Active Prince William

Advancing active mobility in greater Prince William, Virginia

Category: Sidewalks (Page 1 of 4)

Our Recommendations for PWC’s Traffic Safety Action Plan

May 6, 2025 / / 0 Comments

 

On May 5, 2025,  Active Prince William submitted the following recommended programmatic actions for Prince William County’s Comprehensive Traffic Safety Action Plan that is now under development.  We look forward to seeing our recommendations incorporated in the adopted plan and implemented by PWCDOT and VDOT in the years to come.  View our official comment letter.

Active Prince William’s Recommended Programmatic Actions for Prince William County’s Safe Streets and Roads for All Action Plan

1) Reduce the design speed for all commercial arterial roadways (e.g., Richmond Highway, Sudley Road, Centreville Road, Dale Boulevard) to 35 MPH or less.  Speed kills.  If VDOT is willing to reduce the posted speed limit on parts of US-1 to 35 MPH in Fairfax County and to 25 MPH in Arlington County (with the local governing body’s concurrence), it will do the same in Prince William County.

2) Avoid and eliminate right-turn-only lanes on commercial arterial roadways, to shorten the crossing distance for pedestrians, lower vehicle speeds and improve yielding behavior at intersections, and reduce traffic crashes.

3) Eliminate overly wide (e.g., all 12-ft) travel lanes and excess roadway capacity through roadway reconfigurations (e.g., lane diets and road diets).   Wide and unwarranted travel lanes promote speeding and consume valuable public street space that could be reallocated to better accommodate non-vehicular travel modes and/or turning or parked vehicles.

 4) Establish a robust roadway reconfiguration program–in conjunction with scheduled VDOT roadway resurfacing projects–to retrofit bike lanes and pedestrian safety improvements, at little or no cost to Prince William County, through lane diets and road diets.   As Fairfax County DOT has accomplished for well over a decade, roadway reconfigurations during scheduled VDOT resurfacing projects can substantially and cost effectively expand a locality’s bikeway network and improve pedestrian comfort and safety.

5) Improve intersection safety for pedestrians, where warranted, by installing pedestrian crossing signals with Leading Pedestrian Intervals, high-visibility (and raised) crosswalks, and improved street lighting.  Reduce pedestrian crossing distances with lane reductions, bike lanes, pedestrian refuges, and/or curb extensions (aka bulb outs), and slow turning vehicles by reducing curb- return radii.

6) Add signalized pedestrian crossings of commercial arterials where the existing signalized crossings are too widely spaced.

7) Improve sidewalk safety and comfort for pedestrians and reduce mid-block traffic crashes by consolidating commercial driveway entrances and by installing raised medians during road reconstruction and rehabilitation projects.  Meanwhile, all existing driveway aprons on sidewalks should receive high-visibility crosswalk markings until such driveway aprons are eventually removed.

8) Grade separate all trail crossings of multilane roadways, especially as part of interchange construction projects.  Install raised crosswalks at at-grade sidewalk and trail crossings to enhance the visibility and reinforce the right-of-way of crosswalk users and to slow approaching traffic.

9) Ensure that all roadway crossings of streams are planned, designed, and effectively inventoried by VDOT to accommodate existing and future stream valley trails beneath the roadway or within the steam culvert.

10) Avoid and eliminate all at-grade sidewalk and trail crossings of multilane turn lanes or highway ramps, to preclude dual-threat or multi-threat crossing situations, where the drivers in every lane must stop for (or yield to) vulnerable road users and already-stopped vehicles may block the view of crossing pedestrians.

11) Install signs, pavement markings, and flashing beacons, as appropriate, to alert turning drivers to crossing vulnerable road users at free-flow right-turn lanes (aka slip lanes).

12) Ensure that all segments of US Bicycle Route 1 within Prince William County attain an acceptable Bicycle Level of Service (BLOS) of C or better, through roadway reconfigurations, route realignments, paved shoulder retrofits, and/or shared-use path construction or reconstruction, following up on this circa 2013 route evaluation.  The deficient route segments currently include Fleetwood Dr, Aden Rd, Joplin Rd, Bristow Rd, Hoadly Rd, Minnieville Rd, Old Bridge Rd, and Tanyard Hill Rd.

