Mention the Duke Street corridor, particularly headed eastbound in the afternoons and evenings, to just about any Alexandria resident, and you’ll hear: “Ugh. Traffic.”
The roadway is the most-used in Alexandria, and drivers trying to avoid the backups often use side streets and neighborhood roads to shave a few minutes off their commute.
In early January, city officials will launch a pilot program to study how changing the timing of signals might reduce cut-through traffic by making Duke Street flow a little bit smoother. Residents and commuters should expect (more) delays on neighborhood roads as a part of the pilot project.
“The City has recently gained access to a platform that helps analyze traffic volumes and patterns. With this new technology, the City is more equipped to experiment with changes to the roadway to understand how people modify their behavior in response to the changes on the street,” city officials wrote on the Duke Street Traffic Mitigation webpage.
The hope is that by making Duke Street traffic move with fewer backups, commuters will stick to Duke Street and stop cutting through the neighborhoods.
This pilot project is separate from the larger Duke Street In Motion project, which will focus on all types of transit.
The January pilot project, specifically, will make signals stay green longer on Quaker Lane headed southbound onto Duke Street, and make signals stay green longer on Duke Street headed toward Telegraph Road. Signals on side streets will be shorter to make cutting through neighborhood less attractive by making it take longer.
If this program is successful, the city will launch a second pilot program in August that will reinstate the January changes and prohibit access to Telegraph Road from West Taylor Run Parkway, which has been known to back up all the way to Janneys Lane.
City officials have four predictions on what could happen due to the changes in signal timing in January:
- In the first few weeks, more vehicles could queue on neighborhood streets until they realize those routes are not faster.
- If you live in the neighborhood and want to access Duke Street [between] 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., it could take you longer.
- More traffic might cut through Alexandria from 395 if it is the fastest route to Telegraph Road and Fairfax County.
- Ultimately, less traffic might cut-through neighborhood streets.
The pilot project will end March 30 and city officials will evaluate data in the following months while traffic signals and timing go back to “normal” (i.e. the way it is now).
The city will be gathering feedback from residents in addition to analyzing data to evaluate success of the pilot program.
