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.

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.

Don't Quit Your Day Jobs, And We Won't Start Sliding Down Poles In Our Spare Time

Good on Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Station 25 for having a little fun with the decades-in-the-making infrastructure rising in the background. We admit our own "humorous" "web logging" has been only slightly more expeditious than the entire saga of getting the W&OD trail bike bridge over Wiehle Avenue approved and built, but geez, guys, can't you keep your fire trucks and ambulances in your own lane?

We kid, we kid. What we're not kidding about is we still have months to go before our overcaffeinated cadre of cyclists can slap on the spandex and whip over the intersection with Wiehle without stopping.... as opposed to slapping on the spandex and whipping through the intersection with Wiehle without stopping, the end. 

It's Time for Some Name Changes – No Fooling

Because it's April, there were of course the requisite April Fool's jokes on that social media thing the kids all seem to love, if by "kids" you mean folks with smartphones and mortgages, and the soul-crushing jobs required to pay for both.

But we digress. One of the best of this year's April Fool's crop was a photo of a street sign on our beloved Temporary Road, doctored so it read “Permanent Road.” And for sure, no 100-foot-long stretch of asphalt 'round these here parts has arguably generated as much head-scratching as this one. And we get it, Reston! You're scared of commitment. But all these decades later, you're stuck with us – and vice versa.

However, that's not the only name in our plastic fantastic planned community that might benefit from a little updating. Consider:

New Dominion Parkway – The fancier part of Temporary Road, on the other side of Reston Parkway. Way back when Reston Town Center was just a handful of buildings surrounded by a sea of surface parking, we saw this street name and were duly impressed. This wasn't the stuffy old Dominion, the Virginia of the capital of the Confederacy -- no siree Bob (Simon), it's the new Virginia! Instead of cotillions, there's chain dining. Instead of plantations, paid parking. No notes.

Wiehle Avenue – A road named after the village which was named after the man who decided to build a town with one viable business (a distillery). But it’s so 19th century! Maybe we should update it to honor the last name of a more recent town founder, or at least his initials. Nah, that would be crazy.

Old Reston Avenue – A sharp right turn off Temporary Road, this stub of a road still has an official "Virginia Byway" sign hinting at its old-timeyness. But besides the ruins of the aforementioned distillery, there's not much old-timey about it these days, except maybe for the hot dogs rolling ceaselessly under the warmers at the gas station at its other end.

American Dream Way – So named for the one-time headquarters of a mortgage student loan company, it will soon be the only way into a gated community of townhouses and tiny green spaces -- but only if you can afford it! Again, no notes.

Baron Cameron Avenue – Honoring the Sixth Baron Fairfax of Cameron, born in 1693. But this is America, by gum, and we don't bow down to royalty. Let's change it to his given name, Tommy "Gridlock" Fairfax.

Sunrise Valley/Sunset Hills – One is north of the other, not east or west, so these names don't really work from a geographical standpoint. So why not make fans of mid-century musicals happy, and change their names to Sunrise Valley/If I Were a Rich Man and Sunset Hills/To Life?

Colt's Neck Drive – Appropriate when Reston's fancy octagonal horse stable was nearby, but the stable is long gone and so are the horses, give or take the occasional runaway from outside Reston's borders. How about something that better reflects today's flora and fauna, like Invasive Ivy Parkway?

Olde Crafts Drive – Someone will have to explain this one to us, along with its neighboring Barrel Cooper Court and Gunsmith Square. Are there Colonial Williamsburg-style demonstrations of barrel coopering, whatever that is, and musketry, whatever that is, every week- end? Do you get issued a tri-cornered hat when you move in? Does the DRB put you in the stocks if your door is the wrong color? So many questions.

Opportunity Way, Visionary Way, Inspiration Street, and Progress Street – These are the names of the new streets surrounding the even newer skyscrapers adjoining Reston Town Center. Given their names' vaguely Soviet state-sanctioned optimism vibe, we guess Glorious 10 Year Plan Drive and Tractor Surplus Exceeded Parkway were taken.

Links Drive, Golf Course Drive, and several others – Write your own joke here, the end.

This post was originally published in the Reston Letter.

Going Round and Round in Reston

 You may have missed it amid the firehose of current events, but we were struck by the recent announcement that a newly arrived Reston business was naming different areas of its office after parts of the Beltway, because what people love most about their work day is the part where they sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the "Outer Loop," whatever that is, to get to some midrise office building in time for the "team sync," whatever that is.

