Author: Chris Slatt

The public meetings around the Shirlington Road Bridge project have reignited a long-standing community conversation about crossing safety near Four Mile Run Drive and Shirlington Road that has gone on for at least 10 years.

The area, at the confluence of the W&OD Trail, several legs of the Four Mile Run Trail, also suffers from a bridge over Four Mile Run that only has a sidewalk on one side, with that sidewalk being extremely narrow, traffic coming off of a major interstate highway, and a very auto-centric built environment with many curb cuts crossing the sidewalks and large trucks from the concrete plant.

Two regional governmental bodies, that don’t receive much detailed coverage in the press, could have a big impact on the transportation options available to you, the quality of the air you breathe and our ability to meet our climate goals.

Have you heard of the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (TPB)?  Or the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority (NVTA)?

(Updated at 9:25 p.m.) Enforcement of traffic laws is one of the key pillars to safety on our streets. No matter how well-engineered our streets are to encourage good behavior, if people are able to blow through red lights or exceed a safe speed with their vehicle, our streets will never be safe.

Unfortunately, our current methods of doing traffic enforcement bring their own set of problems. Police forces that are already struggling with staffing levels see traffic enforcement as a low priority making enforcement rare and sporadic, and traffic stops have proven to be the #1 pretext for harassment of black people. Automating enforcement of common traffic violations like speeding, running red lights and running stop signs can both improve safety on our streets for everyone, remove potential bias and reduce unnecessary encounters between residents and armed police officers.

Just in time for the start of the normal busy season in the D.C. area, MetroRail, MetroBus and ART have largely resumed normal levels of service. If you need to return to the office, transit is likely there and ready for you and the newest research is finding that riding transit can be done very safely.

MetroRail Service

“Is it BRT if it doesn’t have dedicated lanes?”  That was a hot topic of conversation in 2013 and I can’t finish out my series on Pike Premium Transit without digging back into the most controversial aspect of the Columbia Pike Streetcar debate.

If you need a refresher,  Part 1 introduced what was envisioned for the Pike Premium Transit Network. Part 2 looked at progress on features to improve bus travel time. Part 3 examined the planned convenience & dependability features.  Today, I’ll take a look at the most controversial feature that was ever discussed for Columbia Pike’s transit system.

As Northern Virginia prepares to enter Phase 2 and our community businesses and organizations begin to look for ways to safely resume activities, I have noticed a distributing trend — the use of cars as required Personal Protective Equipment.

The first time it caught my eye was Arlington’s drive-through COVID testing site that opened in March, offering convenient testing for any citizen… as long as they own a car. Thankfully the County recognized the inherent injustice in this arrangement and opened a walk-up testing site, though unfortunately not until nearly two months later. Sadly, other local organizations don’t seem to have taken this lesson to heart.

As part of our response to COVID-19, travel has ground to a halt. Automotive vehicles miles traveled is down around 90% in Arlington County according to Streetlight Data, while transit service has been cut drastically across the board. As Virginia starts to slowly move into its phased reopening plan, Arlington needs to prepare for the return of travel.

COVID-19 is likely to impact our transportation choices for months, if not years to come.  What do we want our transportation system to look like post-COVID?

Back in January, I kicked off this series looking at the Pike Premium Transit Network.

2020 is the year that the Columbia Pike Streetcar was supposed to start running; since many folks claimed that a “Modern BRT” system could be implemented more quickly than a Streetcar, I’m examining how far we’ve come in that implementation compared to what was envisioned.