No one wants a vehicle speeding by while they’re at work. Slowdown in work zones! Construction season is here! Work zones involve large equipment, traffic pattern changes, lane closures, uneven pavement, variable speed limits, and – most importantly – workers. When driving near a work zone, lookout for highway workers, adhere to all signage, and drive distraction-free.
Our crews began the installation of the third round of tactical speed humps in slow school zones earlier this month. We expanded this pilot to a third round due to the safety benefits expressed by community members and significant reductions in speeding recorded along school slow zone corridors found in Round 1 and Round 2 of the pilots.
Locations to be installed over the summer include:
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Campbell Elementary: 7th Rd S- Installed
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Tuckahoe Elementary: N Trinidad St
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Washington-Liberty High: 15th St N
- Nottingham ES: N Ohio St
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Randolph Elementary: 16th St S
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Discovery Elementary/Williamsburg Middle: N Kensington St
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Arlington Science Focus Elementary: N Lincoln St
Vision Zero staff have updated the Multimodal Safety Engineering Toolbox to reflect updated national standards and guidelines, as well as local experience applying multimodal safety engineering tools. You’ll also notice a few new tools in the list, too! The Toolbox is intended to create transparency in the engineering process by communicating the considerations and references that staff follow when designing the County’s transportation network.
We have also included a helpful guide on how to read the tools descriptions, as well as an Executive Summary that highlights key information and includes a matric of all 44 tools on the Vision Zero website.
View the Multimodal Safety Engineering Toolbox here.
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The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) held their annual Designing Cities Conference in Washington, D.C. in May. The conference brings together engineers, planners, government agency leaders and transportation professionals from all over North America to engage, connect and learn from one another. This year the County sent over a dozen staff to the conference; staff participated in walk-shops, bike tours and peer exchanges. As a part of the conference agenda, County staff led participants on five walking and bike tours in Arlington. Arlington was honored to share our projects and learn about best practices across the country through the many conference offerings.
Recent Pilot Safety Projects:
- The County will launch the Speed Management Pilot Safety Project in summer 2025. The pilot works toward Arlington’s Vision Zero goal by testing different speed management tools on arterials and assessing how they impact driver speeds in Arlington.
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Northern Arlington Infrastructure Projects Open House: In May, staff from several Arlington County and Virginia Department of Transportation teams held an open house to share information about the projects coming to north Arlington neighborhoods. Check out the project pages to find materials from the open house
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Transportation Construction Projects
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Projects In Design
Last month, Vision Zero staff were happy to host our Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) peer agency, Madison Wisconsin’s Vision Zero Team, who were in town for this year’s NATCO conference. Madison staffed braved the rainy weather for a walk and bike tour around Gateway Park and the Courthouse-Rosslyn corridor. It was a wonderful opportunity to meet in person and exchange ideas on a range of safety from engineering best practices to successful community education methods.
 The Federal Highway Administration’s Pairing provides a platform for sharing information and noteworthy practices, assessing strategies and action and forging beneficial learning relationships among Vision Zero Communities.
View FHWA’s Vision Zero Community Pairing Program page to learn more about the program.
To keep students safe as they arrive and depart from summer school each day, PhotoSPEED safety cameras will remain operations through the duration of summer learning at the locations below. The Arlington Public Schools (APS) Summer School Program will run from July 7th through August 1, 2025.
- EB 5800 block of Williamsburg Boulevard
- EB 3500 block of 2nd Street S.
- SB 1200 block of S George Mason Dr
- EB 4500 block of Washington Boulevard
Speed safety cameras are operational when the school zone lights (beacons) are flashing during school arrival and departure. Violators will be issued a $100 ticket (civil fine) per infraction to the vehicle’s registered owner. View ACPD’s press release here.
Engineers from the Transportation Engineering & Operations Bureau have been conducting a review of arterial streets in the county with speed limits of 30mph or higher.
At the June meeting, the Arlington County Board approved a Request to Advertisement proposed changes to the County Code to reduce the permanent posted speed limit from 30mph to 25mph on five corridors:
- Fairfax Drive between Little Falls Road and Langston Boulevard
- S. Arlington Mill Drive between Shirlington Road and S. Walter Reed Drive
- S. Carlin Springs Road between Arlington Boulevard and the Arlington County Line.
- S. Four Mile Run Drive between Shirlington Road and Columbia Pike
- Washington Boulevard between N. Glebe Road and N. Kirkwood Street.
Next Steps
In accordance with Virginia law, all speed limit changes must be approved by the County Board at a public hearing. This public hearing will take place at the County Board meeting on July 19, 2025. Additional details about the staff recommendation will be available in the Board report in advance of the public hearing.
The County is launching a study of 14 intersections along the Langston Boulevard corridor to take the transportation recommendations from the Langston Boulevard Area Plan and translate them into specific projects. The study will develop preliminary design concepts and outline longer-term changes to increase safety and accessibility within Areas 2 and 3.
On June 4, the project team held a virtual community kick-off meeting to share more about the study, its goals and our next steps. The next public engagement will be a Community Design Workshop in Fall 2025!
You can find a recording, meeting slides and a Q&A transcript of the kick-off meeting on the project page.
We will be giving our annual program update to the Transportation Commission at their meeting on Monday, June 30. We’ll also be seeking feedback on the program as we lead into the 5-Year Action Plan update this fall. You can tune into the meeting here.
Visit the Vision Zero Safety Projects page to learn more about safety-driven quick build projects, capital projects, pilot projects, High-Injury Network safety audits, and more.
Also, check out our Crash Data Dashboard that shows crash data over the last 10 years, how and where we implement safety tools from the multimodal safety toolbox, our various safety initiatives, speed reduction corridors, and where we are doing outreach/engagement.
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