But we digress. Why doesn't Reston, a famous planned community, do the same thing, renaming different parts of itself after a famous round highway? After all, would you rather live in a neighborhood with some outdated 1960s name like "Thistle Down Misty Meadows Parkview Cluster (Reserved Parking Only)" or in a place with a name that gives off vibrant 2020s sounding vibes like, wedunno, "Chevy Chase?" So get your can of spray paint in one of two DRB-approved colors, and get ready to do some renaming!

Tysons Corner. A brilliant rebranding of Reston Town Center, especially since we now have more steakhouses and less free parking than that clump of office buildings to the east.

Old Town Alexandria. It's essentially Lake Anne, only slightly older and with more functional utilities.

The Mixing Bowl. We could mention one of Reston's finer midscale watering holes, but Mrs. Restonian would likely disapprove.

The 270 Spur. An array of signs and turns designed to confuse and irritate drivers? It's gotta be the area around the Wiehle Metro Station.

Silver Spring. Any of the tennis courts where people play pickleball.

HOV lanes. Also known as "Lexus lanes" for their high tolls, we'd say any of the roads leading out of Reston to "Great" Falls or Loudoun County.

National Harbor. Wherever the casino winds up being built, with the nearest stormwater retention pond serving as the "harbor."

We forgot to mention that the aforementioned office has something called the "Blues Cafe," a work area in- spired by D.C.'s jazz scene. Of course, when we think of the blues and Reston, the only thing that comes to mind is the DRB, the end.

 This post was originally published in the Reston Letter.

About Freaking Time: Groundbreaking for Fancy W&OD Trail Bridge Over Wiehle, Capping 11-Year Process (We Hope)

 

At long last, the first ceremonial shovels of dirt have been turned for the fancypants Wiehle Avenue overpass, which will allow W&OD cyclists to... continue not to stop as they streak over, not through, the intersection. Given that this project was approved way back in ought-twelve and was supposed to be completed by 2021, it's nice that they managed to break ground slightly after its 10th birthday.  Hopefully it'll be finished before it's old enough to drive!

In the past, we made some snarky comments about other large objects from around the world that managed to be built much more quickly than this relatively pedestrian pedestrian bridge. But we were just dumb web loggers who couldn't possibly understand the complexities of such an involved project in this day and age, and foolishly suggested that it was emblematic of how the county's efforts to improve infrastructure to accommodate growth dramatically lag the actual growth it was more than happy to approve. Silly rabbits! No word on why those large objects in the background somehow didn't take a decade to build, though, the end.

Soapstone Speeders Sought for Slick Shots: Reston Speed Camera Goes Live

V. v. exciting news for people who travel at exactly the speed limit in the left lane with their turn signal on: Fairfax County's fun new speed camera trial went live today, with one of its cameras trained directly on a major South Reston thoroughfare. That's right, the Reston camera is on Soapstone Drive, near Terraset Elementary School. No word if it's also buried halfway underground with just the top of the lens sticking out. 

Anyhoo! Give us some good happy motoring blockquote, BFFs at Reston Patch:

Friday was the first day the photo monitoring devices were activated as part of a pilot program to improve pedestrian safety and save lives by changing motorists' driving habits.

Hunter Mill District Supervisor Walter Alcorn originally introduced the measure to develop a speed camera program for school and work zones in the county, during the Dec. 7, 2021 board of supervisors meeting. The board voted unanimously to adopt the measure, which was cosponsored by Supervisors John Foust (Dranesville) and Rodney Lusk (Franconia).

For the first 30 days, ticketed drivers will only receive a warning, but after that fines start mounting quickly for repeat offenders. Fairfax County is only placing these near schools and in work zones (for now), so it's hard to complain about Big Gubmint attacking our Freedoms, especially since at least two Fairfax County students have lost their lives due to speeding drivers in the past year. We do wonder, though, if the Reston speed camera will be able to tell the difference between Terraset and some of the cars on the road:

Reston Going to the Birds: E-Scooters Join Bikeshares As Most Likely Objects To Be Found During Future Lake Dredging

First, the red Capital Bikeshare stations descended upon our neighborhoods, glowing monoliths and solar panels and puny, pathetic bollards and all. Now, within a week of the county approving its "shared mobility device program," we've seen the first rentable scooters that weren't totally lost pop up in Reston -- in Reston Town Center, no less!

