We're Your Friendly Neighborhood "Web Loggers," And We Approve This Message

Now that the decades-in-the-making cyclovelocitron bridge over Wiehle has finally been inspected and approved, we're coming to appreciate our friends at Station 25 and their puns, apparent love for bombastic 1980s bands notwithstanding. 

And before you gripe too much about how bikers have it made with big socialist projects like "repeatedly delayed bridges," check out the positioning of the fun "bike lane" someone, apparently with an even bigger sense of humor than our firefighters, painted a block south on Wiehle, next to the giant building in the back right of the photo, calling on cyclists to thread the needle between two lanes of dense traffic before invariably getting cut off by inattentive drivers turning on to the Toll Road. We would Wiehle prefer not 2Use that lane, please and thank you, the end.

Breaking: Bridge Broke (Apparently) (Updated)

Scheduled to open to great spandex-waving fanfare earlier this week, the exciting superspan of a bridge allowing cyclists on the W&OD Trail to zip over Wiehle Avenue at speeds approaching Mach 3 is... still closed, with no explanation. When the Restonian On Your Side I-Team went to investigate earlier today, the lack of activity on the work site was palpable, with no work vehicles or equipment in sight, save for a sole port-a-potty. Whatever's wrong apparently isn't a big priority.

Of course, we've been waiting for this bridge, originally scheduled to open in 2021, since 2008, so a few extra days really adds up to a rounding error. And never mind that the bridge already has a nice layer of rust patina, presumably from sitting in some rainy staging area for months (or longer) before it could be hoisted over Wiehle. But zoom out a bit, and you can see some other, less consequential projects that apparently can be put together in slightly less than 16 years:

Something something metaphor for the minimal attention begrudgingly paid to the impacts of development while greenlighting sweeeeet development projects right and left, the end.

Update: Apparently the bridge isn't broken, a fence is. The bridge will remain closed until the appropriate permits are issued, and the county has reinforced the impenetrable cones blocking access for now with (checks notes) "tape and orange fencing" to keep people from posting incriminating selfies of themselves trespassing and whatnot. That'll keep folks out!

Update to the Update: Finally open, and only 16 days late -- a mere rounding error from the heady days when Flo Rida and T-Pain topped the charts and someone thought a bridge over a heavily trafficked road might be a good idea, the end.