13) Establish Prince William County procedures for snow and ice removal from sidewalks and shared-use paths, especially along bus routes.  VDOT, by established policy, does not remove snow or ice from its sidewalks or shared-use paths, but after the roads have been cleared, sidewalks, paths, and bus stops may be blocked for many days and even weeks by mounds of plowed snow and ice, forcing pedestrians and bus riders to walk in the roadway.  Do Prince William County and its four towns have and enforce snow-removal ordinances?  Could volunteers be enlisted to adopt a road segment for snow clearing?  Are both the County and PWCS equipped and mandated to remove snow and ice on sidewalks and paths that front PWC- or PWCS-owned parcels?

14) Establish and enforce Prince William County procedures to ensure the maintenance of traffic (MOT) for people using sidewalks or shared-use paths during nearby construction projects.

15) Establish programs to identify, inspect, prioritize, and annually fund the construction, repair, replacement, and upgrade of sidewalks and shared-use paths, by the County and by VDOT.

16) Establish a program to identify, prioritize, fund, build, and maintain neighborhood cut-through paths that connect low-traffic subdivision streets.

17) Develop and promote a bicycle comfort level (level of traffic stress) map for Prince William County, building upon a previous effort.

18) Establish a PWC quick-build program to test road reconfiguration concepts in a cost-effective and timely manner.

19) Implement a strategic and data-driven program of automated traffic law enforcement to the fullest extent allowed by the Commonwealth of Virginia.

20) Continuously track and report annually on traffic crashes, injuries, and fatalities to identify their leading causes and locations and to monitor progress.

21) Develop a strategic and comprehensive active transportation master plan for Prince William County, guided by an expert team of outside consultants.

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Virginia Bicycling Federation’s 2025 Legislative Asks Presented to Prince William Legislators

January 11, 2025 /

On December 19, 2024, the nine members of Prince William’s state legislative delegation depicted above held a pre-session town hall meeting to discuss their individual priorities for the coming legislative session and to hear from their constituents.  Active Prince William Co-Chair Allen Muchnick, who has also served on the Virginia Bicycling Federation’s board of directors since 1994, presented the statement below to summarize the Federation’s current state legislative priorities.

Prince William State Legislative Delegation Pre-Session Virtual Town Hall, December 19, 2024, Statement of Allen Muchnick, Virginia Bicycling Federation

Good evening.  I’m Allen Muchnick.  I live in the City of Manassas, and I’m a long-time board member of the Virginia Bicycling Federation.

In recent years, the Virginia Bicycling Federation has focused on reforming Virginia’s traffic laws to improve the safety and comfort of people bicycling on Virginia’s roadways.  Specifically, we have sought to remove dangerous and needless restrictions on bicycling two-abreast within a standard travel lane, to allow bike riders to treat stop signs as yield signs under limited circumstances, and to allow bike riders to start crossing a signalized intersection with the pedestrian Walk signal.  Between legislative sessions, we met with VDOT and State Police representatives to find common ground and iron out bill language, and our bills have been well supported by the House and Senate Democrats.   However, due to strong opposition emanating from the current Secretary of Transportation near the end of the 2024 session, we are not seeking such legislation for the coming Session.

Expanding the local authority for automated speed enforcement would be an effective way to reduce our current epidemic of traffic violence, especially pedestrian fatalities.  With the increased use of speed cameras in school zones across Virginia, support has grown to allow automated speed enforcement at any high-crash location.  We hope this expanded authority is enacted in 2025.

