Graduate GIS study maps nine priority cycling corridors and urges more counters

A graduate GIS analysis presented to the Arlington Bicycle Advisory Committee identified nine priority corridors the presenter recommends upgrading to high-quality cycling facilities. Reid Unison, a lead service planner at Amtrak who completed the study for his master's capstone, described a binary scoring system that produced three priority tiers and highlighted Corridor 1A (parts of Fairfax Drive and Clarendon Boulevard) as a Tier 1 corridor that would link to Virginia Square GMU Metro Station and serve roughly 3,000 previously unserved housing units.

Unison said the analysis used Arlington County's Open Data GIS, bicycle counters, and Overpass Turbo POIs and reported coverage and demand metrics: "It's about 53.4% of all housing units across the county" that are within 0.125 miles of high-quality cycling facilities, and of 266 key destinations examined, about 47% are served by high-quality connections. He also recommended installing additional bicycle counters using different technologies to capture demand on painted and protected lanes, which are currently undercounted by trail-based counters.