THE VIEW FROM OVER HERE

              Fairfax Board Stifles Bicycling

Montgomery County, MD just announced opening a bikeshare program with  450 shareable bikes at 40 sites around the County.  Washington, DC, Alexandria, and Arlington County all have active bikeshare operations.                                                                                                                     Now, we hear that Fairfax County will receive funding to install bike stations and operating hardware to support the expansion of Capital Bikeshare to the new Wiehle Avenue Metro Station!  Thanks to Comstock, the builder of the Wiehle Station complex, there is space built in for 250 bicycles in the complex. 

Now, bikeshare will be there as well.  For those concerned about congestion on our roads, this is good news indeed.  But, provision for bicycles would not have happened if it had been left to Fairfax County Board of Supervisors.                    

Five or six years ago, when Gerry Connolly was Chairman of County Board of Supervisors, he actively promoted bicycling as an alternative to road-clogging automobiles as well as healthy recreation for residents. Connolly engineered the first modest steps to move the County towards becoming a bike friendly place which, with modest investment, could actually make a 10% or maybe larger dent in the congestion on our roads. 

Connolly created a bicycle coordinator position to assess the actions needed and to prepare plans to make safe bicycle travel a reality.  The first maps for cyclists were prepared to show the few existing safe routes for bicycles.  Bike racks were put on commuter buses, and a small operating budget for the Coordinator was established.                                                                                            

Then, Connolly left to become Congressman for the 11th District and Fairfax  County support for bicycling effectively stalled.  Funding for a County Bicycle Plan to map proposed bike lanes, paths and related facilities, and recommend priorities for establishing them was delayed, and delayed.                                               

Finally, the Countywide Plan was completed just over a year ago.  Extensive public hearings on the Plan were held around the County.  Strong public support was manifest in those hearings.  Both now the Plan simply gathers dust, awaiting approval by an inert BOS, perhaps we are told, sometime in late 2014!                                                                                                    Meanwhile, Chairman Sharon Bulova and the Fairfax County BOS have zeroed out the bicycle operating budget of $333,000 for each of the last three years.  They refuse to continue even this modest funding amounting to about 32 cents per year per resident , or .0001% of the County’s $3.6 billion budget. This tiny fraction could easily be offset by reductions in other plush budget items such as admin support for nine supervisors, their PR machinery or any of several items where the .0001 % would not be missed.                                                                                                         

The arrival of rail service in Reston offers an opportunity to renew the County’s essential commitment to safe bicycling as an integral part of a plan to improve a clogged transportation system.  Failure to act on the County Plan and to provide minimal funding put this County to shame while local governments in the DC Metro area and all over the country are making safe bicycling an integral part of modern transportation systems.  It is time to approve the County Plan, restore the funding and get Fairfax moving again!