Via Seminary Hill Association
As many of you are aware, on May 30th, the city's Transportation and Environmental Services staff presented its proposed re-design of Seminary Road. Seminary Hill Association had put forward a plan we termed Alternative 4, which maintained 4 lanes of car travel, but provided safety improvements including: reducing the width of those 4 lanes to slow speed, creating light-activated crosswalks for pedestrians, providing a 3' buffer on each side of the roadway, and calling for increased speed enforcement along Seminary Road. The Seminary Hill board voted overwhelmingly for this option, and a large majority of our residents have expressed support for this alternative. Unfortunately, city staff did not choose to consider our proposal, but instead created what they term a "hybrid" approach combining 2 of their own proposals to alter the car travel lanes.
The city's proposal narrows the eastbound car travel lanes from 2 lanes to 1 lane between St. Stephens Road and Zabriskie Lane - a stretch of just 4/10ths of a mile - before returning the 2nd car travel lane to approach the intersection at Quaker Lane. In this stretch of roadway, they propose to create an 8' "shared buffer" space on the sides of the road, create pedestrian crosswalks with concrete"refuge" islands in the middle of the roadway, and alter the signal pattern at the intersection of Quaker Lane. At this intersection, the right hand lane would become right turn only onto Quaker, but right turn on red would be prohibited. The left lane would become left turn and through traffic, which means that cars going straight onto Janneys Lane would have to wait behind cars seeking to turn left onto Quaker Lane. You can view the full details of this plan at this website: www.alexandriava.gov/103393.
The city is now accepting comments on their proposal. Please take a few minutes and participate in the survey so your voice can be heard. You can access the survey at: https://www.research.net/r/
In addition, there is another online survey that was created by residents in favor of maintaining the 4 car travel lanes, as the SHA position advocates Over 1200 residents have signed that petition. If you wish to learn more about this petition, please go to this link: https://www.ipetitions.com/
The city's proposal for Seminary Road will go before the Traffic and Parking Board on Monday, June 24th at 7:30 p.m. at City Hall. Please consider attending this meeting. You can fill out a form that night to speak to the board on this matter. Following the Traffic and Parking Board's decision, the matter will come before City Council in Spetember. That will be the final opportunity to let our elected officials know your views.
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