A new roundabout in Alexandria’s Warwick Village neighborhood has resulted in a surge of near-miss complaints.
The Alexandria chapter of NoVA Families for Safe Streets saw a surge of reports in its crowd-sourced Near Miss and Dangerous Locations Reporting and Dashboard. The dashboard is intended to identify roadways with high risks for pedestrians.
From Sept. 19 to Nov. 7, the nonprofit reported 57 near-miss incidents related to the roundabout. Concerns include drivers speeding through the newly configured roadway with few stop signs, safety signals, and poor visibility.
“The parent walking with me had to physically yank her child out of the path of a car whose driver clearly didn’t see us or bother to yield,” said one commenter.
The roundabout at the intersection of Kennedy Street and Hickory Street was installed in August. Nearly a dozen roadways converge at the intersection on a hill, and the city estimates an average of more than 1,200 vehicles travel through it daily. The project includes curb extensions and high-visibility crosswalks.
Another person said that they walk out of their way to avoid the intersection.
“Most mornings I now walk 1/2 mile out of my way to go down Kennedy and cross at Ancell,” the commenter said. “I don’t want my kids to be the ones who die in order for the city to take us seriously.”
Mike Doyle founded NoVA Families for Safe Streets after he was hit by a car in Old Town in 2017. He says the city won’t take concerns raised in the dashboard seriously because the data is seen as “spiked.”
“We had one person who submitted four reports about the roundabout,” Doyle said, “and another person submitted two reports.”
Doyle said that the dashboard is a bonafide data point that the city should take seriously. The results were emailed to members of City Council, he said.
“In this particular roundabout, if you believe the comments from the people who are traversing the roundabout, it’s not optimal,” he said. “It needs to be further refined.”
The dashboard was developed by students in Virginia Tech’s Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning program. It is supported by grants from the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles and the Washington Metropolitan Council of Governments.
The city will start compiling data on the roundabout next spring, according to Hillary Orr, the city’s deputy director of transportation and environmental services.
“We appreciate their advocacy efforts and think they do a lot of really good work,” Orr said of NoVA Families for Safe Streets.
According to the city:
The mini-roundabout is designed to be approached at 15 MPH or less. Large vehicles like box trucks, buses, or trailers may ride over the center circle. The City will be using modular curbs similar to those on Commonwealth Avenue that can be traveled over by larger vehicles, albeit at very low speeds.
