An 18-year-old man from Alexandria has been charged with reckless driving after allegedly crashing into a pedestrian on Richmond Highway in March, killing her.
Shortly before 9:30 p.m. on March 30, Luis Merino Berrios was driving south on Richmond Highway in a 2007 Mercedes C230 when he lost control near Groveton Street, a change from the originally reported location of Clayborne Avenue.
From the Fairfax County Police Department:
The driver of a 2017 Jeep Wrangler attempted to make a left turn from northbound Richmond Highway onto Groveton Street. Detectives determined Berrios was traveling at an excessive speed. He attempted avoidance maneuvers, lost control of his Mercedes, and struck the Jeep Wrangler. Berrios’s vehicle spun several times before leaving the roadway striking Samantha Jennings-Jones who was walking on the sidewalk.
Jennings-Jones was declared dead at the scene. She was 36.
Berrios was charged today (Thursday) and released on a summons, which means he’s still legally allowed to drive, the FCPD said.
Police said they didn’t have the exact speed Berrios was driving, but it was “excessive” for that section of Richmond Highway, which had a 45 mph speed limit.
Starting on Tuesday (May 23), the speed limit will be dropped to 35 mph in response to years of concerns about the roadway’s safety. Another pedestrian was killed on Route 1 just a week after Jennings-Jones died, and earlier this month, a motorcyclist was killed in the Lorton area.
According to her obituary, Jennings-Jones was working in the White House Office of the National Cyber Directorate when she died. She had a husband and two cats.
“Sam was a firm believer that friends are the family you choose, and she will be missed by the many friends and colleagues whose lives she touched and was such a big part of,” the obituary said.
Photo via Google Maps
A 27-year-old man from Maryland has been arrested following a police pursuit on Route 1 (Richmond Highway) that extended from Prince William County into Mount Vernon.
Based on a preliminary investigation, the man was driving a GMC Yukon that had been reported stolen from a Koons dealership on Richmond Highway at 10:30 a.m., a Prince William County Police Department spokesperson said.
When a Prince William County police officer approached the man and told him he was under arrest, the driver fled. Since the situation didn’t meet the department’s standards for pursuing a suspect, the officer instead alerted Virginia State Police and Fairfax County police to the fleeing vehicle.
A Virginia State trooper located the vehicle around 10:49 a.m.
“The GMC was on Route 1 in Prince William County heading north towards the Fairfax County line,” the VSP said. “The trooper activated his emergency lights and siren to initiate a traffic stop, but the GMC refused to stop and sped off.”
According to scanner traffic, the GMC drove the wrong way on Richmond Highway, heading north in the southbound lanes. During the chase, the driver “rammed” the pursuing trooper’s marked patrol SUV three different times, ultimately disabling the vehicle, the state police said.
Prince William County police officers, who were staying in sight of the chase to provide support, saw the GMC “make intentional contact” with the trooper’s cruiser, the Prince William police spokesperson said.
At 10:56 a.m., the driver bailed out of the GMC at Pole Road and Highland Lane in the Mount Vernon area, where he was taken into custody with the help of Prince William County police and a Fairfax County sheriff’s deputy.
The driver and the trooper were both taken to Inova Mount Vernon Hospital for medical evaluations “as a precautionary measure,” but no injuries were reported, state police said.
Charges from state police and Prince William County are pending, as an investigation into the case continues.
The speed limit on Richmond Highway (Route 1) has been permanently lowered through much of Fairfax County.
Starting next Tuesday (May 23), the legal limit will be reduced from 45 to 35 mph along a roughly 7-mile stretch between the Alexandria City limits at the Capital Beltway (I-495) and Jeff Todd Way/Mount Vernon Memorial Highway, the Virginia and Fairfax County transportation departments announced yesterday (Monday).
The departments said the change is designed “to optimize safety and operations for pedestrians, bicyclists, drivers and transit users” along a corridor that routinely sees devastating crashes.
Just this year, there have been at least 102 vehicle crashes on the Fairfax County section of Richmond Highway, injuring 75 people, according to state data. Prior to 2018, the total number of crashes consistently topped 400, peaking at 508 crashes in 2012.