For the 2025 Session, the Virginia Bicycling Federation is currently seeking patrons to carry three pre-filed bills:

  • A bill to establish point-of-sale rebates for electric-assisted bicycle purchases has been pre-filed by Delegate Thomas, who patroned a similar bill in 2024.  E-bike rebates are currently in place in 10 states, and this bill, like others, would focus the rebate on low-income individuals.  E-bikes have been found to effectively replace many local motor vehicle trips and to expand mobility options for low-income households.
  • A second bill would tweak Virginia’s bicycling laws to overcome VDOT’s current objection to installing bicycle signals on two-way cycle tracks and shared-use paths.
  • Finally, we seek an authoritative study by JLARC (or possibly the Virginia Transportation Research Council) to prompt VDOT to adequately and proactively maintain its pedestrian and bicycle facilities. To this day, VDOT has no dedicated funding or asset management program to adequately maintain its pedestrian and bicycle facilities, and it’s been 22 years since JLARC last completed a comprehensive assessment of VDOT’s highway maintenance and operations programs.

Thank you for your consideration and for this public comment opportunity.

 

Our Comments on the Mathis Avenue Improvement Project

March 31, 2022 /

On March 31, 2022, Active Prince William submitted the following comments to the City of Manassas regarding its proposed Mathis Avenue Improvement Project:

Re: Mathis Avenue Improvement Project (T-086) Public Meeting Comments

On behalf of Active Prince William, I’m writing to submit the following comments in response to the March 17, public meeting for the above-referenced project.  Our all-volunteer organization seeks improved active mobility and public transportation throughout greater Prince William, to create more livable, equitable, and sustainable communities.

An Improved Public Process for Transportation Project Development

We sincerely appreciate the improved process used to involve the public at the 30% design stage for this capital transportation project, which included both a February 23 virtual public meeting and an in-person meeting held on March 17.  This public involvement process is far better than the one used by City staff for its recent Sudley Road Third Lane Project, which excluded all public input before preliminary engineering was at least 90% complete (including when that project had been re-scoped substantially twice, in December 2017 and in February 2021).  We hope this public comment opportunity reflects a permanent policy change to proactively involve the public in all City transportation projects going forward, ideally starting at the project scoping stage.

The Proposed Design is a Reasonable Interim Aesthetic Improvement but Lacks Essential Pedestrian Amenities for a Vibrant, Mixed-Use Street

As a final condition for a revitalized Mathis Avenue as a mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented street–ideally with robust bus transit service–the proposed design would be a major disappointment.  However, as an interim improvement intended to transform the appearance of this somewhat desolate commercial street and to promote future mixed-use redevelopment at minimal cost, this project does appear to have merit.

In particular, the proposed design provides sidewalks that are too narrow for comfortable two-way walking, are too close to the roadway, and lack street trees and pedestrian-serving street furniture in what should be much wider curbside planting strips and furniture zones.   In addition, the sidewalks are interrupted with frequent curb cuts, where motor vehicle cross flows impede safe and comfortable walking.

However, considering the need for Mathis Avenue to continue serving the existing auto-oriented businesses beside it, especially along the east side of this street, until redevelopment occurs some years in the future, the imperative to minimize right of way takings and to preserve the existing curb cuts is understandable.

To effectively promote the specific forms of redevelopment that the City seeks and to ensure that this redevelopment incorporates the necessary mobility infrastructure to equitably support that redevelopment, the City’s Department of Planning and Community Development should undertake a robust community-based planning process to develop a detailed form-based zoning code for the Mathis Avenue corridor.  Form-base zoning codes are a proven tool to effectively promote the specific forms of redevelopment desired by localities.

Bicycling Accommodations and Roadway Design Speed

The lack of bike lanes (or any alternative bicycle facilities) in this project is disappointing but is also understandable since the existing curbs are not being moved to keep the existing storm sewer infrastructure in place, to minimize costs and commercial property impacts.  However, without bike lanes, the construction of raised medians will degrade bicycling conditions substantially, and those degraded conditions are unlikely to be remedied by a future roadway widening when the corridor is eventually redeveloped.

Presently, motorists can readily safely overtake people riding bicycles on Mathis Avenue by passing in the two-way central left-turn lane.  The raised medians, however, will prevent motorists from overtaking bicycle riders, who typically travel at 10-16 MPH.  Thus, people riding bicycles on Mathis Avenue will serve as slow-moving traffic-calming devices.  This roadway change will make bicycling unpleasant for nearly all riders and will subject people riding bicycles to increased harassment from frustrated motorists who are unable to pass.  Moreover, since Mathis Avenue would probably not be rebuilt with added bike lanes when redevelopment occurs in the future, this degradation of bicycling conditions on Mathis Avenue is likely permanent.

