There have been no complaints or transportation issues with fire and emergency personnel along the stretch of Seminary Road that has undergone the controversial road diet, according to Alexandria Fire Chief Corey Smedley.
“The measures needed for us to safely travel on Seminary Road before, during, and after an emergency call have been put into place,” Smedley told ALXnow. “At this point, we haven’t received any complaints from our drivers or battalion chiefs regarding travel issues. Our priority will always be the safety of the community and the members of the Alexandria Fire Department. When we receive an emergency call, we will do everything within our power to respond and navigate the City no matter the circumstance or conditions.”
The city initially admitted that there were significant traffic delays as the lane reduction was being implemented between N. Quaker Lane and Howard Street, though those delays have since lessened, according to Mayor Justin Wilson. Inova Alexandria Hospital is located on the reconfigured stretch of Seminary and there has been concern that the road diet impacts access for emergency personnel.
Despite the fire department not reporting any issues and Virginia Theological Seminary — a major property owner along Seminary Road — supporting the changes for its pedestrian safety improvements, former Alexandria Mayor Allison Silberberg has joined the chorus of community members who are asking that the roadway be put back the way it was.
She said that the road is an “unnecessary risk to public safety.”
“According to the City’s own data, this portion of Seminary was among the safest streets in Alexandria,” Silberberg said. “There was a legitimate need for additional pedestrian crosswalks, but this could have been done without the road diet.”
“In addition to the incredible traffic jams our residents now experience on Seminary Road and adjoining roads, the overriding concern to all of us should be the safety of those who need to reach our City’s only hospital during emergencies,” she continued. “The construction of raised medians combined with the reduction of travel lanes has created a potentially dangerous situation for our first responders and residents. We all know that during emergencies, minutes and even seconds matter. Thirteen Civic Associations from across the city and the Federation of Civic Associations were correct when they urged the City not to reduce the capacity of a major arterial road by 50%, creating significant traffic delays and unnecessary risk to public safety.”
It’s rare for a Facebook group to be the topic of discussion at the City Council dais, but Alexandria Residents Against the Seminary Road Diet is no ordinary page.
The group started as a small forum for drivers and residents to express their frustration over the city’s change to a portion of Seminary Road — reducing vehicle travel lanes from four lanes to two, with a turn lane in between, to allow for greater pedestrian and bicycle space.
The change led to traffic congestion for commuters, at least initially, as construction got underway. While the construction has mostly finished, the frustration in the group remains intense.
The backlash to the street change has inspired everything from banners along the street calling to “Retake Seminary Road” to a burger named after that and other Alexandria controversies.
For better or worse, the nearly 1,200 member group has become the digital hub of opposition to the changes on Seminary Road. City officials have been engaged in a long-running debate with residents in the comments section and the Facebook group took center-stage at a spat between two City Council members in a discussion last week about pausing work on Seminary Road.
The group was recently made private, meaning only those who join are allowed to comment and view posts, but while it was public it was extraordinarily active. Members would create numerous new posts every day, and those posts would in turn attract comments, often by the dozen.
There were a few frequent themes of those posts: photos of morning or evening rush hour traffic, links to news articles or videos about the Seminary Road changes, and ideas for how to pressure officials to change the road back to the way it was before.
The level of engagement on the page, and with the issue in general, is — to many — out of proportion to the actual stakes involved.
Not sure I’ve ever covered a story like this, where one road change was so polarizing https://t.co/yV6Hg4ICQD
— Adam Tuss (@AdamTuss) December 6, 2019
Chris Weymont, Bill Rossello and Keith Reynolds are the three administrators of the page, and each describes themself as a reluctant advocate drawn into a transportation policy argument.
“It started off on a Friday night with 10 invites and its grown exponentially,” Reynolds said. “I was a disgruntled resident. I thought it would gain a little bit of traction, but not this much. It continues to grow as people continue to find out about the page.”
