Alexandria Living Magazine
In the past month, we asked Alexandria residents to answer this question:
“What is your biggest concern about transportation and/or commuting in the Alexandria area, and what do you think should be done to make it better?”
Here are the responses we received.
Addressing Cut-Through Traffic is Critical
We need to think about regional cut-through congestion in the long term and short term, and regionally as well as locally.
The city of Falls Church has successfully run a “drive-through permit” program that protects select communities from cut through and is enforced by police. Just this year, the Fairfax County won approval to implement a similar program.
Such a program for select Alexandria neighborhoods would be a good short-term solution.
Also this year in Richmond, two bills became law to roadway workers along construction areas using speed cameras to enforce speed limits and requiring motorists to use smartphones hands free.
The city regularly complains they don’t have enough traffic officers to patrol. Speeds cameras would solved this instantly. Further, hands-free smartphone use should be the law everywhere in Virginia especially in the era of Waze. People with their noses in phones are a huge hazard for bikers, pedestrians and other motorists.
Throughout Europe on freeways and now even in a few states they implement “variable speed limit technology” combined with increased enforcement which is proven to improve traffic efficiency by 20%. Why not NoVa?
We need to build a wider and deeper coalition among regional cities and counties as well as VDOT to implement such solutions.
The Greater Washington Partnership, a regional corporate employer driven initiative to overcome the Baltimore-DC-Richmond region's transportation and mobility challenges, has a blueprint offering new ways of looking at our regional transportation problem.
Peter Turner
Sustainable Traffic Changes
[My biggest concern is] creating smart sustainable traffic change and diversity of transportation of Alexandria — walking, scootering, biking, metro, and cars.
While Seminary Road and King street is a great start for helping to promote bikers and create traffic calming measures, there failed to be a balance of congestion control methods.
This lack of balance causes frustration for ALL users of the roadways, bikers, and cars, alike.If you tighten the flow in one area you need to loosen (or promote traffic flow) to another. It’s that idea of rice in a funnel, that we all learned in school. For instance, smart synced traffic lights around the West end similar to Route 1 would greatly help Seminary, Quaker and Duke.
I applaud what the City Council has done already and hope they continue to build in a smart balanced and sustainable way. I’m also ashamed of the polarization that this topic has caused within my city. I understand it’s not perfect but the pure hatred I’ve seen over this topic is just sad and short sited.
Ocean Eiler
Alexandria Needs More Collaborative Transit Planning
The way Alexandria approaches building transit alternatives is our main concern and that is due to the very bad experience we have had with the design process and development of the Potomac Yard Metro Station.
Far too often, congestion and delays typify the transit experience in our area. Yet, building transit infrastructure that creates value for neighborhoods is perfectly attainable.
If Alexandria’s goal is to create a great place to live, it will have to improve the way city officials bring together transit professionals, boards and commission members, elected officials, designers, developers, and the public to solidify a shared vision.
Once that is done, design decisions should easily fall into place. Elected officials should then act to respect that shared vision and treat all stakeholders alike.
Our experience in Alexandria, however, did not follow this rule of thumb. In the case of the Potomac Yard Metro Station, some key design decisions were made with little concern to the public. This resulted in the elimination of the south mezzanine and related south entrances.
Projects face challenges, but the way City officials handle them matters. If Alexandria wants to restore public confidence and abide to a shared vision for mass transit infrastructure, it will need to learn to respect local residents and work with them instead of squashing the shared vision for their own.
Building the south entrance of the Potomac Yard Metro Station would be a good start. It will support the influx of people coming for Amazon and Virginia Tech to the area, correctly apply the $50 million grant received from the Commonwealth, and realize the vision for South Potomac Yard.
Rafael Lima and Adrien Lopez
Traffic Congestion Affects Neighborhood Safety
My biggest concerns are neighborhood safety and traffic congestion.
As a working parent in Alexandria with no family nearby to ask for help, I need to be able to function as efficiently as possible to survive the day. Yet, everywhere I turn during rush hour is gridlocked, and commuters are using neighborhood streets to go a little faster. Now, local streets in Central Alexandria are taking on thousands of cars per day of frustrated drivers creating unsafe conditions. Those of us who live there are trapped at home or can't get home. Our parked cars are being side-swiped all the time. Yet, the City remains hyper-focused on reducing capacity and speeds on our arterials, puts out a draft Mobility Plan that doesn't even mention cut-through traffic mitigation, and then announces program initiatives and projects that create more density and reduced bus services.
