FABB Blog

 

New Bike Routes in Reston

VDOT is finishing up work on new bike lanes on South Lakes Drive in Reston as part of the 2018 repaving season. South Lakes Dr was changed from having 2 lanes in each direction to having a single travel lane in each direction and buffered bike lanes. During the public meeting held in March of this year, residents were opposed to county's proposal, even though traffic counts indicated that traffic flow would be minimally impacted.

As a compromise, VDOT did not reduce the lanes the section of road that includes South Lakes High School as residents felt strongly that full capacity was needed there. As a compromise, an alternate route was identified using Ridge Heights Rd and Soapstone Dr. Ridge Heights will be getting bike lanes later this year and there are already bike lanes on Soapstone.

Today we noticed that FCDOT has placed South Lakes Bike Route signs along the section where the route deviates from South Lakes Dr. Thanks to VDOT and FCDOT for implementing this project and installing wayfinding signs. The massive traffic jams that some residents predicted would occur once school was back in session have not happened; traffic seems to be flowing just fine and we're seen more cyclists using the road. Let's hope that once people discover this new bike facility that many more will join them.

Here is a photo of one of the new bike route signs.


In south Reston there is now an almost complete network of bike routes leading to the village centers, the W&OD Trail, the Metro station, and other destinations. Soon there will be a new separated bike facility along Sunrise Valley Dr that will be important as new residential units are being constructed. Here's a map that we just put together showing the major on-road bike facilities (except for the trail shown along Sunrise Valley Dr leading to the Metro station.

Labels: FCDOT, repaving, reston, vdot, wiehle-reston east

posted by Bruce Wright at 5:51 PM permalink