The fact that nearby Portner Avenue is designated as a bicycle route is no reason to degrade bicycling conditions on Mathis Avenue.  While many through bicyclists already prefer to travel on Portner Avenue, only Mathis Avenue serves the businesses and jobs located along Mathis Avenue, and people will someday live on this segment of Mathis Avenue too.

Thus, for both bicycle access and pedestrian safety, this project should strive to reduce the design speed for Mathis Avenue–and ideally the posted speed limit–to 20 MPH or below.   The raised median with street trees—and especially street trees in future curbside planting strips and future taller buildings closer to the roadway—should encourage motorists to drive more slowly on Mathis Avenue, but other design changes are needed too.

Shorter curb-return radii at corners and narrower sidewalk curb cuts would help reduce motor vehicle speeds, and electronic speed-feedback signs paired with posted speed limit signs (dynamic speed displays) would warn speeding motorists to slow down.  In addition, shared-lane markings (aka “sharrows”) centered in each travel lane would inform both motorists and bicycle riders that this is a shared roadway.

More Visible and Shorter Crosswalks

One notable design feature that should be changed is the proposed use of brick-colored stamped asphalt crosswalks.  While intended to impart historic charm, brown-colored crosswalks are far less conspicuous to motorists than modern high-visibility and reflective thermoplastic crosswalk markings.  The primary purpose of marked crosswalks is to alert motorists to the likely presence of crossing pedestrians, encouraging drivers to slow down, look for, prepare to yield to, and stop for pedestrians who may be crossing the roadway.  A faux-brick aesthetic is far less important than the safety of people who are walking across the street.

In addition, the final design of each intersection should pay particular attention to shortening the length of all crosswalks to the extent feasible and to install two separate curb ramps for the crosswalk landings at each corner.  The present design includes a single combined curb ramp at the southeast corner of Mathis Avenue and Sudley Road and at all four corners of Mathis Avenue and Liberia Avenue, the two on the north side not being rebuilt.

Designing shorter curb-return radii at all intersection corners, as suggested above to reduce the roadway design speed, would also reduce the crosswalk lengths at those intersections.

Consider Short Left-Turn Lanes at Reb Yank Drive and Carriage Lane

The advertised design does not include any space in the center of the roadway (beyond the intersection itself) to store vehicles waiting to turn left at Reb Yank Drive (from both directions) or southbound at Carriage Lane.  While shortening the raised medians to add short left-turn pockets at those three locations could increase travel speeds along Mathis Avenue and could also remove the proposed median refuges for crossing pedestrians at those unsignalized intersections, it may be prudent to add those left-turn pockets to smooth traffic flow, reduce traffic congestion, and lower the incidence of rear-end collisions at those locations.  However, if traffic studies have already documented that those left-turn pockets are unnecessary, then please retain them.

Thank you for considering our comments as you finalize the design of this project.

Our Comments on the Old Bridge Rd/Occoquan Rd Intersection Project

February 18, 2022 /

On February 3, 2022, the Prince William County Department of Transportation held a Design Public Hearing for its $11.85 million project to straighten the curve on Old Bridge Road near its intersection with Occoquan Road.   Below are Active Prince William’s written comments on the proposed design of that project.  View the public hearing brochure and the public hearing presentation to see the proposed design.

Active Prince William submits the following comments for the Design Public Hearing for the above-referenced project.  Our all-volunteer organization seeks improved active mobility and public transportation throughout greater Prince William, to create more livable, equitable, and sustainable communities.

Our concerns with the proposed design for this intersection-reconstruction project can be summarized as follows: 1) lengthened crosswalks, 2) inadequate replacement sidewalks, 3) lack of bicycling accommodations, and 4) excessive design speeds.

Although framed as a “safety improvement”, this project does little to make walking, bicycling, or transit access safer.  At the same time, this project would promote speeding and add unnecessary vehicle capacity.

