Fairfax County General :
Fairfax Underground
Welcome to Fairfax Underground, a project site designed to improve communication among residents of Fairfax County, VA. Feel free to post anything Northern Virginia residents would find interesting.
I have been fortunate enough to be able to avoid Tysons Corner for the better part of the last ten years. I worked there in the late 80's and it was barely tolerable then. Since I noticed it was getting worse so I just never went there.
Today I had to go through it - what an absolute mess. They have taken a bad situation and made it worse. Its still a nightmare to navigate on foot but with the addition of that ugly metro smack in the middle of Rt. 7 they have cut off most of the cross streets to both cars and pedestrians. What a joke. In order for a pedestrian to cross Rt. 7 now they have to walk a loooooong way to a break in the metro monolith.
The loss of cross streets and visibility from the Great Wall of Metro is not only ugly but it looks as though that has pushed grid-lock to the max. Congrats Fairfax I do believe this is by far the worst urban planning I have ever seen.
Yes it was far better to do this rather than run the orange line down the middle off 66 to Gainesville. If they had, traffic reporters would not be able to describe the fucked up mess it is by 6 am every morning.
Tysons is crap. It always was its just been uber-crappified by the botched Metro running down the middle of Rt. 7. At least in Chicago they had the sense to elevate the subway so that the space under it was useful. In tysons they just built a dividing wall splitting tysons in two.
The plannning never made sense now it just makes less sense out there.
I used to LOVE shopping at tysons. I was there every weekend. Ever since they put up the metro, I have not been due to the traffic. I tried to go at 2pm on a wednesday, hit a long line of traffic and sat in it on route 7 to wait 20 minutes to go one light- i gave up and went home.
Springfield mall will only be slightly better since there are 50 ways to get there via car. Tysons you're stuck with 7 or 123 and both are clusterfucks.
The metro itself makes me no difference, I always drive since I know I will come out the stores with bags and who wants to carry all that on the metro?
They killed Rt. 7 with the Metro. Its constant gridlock. I was there Sunday and had to go through the mall to get out in under 35 min (from the Best Buy to 495). 7 was backed up from the beltway all the way to Westpark Dr. Now with the metro you cannot see the store signs from the Westbound lanes as the Metro blocks the view. Those retailers are all screwed.
holycow Wrote:
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> I have been fortunate enough to be able to avoid
> Tysons Corner for the better part of the last ten
> years. I worked there in the late 80's and it was
> barely tolerable then. Since I noticed it was
> getting worse so I just never went there.
>
> Today I had to go through it - what an absolute
> mess. They have taken a bad situation and made it
> worse. Its still a nightmare to navigate on foot
> but with the addition of that ugly metro smack in
> the middle of Rt. 7 they have cut off most of the
> cross streets to both cars and pedestrians. What
> a joke. In order for a pedestrian to cross Rt. 7
> now they have to walk a loooooong way to a break
> in the metro monolith.
>
> The loss of cross streets and visibility from the
> Great Wall of Metro is not only ugly but it looks
> as though that has pushed grid-lock to the max.
> Congrats Fairfax I do believe this is by far the
> worst urban planning I have ever seen.
>
> Epic.
I don't mind Tyson's Corner. Can't see it from Alexandria.
Tyson's was once an area of nice farms and woods until John "Til" Hazel decided to improve the corner. But he neglected to remove the pig troughs.
Tyson's Corner is now the study in urban stupidity