Softly, I blink and the shutter closes and opens, and there in the blurry yellowness of summer, he's digging the sand off his eyes and telling me he wants to stay there forever. Let me sink my hand into the deepness of our ponds and pull back the richness of life.
It seems that once you step foot outside of the county line, all hope for bikes and pedestrians are lost. Arlington county puts focus on walkable and bike-able areas since it is more of an urban setting and even has two websites: WalkArlington and BikeArlington. All of the converted trails, dedicated bike lanes and sharrows make biking around for errands, transport and fun a lot more convenient. There are still a few areas that could use work, specifically some parts of the Columbia Pike area, which hopefully the county will begin to address as they make improvements to the area. Overall, however, rides around Arlington County are pretty damned easy.
Which is why I hardly ever venture outside the county line on my bike, save for when I bike to work, except to visit Alexandria on the east side of 395. It makes doing errands a bit difficult. Take, for example, a simple drive to Trader Joes, located merely two or three miles away from where I work and live. In theory, the location is more convenient than where I previously lived in Baltimore where the nearest one was fifteen minutes by car, or in Elkton where it was over thirty minutes away. You'd think I'd be there all the time given the proximity, but when considering my mode of transportation, that isn't always the case.
Living at the intersection between two major roads, Rt 7 and Columbia Pike, Trader Joes is difficult to get to on foot or bike. I tend to avoid these types of roads, highways with strip malls up and down the lengths, speed limits topping 50 mph and in some cases, four lanes on each side with no bike paths. In fact, Google maps lists the bike path near Trader Joes on Columbia Pike as being on the sidewalk. As a somewhat experienced biker, I have a rightful apprehension about biking on such busy roads and on the sidewalks.
In addition to these problems, the intersection of these two roads is built as an over/under pass and clover leaf combination, a type of crossing that only really benefits those in cars, but effectively cuts off free foot and bike traffic. The amount of space clover leafs take up is astounding. As a partly urban area, I'd expect these areas to be a loss in possible real estate. And with more and more people giving up their cars and turning to bikes and public transportation, I'm surprised to see blocks like these still existing without and alternatives.
Overall, it's apparent that we still very much live in a car-centric society, even in a metropolitan area. Catering to more and more cars obviously isn't the answer, as building more roads does little to ease congestion. However, we're stuck with it for now. I can just hope that lawmakers will be a bit more open-minded in the future when these sorts of areas come into consideration. More people want to be able to walk around their community. They want to be able to walk to the grocery store, to walk to their favorite spots, to take their kids out with them and to have safe and accessible ways to do this.