So far in 2023, three people have been killed on the roadway: two pedestrians and a motorcyclist. Since 2011, there have been about 37 fatalities.
The Virginia Department of Transportation recommended in July 2022 that the speed limit be lowered after a year-long speed study found crashes occur more frequently on Richmond Highway than other primary highways in Northern Virginia, on average.
“The team also found that Richmond Highway between Buckman Road/Mount Vernon Highway and the Alexandria southern city limits had a higher incidence of pedestrian [and] bicycle crashes and speed-related crashes compared to other sections of Richmond Highway,” VDOT said.
However, the study recommended maintaining the existing 45-mph speed limit in the Fort Belvoir area from Belvoir Road to Jeff Todd Way. That 0.75-mile stretch had a lower crash rate, though about 50% of vehicles still exceed the speed limit, according to VDOT.
At a public meeting last summer, some community members raised concerns about the lower speed limit increasing congestion and questioned how effectively it’ll be enforced, but VDOT officials said the study indicated the change will have a “minimal” impact on traffic and allow tougher penalties on drivers who violate the limit.
Even a small decrease in vehicle speeds can lead to fewer serious crashes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. A 5-mph reduction from 40 mph, for example, will produce an estimated 34% reduction in crashes with injuries.
Signs showing the new speed limit will be placed along Richmond Highway on May 23, VDOT said. A final report on the speed study is expected to be finished around the middle of this year.
(Updated at 7:50 p.m.) Several people have been hospitalized after a crash on Richmond Highway (Route 1) in Groveton that involved four different vehicles, including a Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department truck.
One person sustained injuries considered life-threatening, the Fairfax County Police Department says.
Police units were dispatched to a fire department accident with injury at the intersection with Memorial Street near Beacon Center around 5:19 p.m., the FCPD confirmed.
Based on scanner traffic on OpenMhz, at least six people were transported to Inova Fairfax Hospital, including two people from a car and four from the fire department truck.
Richmond Highway has been shut down in both directions, and police advise avoiding the area.
The fire department directed comments to FCPD.
Officers are at Richmond Hwy & Memorial St in Groveton for a crash involving a @Ffxfirerescue truck and three vehicles. Several people taken to the hospital, one with life threatening injuries. Richmond Hwy is closed at Memorial St. Avoid the area. #FCPD pic.twitter.com/ihWkO2DG7x
— Fairfax County Police (@FairfaxCountyPD) March 23, 2023
Undeveloped land in Mount Vernon near Richmond Highway that had been eyed for an elementary school is now being considered for an early childhood education center instead.
As part of its approval of the latest Capital Improvements Program (CIP) on Feb. 9, the Fairfax County School Board voted unanimously to reallocate $500,000 in bond funding to the proposed center, which will take the place of a planned Route 1/Pinewood Lakes elementary school.
The money will help Fairfax County Public Schools start planning and designing the facility earlier than previously anticipated in the spending plan, according to School Board Vice Chair Tamara Derenak Kaufax, who represents the Franconia District and proposed the amendment.
“Based on the current budget, this project would have available approximately 15,000 to 20,000 square feet for dedicated classroom use,” Derenak Kaufax said during the board meeting (at the 5:17:33 mark). “The space would allow for up to 400 pre-K, Early Head Start or preschool special education students to gain that critical, strong educational start.”
The center will be located in the Woodlawn neighborhood on 10 acres of land owned by the school board next to Buckman Road near Lakepark Drive. The board also has a smaller, adjacent site at 4300 Keswick Road, but only the larger parcel will be used, Derenak Kaufax told FFXnow.
FCPS first proposed building an elementary school to serve the northern Route 1 corridor in 2013. Voters approved a school bond referendum that November that included nearly $21.2 million for the project — funds still listed in the newly approved CIP for fiscal years 2024-2028 as “projected future project spending.”
However, after the referendum passed, the Department of Defense moved over 11,000 jobs in the area to Fort Belvoir, and FCPS got federal grant funds to build an elementary school on the military base, “alleviating the immediate capacity need” for the Route 1 school, Derenak Kaufax told the school board.
