A high-visibility traffic enforcement initiative is kicking off next week in Arlington.
The region-wide Street Smart campaign, which runs from Monday, April 7 through Sunday, May 4, focuses on reducing traffic-related crashes and educating drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists about the law.
A stretch of 12th Street S. in Pentagon City will be off-limits to drivers for about a year as the county extends a bus rapid transit corridor.
Closing the street during the expansion will be safer and allow the work to be completed more quickly, county staff said during a March 11 briefing of the county’s Transit Advisory Committee.
With three years of a sometimes harrowing transportation-improvement effort coming to a close by the end of the year, the Columbia Pike corridor is primed a new chapter of growth.
“We are, together, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel” on road, transit and pedestrian/bicyclist upgrades up and down the 5-mile corridor, said Hui Wang of the Arlington Department of Environmental Services.
A small but critical piece of the effort to improve sidewalk conditions on S. Carlin Springs Road took a step forward this weekend.
Arlington County Board members voted to pay a property owner $29,230 for easements that will allow for a wider sidewalk at Carlin Springs and 2nd Street S., near Kenmore Middle School.
The Falls Church City Council has voted to pursue eminent domain in order to build the city’s first traffic circle.
Several Council members voiced unease at the idea of setting unwelcome precedent, but ultimately took the gloves off on Monday in an 18-month battle to obtain a key easement.
The clock is ticking for Falls Church officials to approve the construction of a traffic roundabout at Annandale Road and S. Maple Avenue.
The Virginia Department of Transportation “is breathing down our neck to get this done,” City Manager Wyatt Shields said at a Wednesday agenda-setting session with Mayor Letty Hardi and City Council members.
A recent near-tragedy again has returned the spotlight to safety on S. Carlin Springs Road.
“People after the pandemic are driving like crazy,” Arlington County Board member Takis Karantonis said at a meeting last night (Dec. 2) of the Glencarlyn Civic Association. “There is no way to sugar-coat it.”
A study on the traffic and safety needs of Carlin Springs Road has been pushed back by over a year.
Following an open house earlier this week about safety concerns on the southern portion of Carlin Springs, county spokesperson Claudia Pors confirmed that the planned Carlin Springs Road Corridor Study will take place in Fiscal Year 2027, which starts on July 1, 2026.
Arlington County residents are some of the safest in the country, by at least one measure.
Just 3.8 out of every 100,000 Arlington County residents died either by homicide or in a land transport collision between 2018 and 2022, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s a lower death rate than any other county in the nation with a population of at least 100,000 people.
(Updated at 11 a.m.) The McDonald’s on N. Glebe Road in the Buckingham neighborhood is on track to get a second drive-thru lane.
The fast food restaurant at 40 N. Glebe Road plans to add another queuing lane leading up to the existing drive-thru window, increasing how many customers can place orders at the same time. The change is expected to bring shorter lines, cutting down on the amount of cars that back up onto the road, according to a county report.
(Updated at 4:30 p.m.) Post-pandemic, the Arlington County Fair has seen a strong uptick in attendance and with it, new challenges to tackle.
Before 2020, attendance averaged at 65,000 people, according to fair board chair Matt Richard. Between the fair’s reopening in 2021 and the 2023 fair, attendance grew from 85,000 to 150,000.
Ballston might remain the place where the Washington Capitals practice if everything goes to plan and the hockey team begins playing games in a newly announced sports arena in Potomac Yard.
The new arena for the Caps and Washington Wizards, as well as a concert venue, could open as soon as 2028 in the Alexandria neighborhood already seeing heavy investment, including a new Metro station and Virginia Tech’s forthcoming Innovation Campus.