The first county franchisee, Bird, is beginning to distribute up to 300 scooters countywide (a second company, LINK, will start distributing scooters sometime this fall). 

At least 15 of Bird's battery-powered doohickeys have been set up in RTC, making this the second most embarrassing moment involving birds and our plastic fantastic fake downtown. Check out this helpful cellular telephone map:

With its mix of paths, transit, and pedestrian-friendly design, Reston's actually a decent place for these scooters, and we can't wait to effortlessly scoot from the Apple Store to the former site of the Macaroni Grill to pay our #respects some day in the not-so-distant future. (But we won't be going to Herndon -- that purple area on the map suggests that scooters remain verboten for our neighbors to the west.) But with the way they block sidewalks when they're not in use and encourage speedy zipping around pedestrians when they are, they're.... not exactly popular with everyone, as this fancy "supercut," as the kids haven't said in years, suggests.

 

Scooters and plentiful bodies of water? What could possibly go wrong, the end.

Invasion of the Parking Snatchers: Bikeshare Stations Descend on Unsuspecting Reston Neighborhoods, Causing Panic, Mild Chafing on Humid Days (Updated)

 Check out this weird piece of debris that recently fell onto Ring Road, presumably from outer space (monolith and all). Ha ha, we kid! It’s actually part of the long-anticipated second phase of Capital Bikeshare, a secret quasi-governmental project to discretely plant bright red monoliths in our neighborhoods to wean all of us from our Ford Foci and mandate cycling to all points near and far in the name of GLORIOUS SOCIALISM, which as we all know is symbolized by the only thing more fear-inducing than the dreaded hammer and sickle (a bicycle). Plus each one appears to be powered by/report back to its socialist overlords using a SOLAR PANEL, which is just the craziest thing since someone decided to bury a school in the ground to save a few bucks on the electric bill.

We digress. The recent flurry of activity is more than doubling the number of socialist cycling cells in our plastic fantastic planned community. When all’s said and done, there will be 35 operating stations — but oddly, only three in more sought after North Reston. Capitalism wins (for now!)

Now, we’re all for bikes and socialisms and whatnot, but we’re wondering about the location of some of these new stations. Given the Ring Road station’s location in the MIDDLE OF RING ROAD, we’re thinking it’s going to need bigger (and more fanciful) bollards than those scrawny white things to keep the bikes from being clipped by happy motorists on the regular. Then there’s the one that descended on Fairway Drive:

Wow, where are people going to park now? Its appearance apparently also attracted a uniformed agent, pictured here probing (or being probed by) the strange alien device.

Then there’s this one subtly blending into the shadows on Inlet Court — which is at least a cul-de-sac. The odd thing is there’s a bus stop about 150 yards away, which would be a logical, and maybe even helpful, spot for a bikeshare station — but it’s completely invisible from it. That's okay -- maybe the trees will become sentient and learn how to ride.

Needless to say, the folks on Next Door Neighbor Dot Com haven't been this bent out of shape since someone shot off some fireworks in their backyard, talking about the bikes attracting excess traffic and -- you guessed it -- the wrong elements to their otherwise bucolic neighborhoods, but mostly about the loss of surface parking. Hey, when you're making a socialism omelette, sometimes you have to break a few gas-powered eggs! 

No word on when the mandatory spandex distribution will begin, but we’ll be first in line, the end.

Update: A Confidential Restonian Operative sent us a cellular telephone photo of the objects being delivered to one Reston neighborhood.

COINCIDENCE?

Yikes: Colonial Pipeline Hack Literally Under Our Feet (Updated With Very 1970s Rationing Vibes)

You know how the Colonial Pipeline was hacked with ransomware demands, leading the pipeline to shut down and spike gas prices across the East Coast? Yeah, that was awesome, except for the “spike gas prices” part, and maybe for the part where the tubes (not the Internet tubes that lawmakers like to talk about, but the literal ones that carry noxious chemicals underground) literally run through our plastic fantastic planned community.

