Transportation Committee

[Bruce&Linda Dwyer]

BikeWalk was well represented at the Transportation Committee meeting with Elizabeth, Larry, Dave, Ruth, and Bruce. We made up more than half of the non-city employee attendees.  The committee focussed on clarifying their list of key transportation issues and problems.  The committee is also concerned that they have not moved forward to begin addressing a discussion of solutions.  From my point of view, the list does not really hit on the major problem: too many cars in the face of almost certain increased development and density.  Dave and I brought this point up (thanks to good information from Jim Wamsley) in the follow-on audience discussion and it was very well received by several committee members.  Apparently the committee had asked for, and not yet received, projections on growth when Alexandria will be built-out, and the accompanying traffic impact assuming current transportation use.  We feel pretty confident that such projections will show massive gridlock.  Transportation planning needs to be done in this context and the citizens of Alexandria need to be aware that it is unlikely that we can continue to travel around town as we have become accustomed.  Hopefully, city staff will provide such information to inform the discussion of solutions.
Committee members Poul Hertel and George Foote have done analysis of transportation congestion and prepared a memo to the committee on a new transportation system for Alexandria that addresses the nature of changes that are needed.  If you are interested in a copy, let me know and I will forward them to you.  They are large PDF files so I am not sending them through the list serve.

The next Transportation Committee meeting is tentatively scheduled for Monday March 28 7PM , location to be determined.  The best way to get information on the committee and to sign up to a list serve, go to http://ci.alexandria.va.us/tes/policy_and_program/transportation_policy.html 

The next meeting of BikeWalk Alexandria is scheduled for Monday, April 4 7:30 PM at St. Elmo's.

A great resource for ped and bike news and events is the biweekly CENTERLINES.  To subscribe send a blank email to
cl_subscribe at bikewalk.org  To check out web site, go to  http://www.bikewalk.org


Bruce Dwyer
ouibike at att.net
703-549-3263
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