To the editor:

Some residents of one of Alexandrias oldest and largest condominiums Parkfairfax, just a few hundred yards east of Arlington Countys Shirlington Village at I-395 are joining forces with their Fairlington neighbors from across Quaker Lane to help reverse the ill-advised and possibly dangerous plan to extend the looming high-occupancy toll lane along I-95 to and through the traffic bottleneck known as Shirlington Circle.

The reason? Take your pick: the noise and residual debris of day-and-night, months-long construction; the disruption of nearby woodlands; the negative impact upon local residents property values; the arbitrary (and perhaps unaccountable) assigning of public land to for-profit corporate control; the predictable environmental pollution due to increased traffic flow from points south of the I-495 Beltway; the rush-hour jamming of feeder roadways like Quaker Lane, Martha Custis Drive and Gunston Road; and the Hobsons choice of having unsightly noise barriers sprinkled along the route to absorb some of the expected noise level.

I call this invasive project the HOT Mushroom Cloud which will permanently hover over our community as a monument to the politics of expediency, whereby certain government/corporate moguls are pandering to SOB (south-of-the-Beltway) single-occupancy motorists at the expense of us in-their-way residents.

Readers desiring to join our cause may start by signing the online citizens petition at www.petitiononline.com/xhotlane/petition.html.

Larry W. Bryant
Alexandria