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Community Corner

Of Bikes and Budgets: Time for the Arlington County Board to Act

Arlington County's efforts to improve transportation through cycling have been great - but they haven't been enough. It's time to change that with the next budget.

It’s budget season in Arlington, and it’s time for the Arlington County Board to back up its marketing with funding. Arlington County has, for years now, encouraged its citizens to consider cycling as part of their personal approach to transportation.  But the funding for the infrastructure and education improvements necessary to support that approach has lagged greatly. That needs to change.

To be clear, Arlington County has certainly stepped up its efforts in recent years.  Miles of new or improved bike lanes, additional bike parking throughout the county, and the massive success that is Capital Bikeshare quickly come to mind. Arlington County's political leaders and staff deserve great credit for those achievements. But those successes also serve to highlight the significant needs that remain unaddressed. 

While new bike lanes and Capital Bikeshare have been able to encourage more people to take to the streets on bikes, the County has cut its budget for cycling education in half. More cyclists on our street are great – but many of them will need education on how to ride safely. Cutting education just as those who need it most are arriving is not a prudent move. 

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Initiatives to improve critical intersections – like that of the Custis trail at Lynn Street near the Key Bridge – languish for lack of staff time to implement already-funded projects. Arlington County has a very good track record of identifying and securing funding for infrastructure projects, and it should match those efforts by funding enough staff capacity that it does not become its own bottleneck.  

The County has also . This means that the same cyclists encouraged by the County to commute on these trails are faced daily with buckled pavement. This is to say nothing of the uncertainty brought by snow, where the lack of clearing resulted in 15,000 to 20,000 fewer trips along one section of the Custis trail in a three week period last year.  

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It is, to be sure, another year of belt-tightening in Arlington County. Cyclists, however, are not asking for increased funding for their own narrow benefit. In reality, increasing the County’s funding for infrastructure maintenance and improvements benefits many more people than the cyclists that use them directly. Every person that rides to Clarendon for a night out is one less driver to compete with for a parking space. Every bike commuter on the Custis trail lowers the traffic congestion on the roads passing through Arlington or eases the load on Metro. This approach to increasing transportation capacity is far more efficient – dollar for dollar – than creating new bus lines or providing more on-street parking.

The County can also benefit from taking cycling more seriously on the expenditure side of the ledger. One of the things that makes Arlington a great place for cycling is its compact and accessible geography. Some Arlington County functions that currently utilize motor vehicles – like parking enforcement – could easily substitute bikes. Such a move would lower expenses (fewer cars in the county fleet) and improve traffic flow (fewer enforcement vehicles parked in the street while ticketing) without negatively affecting the efficacy of enforcement.

The County’s leadership has demonstrated that it “gets” the role cycling can play in improving Arlington for everyone, but hasn’t yet fully supported that role. With the new bike share stations coming to Rosslyn and Courthouse soon – - there will be another enormous influx of cycling in Arlington. Now is the time for the County Board to fund the measures needed to ensure that this new momentum carries forward into a  cost-effective and permanent improvement in Arlington’s transportation systems.

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Arlington County's FY2012 Budget page can be found here.

The Arlington County Board will be holding a public hearing on its budget priorities on Tuesday, March 22, 2011, at 7pm.

Arlington County citizens can also submit comments on the Arlington County budget to the County Board directly.

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