By Caitlyn Meisner | cmeisner@alextimes.com

City Council denied residents’ request for an appeal of a 5-1 Traffic and Parking Board decision in a contentious 4-3 vote, moving ahead with plans to alter South Pickett Street at Saturday’s public hearing.

Councilor John Taylor Chapman, Vice Mayor Amy Jackson and Mayor-elect Alyia Gaskins sided with the residents in voting to approve the appeal and deny the project. Mayor Justin Wilson and Councilors Canek Aguirre, Sarah Bagley and Kirk McPike voted to deny the resident appeal and move forward with the project.

The series of changes are slated for South Pickett Street, a four-lane, undivided road located between South Van Dorn and Duke Streets near the Charles E. Beatley Jr. Library. The road is also located along the Cameron Station neighborhood, Cameron Station Boulevard, Edsall Road, the West End Village Shopping Center and a few car dealerships.

City Council approved a multitude of changes, including the removal of one travel lane in each direction, the removal of up to 10 on-street parking spaces, implementing “No Turn on Red” restrictions for all signalized intersections and reducing the speed limit from 35 miles per hour to 25 mph. According to the city’s project website, construction is planned for 2025 and 2026.

Nearby residents, who mainly live within Cameron Station, have largely been concerned with the impact the reduction of lanes will have on congestion in the area, the possibility of cut-through traffic onto Cameron Station Boulevard – making the neighborhood less safe – and impacting local businesses, which Gaskins and Jackson were mainly concerned about at the hearing.

“We think that [reducing lanes is] going to cause a tremendous amount of congestion,” Sunny Pietrafasa, the Cameron Station Civic Association president, said in an interview with the Times. “The city has already said or divulged that there’s congestion on South Pickett Street, so I don’t understand how eliminating one lane each way helps with that.”

Pietrafasa noted that she did not have an issue with the speed limit reduction to 25 mph and implementing better crosswalks.

Chris McNamee, another Cameron Station resident, said at the public hearing that he was concerned about the safety implications of possibly having more traffic on Cameron Station Boulevard with the implementation of these changes.

“I appreciate and I recognize the need to increase safety on South Pickett, but I think that for us, in our neighborhood, with the children and all the traffic to be driven through it, it poses a real problem,” McNamee said. “Common sense dictates that if [South Pickett is] going to start getting backed up, even if it doesn’t have a real effect, people are going to want to keep moving. That’s just human nature.”

The law firm representing the West End Shopping Center wrote a letter to the Traffic and Parking Board in July, which stated the property owner understood the need for improved safety conditions for cyclists and drivers, but worried about the impact on business during construction.

“There is a high volume of semi-trucks that make turning maneuvers into the drive aisle behind the Home Depot to access a number of different businesses. The trucks need to maintain the ability to avoid blocking or maneuvering into oncoming traffic during construction,” the letter reads.

Alex Carroll, a Complete Streets program manager with the city’s Department of Transportation & Environmental Services, said this project was important because of its connection to the Duke Street in Motion project – an $87 million overhaul approved in June 2023 aiming to connect the West End to Old Town – and the improvements were needed for pedestrian and cyclist safety.

Carroll, in a Nov. 12 Council legislative meeting, noted that there have been 85 crashes from 2018 to 2022, over half of which were angle – more commonly known as T-bone – crashes on South Pickett Street. One-third of these crashes resulted in injury and one resulted in a fatality at the intersection of South Pickett and Duke streets.

T&ES split South Pickett Street into four sections, all of which would have different changes made to it based on a recent study conducted by the city. This study was made possible with grant assistance from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, allowing the city to reach out to residents as well as plan, analyze and design concepts.

The different components along the road include one-way travel lanes in each direction, with a left-turn-only lane onto Edsall Road; a center turn lane; planted medians; and turn-only lanes from South Pickett Street onto Duke Street.

The entire stretch of road would have protected bike lanes on either side, and along South Pickett Street there would be enhanced crosswalks with “pedestrian refuges,” or small islands between the cars for pedestrians to stand.

Mike Doyle, the founder of Northern Virginia for Safe Streets and the Alexandria chapter of the organization, said in an interview with the Times that the addition of protected bike lanes would benefit everyone.

“The bike lanes narrow the road, which helps to reduce the speed that drivers feel comfortable going at,” Doyle said. “They provide better protection for the cyclists, and they certainly provide better protection for the pedestrians.”

According to the city’s study, based on 2023 peak traffic, between 13,000 and 15,000 vehicles per day traverse South Pickett Street, with less than 45 seconds of delay at each traffic light. City documents state drivers should see an additional eight or nine second delay going northbound to the West End Village Shopping Center when changes are made.

“The corridor operates acceptably under the proposed condition, and the project team has determined that any minimal increases in delay or queuing are a worthwhile tradeoff for the tremendous safety benefits under consideration,” the staff report on the project states.

And, in December 2023, T&ES conducted a survey of residents to “better understand their experiences” traveling on South Pickett Street. Of the 214 respondents, 80% report traveling by car, with 58% of respondents stating they were concerned that people drive too fast. 43% expressed concern about the lack of crosswalks and bicycle access.

These changes were approved 5-1 by the Traffic and Parking Board in July – with Chair James Lewis opposing – but an appeal was presented to Council after more than 450 residents and homeowners signed a petition stating their opposition in early August.

Carroll said in Saturday’s hearing that there was no incentive, the city found, in its study to use Cameron Station Boulevard as an alternative route. And, Carroll pointed out that cut-through traffic has been a concern in the past with other road diets, but such concerns have not yet materialized.

“Delay is expected to remain unchanged, so there’s no additional incentive than there would be today to take Cameron Station Boulevard as a bypass route,” she said. “When we’re thinking about what encourages people to sort of dip out from South Pickett Street and take an alternate route, [less travel time] would be a key decision point.”

Gaskins, who lives in Cameron Station, was concerned that some safety issues and conflicts were not addressed in the proposal as it stood, particularly with the large trucks that enter and exit the shopping center. She also said she was considering the amount of opposition the project has gotten from some businesses along the road, mainly the car dealerships that operate there.

“I have concerns about how if one of our goals is commercial success and revenue and opportunity, what a plan like this does to their model,” she said. “It is a street unlike other streets in the city, like we don’t have another street in the city that has this many car dealerships or this many types of other types of uses coming through.”

Jackson echoed Gaskins’ concerns, asking Carroll if T&ES staff had been to the site to observe truck traffic and how trucks struggled to turn. Jackson didn’t go into as much detail as Gaskins with her opposition to this project, but asked staff a few clarifying questions.

Chapman did not ask questions of staff or state why he was opposed to the project during the public hearing.

Aguirre said he didn’t want to hinder businesses either, but some have been violating their special use permits in regards to unloading and loading of large trucks into the street.

“They have been acting indiscriminately,” he said. “… Shame on us as a Council that we have not been enforcing this. This is something that we need to have been taking a closer look at, because we have now encouraged a behavior which goes directly in conflict with the special use permit.”

While only 5% of South Pickett Street’s traffic is trucks – and 75% of that is smaller trucks from Amazon or city trucks – Carroll said staff spoke with businesses about this and the concept plans would create fewer conflicts.

Wilson said, before Council voted, that he’s heard the criticism from residents about congestion, but has heard the testimony from the experts too.

“The data shows this is going to improve traffic flow for cars. Cars will move quicker through this corridor,” Wilson said. “That is what is inherent in the proposal, and you don’t need to believe this proposal to understand that. You need to look at the examples elsewhere in the city where we have done this successfully and it has improved traffic flow.”