FCPS administrators wrote a report last spring recommending the site be used for a standalone pre-kindergarten center, and Superintendent Michelle Reid brought the proposal to the school board on Sept. 12.
While Fairfax County has seen a general dip in child care options during the pandemic, the need for more early childhood education capacity, particularly in the Richmond Highway corridor, was “significant” even before Covid, Mount Vernon District School Board Representative Karen Corbett-Sanders said. Read More
Fairfax County is going back to the drawing board for the names of its proposed Richmond Highway bus rapid transit (BRT) stations.
The Fairfax County Department of Transportation says it is looking for feedback on names for three stations “in response to community ideas about better ways to reflect station location and community character,” according to a news release published today (Tuesday).
The three stations being revisited are:
- Station #2: currently named Penn Daw, located at North Kings Highway and South Kings Hwy
- Station #5: currently named Hybla Valley, located at Boswell Avenue and Fordson Road
- Station #6: currently named Gum Springs, located at Sherwood Hall Lane
Dubbed “The One,” the planned BRT service will ultimately consist of nine stations in the Route 1 corridor, starting at the Huntington Metro station and ending in Fort Belvoir past the Woodlawn Plantation.
To gather input on what the stations should be called, FCDOT will host an open house at the Hybla Valley Community Center (7950 Audubon Avenue) from 6:30-8 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 12.
An online survey will also launch that day and stay open through Nov. 4.
Not expected to begin operations until 2030, the BRT will use dedicated bus lanes built in the median of Richmond Highway after the Virginia Department of Transportation widens the roadway from four to six lanes.
This summer, the county asked the public to weigh in on design elements and artwork at the future stations. The designs will be finalized by a Richmond Highway BRT Executive Commission in late spring 2023, according to FCDOT.
(Updated at 10:15 a.m. on 9/2/2022) Fairfax County police have arrested four people after chasing a vehicle on Route 1 that was allegedly stolen.
The north left shoulder, left lane, and center lane of Route 1 (also known as Richmond Highway) were closed today (Thursday) at the Fort Hunt Road intersection in Belle Haven, just south of the Capital Beltway, according to the Virginia Department of Transportation’s traffic information site.
According to the county police department, an officer spotted a vehicle going north on Route 1 that had been reported stolen in a Prince George’s County carjacking. When the officer attempted a traffic stop near Fort Hunt Road, the “car did not stop and continued to drive away,” a spokesperson said.
The resulting pursuit ended in the Huntington Avenue area when the officer deployed a Precision Immobilization Technique, a manuever for stopping high-speed vehicles that the FCPD pioneered but has been criticized as risky.
The move prompted the car to roll over into southbound Route 1 traffic, police told FFXnow.
Four occupants of the vehicle were taken into custody and transported to a hospital with injuries not considered life-threatening, according to police. No officers were injured.
The FCPD is advising community members to avoid the area.
The department will identify those arrested — all of them adults — and announce charges tomorrow (Friday).
Officers are in area of Richmond Hwy & Huntington Rd after pursuing a stolen vehicle. Officer used Precision Immobilization Technique to stop the car. 4 occupants in custody & transported w/non-life-threatening inj. Officers are ok. Please avoid area. #FCPD pic.twitter.com/F2TMIjPe1s
— Fairfax County Police (@FairfaxCountyPD) September 1, 2022
A 24-year-old man from Maryland died on Saturday (July 30) after getting injured in a one-vehicle crash on Richmond Highway more than two weeks ago.
The Fairfax County Police Department announced last night (Sunday) that Santos Casco Sierra had succumbed to injuries sustained after he drove off of Richmond Highway, also known as Route 1, near Woodside Lane in Lorton around 5:14 a.m. on July 16.
According to police, Casco Sierra was driving south on the roadway in a 2010 Ford Fusion “when the vehicle left the roadway, struck a tree and caught on fire.”
