About the Braddock Road Corridor Improvements

Braddock Road is one of Alexandria’s most important east-west corridors — connecting Del Ray, Rosemont, George Washington Middle School, and the Braddock Road Metro station to trails and the rest of the city.

The Braddock Road Corridor Improvements project would add protected bike lanes, shorten dangerous crosswalks, calm traffic, and close a critical gap in Alexandria’s bicycle network: protected lanes already exist west of Russell Road and east of Mount Vernon Avenue — this project connects them. It also significantly improves the Brooks Bike Bus route to Naomi Brooks Elementary and bike access to George Washington Middle School, tying directly back to the 2023 Safe Routes to School walk audit that helped spark the project. The project further stems from residents’ concerns submitted through Alex311 and multiple adopted city plans, including the 2016 Pedestrian and Bicycle Master Plan and the 2017 Vision Zero Action Plan.

On community support

Opponents have framed this as a project being pushed through against neighborhood opposition. The record doesn’t support that. Even among residents living directly on Braddock Road, the opposition petition was signed by only 58% of households. At the Traffic and Parking Board’s six-hour hearing, 37 people spoke in favor and 28 opposed. And the city’s own resident survey found 60%+ support for protected bike lanes on both sides of the street — with “compromise” options actually the least popular response.

Where this project came from

The Virginia Department of Transportation identified portions of Braddock Road as a statewide priority for pedestrian and bicycle safety improvements. Opponents have argued that VDOT only flagged the eastern segment near the Metro station — and it’s true that segment received the highest designation (“very high priority” for bikes, “high priority” for pedestrians). But VDOT also designated the middle stretch between Mount Vernon and Commonwealth as “high priority” for both pedestrian and bicycle access, and the segment between Commonwealth and Russell as “high priority” for bicycle access and “medium priority” for pedestrian access. The full corridor is in VDOT’s priority system — just not all at the same level.

Where the project is today

On February 23, 2026, Alexandria’s Traffic and Parking Board voted 6-0 to approve the project following a six-hour hearing in which more than half of 66 speakers supported the improvements. Opponents filed an appeal to City Council, which is expected to be heard on May 16, 2026.

On the safety data

Opponents point to the absence of bicycle or pedestrian accidents on the middle stretch of the corridor as evidence that the road doesn’t need improvement. But the city’s data tells a fuller story: between 2019 and 2023, there were 17 crashes in the project area resulting in 8 injuries, and a pedestrian was killed at the intersection of Braddock Road and Commonwealth Avenue in 2015. The corridor also has a persistent speeding problem. The posted speed limit is 25 MPH, but city speed measurements show drivers traveling at 29–32 MPH across the corridor — with the stretch from Commonwealth to Russell Road averaging 31–32 MPH. That gap between posted and actual speeds is a known risk factor for serious injuries.

Opponents also point out that we don’t see many bikes using this road today, but of course that makes sense — when a road feels too dangerous to bike on, people don’t bike on it! Put simply: the absence of crashes in this area reflects the absence of cyclists, not the presence of safety.

Beyond reducing speeds, the redesign eliminates “double-threat” crash risk where the Metro Linear Trail and Potomac Yard Trail cross Braddock Road — a configuration where a stopped vehicle in one lane hides a pedestrian from a driver in the next. It also shortens pedestrian crossing distances at Luray Avenue, Commonwealth Avenue, and Mount Vernon Avenue.

On proposed alternative routes

We’re aware that opponents have proposed alternative bike routes that would send cyclists onto surface streets to avoid Braddock Road entirely. These alternatives are not viable. They are 1.5x or more longer and less direct than the Braddock Road route, and they ask cyclists to navigate more dangerous conditions — including unsignalized crossings of Mount Vernon Avenue and Commonwealth Avenue, and sharrows on Russell Road, which research consistently shows are among the least safe bike facilities. Routing cyclists around the corridor doesn’t make them safer; it just hides them from view.

More recently, opponents have begun calling for a “neighborhood bikeway like the one on Royal Street” as an alternative. To be clear: there is no neighborhood bikeway on Royal Street. What exists on Royal Street is a set of painted sharrows — the same type of facility that already exists on Braddock Road today. Pointing to Royal Street as a model isn’t proposing a real alternative; it’s pointing to the very status quo this project is meant to fix.