Here’s the latest from our favorite correspondent, the Peasant From Less Sought After South Reston:

Very, very exciting news on the gas front (and we don’t mean from having overindulged ourselves on Bush’s Baked Beans!).  As I’m sure you’ve seen, our governor has now declared a gen-u-ine EMERGENCY because of the looming gas shortages that bring back to the OK Baby Boomer generation such as yours truly fond memories of the 1973 and 1979 oil crises that put our Plymouth Satellites and Ford Galaxies in mortal danger.

Second, we are shocked – shocked – to sadly report that price gouging is already going on here in our mini-utopia.  The Peasant, being a crafty salt of the earth bumpkin and having once lived in an AOC-style socialist paradise where one bought things on the spot because they would be gone 30 minutes later, filled up his oxcart Saturday evening at the South Lakes Sunoco at $2.99 a gallon. Mrs. Peasant filled up her turbo-charged oxcart on Sunday at the same price.  Sadly, we regret to inform you that today the price has miraculously risen by 30 cents/10 percent to $3.29 a gallon.

This fancy "web site" also shows prices rising around the region, and we've heard that many area gas stations have intermittently run out of gas over the last day or so.

Let's just hope that people here are being smarter than folks in (checks notes but doesn't need to) Florida, as shown in this cellular telephone photo making the rounds:

More from the Peasant:

We are left to wonder if some AP Chemistry students at South Lakes can, a la the Manhattan Project or Operation Warp Speed, construct a revolutionary bio-digester that turns Carl Sagan-esque billions and billions of cicadas into pure bio fuel, with the added benefit of Elon Musk now being free to concentrate on playing a real life Matt Damon and living on Mars.

No truth to the rumor that the ransomware was delivered to the pipeline servers by a random technician clicking on one of the “Who’s Your Baby’s Daddy” ads on this filthy “web log.” In conclusion, maybe don’t click on anything that might turn some switches controlling the tubes under our communal gardening plots and whatnot and turn Reston into a leaking miasma of earth-toned smoke, atmospherically speaking, the end.

Update: The Peasant sent us some exciting digital telephone photos of long lines for gas this afternoon at South Lakes Village Center, where gas is now an affordable $3.29 per gallon:

Long gas lines, rising prices, and some strange flu? It's not just the sunken living rooms that are making it feel like the 70s all over again, the end.

We Welcome Our Automated Wegmans-Adjacent Overlords: Self-Driving Vehicles To Aid In Carrying Prepared Foods To Regular, Non-Self-Driving Vehicles

Enormously huge news for fans of Black Mirror-like dystopian futures, prepared foods, and planned real estate developments: Turns out our plastic fantastic planned community will be among the first to have self-driving cars zipping around, in an endless Wegmans-to-parking-garage-and-back-to-Wegmans loop in the fun new 4 million square-foot Reston Crescent development that's now apparently called Halley Rise, enabling hungry Restonians to make their rotisserie chicken runs at speeds approaching Mach 3. Sweet! Give us some futuristic blockquote, BFFs at the Verge:

Boston-based self-driving startup Optimus Ride said on Thursday that it will provide rides in its golf cart-sized vehicles to tenants of a $1.4 billion mixed-use development project in Reston, Virginia, starting later this year. It will be a very modest deployment of the technology — three vehicles on a fixed loop to and from the parking facility — but it underscores the need for self-driving car operators to rein in their ambitions before going public.

HOGWASH. It actually underscores the need to get those Wegmans prepackaged food containers back to the car before they get cold.

An MIT spinoff, Optimus Ride said its vehicles would be confined to the private development site called Halley Rise, and it will be geofenced, meaning they can’t operate outside of a specific geographic area. Human safety drivers will be in each vehicle in case anything goes wrong, though the company claims its technology is Level 4 capable, or able to handle all of the driving duties within the geofence and under specific conditions.

When the vehicles reach Level 5 capability, they will be able to enslave humanity pick out the best sushi platters and pre-warmed samosas on their own.

So that's exciting! But maybe you're looking for a futuristic means of transportation beyond the friendly confines of Halley Rise (BTW, does "rise" refer to our grocery bills, congestion along Sunrise Valley, or both?).

But we digress. Might we suggest the other futuristic, next-generation innovation in transportation -- the electric scooter? Already annoying and endangering people available in Arlington and D.C. proper, imagine our surprise when we opened our flip phone and saw one lonely Bird Scooter, apparently abandoned at the Wiehle-Reston Metro Station and pinging for help.

