Fixing the Kirkwood Rd Bike Gap & Simplifying a Complex Clarendon Intersection
Level of Effort: 15 minutes, at home in your PJs
Deadline: Sun 6/18 11:59pm

Kirkwood Road is a quiet boulevard that connects Langston Blvd to Clarendon and it has bike lanes...that stop a block short of the Fairfax Drive bike lanes. Arlington County has brought forward a project to fix that gap, as well as simplify and improve safety at one of the weirdest intersections in Arlington - where Kirkwood meets Fairfax Drive, Jackson St, and 10th St.

Check out the concept plan, review our suggested feedback, and let the County know your thoughts!  Would the concept plan make you safer using Kirkwood Rd & the intersection? What parts are awesome and should be retained? How could it be improved? Are any parts of it confusing?

Our suggested feedback for the "any other thoughts you have about the concept design" portion of the questionnaire (most of these can also be easily added to the map at the end).

- Very supportive of closing the Jackson Street entrance from this intersection to cars.

- Access to Jackson Street must be maintained for bikes & scooters (without having to use the sidewalk) and a contraflow bike lane should be added to that block of Jackson to support southbound travel for bikes and scooters.  Kirkwood to Jackson is the only north-south bike route shown on the Arlington bike map that gets you from North of Washington Blvd to South of Wilson Blvd between Quincy St and Highland St (11 blocks!)  

- Bike & Pedestrian traffic should be separated on the new large median island to reduce conflicts.  The mixing of bikes, scooters, and pedestrians at the corners of the Clarendon Circle project has not been successful.

- Find the "flipped" directionality of the bike crosswalk very confusing.

- Support limiting traffic exiting the parking area to turning right onto Kirkwood

- Appreciate the extra thought and infrastructure to support bikes transitioning from Kirkwood to go eastbound through the parking area.

- Strongly supportive of the protected bike lanes on Kirkwood

- Concerned about sight lines for cars exiting the parking area - will they be able to see approaching cars at a sufficient distance?  Tall vehicles in the on-street parking already make it tough to see approaching cars at this intersection and this plan seems to set drivers back a bit further than existing conditions.

- Signal needs to be set to recall or steps taken to ensure bikes making the "two stage left" from Fairfax Drive into the parking area are detected (if actuated).

- Appreciate many crossing distances being shortened but many still seem unnecessarily long (why is the entrance to the parking area 26' wide when only supporting a bike lanes and one-way car traffic?)

- Supportive of the decreased complexity of the intersection - many fewer directions cars can be going makes it easier to safely cross as a person walking or biking