roads have more accidents than single lane roads?

That's before you even get to the issues of intersections, the wider you make a road, the harder it is to make a turn across one. People and businesses start demanding new stop-signs and signals as roads get wider. Surely you prefer to make an unprotected left across one lane than three? You must realize this at some level, even if it counteracts your linear lane increase concept.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Road diet": is a ridiculous concept. Roads were built in the first place to meet a need. That need did not just go away, allowing road capacity to be reduced without affecting road users. Adding additional pedestrian/bicycle/scooter capacity is one thing, but it's destructive if done by eliminating existing road capacity at the expense of existing road users who don't/can't use those alternative modes of transportation. Wishful thinking about green and healthy bicycling doesn't magically create thousands of new daily bicycle riders who happily abandon cars for bicycles for long commutes in bad weather, wearing business attire.

If a road is unsafe, because people drive too fast on it, then a diet can be beneficial even if no alternate capacity is added.

If you preserve intersection capacity, which is usually the real bottleneck, then dropping a lane may not even negatively impact through-flow. Part of this is because each additional lane is less useful than the one before it. People start weaving in and out of traffic, changing lanes and its harder to turn across multi-lane roads. This magnifies conflict points and leads to accidents. Accidents tend to bring roads to complete standstill. Single lane roads have far fewer accidents.

This is why road widening rarely "works."

The single minded focus on "safety" also has diminishing returns. Our roads are already quite safe and further reducing fatalities comes at an ever increasing cost in the form of congestion, frustration and a reduced quality of life. It would also be better if our nanny state government just focused on trying to get people around more efficiently and stop attempting (and failing) to micromanage how people drive.

And yet drivers kill 40,000+ people a year. Plus a proportionate number of injuries. And worse, those numbers are actually going up. So it seems micromanaging is in order after all. Which would seem obvious when you observe any road around here for more than 10 minutes.

Road safety and the number of lanes a road has likely have almost zero correlation. Safety is much more related to people who drive drunk or high, and/or who have minimal driving skills because the bar to getting a license is very low. People who change lanes abruptly, pull out into oncoming traffic, who fail to yield to the right of way, and who lack the skills to operate their vehicles safely under various weather and other conditions are the problem. Multi-lane roads are not the problem; people who drive incompetently on them, and other single-lane roads, too, are the problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Road diet": is a ridiculous concept. Roads were built in the first place to meet a need. That need did not just go away, allowing road capacity to be reduced without affecting road users. Adding additional pedestrian/bicycle/scooter capacity is one thing, but it's destructive if done by eliminating existing road capacity at the expense of existing road users who don't/can't use those alternative modes of transportation. Wishful thinking about green and healthy bicycling doesn't magically create thousands of new daily bicycle riders who happily abandon cars for bicycles for long commutes in bad weather, wearing business attire.

If a road is unsafe, because people drive too fast on it, then a diet can be beneficial even if no alternate capacity is added.

If you preserve intersection capacity, which is usually the real bottleneck, then dropping a lane may not even negatively impact through-flow. Part of this is because each additional lane is less useful than the one before it. People start weaving in and out of traffic, changing lanes and its harder to turn across multi-lane roads. This magnifies conflict points and leads to accidents. Accidents tend to bring roads to complete standstill. Single lane roads have far fewer accidents.

This is why road widening rarely "works."

The single minded focus on "safety" also has diminishing returns. Our roads are already quite safe and further reducing fatalities comes at an ever increasing cost in the form of congestion, frustration and a reduced quality of life. It would also be better if our nanny state government just focused on trying to get people around more efficiently and stop attempting (and failing) to micromanage how people drive.

And yet drivers kill 40,000+ people a year. Plus a proportionate number of injuries. And worse, those numbers are actually going up. So it seems micromanaging is in order after all. Which would seem obvious when you observe any road around here for more than 10 minutes.

Road safety and the number of lanes a road has likely have almost zero correlation. Safety is much more related to people who drive drunk or high, and/or who have minimal driving skills because the bar to getting a license is very low. People who change lanes abruptly, pull out into oncoming traffic, who fail to yield to the right of way, and who lack the skills to operate their vehicles safely under various weather and other conditions are the problem. Multi-lane roads are not the problem; people who drive incompetently on them, and other single-lane roads, too, are the problem.

Biker riders actually have a higher fatality rate per mile than car passengers/drivers. So encouraging people to bike to work will increase traffic deaths.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My guess is that there's urban planning bro in Fairfax Co who needed something to write on his resume and who wants to be nominated for some award at the next urban planning bro conference.

You're close. There has been a cycle (pun intended) of public and private grant funding for bike lanes available since they became in vogue over the last few years. My municipality does not have a strategic plan or conduct community needs assessments. Instead, it chases grants, and that is the direction in which we go. We have 5 bicycle lanes currently underway, as we have gotten Maryland state grants for them. It makes city leaders feel righteous and the rest of us not so much, since the lanes are put on streets cyclist don't favor.

No telling what's next.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My guess is that there's urban planning bro in Fairfax Co who needed something to write on his resume and who wants to be nominated for some award at the next urban planning bro conference.

You're close. There has been a cycle (pun intended) of public and private grant funding for bike lanes available since they became in vogue over the last few years. My municipality does not have a strategic plan or conduct community needs assessments. Instead, it chases grants, and that is the direction in which we go. We have 5 bicycle lanes currently underway, as we have gotten Maryland state grants for them. It makes city leaders feel righteous and the rest of us not so much, since the lanes are put on streets cyclist don't favor.

