By Caitlyn Meisner | cmeisner@alextimes.com
City Council denied a request for an appeal of a unanimous Traffic and Parking Board decision – which had been brought forward by a group of nearby residents – and moved ahead with plans to significantly alter a section of Eisenhower Avenue at Saturday’s public hearing. The vote was 5-2 to deny the appeal.
Councilor John Taylor Chapman and Vice Mayor Amy Jackson sided with the residents in voting to approve the appeal/deny the project. Mayor Justin Wilson, along with Councilors Canek Aguirre, Sarah Bagley, Aliya Gaskins and Kirk McPike voted to deny the resident appeal.
The series of changes are slated for Eisenhower Avenue between South Van Dorn Street and Holmes Run Trail – which are likely to take effect in 2030. A staff presentation states that these changes are designed to improve mobility, access and safety; address connectivity; support future demand and land uses; and advance the small area plans for Eisenhower East and West.
City Council approved a multitude of changes, including removing dedicated left-turn and travel lanes, adding up to 200 parking spaces between Metro Road and Holmes Run Trail along Eisenhower Avenue, implementing “No Turn on Red” restrictions, reducing the speed limit from 35 miles per hour to 25 mph, constructing a new sidewalk and providing separated lanes for biking and scootering.
The Virginia Department of Transportation chose this area to be evaluated under Project Pipeline, an initiative to identify avenues for funding in high priority areas. VDOT was able to provide a consultant to conduct the traffic study along with funds, so the city has not dedicated any funds to it so far. VDOT determined this area as a priority corridor for accessibility and safety enhancements.
In the city’s staff report, a few options were presented, but the community generally preferred one option due to the safety benefits for pedestrians, vehicular traffic and bicyclists. As part of this plan, city staff recommended the relocation of left turn signals to better utilize Metro Road.
“Staff identified Metro Road as a route that was underutilized, operating around 20% of its current design,” the staff report stated.
Alex Carroll, a Complete Streets program manager for the city’s Department of Transportation & Environmental Services, said in the hearing that turning instead at the Eisenhower Avenue and Metro Road signal would be better and it could accommodate frequent turns.
“It drastically alleviates congestion at the intersection of Eisenhower Avenue and South Van Dorn Street,” Carroll said. “By removing these movements … we can then … keep South Van Dorn Street moving.”
Jackson said the planned changes were likely to make it more difficult for emergency vehicles to get through traffic on Eisenhower Avenue and South Van Dorn Street.
Carroll countered that the city’s traffic model indicates that traffic should decrease – despite planned large nearby redevelopment projects – which if accurate would make it easier for first responders to get through the intersection. Carroll also said the Alexandria Police and Fire Departments approved the proposal.
Chapman said he wasn’t happy with the plan to add up to 200 parking spaces on Eisenhower because in previous years, Council has told businesses to share existing spaces and didn’t think reducing lanes was a good idea.
“I don’t think necessarily shrinking our arterial roads is necessarily the way to go, especially if we know and hope that there’s going to be redevelopment along the corridor,” Chapman said.
Data collected by city staff found that currently, at peak travel hours – typically during rush hours – it may take one car three to four minutes to travel southbound onto South Van Dorn Street. To go westbound onto Eisenhower Avenue, it may take between 2.5 to three minutes. If relocated, city staff said, each route could be reduced to less than two minutes per vehicle in either direction.
The changes were approved unanimously by the Traffic and Parking Board in July, but an appeal was presented to Council after nearly 40 residents and homeowners – who mainly live on Summers Grove Road, Harrison Circle, Pearson Lane and Cowling Court – signed a petition stating their opposition.
Patricia Harrington, one of the residents in opposition, said, from her experience, rerouting traffic through Metro Road will not save time.
“We think [the changes are] ill-conceived and it’s just going to create a lot of disaster for our area,” Harrington said. “… We’re very suspect, because all the logic that we know from driving on these roads tells us this is not going to save time.”