According to the traffic crash reports compiled by the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, Prince William County experienced a total of 804 traffic crashes involving pedestrians or bicyclists during the past decade (2012-2021), resulting in 232 severe injuries and 53 deaths among people walking or bicycling.  Undoubtedly, the excessive design speeds on Prince William County’s multilane arterial roadways are largely responsible for this carnage affecting people walking and bicycling, while also causing many additional deaths and severe injuries to the drivers and occupants of motor vehicles.

According to VDOT’s 2019 traffic count data, Old Bridge Road (VA 641) had an AADT of 53,000 west of Occoquan Road and an AADT of 45,000 east of Occoquan Road, whereas Occoquan Road (VA 906) had an AADT of 13,000 south of Old Bridge Road and an AADT of 2800 north of Occoquan Road.  However, those traffic volumes will likely decrease once the southbound bottleneck on I-95 south of Mile-Marker 160 is fixed.

Lengthened Crosswalks

The proposed design would lengthen all three marked crosswalks at this intersection.  With the added right-turn lane on eastbound Old Bridge Road, the Old Bridge Road crosswalk would become eight lanes wide.  The crosswalk across the southern leg of Occoquan Road would remain six lanes wide, and the crosswalk across the northern leg of Occoquan Road would now cross four lanes of traffic, including the separated right-turn pocket from westbound Old Bridge Road.

To help mitigate the adverse impacts of those longer crosswalks, the design should create protected median pedestrian refuges in each crosswalk.  In addition, whenever pedestrian crossing signals are activated, leading pedestrian intervals should be triggered to give the crossing pedestrians a head start over both right-turning and left-turning vehicles.

Moreover, serious consideration should be given to not adding right-turn lanes on eastbound Old Bridge Road and/or southbound Occoquan Road and to eliminating one or two of the existing turn lanes on northbound Occoquan Road.

On eastbound Old Bridge Road, the existing curb lane approaching Occoquan Road should be redesignated for right turns only, rather than adding a new right-turn-only lane.  The VDOT traffic data show that the Old Bridge Road leg east of Occoquan Road carries 8,000 fewer vehicles/day than the Old Bridge Road leg west of Occoquan Road, indicating that two eastbound straight-through lanes are sufficient at that location.

On southbound Occoquan Road, which carries only 2800 vehicles/day, a short right-turn pocket with a pork chop island pedestrian refuge could be created as an alternative to the proposed new right-turn-only lane.

On northbound Occoquan Road, one of the two existing left-turn-only lanes could be eliminated and/or the right-turn lane replaced with a short right-turn pocket with a pork chop island pedestrian refuge.

The overall objective should be to shorten, not lengthen, the three existing crosswalks.  

 Inadequate Replacement Sidewalks

The proposed replacement sidewalks, along both sides of both roads, are only five feet wide and separated from the roadway by only a four-foot-wide grass buffer.  While this does represent a modest improvement over the existing deficient sidewalks, the replacement sidewalks should be both wider and separated farther from the roadway.

Walking just four feet away from a busy multilane roadway is noisy and unpleasant, and five-foot-wide sidewalks do not comfortably accommodate two-way pedestrian traffic or walking two abreast.

Furthermore, in winter, snow and ice plowed onto such narrowly buffered sidewalks from the adjacent roadway can render such sidewalks impassable for many days and weeks.  In the summer heat, the absence of street trees growing within a viable tree-planting strip makes walking without shade miserable.

In addition, the proposed sidewalks are devoid of much-needed pedestrian amenities such as benches, pedestrian-scale streetlights, and bus shelters.

The realignment of Old Bridge Road will abandon much of the existing roadway along the south side of that road.  That abandoned roadway provides ample right of way to build a wider and better-separated replacement sidewalk at that location.

For future projects, the County should revise its road-design standards to provide better pedestrian accommodations.

Lack of Bicycling Accommodations

Old Bridge Road and Occoquan Road both lack bicycling accommodations, so they are not Complete Streets.  Without even a sidepath (a wide sidewalk intended for both bicycling and walking), these roadways should be restriped or rebuilt with at least conventional (striped) on-road bicycle lanes.