No telling what's next.

Your tax dollars at work! Remember when it's time to vote.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Road diet": is a ridiculous concept. Roads were built in the first place to meet a need. That need did not just go away, allowing road capacity to be reduced without affecting road users. Adding additional pedestrian/bicycle/scooter capacity is one thing, but it's destructive if done by eliminating existing road capacity at the expense of existing road users who don't/can't use those alternative modes of transportation. Wishful thinking about green and healthy bicycling doesn't magically create thousands of new daily bicycle riders who happily abandon cars for bicycles for long commutes in bad weather, wearing business attire.

If a road is unsafe, because people drive too fast on it, then a diet can be beneficial even if no alternate capacity is added.

If you preserve intersection capacity, which is usually the real bottleneck, then dropping a lane may not even negatively impact through-flow. Part of this is because each additional lane is less useful than the one before it. People start weaving in and out of traffic, changing lanes and its harder to turn across multi-lane roads. This magnifies conflict points and leads to accidents. Accidents tend to bring roads to complete standstill. Single lane roads have far fewer accidents.

This is why road widening rarely "works."

Transit planners are always spouting these embarrassing aphorisms. Y'all need to get out of the sociology department and study economics.

I used to find it weird that driving advocates have such a limited understanding of traffic, but it makes sense once you realize they only are driving advocates because they don't understand traffic.

Do you truly believe that when a road goes from 2 lanes to 3 that it increased as much capacity as when it when from 1 to 2? Do you really think cars flow like a fluid in a pipe? You don't see cars bunch up in a lane? You don't see people change lanes resulting in someone having to hit their brakes? Why do multi-lane roads have more accidents than single lane roads?

That's before you even get to the issues of intersections, the wider you make a road, the harder it is to make a turn across one. People and businesses start demanding new stop-signs and signals as roads get wider. Surely you prefer to make an unprotected left across one lane than three? You must realize this at some level, even if it counteracts your linear lane increase concept.

You are my stereotype of transit planners. They ignore all the big issues with safety like drunk driving and stoned driving and a complete lack of police enforcement of traffic laws and poorly designed intersections and people texting while driving and an epidemic of road rage and ridiculous amounts of double parking and the creeping sense creating by mopeds/cyclists/scooters doing whatever they want that only suckers obey traffic laws, and instead they obsesses over minor issues like the number of lanes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My guess is that there's urban planning bro in Fairfax Co who needed something to write on his resume and who wants to be nominated for some award at the next urban planning bro conference.

You're close. There has been a cycle (pun intended) of public and private grant funding for bike lanes available since they became in vogue over the last few years. My municipality does not have a strategic plan or conduct community needs assessments. Instead, it chases grants, and that is the direction in which we go. We have 5 bicycle lanes currently underway, as we have gotten Maryland state grants for them. It makes city leaders feel righteous and the rest of us not so much, since the lanes are put on streets cyclist don't favor.

No telling what's next.

Finally an explanation that makes sense!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Road diet": is a ridiculous concept. Roads were built in the first place to meet a need. That need did not just go away, allowing road capacity to be reduced without affecting road users. Adding additional pedestrian/bicycle/scooter capacity is one thing, but it's destructive if done by eliminating existing road capacity at the expense of existing road users who don't/can't use those alternative modes of transportation. Wishful thinking about green and healthy bicycling doesn't magically create thousands of new daily bicycle riders who happily abandon cars for bicycles for long commutes in bad weather, wearing business attire.

If a road is unsafe, because people drive too fast on it, then a diet can be beneficial even if no alternate capacity is added.

If you preserve intersection capacity, which is usually the real bottleneck, then dropping a lane may not even negatively impact through-flow. Part of this is because each additional lane is less useful than the one before it. People start weaving in and out of traffic, changing lanes and its harder to turn across multi-lane roads. This magnifies conflict points and leads to accidents. Accidents tend to bring roads to complete standstill. Single lane roads have far fewer accidents.

This is why road widening rarely "works."

Transit planners are always spouting these embarrassing aphorisms. Y'all need to get out of the sociology department and study economics.

I used to find it weird that driving advocates have such a limited understanding of traffic, but it makes sense once you realize they only are driving advocates because they don't understand traffic.

Do you truly believe that when a road goes from 2 lanes to 3 that it increased as much capacity as when it when from 1 to 2? Do you really think cars flow like a fluid in a pipe? You don't see cars bunch up in a lane? You don't see people change lanes resulting in someone having to hit their brakes? Why do multi-lane roads have more accidents than single lane roads?

That's before you even get to the issues of intersections, the wider you make a road, the harder it is to make a turn across one. People and businesses start demanding new stop-signs and signals as roads get wider. Surely you prefer to make an unprotected left across one lane than three? You must realize this at some level, even if it counteracts your linear lane increase concept.

You are my stereotype of transit planners. They ignore all the big issues with safety like drunk driving and stoned driving and a complete lack of police enforcement of traffic laws and poorly designed intersections and people texting while driving and an epidemic of road rage and ridiculous amounts of double parking and the creeping sense creating by mopeds/cyclists/scooters doing whatever they want that only suckers obey traffic laws, and instead they obsesses over minor issues like the number of lanes.

Ignore? Who got traffic stops and pursuit outlawed? Who opposes camera enforcement, interlock devices and speed governors? Who does the double parking and parks at bus stops?

It wasn't "traffic planners" and you know that.

In the zero enforcement environment drivers have created, design is the last tool left to reduce the carnage.

This is the world of your own making.