The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors wants to change how it assesses transportation impacts by switching from an automobile-focused methodology to a more inclusive approach.
The Fairfax County Department of Transportation (FCDOT) is working on a Comprehensive Transportation Analysis (CTA) to collect data and identify the trade-offs between different modes of transportation, FCDOT planner Tim Kutz told the board during a transportation committee meeting on Tuesday (Sept. 17).
“This ties in directly with what the board and the Fairfax County Strategic Plan has recommended since 2021…to look at the methodologies and the ways in which we do traffic impact studies and make them more multimodal,” Kutz said.
Previously, the county, like the Virginia Department of Transportation, has focused on collecting data centered around cars and other motor vehicles when evaluating the effectiveness of roadways and determining whether improvements are needed.
Although the CTA calls for some changes to that approach, Kutz said vehicular impacts will still be considered, especially in certain areas.
“We’re still going to study those things,” he said. “It’s just how we look at them and how we, again, look at the trade offs between those different modes. We’re going to have different frameworks for the measures and the thresholds based on the project types.”
Existing measures include:
- Vehicular Level of Service/Delay
- Vehicular Volume to Capacity Ratio
- Vehicular Queuing
Additional measures include:
- Pedestrian Level of Comfort/Gap Analysis
- Pedestrian Delay
- Bicycle Level of Traffic Stress/Gap Analysis
- Transit Access
- Transit Ridership
- Vehicle Miles Traveled
- Crashes
Chairman Jeff McKay asked if the data could be used to decrease pedestrian incidents and crashes in specific locations.
“I’m wondering if, when an incident like that happens, is that a trigger to go back, look at all this data in the place where that accident happened and we believe we’re at a point where that data can help prescribe, potentially, a menu of options that we might want to consider from a capital construction standpoint,” he said.
FCDOT acting director Gregg Steverson referenced the county’s spot improvement program, which focuses on changes to specific sites or intersections. The department emphasizes safety as a metric for identifying priority locations.
“That program is going to do a huge aspect of that when it comes to looking at locations from an equity, crash, history perspective and developing sort of the menu of things that we look for in order to do that,” Steverson said.
Committee chair Jimmy Bierman, who represents Dranesville District, highlighted the importance of the CTA, saying the need for the county to create more walkable, multimodal communities is a concern he hears about often.
“A lot of the way our county has been designed over time has been almost exclusively focused on moving cars. And a lot of the methods of effectiveness — when it comes to traffic and how we’re going to get people around — is extremely car-based,” Bierman said. “So, this discussion where we try to quantify and figure out how we’re going to balance those pedestrian options and those and those car options is really important.”
