For all the construction wonks out there, it’s been a while since we saw an installation of a skywalk in Tysons. The last ones were put in place between the Tysons Corner Metro Station and Macerich’s Plaza at Tysons Corner Center. What might end up being the final skywalk in Tysons went up this past week, between the garage serving Lerner’s corporate offices and the new 1775 Tysons Boulevard.
The skywalks that have been going up the past few years are a mitigation measure, indicating how unwalkable parts of Tysons remain. A lot of reforms are going into place to change those conditions, but that battle is a long term one that takes cultural change at our DOTs, and a shift in priorities for our leaders from a commuter first to a resident first mentality.
Rosslyn is the capital of skywalks in our region, with a seemingly endless maze of elevated platforms connecting early Arlington buildings that were similarly office-park-esc 25 years ago. Many of those skywalks are now coming down as Arlington continues its shift towards walkability including road diets, more bike lanes, and better road grid inter-connectivity which is squeezing more bang for the buck out of the over abundance of road surface.
While we wait for the DOTs to learn from the same mistakes made in Arlington we still need a means for people to get around. There’s already been a lot of attention paid to a nearby dangerous intersection. The response from the DOTs was to create a 6-month study, that may or may not have already begun, to investigate whether permitting a safe walk path for pedestrians next to metro might cause a 4 second delay for drivers. Rosslyn’s transition is a likely future scenario for Tysons, but hopefully we will have far fewer skywalks to deal with once we are ready to take them down.