On compromises

It’s worth understanding that the staff plan in front of City Council already reflects a number of design compromises made in response to resident feedback. The city dropped an early option to reverse the direction of traffic flow on East Alexandria Avenue — a change that would have meaningfully improved operating conditions at the Braddock/Russell intersection — after residents objected. The plan retains five on-street parking spaces near Spring Street specifically to serve the one house on Braddock Road without off-street parking. And it adds two ADA-accessible parking spaces near Good Shepherd Lutheran Church to replace the one ADA space removed from Braddock itself. None of these changes were required by traffic engineering — they were responses to community input.

On accessibility

Opponents have raised concerns about people with disabilities — and those concerns deserve a real answer. Current sidewalks along the corridor are only 4–5 feet wide with no buffer from traffic — too narrow for wheelchairs and difficult for strollers. As one wheelchair user’s father testified at the February hearing, people with mobility differences are currently forced to travel in the road because the sidewalks don’t work for them. Protected bike lanes give people on bikes a dedicated place to ride — which means the sidewalks are freed up for everyone else.

On disability parking specifically: the project does relocate one disability parking space currently near Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. The city’s proposal would replace it with two new disability spaces just off Braddock Road, but these new spaces are farther from the church’s accessible entrance. This is a real tradeoff that merits continued discussion and problem-solving.

On parking

This project removes most on-street parking along parts of Braddock Road, and that’s a real change for some residents. That said, the vast majority of homes on the corridor have off-street parking. The city’s parking study shows this parking is not heavily used today, with peak parking utilization at approximately 28 spaces on weekdays and 47 spaces on Sundays out of 105 total on-street spaces — and more than 300 additional spaces available on surrounding streets within a single block. Among the roughly 50 homes with Braddock Road addresses, most have two or more off-street spaces; only one home has none, and the city is retaining five on-street spaces specifically to preserve that resident’s access. City staff adjusted the design based on community feedback throughout the planning process.

On traffic

One of the most common concerns is that reducing lanes will create gridlock. The city’s traffic modeling tells a different story: with updated signal timing, the redesigned corridor is expected to reduce driver delay across the board. At the PM peak, average delay drops by roughly 1–2 seconds per intersection at Russell, Commonwealth, and Mount Vernon. AM peak and weekend reductions are larger still — up to 4–5 seconds at Russell and Mount Vernon. The full Synchro capacity analysis shows the per-movement delay numbers side by side.

It’s worth pausing on that, because it’s counterintuitive: adding protected bike lanes and removing underused left-turn lanes makes driving on Braddock Road faster, not slower. Leaving the corridor as-is (the city’s 2042 “no-build” scenario, which preserves today’s lane configuration and left-turn lanes) would actually increase delay by 0.3–1.2 seconds at most movements.

The underlying trend helps explain why. Traffic volumes on Braddock Road have declined 13% since 1997, even as Alexandria’s population grew 33%. The city’s modeling conservatively assumes modest future growth anyway — and the corridor still comes out ahead. Signal retiming hasn’t been done on this stretch in years, and it’s a big part of the answer. But signal retiming alone doesn’t fix the dangerous crossings, the missing bike connections, or the narrow sidewalks. This project does all of it together.

On emergency vehicles

The Alexandria Fire Department raised concerns about one specific stretch of the corridor — the area near the Metro station underpass, where a lane reduction combined with protected bike lanes could require emergency vehicles to navigate around stopped traffic. It’s worth noting that this is segment 1 of the project — the portion that both supporters and opponents agree needs safety improvements. To address those concerns directly, the city is planning to add Emergency Vehicle Priority (EVP) lights at the intersection at West Street, which will allow fire trucks and ambulances to preempt the signal and clear traffic through the underpass. The city has also noted that emergency vehicles can use bike lanes when needed, a standard design accommodation used on other roads with similar configurations throughout the region.

Critically, the Deputy Fire Chief’s EMS and Fire assessment of the project was explicit about the rest of the corridor. In his own words (see page 205 of the February 2026 Traffic and Parking Board docket):

“With respect to the changes proposed in the area of West Street and between Mt. Vernon and Russell, Fire has no concerns and supports those changes fully.”

Despite this, opponents continue to claim that the redesign will prevent EMS vehicles from getting people to hospitals. That claim is fully made up. It is not supported by the Fire Department’s assessment, and it directly contradicts the Deputy Fire Chief’s own words.