Overall:

• The County should be striving for a 10' wide trail with at least 2' of buffer space between the trail and any vertical obstructions like retaining walls or guardrails. In addition to needing to be able to pass safely and comfortably, this trail will be used by families going to school at Fleet and TJ; parents should be able to walk or ride next to their kids.  Many of the concepts don't achieve this - they trap an 11' wide paved trail between a retaining wall and a guardrail - this leaves 4' of paved trail nearly unusable because it is immediately adjacent to a wall.
• The County needs to be planning for adding needed trail amenities - water fountains, trash cans, benches, lighting, additional trees to shade the trail, as well as bike parking at destinations like TJ Park.
• The trail design needs to accommodate long wheel-base vehicles like bikes pulling trailers, long-tails & box bikes.  This trail connects schools, churches, preschools, retail & residential - family biking will be a strong demand.
• Anywhere the trail crosses a street at an unsignalized intersection, the crosswalk for the trail should be a "raised crossing" - a crosswalk placed across a speed hump to slow cars crossing the trail.

Segment 1:

• We support Alternative 2 as it would widen the trail to a safer, more useful width while avoiding impacts to the existing mature trees which shade the trail.
• We encourage Arlington to explore splitting the trail around some of the mature trees to achieve a sufficiently-wide trail while preserving trees.

Segment 2:

• We strongly support Alternative 1 as it would remove the slip lane from Glebe Road to westbound Arlington Blvd.  This makes the crossing much safer, easier to negotiate on a long wheel-base bike and more direct.
• Alternative 2, in addition to requiring two steps to cross Glebe Road, requires trail users to navigate a sharp turn on both sides of Glebe, which would make this route very difficult to navigate on bikes with longer wheelbases and when riding with children.

Segment 3:

• We strongly support Alternative 1 which would keep the trail along Arlington Blvd rather than routing it up to Cathedral Lane.  Alt 1 is more direct, less hilly, avoids crossing the McDonald's driveways, has less of a traffic impact, avoids having to cross Cathedral Lane, avoids having to cross both Thomas and Trenton Streets, and has more opportunities for planting shade trees along the trail.
• Alternative 1 should add a trail spur connecting across the service road to Trenton Street.  Trenton is the primary north-south bike alternative to busy Glebe Road.
• Alternative 2 would have many more crossings, be completely unshaded along both Glebe & Cathedral Ln, be uncomfortably narrow and close to cars along Glebe Rd, and cause unnecessary traffic impacts by converting much of Cathedral Ln to 1-way. Alternative 2 would be unacceptably unsafe, particularly for children using the trail.

Segment 4:

• We strongly support Alternative 1, which achieves a useful trail width and buffer NOW rather than relying on redevelopment which is extremely unlikely.  We believe the traffic impact would be reasonable, especially if coupled with Alternative 1 of Segment 3 which would prevent service lane traffic from using this approach to George Mason Drive (requiring them to use Trenton St instead).
• We also suggest that the County should narrow the turn lane and non-curbside lanes on the George Mason Drive Bridge to 10' so that the east sidewalk on the bridge can be further widened to 11'. 10' lanes in urban areas have arguably the best safety record of any lane width that has been studied.  The curbside lane should remain 11' to accommodate buses.

Segment 5:

• While we would prefer the consistent 10' width of Alternative 1, a short section of 8' wide trail may be a reasonable trade-off to save trees as outlined in Alternative 2.  Both alternatives should make a better effort to shorten the crossings and tighten up the curb radii at the crossings.  The designs as shown encourage cars to take the turns more quickly than is safe and appropriate.
• The County should explore creative design solutions such as mountable curbs to allow a narrower travel lane & wider trail while addressing fire department concerns.

Segment 6: 

• Like many segments, the design needs more buffer space between the trail and the guardrail as well as between the trail and any retaining walls.  Additionally, the design needs to prevent parked cars in the Goodwill parking lot from overhanging the trail.

Segment 7:

• We support Alternative 2 which avoids having a large number of driveways crossing the trail.  We also support adding a new trail connection (not shown in either alternative) that would connect under the Jackon St Pedestrian bridge, allowing trail users who are passing through to avoid climbing up to bridge height and then coming back down, and reducing conflict between people on the trail and people using TJ Park.