Whenever Joel Kuester or one of the hundreds of other cyclists with the Reston Bike Club talked about having to cross the street at a busy and sometimes dangerous part of Wiehle Avenue, they compared it to a game of Frogger.
The crosswalk wasn’t at an intersection, so it wasn’t a point at which drivers were used to stopping. The crossing didn’t have a dedicated signal either, and cyclists and pedestrians had to count on several lanes worth of traffic stopping. There are “turns in all different directions,” so it was also confusing, Kuester said.
Supervisor Walter Alcorn, whose Hunter Mill District includes Reston, said he knows two people who have been injured at the crossing, and he’s heard of many others that have either been involved in an accident or a near-miss there.
But now that there’s a new pedestrian bridge over Wiehle Avenue near Sunset Hills Road, many of those concerns have been addressed. The bridge opened July 24, and many people who have already used it said it’s making them feel safer.
“It improves safety,” said Kuester, who’s vice chairman of the Reston Bike Club. “It allows us to continue on our rides without having to slow down and navigate the crossing. It just makes riding in this part of the town much, much easier and safer.”
The $12 million project has been years in the making. It was complicated, Alcorn said, because it involved multiple property owners. The bridge primarily sits on Northern Virginia Parks property, but the county had to get easements in land rights from adjoining property owners.
Then, earlier this summer, when it appeared the bridge would be ready to open, it was discovered that “there was not sufficient grounding for lightning strikes on the bridge,” which delayed the opening a few extra days, Alcorn said.
There’s still lingering work to finalize some parts of the project, such as removing the mid-block at grade crossing that Alcorn described as dangerous for cyclists, pedestrians and drivers.
The Washington and Old Dominion (W&OD) Trail is closed on the west side of the new pedestrian bridge to finish road upgrades and build a new shared-use path along Wiehle Avenue. The sidewalk on the west side of Wiehle Avenue is also closed.
A ribbon cutting, Alcorn said, will be scheduled for sometime in the fall, but “for purposes of using the bridge, it’s all good to go now.”
Community members are already taking advantage.
John Koss, president of the group Reston Runners, called the area a “major superhighway for outdoor recreationalists.”
“Even though most of the motorists here are very courteous, sometimes they’d stop, sometimes they wouldn’t,” Koss said. “And if they did, you would only go halfway across to the middle island. You had to figure out what was coming the other way. But now this bridge simplifies everything.”
Bruce Wright, with the group Fairfax Alliance for Better Bicycling, said there have been many crashes at the site of the old crossing because it was close to a traffic signal.
“There has been probably at least one crash a year at that intersection,” Wright said.
Wright called the new bridge a “great way to get across Wiehle Avenue.”
“We don’t have to worry about it; the motorists don’t have to worry about us,” he said. “So, it’s kind of a win-win.”
Alcorn said the pedestrian bridge is one of the most expensive and advanced ways to avoid conflicts between cyclists, pedestrians and drivers. However, he said, the Board of Supervisors is working with Virginia’s Department of Transportation and other agencies to improve crosswalks and the visibility of crosswalks.
The board, Alcorn said, has committed $100 million over six years to improve bike and pedestrian safety around the county.
More information about the Wiehle Avenue pedestrian bridge is available online.
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