After an 11-hour public hearing with more than 100 speakers Saturday (May 16), a divided City Council upheld the Traffic and Parking Board’s decision to redesign a 0.8-mile section of Braddock Road in Alexandria’s Rosemont and Del Ray neighborhoods.
The 4-3 decision means city staff will continue designing the project into 2027. In 2028, parking will be removed on Braddock Road between Mount Vernon Avenue and Russell Road to make way for new bike lanes. Braddock Road will also be reduced from two lanes to one in each direction between West Street and Mount Vernon Avenue, creating two-way bicycle lanes on one side and a commercial delivery loading zone on the other.
The appeal was held after petitions were submitted by four residents living along the Braddock Road corridor, as well as Good Shepherd Lutheran Church (100 W. Luray Ave.) and Community Praise Church (1400 Russell Road).
Mayor Alyia Gaskins, Vice Mayor Sarah Bagley and Council Members Canek Aguirre and Sandy Marks affirmed the board’s decision, while Council Members John Taylor Chapman, Jacinta Greene and Abdel Elnoubi voted against it.
City Council also approved Bagley’s suggestion to keep two ADA parking spaces available on the street in front of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church.
Planning on the project started in 2024. In March 2025, 70% of 251 respondents to a city survey indicated that Braddock Road feels unsafe for families walking and biking, as well as for children walking alone.
“We recognize that this project has generated a lot of community interest and differing perspectives, which is understandable when we are looking at a roadway that affects how people travel along the corridor, how they park, how they access their homes, and move through the neighborhood on a daily basis,” Hillary Orr, the city’s deputy director of transportation, told City Council.
Carrie Giddins of the Save Braddock Road Coalition lives near Braddock Road and says the city has lost touch with residents.
“This is about much more than bike lanes,” Giddins told ALXnow. “It’s about a city that has lost touch with what a majority of its residents want, and how their decisions impact the lives lived here. There’s no transparency in how the city operates. The employees have been empowered to act on their feelings and their relationship and not on data, or what’s actually best for the residents they supposedly work for. Once things get to City Council, the outcome appears done, because they don’t want to be seen as questioning their employees.”
James Hook lives on E. Braddock Road and is in favor of the changes. He shared concerns about the safety of kids who bike to nearby George Washington Middle School.
“It is my experience that [Braddock Road] is not safe for biking,” Hook told City Council. “When I ride my e-bike or road bike at the speed of traffic, I can usually get through without incident. When I ride at a slower pace, with friends or family, or take a scooter home from the Metro … I have constant near-misses. I’ve been bumped, passed so closely that I can reach out and touch the vehicle passing me, and been honked at and shouted at by drivers who don’t like sharing space with me, and that’s just in the last month.”
Oliver, a 14-year-old eighth grader at GWMS, said that Braddock Road isn’t safe for students.
“I have witnessed and been involved with too many near-misses this year, and I’ve heard of too many accidents,” Oliver said. “The lives and safety of students is more important than anything else.”
Elnoubi told ALXnow the corridor isn’t on the city’s High Injury Network, and that the two segments in dispute had no pedestrian or cyclist crashes in the data window. He also said the city’s traffic study was not comprehensive and that the project creates more harm than good.
“The traffic study supporting the city’s claim of ‘minimal delay’ is based on counts taken on a single weekday in January 2025, before federal workers returned to in-person work — and was never checked against the heavier traffic many residents have noticed on this corridor over the past year,” Elnoubi said. “The impact on a 500-member church and on neighbors, including residents with disabilities and seniors, doesn’t outweigh the marginal safety benefits.
On his substitute motion that failed, he added, “I offered a substitute motion that would have preserved some parking and turn lanes at the most disputed intersections. It was rejected. The version that ultimately passed kept a handful of spaces in front of one church and left the rest of the concerns unaddressed.”
Giddins also said the decision will affect property values and the marketability of homes along the corridor.
“No one’s going to buy a house where you can’t pull up in front of your house,” Giddins said.
Retired Sheriff Dana Lawhorne also lives near Braddock Road and opposes the decision.
“This should never have gotten to this point in the first place,” Lawhorne told ALXnow. “Our city government should work with our residents to find viable solutions that work for everyone. That didn’t happen.”
