An argument over major roadway changes left City Council members, like drivers at the Duke Street and Cambridge Road intersection near Bishop Ireton High School, stuck at a messy impasse.
As the City of Alexandria’s been working through the Duke Street In Motion plans — an overhaul of Duke Street with a bigger focus on transit, cyclist and pedestrian safety — the intersection of Duke with Cambridge Road has been a sticking point.
The resolution before City Council at a meeting earlier this week was a series of changes in conjunction with the creation of the new Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor. The resolution included:
- the conversion of the access road along Duke Street from two-way to one-way westbound between West Taylor Run Parkway and Cambridge Road
- a queue jump lane for buses running in the eastbound direction at North Quaker Lane
- the removal of an eastbound dedicated bus lane between Roth Street and Wheeler Avenue
The staff report said the idea of the changes to the intersection of Cambridge Road and Duke Street is to “reduce conflict points to improve safety at this location.” According to the report:
The two-way to one-way conversion accomplishes multiple goals of the Duke Street Transitway project, but the key priority is efficiently moving people on Duke Street, including those on buses. The one-way conversion not only makes this feasible, it also enables separated space to be provided for people walking, biking, e-biking, and scooting, which aligns with the recommendation of the Duke Street Transitway Advisory Group to provide continuous and safe facilities on the north side of the street.
While Alexandria’s City Council has largely been supportive of Duke Street In Motion, several members of the Council took issue with individual pieces of the plan at this eastern end of the project.
Various City Council members expressed misgivings about different parts of the project. City Council member and Mayor-elect Alyia Gaskins said she was not supportive of the proposed changes to the Cambridge Road intersection. For Vice Mayor Amy Jackson, it was a concern about the removal of bus shelters as part of the BRT system as well as the one-way conversion of the service road.
“I still have concerns about the bus shelters,” Jackson said. “We’re taking away so many bus shelters… people don’t feel like they have the convenience that they have right now with us taking bus stops away. I still don’t feel like this is ready for primetime.”
Council member John Chapman said he was concerned the project didn’t have enough outreach for what would be a substantial change for neighborhoods affected by the one-way conversion.
“I have seen some gaps in outreach,” Chapman said. “It really came down to very specific areas in this section of Duke.”
Others, like City Council members Sarah Bagley and Kirk McPike, argued the intersection is confusing, dangerous, and in dire need of substantial changes.
“This road would not be built this way today if we started from scratch, and I want to say that out loud,” Bagley said. “There’s nothing about the current design that is the preferred design that would be built today.”
While there were concerns about the impact changes to the intersections could have on cars, Bagley said the city needed to take transit prioritization more seriously in the face of looming climate change.
“I think we’re reaching a point with our street design in the city and our understanding of climate change and emissions and safety that we are going to have to make some tough decisions,” Bagley said. “Whether or not this proposal tonight is the best tough decision, these aren’t going to way, and this is going to keep happening.”
“We have a deeply broken intersection at Duke and Cambridge,” McPike said.
The City Council seemed poised to strike down the changes, which would leave the street basically as-is and staff said the Duke Street BRT wouldn’t receive any significant benefit in that section of the Duke Street Transitway.
The fight over the one-way conversion sparked a rare argument between Mayor Justin Wilson and Gaskins, who was generally seen as a successor to the Wilsonian side of the local Democratic camp in the primary earlier this year compared to Jackson.
According to Wilson:
If there’s an expectation on this dais that we’re going to get to a place where everyone is unanimously saying what we come up with is wonderful and amazing, it’s not going to happen. I do think there is an important resource allocation question the Council needs to answer as we go forward: if there is not a willingness to work through some difficult trade-offs then we are kind of wasting some resources on some of these things.
We’ve gone through the details of engagement undertaken on this and it is extensive. You’re going to have people who engaged int his process thrilled it all fell apart tonight and people who are going to be frustrated. That’s natural. We have to understand that comes at a cost for resources for everyone.
Gaskins, on the other hand, said the various City Council members had valid concerns that shouldn’t be waved way:
My decision is not from a place of not understanding tradeoffs. These are always going to be difficult conversations and yes we’re going to have to balance what those tradeoffs are… but that doesn’t mean every time we’re presented with something that it’s the perfect solution or the thing we can all come to agreement on.
Here, when everyone spoke, different reasons and pieces of the puzzle as to why people are making the decisions they are.
The vote on the proposal failed in a 3-3-1 vote — a tie — with one abstention, but City Council member Canek Aguirre proposed a middle way that shortened the length of the one-way street from Cambridge Road to Longview Drive, limiting the traffic impact more than staff’s proposal and excluding W. Taylor Run Parkway
While several members of the City Council expressed some reticence about the change, the City Council ultimately voted 6-1 in favor of the compromise.
Photo via Google Maps