While Reynolds said he set up the page to act as a forum to air complaints about the new Seminary Road changes, moderating the page started taking up more and more time. That was when Weymont and Rossello, two active early members of the page, were invited to join a small administrative team.
“I started to see some things going on that I didn’t like over a period of time, particularly after the King Street road diet,” Rossello said of his activism.
Rossello said he maybe gets on Facebook to post once or twice a year, but became involved with the page through neighborhood listserv Nextdoor and the Seminary Hill Association. Rossello said he was not active in local civic groups before becoming involved in the Seminary Road debate, but has since been elected to the Seminary Hill board and has been asked to become a member of the Alexandria Civic Federation.
“It grew out of angst a year and a half ago,” Rossello said. “Now I’m in the thick of it.”
Weymont joined later but has been one of the more active administrators in the group — weighing in on discussions and tagging relevant people. According to Weymont, the traffic issue has transcended every other partisan divide, with both avowed Democrats and die-hard Republicans standing side-by-side against the road diet.
“We’re not surprised in multiple ways,” Weymont said. “We know how badly the bike lobby and Mayor wanted this. When it comes to traffic, it’s a quality of life issue, for hardened Democrats and hardened Republicans.”
The group most commonly pointed to as the “bike lobby” is the Alexandria Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC), a local volunteer organization that has been involved in promoting the road diet.
“We feel like we have taken back Seminary Road,” said Jim Durham, chairman of BPAC.
A driver in Alexandria may have inadvertently contributed to a long-running fight to get the Appomattox statue commemorating Confederate soldiers removed from its pedestal.
Someone crashed into the statue at the intersection of S. Washington Street and Prince Street this weekend, Alexandria police confirmed to ALXnow.
“The statue was damaged by a vehicle at approximately 2 a.m. Saturday morning,” said APD spokesman Lt. Courtney Ballantine via email. “The Daughters of the Confederacy (owners) were notified and will make any necessary repairs.”
The base of the statue is cracked, with the statue itself now unevenly aligned, photos show. It is not the first time the statue has been damaged by a car — in 1988, a crash completely toppled the statue.
The statue was installed in 1889, during a time when streets throughout the South were renamed after Confederate leaders and statues were installed as a campaign of oppression against black residents. The statue was meant to symbolize a burial of hatred and conflicts from the Civil War, according to Alexandria Gazette articles from the time, but things didn’t really turn out that way.
Across several mayors and city councils, Alexandria has repeatedly expressed its desire to have the statue taken down, but a law passed by the state legislature in 1998 prohibits local governments from altering monuments to wars and veterans. Any movement of the statue would require the support of the statue’s owners, the Daughters of the Confederacy.
Mayor Justin Wilson said the weekend’s crash does not impact the state law governing the city’s inability to remove it.
“That being said, our staff is assessing the safety of the statue and conferring with the Daughters of the Confederacy as to next steps,” Wilson said.
Hat tip to Drew Hansen
Holy Cow Del Ray has taken all of the outrage and fury of Alexandria’s most controversial issues and put them between two buns.
The restaurant at 2312 Mount Vernon Avenue announced its new “burger of the moment,” the Seminary Road-Dockless Scooter-Waterfront Development-Halal Butcher-Bike Lane Sandwich, on Facebook.
The creation features a grilled chicken breast and melted jack cheese on a toasted potato roll topped with bacon, lettuce, tomato, pickled onion and Miracle Whip.
The restaurant acknowledged in the post that the Miracle Whip — a cheap alternative to mayonnaise — was a fittingly controversial decision to represent the burger’s conflicted name. Some commenters argued that naming a chicken sandwich a burger was the more controversial decision.
The sandwich costs $8.95.