Awww, poor 'lil guy! Let's just hope this Bird has a better fate than the ones here:

Garbage Fire Provides Unironic Metaphor for Reston's Transit-Oriented Future, Nearly As Much Gridlock

Did you happen to smell something strange, perhaps more cloying than unpleasant, whilst sitting in traffic near the Toll Road this afternoon? That was the smell of success, baby!

Quite a garbage situation. pic.twitter.com/cfnnGHHQFB

— Katherine (@scarletalphabet) September 19, 2018

It used to be only our hip urban core had the occasional garbage fire. Now with more and more development on its way, all of Reston is en fuego!

Reston is a giant parking lot pic.twitter.com/0WAGdS2yc8

— Chris McNulty (@Vaphilly624) September 19, 2018

Truer words have never been said, Chris. Truer words.

Reston Town Center Demonstrates Traffic Management, PR Skills For Which It Is Deservedly Famous

Even as its owner plans to expand our fake downtown gritty urban core to reach the future Metro station, Reston Town Center continues to demonstrate its expertise in two areas for which it has become deservedly famous: traffic management and public relations.

When the Action McNews On Your Side Working For You Keeping 'Em Honest Investigation Team came to RTC to do an EXPLOSIVE INVESTIGATION on stop signs blocked by festive hanging flowerpots, they were immediately stopped by the Director of First Impressions, as RTC security has been wont to do for years. Check out this BOMBSHELL VIDEO:

Mad props, as the kids haven't said in years, for the Action McNews reporter calling RTC security "mall security."

Fortunately for all involved, the flowerpots were removed almost as quickly as the offending Action McNews reporter and his camera. No truth to the rumor that RTC will now put a bucket of flags on each stop sign for pedestrians to wave down cars as they cross the street. Hahahaha, that would just be crazy, the end.

Metaphor Alert: Massive County Response After Lake Anne Parking Attempt Stymied By Pesky Depth Pole

For the second time in recent memory, an enterprising Reston driver made an at-speed decision to park in the wide-open (and still free!) parking area known as Lake Anne this weekend, only to be stymied by the depth pole at the lake's edge.

Naysayers and cynics might say that, despite the massive influx of traffic since the opening of the Silver Line, the county has done nothing to address a well-known dangerous stretch of road while their eyes pop cartoon-style out of their heads while making cash register sounds anytime the word "woonerf" is uttered. They may point to public proclamations such as "we can't stop development waiting for the roads to be built" as evidence of this claim.

But nothing could be further from the truth, silly rabbits! Feast your eyes on the immediate and substantive response to the latest in a regular series of crashes along this stretch of road, bypassing the usual design charrettes and environmental studies that make building, say, a pedestrian overpass take a decade:

Problem solved.

When Transit Oriented Development Gives You No Infrastructure, Make Transit Oriented Lemonade

Confidential Restonian Operative "Robert" sent us this cellular telephone photograph taken on the outskirts of Reston Town Center, near Bluemont Drive and the Hyatt Parking Garage. Aw, it's nice that they put up a sign to warn passing motorists about pedestrians. But wait, what are those flags?

In case you can't read the concise, user-friendly instructions for which RTC is deservedly famous, our favorite stressful, city-like shopping center has come up with a cunning plan to keep their less elite patrons -- the ones who show up on foot or (shudder) bike instead of paying a completely reasonable price to park -- from being run over before getting to enjoy a premium midscale chain retail experience. That's right, silly rabbits, they literally want people to pick up a cheap plastic flag and wave it at speeding cars as they cross the street, then return it to a receptacle if once they make it!

This may be the last post ever on this filthy "web log." We couldn't possibly top this.

In TOTALLY UNRELATED news, there's no truth to the rumor that Fairfax County is scheduling the first of fourteen public impact hearings about potentially replacing the proposed W&OD trail pedestrian bridge across Wiehle Avenue with a similar bucket-o-flags, although preliminary design studies won't be completed until early 2022. "We can't stop development waiting for a handful of 49 cent plastic flags to be bolted haphazardly onto an existing signpost," a county planning official didn't say, probably, the end.

Update: This inspired piece of poetry, from our favorite correspondent, The Peasant From Less Sought After South Reston.

