(Arlington’s vibrant Wilson Boulevard Corridor, looking east to Rosslyn and The Disctict.)
I live in a Blue County and drive a Blue car. That is as political as I am going to go this morning.
The issue of civic virtue has been percolating in the back of my brain for a long time, rising each time I tried to cross Fairfax Drive to get from the office to Willow in the evening, and back again. I considered the manifold civics aspect one time when a jerk in a white BMW advanced his vehicle a few feet into the crosswalk and flipped me off as I tried to navigate the gridlocked cars.
I was completely able to walk at the time, and filled with civic virtue. I offered the driver an invitation to do something anatomically impossible to himself, to which he responded by lowering his window. I am not kidding you: he asked me “Don’t you know who I am?”
Too easy. “You could be Mother Theresa, dirtbag, and you can still go screw yourself.”
I am on both sides of the issue, as a pedestrian and as a motorist. Something is going on. I went to Willow a week or two ago just to get out of the house and banish the cabin fever.
I was still on the crutches then, and the simple act of getting in and out of the Bluesmobile was a full-on production number. Door open. Crutches out, leaning them against the frame, hoping they would not slide onto the ground. Sprawl right on the big bench seat to leverage the stiff brace-encased leg out of the driver’s side and onto the pavement. Squirm upright and use the doorframe to stand. Then grab the crutches and hobble down to the central parking meter to feed in the credit card for the privilege of being at the curb.
The individual meters are long gone- this is much more efficient for the County, though a bit of a challenge for the mobility impaired. It is all part of that ‘smart growth’ thing, but there is more to all that I will get to presently.
Blue Arlington is a progressive place with a history of cutting-edge ideas. It wasn’t always like that. I have written about the curious history of this truncated diamond of a County. The donated land from the Old Dominion and Maryland spanned the lethargic brown Potomac. Once, the two tracts constituted the original symmetry of the ten-mile-a-side vertically-tilted Federal District. The great river made the construct ungovernable, and the Virginia side of the District was returned to the Dominion in 1846 over simmering animosity on Congressional districts and the abolition of slavery.
To defend the capital against the Rebels, Alexandria County (later renamed Arlington to avoid confusion with the vibrant old Colonial city to the south) was crisscrossed with redoubts and trenches across the highlands. The forts remained, along with the remnants of the plantation agricultural system that faced the Potomac, the great highway to the world ocean.
The river was lined with Great Houses (only ‘great’ in comparison with the hovels of the enslaved workers) like Abingdon, the foundations of which are now nestled in Reagan National airport’s parking garage complex, or the Custis-Lee Arlington House on the bluff above what is now the sprawling cemetery. Anyway, Union Army occupied Arlington like locusts. Just up Glebe road there was an encampment of 100,000 troops that consumed all the existing structures, stripping the land bare for wood to construct lean-tos and shanties and feed the cook-fires.
All the trees were clear-cut. The redoubts sank into the soil, and the foliage came back but the scars on the land endure to this day if you know where to look.
After the war, the County was supine and depressed for decades. Former slaves established Freedman’s Villages on land vacated by the former landholders, and within the perimeters of the old Federal fortifications. Truck farms and cottages dotted the land. The proximity to FDR’s burgeoning New Deal bureaucracy is what began the great transformation of Arlington into the bedroom of the Government, the poor exiled south of Route 50 and the wealthier to the north in a stark division.
The riots that scourged the District north of the Federal enclave knocked Arlington down a peg again in the 1960s, and sparked the sprawling auto-based development in Fairfax County to the west and Prince William to the south. I was part of that: schools, and the price of homes was the driving factor, and driving is what we did on those clogged and inadequate infrastructure of roads.
The Developers attempted- largely successfully- in wiping out any sense of history. They developed a practice of getting the bulldozers in fast to ensure that anything historical was flattered before preservationists could rally their forces in opposition.
I could cite the Chantilly battlefield, where the spot where Major General Isaac Stevens and Major General Philip Kearny were shot, nestled uncomfortably in the Toys R Us parking lot, but that isn’t the point of this.
Location, location, location is what they say, and when I could, I moved in from the ‘burbs to the slightly down-at-the-heels hospitality of Big Pink. Our building predates the 1980 County Master Plan, the one that mobilized the concept of Smart and Sustainable Growth enshrining both as Civic Virtues on the path to the future. You might have it going on where you live.
