As students head back to school on Monday, new speed cameras and speed humps are intended to improve safety in Arlington school zones.
The Arlington County Police Department has installed 10 additional cameras over the summer, bringing its total number up to 28. Additionally, the county is in the process of installing new speed humps at seven locations near schools.
As the 2024-25 school year starts today, Arlington Public Schools is launching several new initiatives to tackle student safety and enrichment.
Approved changes for this year include a new attendance policy for high school athletic events, a new after-school program pilot, and an extra five-day weekend in November.
As students begin returning to Arlington Public Schools this coming Monday, Aug. 26, new initiatives are meant to encourage safer driving around schools this year.
Variable message boards sharing safety messaging and raising awareness about the start of the school year will appear along roads in Arlington in coming days. Ten new speed cameras have also been installed near select schools, operating when school zone lights are flashing at the beginning and end of the school day.
It has been 10 years since Arlington County last put up speed humps to reduce speeding.
Now, they will be coming to streets around a trio of schools where lowering speeds to 20 mph has not stopped drivers from going well past the speed limit.
Some Yorktown residents say their neighborhood has become an icy mess at times over the last few weeks — and they believe a newly installed speed bump is to blame.
County officials still aren’t sure of the exact problem on the road, but they aren’t willing to blame the speed bump quite yet. Regardless of the exact source of the issue, people living along 26th Street N. as it runs between N. George Mason Drive and N. Glebe Road, say they’re desperate for a solution.
Aging speed bumps throughout the county are set to be replaced or repaired under a new contract.
The County Board is expected to approve a $246,275 contract for the maintenance work, which will focus on traffic calming fixtures from the 1990s and early 2000s that are badly deteriorated “due to weather and vehicular traffic.”
In past years, Arlington has been ranked as having some of the worst drivers in the nation. That doesn’t surprise Brian Meenaghan, who has started a Twitter account to document what he views as a never-ending parade of bad drivers on his block.
Meenaghan, an Arlington Heights resident, started the Twitter account @BadDriversof1stRdS at the end of April. The account focuses on the worst offenders on the 3600 block of 1st Road S., a one-way street located in a high traffic area around S. Glebe Road, Route 50 and the Thomas Jefferson middle school and community center.
Police in Fairfax County tell the Washington Post that a man was murdered over the weekend because of his advocacy of speed humps. Police say that Stephen Carr and David Patton had argued before about Carr’s campaign to build a speed hump on the street in front of his Burke home. Then, on Sunday, investigators say an enraged Patton tied up Carr and Carr’s girlfriend, then shot him in the head.
Of course, such extreme acts of violence over neighborhood disagreements are rare. But in speed hump-filled Arlington, it’s easy to be left with the unsettling feeling that such an act of madness is not completely outside the realm of possibility.