This must change. It's time to address the source of the gridlock and fix the poorly designed entrance to the Beltway at Telegraph Road. The City should also follow the lead of Falls Church and Fairfax, both of which have programs in place that protect their citizens from cut-through traffic. To get cars off the road, they need to expand, not reduce bus service. If there was an express bus to take me straight to downtown DC using the new hotlanes, I would get out of my car.
Jill Edwards Hoffman
All Roads Lead to Traffic Congestion
I am a long-standing homeowner and civic activist from Cameron Station. The biggest issue in the West End of Alexandria about transportation and/or commuting in our area has been and will continue to be traffic congestion.
No one can argue that we must continue to make our streets safe. We also need better accessibility to the Metro since most of the residents in the West End of Alexandria are not within a quick or easy walk or bike ride to a Metro. We need a better sidewalk grid as envisioned under the Eisenhower West Small Area Plan.
Most importantly, we need to understand that, given we are not like a New York City with easy access to public transportation, and we must accommodate and be able to move car traffic without unnecessarily creating more traffic congestion. To accomplish some of this we need to expand the bridge over Van Dorn Street near the Van Dorn Metro to accommodate more cars, biker and walkability and/or build a multi-modal bridge for the same purposes.
Lastly, we need to pay more attention to the wishes of local citizens when assessing whether or not to impose road diets on Alexandria streets, since one size does not fit all, and the Complete Streets Guidance takes this into account.
Arthur "Sash" Impastato
An Appetite for Development
Alexandria – a shining city upon a hill, a suburban paradise inside the beltway, and the target of road diets amidst an ever-increasing population and employment density.
The city is hurtling towards a revelation of dissonance between the City’s appetite for development and its mission to have a more “inclusive” transportation network. Residents are already feeling the impact of increased congestion and cut-through traffic due to lane removal on arteries like Seminary, King, and Van Dorn to make way for bike lanes and pedestrian islands.
If the City continues to encourage development, like BRAC and Amazon, that is good for Alexandria’s economy and property values, it must also face the reality that the efficient throughput of people will become imperative. The City has yet to produce data that shows the implemented road diets have improved safety or maintained throughput, and traffic disasters, like the hours-long gridlock on January 7 when there were early dismissals due to expected snow, have given additional validity to the concerns raised by residents.
To improve Alexandria’s transportation performance, travel lanes must be maintained on major arteries and throughput must be prioritized over the idealistic implementation of a multi-modal transportation plan that simply isn’t serving Alexandria best.
Alexis Sargent
Bike Lanes and Traffic Enforcement
My biggest concerns are the new unused bike lanes on Seminary Road. They cause a large back up on Seminary RD during rush hour sending more cards down Fort Williams Parkway as a cut through to Duke Street.
Also, traffic on Duke street is not monitored by police and routinely goes over the speed limit causing a danger to traffic crossing to get on Duke street from Fort Williams Parkway, North Donelson Street and North Early Streets. Cars heading west on Duke street routinely run the red light at the North Early light causing a danger to cars coming from the green light to Duke street.
Catherine Leonard
Fewer Vehicle Lanes Mean More Traffic
My biggest concern about transportation in the Alexandria area is the now reduction in travel lanes and increasing backed up traffic (especially on streets where this was NOT an issue before) as well as the subsequent, resulting cut through traffic. As density increases in all areas of the City, with new high-rise units and other proposed dwellings/swelling options, traffic congestion is only going to get worse.
I’d like to see acknowledgement that those commuters traveling through Alexandria is not going to cease, we are a gateway to other areas. I would like to see the restoration of many streets recently ‘road dieted’ to four-lanes so we can have sound traffic flow to expedite travel through to 395, Wilson Bridge, and 495. Alleviating traffic congestion will go a long way to restoring quality of life for many Alexandrians now stuck in traffic, losing time they can never recoup.
Fran Vogel