It makes you feel good. Who would be in favor of Dumb Growth? You can have plenty of that in Fairfax.
The coming of the Metro System, pushing out (in those days) along Fairfax Drive to the I-66 corridor and distant Vienna, was the pivot of development. The Plan stated that high-rise construction would be permitted in clusters within a few blocks of the Metro stops.
So far, so good, and with the high-rise buildings came the young vibrant crowds that throng the eateries and bars along the Wilson Boulevard corridor. With them came the bold vibe of youth, and a commitment to a social structure that encouraged all sorts of socially virtuous behavior. Bicyclists agitated for bike lanes; dedicated bus lanes accompanied them; new emphasis on making the area pedestrian friendly caused bold white cross walks to be painted between the stoplights on the wide auto-friendly roads as the local grid feeds the snarl of traffic onto the interstate.
Which is a long way around the rosebush to get back to my crutches and leveraging myself out of the Bluesmobile. The curb parking is just inside the new bike lane. The available space is as meager as the intent is infused with the notion of the greater good.
And Lance Armstrong, of course. Focused on the complex task of getting upright, I completely missed the lightning approach of the Lance Armstrong-lookalike on the dedicated bike lane. In the process of lurching back in astonishment, I caromed into car and the crutches clattered to the pavement.
There is a difference, in my mind, between a reasonable accommodation to bicycle locomotion and high-velocity travel by commuters armored in helmets, spandex, pedals clipped to racing flats and mirrored sunglasses. I had no option in dealing with this one. I have been a biker myself, and lived in a state of constant alertment for the driver’s door that would suddenly fly open and create a steel wall across my path.
I support bike lanes, I guess, though it adds a challenge to driving, but even more to the threat to pedestrians.
I guess if we consider ourselves to be all part of one social compact, this makes sense. I am highly cautious when navigating around here, since being overtaken by a racing bicycle in the blind spot can ruin everyone’s day. I am not anti-bike, but consider, as i have, the coexistence of the high-speed racer and the ambling hand-in-hand tourist on the dedicated paths and networks of Arlington County. Way too scary.
But with a certain amount of situational awareness and compassion, I think it is possible for us all to get along here. The problem, like the high-speed bicyclers, is that some people are just passing through. District drivers are notorious for their lack of acumen, and the congenital inability to use directional signals. Fairfax residents are committed to using us as a cut-through on the way to some McMansion out in the former fields of what was, briefly, the richest county in America with ego to match.
It is the pedestrian behavior that is spawned by the well-meaning sustainable development. Of course pedestrians should have the right of way. Never mind the Metrobuses careening around corners never designed to accommodate the behemoths. Never mind the hurtling commuters.
By painting the bright white lines of the crosswalk, the attitude of the citizens on foot has become frighteningly blasé. I am part of it myself, or was, back when I would walk from the office to Willow and cross Fairfax Drive at the crosswalk across the wide expanse of pavement. Scary. Some motorists- presumably the ones who live around here- courteously come to a stop. Others, either from elsewhere or preoccupied with their smart phones and the urgent conversation they must complete, are completely oblivious.
Navigating back and forth, the conduct has become confident on the part of the pedestrians as to be reckless. A new Jimmy Johns sandwich place paradropped into a brand new multi-use development on Pershing Drive, the way I travel the three-quarter miles to the office or the credit union. One night, proceeding along Pershing at the legal limit and just after dusk, a couple, clad in black clothing marched purposefully out into the crosswalk without even looking up.
I was alert, and came safely to a stop, but my hands gripped the wheel in alarm and my heart raced.
Combine the serene self-confidence (or the demonstration of Olympian public virtue) of the walkers with the harried urgency of the commuters, flying bicycles and lurching buses, this is an interesting exercise in sustainability.
I think I liked it better when we were just supposed to be afraid of the cars. It might have been safer that way.
Sorry- I know there are more important topics on which to dwell, but when you have to move slowly and with deliberation, these things take on a certain immediacy. I am going to try to stay alert, and hope no one walks out in front on me yakking on their cellphone.
Or nail me while I am yakking on mine.
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com