Safety upgrades are coming to a crash-prone Arlington, Virginia, intersection this spring.
Soon, there will be “right turn only” signs and flex posts at Arlington Boulevard and Highland Street, a stretch of a busy road where county leaders say drivers routinely drive through traffic to turn left or cross the road.
The plan, which will be debuted as a pilot program, comes in advance of a long-term project to make safety improvements all along the busy corridor.
For years, Arlington County and Virginia’s Department of Transportation, which maintains the road, have been planning to install medians and dedicated left turn lanes along Arlington Boulevard.
But the installation dates for that project aren’t until 2030, according to Christine Baker, Arlington’s Vision Zero project manager.
ARL Now was first to report the Highland Street pilot program.
“We want to see that crash trend pretty much be eliminated, definitely go down,” Baker said.
Highland Street was selected for the pilot, Baker said, because it’s the location with the highest number of left-turn and through movement crashes. There’s no signal at the intersection, so drivers who are making turns or going straight ahead have to wait for a gap.
“The feedback that we’ve heard is GPS can route you that route, and suddenly you’re waiting to turn left across all these lanes of traffic that you didn’t expect,” Baker said. “It can be surprising to folks.”
The county has taken a similar approach in other places, such as Old Dominion Drive and Little Falls Road. There, Baker said, they installed right turn only signs, but drivers didn’t follow that directive, so they added flex posts, too.
Since installing those markers, there hasn’t been a left-turn or through movement crash at the intersection, she said.
“We know it’s a very effective tool in our toolbox, but it’s something that is going to disrupt traffic patterns,” Baker said. “We have to be very mindful of where we place these, and we do see Route 50 as a huge priority to reduce those crash rates.”
The Arlington Boulevard project is projected to cost between $2,000 and $5,000, Baker said.
They’ll monitor traffic patterns in the summer and fall, and will be planning next steps by the winter, Baker said.
The signage and flex posts are likely to remain in place “until the long term project comes in, like 2030, in that time frame. It could be up until then if things go well and we see that it has the safety benefits we want, or it can roll back sooner than that,” Baker said.
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