If you need a breakdown of each of the components of this sandwich:
Photo via Holy Cow Del Ray/Facebook
Fox 5: No Additional Delays on Seminary — Alexandria’s Seminary Road controversy has taken another turn in the local TV news spotlight. This time, Fox 5 looked at the lane reduction issue and concluded that the brief periods of gridlock on the road during peak times are not, in fact, worse than it was when the Seminary was two lanes in both directions. [Fox 5, Twitter]
Population, Housing Continue to Grow — “Alexandria’s housing inventory is barely keeping up with its population growth. That’s a key takeaway from Alexandria’s recently released fiscal 2019 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report… The city added an estimated 2,300 residents in the last year, climbing to 156,800, and roughly 2,900 total residential units, ending fiscal 2019 with 82,310.” [Washington Business Journal]
New ACPS Trying Out Healthy Recipes — “Alexandria City Public Schools recently welcomed a new executive chef to its cafeterias and he’s already got some fresh ideas. Chef Isaiah Ruffin wants more vegetarian options on the menu, less sodium in the lunch items, and about 80 percent of the ingredients to be locally sourced.” [WDVM]
Local Cop Dedicated to Helping the Homeless — “In Alexandria, Officer Bennie Evans goes far beyond the call of duty to work with the homeless — often using his time and money to help — with the goal of building a stronger community altogether. ABC7 joined him on an autumn day at Alexandria’s Meade Memorial Episcopal Church as Evan cooked up lunch for more than a hundred people.” [ABC 7]
Reminder: Weekend Events — A number of significant events are taking place in Alexandria this weekend, including the Alexandria Cider Festival, the holiday tree lighting in Old Town, and the inaugural Alexandria Makers Market at Port City Brewing.
Some residents are downright angry at what they describe as major traffic backups caused by recent changes to Seminary Road.
Last month the city repaved and re-striped a portion of Seminary Road, changing it from two vehicle travel lanes in each direction to one lane in each direction, a center turn lane and two bike lanes. Some construction activity is still underway but people who opposed the project from the outset have wasted no time in decrying what they say is a significant increase in traffic as a result.
Last night NBC 4 reporter Adam Tuss covered the controversy during an evening news broadcast.
“Get rid of these stupid islands, get rid of these bike lanes,” local resident Phil Cefaratti told Tuss. “People on my side are very, very frustrated… we’re basically calling on City Council, especially the mayor, do to something about this.”
Cefaratti echoed other residents who call the result of the changes a “traffic nightmare” and Seminary a “parking lot” during rush hour, saying it now takes up to 20 minutes to go a mile at times.
Seminary Road this morning. Gridlock is bad, but moreover, how will an ambulance get to the hospital? This isn’t safe. @AdamTuss @Marcella_Rob @fox5dc @AlexandriaNow @AlexTimesNews @AlexGazette pic.twitter.com/57UjfYpnnn
— Jill Hoffman (@JHoffman_DC) November 18, 2019
Tuss also interviewed a resident who was happy about the changes, saying it’s a safety improvement. Some took to Twitter after the broadcast to voice similar views.
“I wasn’t listened to” = my opinion wasn’t implemented. I live off Seminary. It’s so much better! Never felt safe walking, running, or biking on it. Driving on it wasn’t that great either.
— Gary Michael (@GMSHOOP) November 20, 2019
The traffic will slowly get better, as it did on King Street when they did the same thing. My child has been hit by a car walking home from TC (thankfully no injuries). Anything this city can do to make it safer would be appreciated.
— Baby Yoda (@202StateofMind) November 20, 2019
City staff told Tuss and previously told the City Council that they expect the daily delays to ease as work concludes and some signal timing changes are implemented.
“While we understand that delays are frustrating, the corridor is still under construction and all of the components that work together to make this project work are not yet complete,” Hillary Orr, deputy director of Transportation and Environmental Services said in a memo. “While there have been some increased queues during the peak half-hour in the morning, we are still generally seeing vehicles able to get through a signal in one cycle.”
Opponents of the changes, meanwhile, are continuing to speak out and have formed a Facebook group to coordinate and gripe. One recent post on the exceedingly active Facebook group says that Mayor Justin Wilson has agreed to watch observe traffic congestion with residents on an as-yet undetermined weekday morning.
