Finally, A Campaign Sign We Can All Agree With

 

Amid all the signs about open borders and cat ladies and whatnot, some random Next Door Neighbor Dot Com user posted this sign seen on the median of Baron Cameron Avenue. After hearing what sounds like a roll of quarters getting dropped into a leaf blower almost every night on the roads near Restonian World Headquarters, consider this a vote for a little peace and quiet, the end.

With Reston Roundabout Proposal, Our Glorious Transit-Oriented Future Looking Like a Combination of New Jersey and Amsterdam

V. v. exciting news about the future of Wiehle Avenue. No, silly rabbits, they're not going to bulldoze the whole thing and turn it into a maglev loop for Elon's robot taxis, but this week Fairfax County settled on the next best thing: a traffic circle!

That's right. If county planners get their way, the traffic-clogged, pedestrian-defying intersection where Wiehle dead-ends at Sunrise Valley Drive will be replaced with a traffic-clogged, pedestrian-defying roundabout. Sadly, the original proposal included a second traffic circle at the intersection of Wiehle and Sunset Hills, but planners deleted it from the newest version of the proposal, denying us the chance of slingshotting back and forth across the Toll Road at speeds so high they could reverse the flow of time and take us back to a more idyllic era before parallelogram-shaped skyscrapers and woonerf and whatnot, as demonstrated scientifically here.  Cowards!

Planners also proposed a sweeeet protected two-way "cycle track" going down one side of Wiehle, allowing spandex-wearing cyclists moving in different directions to high-five each other as they zip by stalled traffic awaiting the opportunity to approach the roundabout and slingshot their way over to South Lakes.

A final community meeting to present the updated plan will be held on Oct. 28 at Langston Hughes Middle School, so be sure to bring up the time-travel thing; county planners love that. Give us some sweet transit-oriented blockquote, BFFs at Reston Now:

The third public meeting will share information on the revised concept, including updated analysis, planning-level cost estimates and implementation schedule, considerations for the bridge over the Dulles Toll Road, and a 3-D rendering of the corridor. FCDOT will also note the trade-offs with the design, particularly at the roundabout intersection, and offer a second option.

NO SECOND OPTION. SAVE THE ROUNDABOUT. Not to well-actually, but traffic circles tend to handle traffic flows better until they hit a certain volume, at which point... (looks out the window at the current intersection). But we digress! The design proposal also calls for an "opportunity for creative pavement design," as illustrated in this blurry rendering from the proposal:

We haven't been this excited since similar plans called for fanciful concrete bollards and rad 80s art on the Wiehle Metro station pedestrian bridge, and we all know how well those turned out, the end.

There's an App for That!

The Reston Association has a new website! We haven't been this excited since we bought a 300 baud modem back in 1985, and for good reason.

This redesign has been years in the making and replaces a temporary site that was built using everyone's favorite podcast sponsor and platform of choice for homemade candle vendors. Among other things, the RA added some nifty email lists, so you can be the first in your cluster to know the next time the nearest pool is closed due to "contamination." Which is great, but why stop there? With a modern website in place, our favorite homeowners' association is now poised for online domination! Once obsolete itself, just consider the other websites reston.org could now make obsolete:

eBay. People often go to desperate ends to find aging fixtures that meet their neighborhood's design standards, so providing a place where people can outbid each other for the last taupe incandescent outdoor light fixture manufactured in 1968 that hasn't been landfilled is a perfect fit.

NextDoor. All the RA has to do is add a "why is the chopper over my house" button to its site, and everyone's favorite website for cranks and busybodies will be out of business before the next flyover.

EHarmony/Tinder/Grindr, etc. It's hard to find that someone special, and especially so in a suburban plastic fantastic planned community, so why not add a personals section for people seeking companions whose favorite color is (harvest) brown, love pickleball and long walks around manmade lakes, and aren't afraid to cry when their assessment comes in the mail?

X/Twitter/Whatever: Bringing Elon on board could get us a wedge-shaped, stainless steel Nature Center whose front door only opens with an app.

America Online. Originally founded just down the road in Vienna, but like so many people in our area, AOL "graduated" to Loudoun County before becoming irrelevant. So why not use whatever's left in the IT budget to bring it back? Instead of the tinny "you've got mail" message, we could all open our laptops to hear "your carport's been cited!"

TikTok: We don't watch the RA meeting livestreams, but we definitely would if they were 45 seconds long and featured dancing board members.

Restonian.org. Big companies often buy similar-sounding domain names for big bucks. Not saying nothing, but our assessment's going to be due in about six months and we could use a little extra cash, the end.

This post was originally published in the Reston Letter.