Harrington acknowledged Eisenhower Avenue was a main artery road to get from the West End to Old Town, but said the area doesn’t need a road diet, which is a way to repurpose lanes from a road and use it for other purposes like a sidewalk or a bike lane. The city has proposed road diets in the past, and completed one on Seminary Road in 2019.
Harrington also said while Metro Road has been safe so far, if the amount of traffic is increased, it may not remain so safe. According to the city’s Vision Zero Crash dashboard – which lists fatal, serious injury, non-severe injury and property-only damage crashes reported by the Alexandria Police Department going back to 2011 – there have been no fatal accidents along Metro Road and three non-severe accidents in the past 10 years.
“How can the city think that it’s better to save what dubiously may be a few seconds at the safe Van Dorn and Eisenhower intersection?” Harrington said. “If we’re worried about safety, this is not the solution.”
Sunny Pietrafesa, who represented the Cameron Station Civic Association at the meeting, said she was concerned that with the Vulcan site redevelopment – that’s bringing in townhouses, condos, a hotel, park and three new streets to the area – traffic in the area will increase. Pietrafesa asked the city to defer a vote on this item.
“We would ask that you defer passing this plan so that we can work with the city and surrounding communities to come up with some sensible way to lessen the traffic on South Van Dorn Street,” Pietrafesa said.
Ryan Knight, the division chief of transportation engineering for the city, said in an exchange with Councilor Alyia Gaskins later in the meeting that future developments that were approved within the Small Area Plan are taken into consideration when conducting traffic studies.
Several people spoke in support of the proposed changes, including Dane Lauritzen, a board member for Alexandria Families for Safe Streets.
“Removing lanes will improve safety on Eisenhower, it will visually narrow the road, it will slow down cars and it’ll provide less crossing distance for pedestrians to use,” Lauritzen said. “… [This project is] a great way to operate within the constraints of space that we have and provide the protection for bicyclists and pedestrians in an area that is simply not safe.”
Charles Paul, a resident in the Carlyle neighborhood, said he hasn’t felt safe enough to bike around Alexandria and strongly supports the proposed changes.
“I don’t cycle in Alexandria very much because I don’t feel safe doing so. When my work flies me out to California, I cycle around all the time. I love doing it because they have separated bike lanes, bike lanes where I feel safe,” Paul said. “I look forward to the possibility of feeling the same way and having the same experience in my beloved home city.”
Councilor Kirk McPike shared an anecdote of his biking experience along this stretch of road after the public comment period closed.
“I was riding my bike west along Eisenhower, I was going about 20 to 25 miles per hour, and the traffic was zipping past me at a point that I had to get off the street at certain points and wait for traffic to pass by, because it was so risky and so dangerous to be out there riding my bike, even though I had a helmet,” McPike said.
McPike asked Carroll what his experience would be like in a few years when the proposed changes would be implemented.
“Your level of traffic stress would be significantly reduced. It’s generally influenced by volume, by speed and by the type of facility available,” Carroll said. “You’d have your own dedicated space and wouldn’t have to worry about really interacting with vehicles except at intersections.”
Gaskins asked Carroll and Knight what was possible to mitigate potential noise disruptions for the adjacent neighborhood to Metro Road if more vehicles were to travel on the road. Knight said he spoke with the city’s noise and air quality team who said they didn’t anticipate noise issues.
“If we reevaluate what Metro Road looks like in coordination with the community on this, we could potentially push the travel lanes further away from the neighborhood to create more of a buffer space between moving traffic and the neighborhood,” Carroll said.
Before the vote, Jackson said road diets have been one of the “banes of her existence” while she’s been on Council and doubted the need for changes.
“As much as I know that this is not written in stone and that it would help, the flip side is that in six years, we don’t know what we’re going to need,” she said. “I feel like we let down a community in doing it, because there are so many people here in this room and who have written us that have said, ‘What about us?’”