Week 6: Reading User's Perspective

I didn’t make much progress on getting the Synchro files this week, but I’m planning to call Fairfax County DOT tomorrow morning when they open to request them directly. The person I originally emailed hasn’t responded, so I am going in with a phone call.

While waiting, I’ve been reading more about the specific problems at Seven Corners to understand why it’s so bad. One of the worst parts is the intersection of Arlington Boulevard Service Road and East Broad Street, where the turning-lane configurations are confusing, and people often go down the wrong road. There’s also a random merge further down Arlington Boulevard right after the intersection that forces traffic to compress from multiple lanes down, which not only is puzzling, but it also creates a bottleneck and backs up into the intersection itself.

Trying to fix an intersection when all you have is “this sucks” is way harder than having people tell you “X road sucks because of Y.” General complaints don’t tell me what to actually fix, but specific problems like “Arlington Blvd has two back-to-back right turns onto East Broad St, and it’s unclear which lane you need to be in for the second one” give me a good foundation.