Will Lexus Lanes Mar Reston's Ford Focus Future? Almost Certainly

Even as economists wring their hands and warn of the imminent hellish dystopian economic hellscape in which Reston residents will be forced to drive Ford Foci, plans are in the works to jack up tolls on the Toll Road introduce "variable-rate pricing," which has brought us awesomely disruptive high-tech innovations like $47-plus tolls on I-66, to our favorite E-Ticket ride to Tysons Corner, the Dulles Toll Road. Give us some cautiously worded verbiage, BFFs at the Washington Post:

Dulles Toll Road officials are eager to talk about an equipment upgrade that will bring the more than 30-year-old toll collection system into the modern age. The new system will allow drivers to pay by credit card and offer a self-service option for those who don’t have an E-ZPass transponder.

What McKeough and others are reluctant to tout, however, is how the $23.4 million upgrade will give the system the ability to charge variable tolls — such as changing prices based on the time or day or amount of traffic.

McKeough emphasized that no decision has been made on whether MWAA would move to a congestion-based pricing system.

“That is a policy question,” she said. “And I am here to talk about construction.”

MWAA board chairman Warner Session did not respond to requests for comment about the project or whether the panel was considering variable tolls.

The Post notes (with considerable understatement) that variable tolling "has generated criticism" because of high tolls in the so-called "Lexus lanes" on I-66, I-495, and elsewhere in the region. But not to worry, silly rabbits! This is the Toll Road we're talking about, and like Reston, it's special! For starters, it carries the "special" debt from building the Silver Line, which riled up a bunch of people who see mass transit, like other functional government services, as something they shouldn't have to pay for as they drive alone to their strapping-bombs-to-dolphins contracting jobs, but we digress.

What is extra special, though, is that the contract for the Toll Road "equipment upgrade" has been awarded to the same company that gouged developed the I-66 tolling process. So all demureness aside on the part of MWAA, it's a good bet that variable tolling will happen at some point.

It's important to remember that toll rates were projected to go up anyways:

The next projected toll increase — to $4.75 — for the main toll plaza and one ramp transaction — is scheduled for January 2019. By 2043, the rate could increase to $11.25; by 2048, the final year tolls are projected to rise under the current schedule, the rate would be $12.50, according to budget documents provided by MWAA.

Who knows, maybe the variable tolling will help spread out those increasing costs and mitigate congestion in a sensible way, just like it's supposed to. Or by 2048, maybe it'll be the dolphins who will be commuting to strap bombs to us, the end.

Political Theater: Scrapping Silver Line Phase 2 Suggested, But Who Would Be Able To Tell The Difference?

There's nothing wrong with our beleaguered mass transit system that a little elbow grease political theater won't fix. After floating the sliver-lined trial balloon of closing most Tysons stations during off-peak periods, a Metro board member has made an even more awesome Modest Proposal: doing away with the entire second phase of the Silver Line from Wiehle out to the particleboard Valhalla of Loudoun County, leaving a series of half-constructed stations to crumble in the median of the Toll Road. What could possibly go wrong?

Construction has begun on five of the six stations, and the project is nearly 47 percent complete.

Price said canceling the extension would save about $100 million over two fiscal years beginning in mid-2018, at a time when the District and other jurisdictions are concerned about rising financial demands from Metro for increased government subsidies.

Metro Board Chairman Jack Evans (D), who also represents the District, said he supports Price’s idea.

“Mr. Price’s observation that we may have to just stop moving forward with the Silver Line may make sense in light of the enormous financial challenges that we face,” said Evans, who also is a D.C. Council member. “It just goes back to the need for a dedicated funding source.”

Of course this is another ham-handed attempt to extort more money out of Fairfax County and/or Virginia. That's going to be inevitable when the county's champagne wishes and caviar dreams are so transparently focused around something out of its control -- something those of us in Reston are starting to understand ourselves. On the plus side, maybe they could open the never-to-be-finished segment of the Silver Line as an awesome rollerblading track, allowing those of us with limited luggage to zip on over to Dulles in a matter of minutes.

In the meantime, it's extremely likely that Metro will start closing early in the evening, which will put a severe damper on our evening trips to Tysons for some sweet chain dining. And for those of us dealing with the latest -- and worst -- SafeTrack disruption of Silver Line service, never fear! Metro has sprung into action -- not with an accelerated repair schedule or additional trains, silly rabbits, but with a teevee video:

Just something to watch on repeat about 150 times on the trip downtown, the end.