Besides improving bicycling conditions, conventional on-road bicycle lanes enhance the pedestrian environment by increasing the separation between the sidewalk and vehicle traffic and by shortening pedestrian crossings of the vehicle lanes at intersections.

Old Bridge Road has overly wide 12-foot travel lanes, the width used on Interstate highways with 70+ MPH design speeds.  Thus, bike lanes could easily be retrofitted on Old Bridge Road at any time, simply by restriping its six 12-foot-wide travel lanes as six 11-foot-wide travel lanes and reallocating the freed-up space for bike lanes.  When added to the existing two-foot-wide concrete gutter pans, the freed-up space would produce five-foot-wide bicycle lanes, meeting the AASHTO minimum width.  Some additional space for bike lanes (or wider medians) could be created by narrowing all left- and right-turn lanes to 11 feet as well.

Since Occoquan Road has only 11-foot lanes, narrowing those lanes to create bike lanes—while still somewhat feasible—might not be approved by VDOT.  However, it is readily feasible to modify the current project to redesign the rebuilt north leg of Occoquan Road to incorporate five-foot bike lanes in both directions.

The south leg of Occoquan Road has at least four travel lanes between Old Bridge Road and US-1 yet had an AADT of only 13,000 in 2019.  This roadway is thus a prime candidate for a four-lane to three-lane road diet, producing a roadway with only one travel lane per direction, a two-way left-turn lane in the center, and two one-way bicycle lanes.

Such roadway reconfigurations, if managed by VDOT during scheduled roadway resurfacing, are highly cost effective and are accomplished at no cost of the County.  Prince William County should coordinate with VDOT to retrofit bike lanes on the entirety of Old Bridge Road and of Occoquan Road whenever those roadways are next scheduled for periodic resurfacing.  If either roadway is reconfigured before the current project is completed, the current project should ensure that those bike lanes are incorporated into the final roadway striping plan for the rebuilt segment.

Excessive Roadway Design Speeds

At the public hearing, project staff reported that the proposed design would preserve the present 35 MPH posted speed limit on Old Bridge Road and aims for a 40 MPH design speed.  Those speeds are too high for an arterial roadway through a commercial corridor with nearby residential neighborhoods and a large park-and-ride facility.

Project staff also noted the traditional highway engineering practice of posting speed limits based on the observed speeds of the motorists that use the roadway (i.e., the 85th percentile speed).  Such an antiquated and dangerous practice is the opposite of a safe systems approach; namely, engineers should select roadway design speeds and standards that allow pedestrians and bicyclists to survive most collisions with motor vehicles.

Narrowing the lanes on Old Bridge Road to 11 feet (or less) would be one simple step to reduce the excessive design speed on this roadway.  In addition, the curb-return radii at all corners of this intersection should be reduced to conform to the 30 MPH design speed that is appropriate for this roadway.

Thank you for considering our comments as you finalize the design of this project.

Sincerely,

Allen Muchnick and Mark Scheufler, co-chairs Active Prince William

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PWC Seeks Public Feedback on Its Proposed Trails Element for Its Comp Plan Update

November 26, 2021 /

Prince William County government emailed the following public notice on November 24, 2021.  Active Prince William encourages all active mobility and trail advocates to carefully review this Interactive Trails Comment Map for omissions and deficiencies and to submit specific feedback using the built-in comment feature.

An interactive Trails Comment Map is now available as part of the Pathway to 2040 Comprehensive Plan Update to the Non-Motorized section of the Mobility Chapter.

The map is intended to gather comments about the future of the trail system and not about existing trail conditions or maintenance and facilities issues.

Please leave comments about where you think there should be a trail or where there is a gap in the trail and sidewalk system.

The Planning Office, Department of Transportation, and Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism would like as much feedback as possible regarding this topic so please pass this information along to as many people as you like.

Comments will be reviewed and considered for inclusion in the plan update. No identifiable information included in the Comment form will be shown on the map and will only be made available if a FOIA request is submitted.

Interactive Trails Comment Map

Pathway to 2040 Mobility Chapter web page

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