To the Editor:

The conditioned vote on the King Street bike lane was a heartening start to using compromise to produce a better solution. Vice Mayor Silberberg and Councilman Chapman are to be commended for their outreach efforts that created a bike lane pilot project whose performance at the end of 18 months will contribute to the final configuration for combining pedestrians, vehicles, bikes, and residential needs.

It was encouraging and impressive to see the mayor’s determination to put an 18-month trial period in place in order to evaluate a tricky and potentially dangerous reconfiguration of a small portion of King Street.

By emphasizing enforcement of roadway laws for both vehicles and bicycles, requesting that BPAC make a serious effort to educate riders, and most importantly insist on hard data for a performance assessment at the end of 18 months, the mayor has moved this out of the confrontational mode triggered by earlier maneuvering.

It is greatly to the credit of residents and Taylor Run Civic Association members Lisa Scanlon and Jesi Carlson that some hard data and outside the box thinking opened up the options on how to fairly include pedestrians, vehicles, bikes, and residents to potentially produce a win-win for everyone. We’re not there, yet. But it was their PowerPoint presentation, unfortunately not shared with the public at the hearing (for mysterious reasons) that made all the difference. Seeing it would have balanced the staff dominated and controlled information session that led to the vote. Offering it to all parties, including residents who use that stretch of King Street on a regular basis, would have been fair and in keeping with the principles of engagement broadly outlined in What’s Next Alexandria. Withholding it was a mistake.

Implementing the evaluation will mean tracking all travel modes of this re-configured roadway over an 18-month period. It will be costly, which is why most traffic studies are short term, rarely exceeding six months. Determining the right measures will need to be a joint venture: residents, cyclists, and city staff, with a review by DASH drivers, police, and firefighters.

Given that the mayor did wisely challenge the advisability of installing bikeways on the narrow street grid of Old Town, it would be prudent in this time of extremely tight budgets to re-allocate the $15,000 from the Royal Street Bike Boulevard study to implement this project. Contracts all contain exit clauses for precisely this reason.

At the end of this 18-month traffic design’s trial run, hard data on this test effort should provide an excellent platform for crafting a traffic pattern that can accommodate everyone, including those who can’t move to get out of the way.

Kathryn Papp

Alexandria