For several years transportation officials, planners, and Fairfax County leaders have known that the Silver Line would be a reality, and that pedestrian improvements would be necessary to make sure people could safely use the transit line. After a nearly 9 month delay, County officials are now telling us there wasn’t enough time?
Residents and commuters aren’t asking for Tysons to magically be transformed into a walkable paradise, but to receive responses like this, when we get any at all, is a slap in our faces. Providing a crosswalk should not be a year long chore when people’s lives are risk. How many must run across 9 lanes of traffic without any signage, striping, or protection before Fairfax County will stop the status quo kowtowing to VDOT? Must someone die at the intersections in question, opening the county to millions in liability, before they will admit that what the state has been feeding them is worthless in terms of urban design?
When faced with a decision on whether to continue working with VDOT or take matters into their own hands to implement correct designs, why do Fairfax officials continue to choose jurisdictional bureaucracy over the lives and safety of its residents? We are not asking for millions of dollars in changes. We are not asking for anything that would take more than 1 week of construction to implement. We know that permitting and processing can be tedious and goes through many levels of government before it is approved, but that was your job, and for 3 years you sat on your hands, and now we have the Silver Line and many extremely dangerous pedestrian conditions.
Some of the changes don’t even require construction. We asked FCDOT to review the speed limit on Westpark, where the speed is 45mph in a residential neighborhood with thousands of residents, and dozens of children. Guess what? VDOT told FCDOT “no” (no reasoning provided, I might add), the speed must stay high, making it dangerous to do anything but drive.
We are paying higher taxes for these very types of changes but all we ever hear back from you is, we want to widen Route 123, or we want to add a new toll road ramp; the studies of which cost more than all the improvements we are requesting combined.
So what will it be Fairfax? Lip service about changes, or tangible improvements that can be streamlined if someone had the guts to do so? Please sign our petition to send a message that enough is enough.
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We call on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and Fairfax County Department of Transportation to end the status quo of bureaucracy, which has chosen to prioritize saving vehicle drivers 2 minutes of time, instead of protecting the safety and lives of its residents who are trying to use the Silver Line.
For more than 3 years Fairfax County had the time to make these simple safety improvements a reality, but they failed to do so. Now we see dozens of pedestrians running across unmarked intersections, and putting themselves at risk.
Does Fairfax County have to face a negligent death before it will stop the improper design standards and process imposed on us? End VDOTs vice grip on the welfare of Tysons’ residents and commuters.
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