Take Action for a Better Arlington

The planning for Barcroft Apartments, Arlington's greatest remaining bastion of affordable housing is about to conclude and it is all looking great, except for two weird and unsafe street designs featuring wide lanes and painted buffers that will encourage speeding and lead to crashes and injuries.  These unsafe street cross sections are the result of recent enforcement of a long-standing portion of the fire code governing aerial access that requires 26 feet of unobstructed clear width in the roadway.  This provision applies to all construction that is 30 feet tall or higher.  That means that this is not just a Barcroft issue, if this code continues to be enforced in this way, then wider unsafe streets will come along with nearly all future construction in Arlington County, including single-family home neighborhoods (residential zoning in Arlington allows buildings up to 35' tall).