Raise The Titanic, Or Whatever Landed In Lake Anne

Now that we know that no one was seriously hurt in this legitimately terrifying one-car crash into Lake Anne yesterday afternoon, thanks in no small part to a bystander jumping into the water to help the passengers, we have two options for this one:

1) Wow, the things people will do to avoid paying for parking at RTC, or

2) After the latest in what seem like near-weekly serious accidents along this stretch of Wiehle Avenue, which have only been exacerbated by the exponential increase in speeding cut-through commuters since the Metro station opened, maybe it's time for someone to actually, you know, do something about this.

Soapstone Bridge Won't Come For More Than A Decade, But New Taxes Could Come Much, Much Sooner

Hey, remember that time when Fairfax County acknowledged that all the bollardy construction goodness popping up around the Toll Road might necessitate another bridge, or underpass, or teleportation tube, to keep South Reston-to-Michaels scrapbooking runs to under an hour, or whatever?

Yeah, that was awesome. While the county earmarked $2.5 million for preliminary planning of the Soapstone bridge way back in ought-fourteen, we learned last week that bids for construction won't be sought until the mid-2020s. Give us some infuriating blockquote, BFFs at Reston 2020:

At the community meeting last week, it was revealed that the Soapstone Connector, recommended for construction by RMAG--the Board-appointed committee that looked at transpo needs related to the arrival of Metro--in 2009, will not be opened for construction bidding until the middle of the next decade. It won't be completed until late in the 2020s.

So while Reston's TSAs may get patched sidewalks (which is about all that has been done by the County of the several dozen transportation improvements recommended by the RMAG), don't expect any substantial roadway improvements for about 20 years--even though development is going on unabated.

Between this bit of news and the nine-year wait to build the W&OD overpass over Wiehle Avenue, you might be starting to suspect that Reston might not be at the top of the county's priorities, even as new developments continue to be approved at blistering rates. But nothing could be further from the truth, silly rabbits, as there's one high-priority county project that's gotten the fast track. That's the plan to create a Very Special Tax District, soon, to fund transportation improvements that could be a decade in the making.

Opposed by the Reston advisory group created to study it as well as Reston as a whole, the Very Special Tax District could come to a vote by county supervisors as early as the end of the year. Our BFFs at Reston 2020 have created an online petition opposing the Very Special District, arguing that developers should pay the full freight of the $2.6 billion in anticipated transportation improvements that might, eventually, get done:

The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors will likely approve a Transportation Service District (TSD) creating an additional property value driven tax on all property owners in Reston's Metro station areas by the end of 2016. The TSD's purpose, based on faulty assumptions, is to fill an alleged $350 million "gap" in tax revenues for improving roadways in the station areas as high-density development unfolds.

The Board will most likely approve a TSD that will add 1-3 cents to the property tax rate now experienced by station area property owners. Moreover, three years of experience at Tysons with a similar TSD indicates that the Board will double or triple the rate within 3-4 years.

The added tax will not be difficult to absorb by developers who will see huge financial gains there in the coming years. Estimates based on recent experience suggest commercial real estate profits will average more than a billion dollars per year in Reston's station areas over the next four decades--and County property tax revenues will grow right along with the growth in property values.

Unlike County and developers' coffers, however, station area residents will not see any revenue gain from the development that occurs there. Nonetheless, they will have to pay this added property value-driven tax as property values and tax rates escalate.

Moreover, not only will they not derive any financial benefit from the tax like their commercial and county counterparts, they will actually experience worse traffic conditions by County intent. Specifically, the County is lowering the performance standard for these roadways, including Reston's four key through north-south and east-west boulevards, from a Level of Service "D" to Level of Service "E." That means peak period congestion there is likely to cause at least 55-80 second delays at each intersection.

There is no logical, ethical, or other valid reason why Reston residents should pay more road taxes for worse road service so others can profit even more from the arrangement. Those who profit--real estate developers and the County--should pay the full burden of improving Reston station area roadways to accommodate the massive job and residential growth planned there.

We can't fault the county for trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip find new revenue streams, but you would think if they were trying to convince a skeptical community of the value of taxing itself, they would have made actually, you know, addressing its needs more of a priority--maybe completing some of them before massive redevelopment began, or even just putting up a bunch of orange traffic cones and a sign saying "PARDON OUR DUST" to create the illusion of forward progress.

You would think.

As of today, 112 people have signed the R2020 petition. Learn more here.