“Fire and Rescue personnel responded to extinguish the fire and extricate Casco Sierra,” the FCPD said. “He was taken to the hospital with injuries that were considered life threatening. Sadly, he succumbed to his injuries yesterday.”
Detectives with the department’s Crash Reconstruction Unit believe speed and alcohol were both factors in the crash, the FCPD says.
This is the eighth non-pedestrian fatality from a vehicle crash that the FCPD has reported this year, topping the six such deaths recorded by August in 2021. His death came on the heels of news that a motorcyclist had died weeks after veering off of Braddock Road near Fairfax County Parkway.
Casco Sierra was the third person to die after a crash on Richmond Highway this July.
A recent study of speed conducted by the Virginia Department of Transportation recommended lowering the speed limit in the northern section of the corridor from Belle Haven through Mount Vernon. The proposal doesn’t apply to Lorton, since the study’s scope ended at Fort Belvoir Road to the east.
A project to underground Richmond Highway utilities may be buried due to cost, construction delays, and the risk it poses to federal funding for other projects happening along the corridor.
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors weighed the pros and cons of undergrounding utilities along the highway, also known as Route 1, at an economic initiatives committee meeting on Tuesday (July 26).
Undergrounding utilities is a fairly common (and supported) practice, but the Route 1 proposal is complicated by two other major infrastructure projects in the corridor: the highway widening and the build-out of a bus rapid transit (BRT) service.
While the board didn’t take any definitive action on Tuesday, it was clear that a number of committee members, including Chairman Jeff McKay, were leaning towards scrapping the project altogether.
“It feels a little bit like ‘why wouldn’t we do it?’ if you just look at it on the surface, but as we dug into it today quite a bit…it makes it a little bit clearer how unclear it is,” Providence District Supervisor Dalia Palchik said.
In a presentation, staff said the county would be solely responsible for financing any undergrounding, with no assistance from the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) or the Federal Transit Authority (FTA).
Undergrounding utilities could also result in a two-year delay for the Route 1 widening and BRT projects, tacking on an extra year each for design work and construction. That would push the completion date for the widening to 2031 and for the BRT to 2032.
Utility undergrounding would also increase the cost of the two projects by at least $264 million, requiring an additional $136 million for the actual construction and potentially another $128 million to account for inflation during the two-year delay.
To raise the needed funds, county staff proposed working with the General Assembly to implement a utility “surcharge.” A $1 per month surcharge for residents and a 2.5% surcharge on commercial properties that could reach a maximum of 6.67% would bring in $40 million in revenue annually.
However, a surcharge would require an agreement with utility companies, mainly Dominion Energy, Verizon, Cox, and NOVEC. Even if an agreement is reached, it could take 12 to 18 months for the companies to sign off through their own “internal legal review” processes, delaying the undergrounding even more.
According to staff, undergrounding utilities could also result in the loss of $334 million in federal funding that the FTA is providing for the BRT project. Read More
The speed limit on a 7-mile stretch of Richmond Highway should be lowered to 35 mph, the Virginia Department of Transportation says.
The road from Jeff Todd Way to the I-95/I-495 (Capital Beltway) interchange currently has a speed limit of 45 mph.
Announced at a virtual public information meeting on Wednesday night (July 20), the recommendation comes from a speed study that VDOT began nearly a year ago.
The study determined that lowering the speed on that 7.31-mile stretch of Richmond Highway was best practice considering the high crash rate, the amount of pedestrian activity, the number of bus stops, and signalized intersections that are currently along this corridor.
“Change in speed allows for longer perception and reaction time for drivers,” VDOT project manager Warren Hughes said. “We want to…change driver behavior. By changing driver behavior, it will enhance safety in the corridor.”
As the study showed, crash rates were much higher on this section of Richmond Highway than the Northern Virginia and state averages for primary highways. On a particular 1.5-mile segment from Jeff Todd Way to Buckman Road, crash rates were 74% higher than the statewide average.
Just this month, two pedestrians were killed in separate crashes on the highway, which is also known as Route 1.
Officials noted that ample evidence suggests lowering speeds even a little saves lives, particularly when it comes to pedestrian-involved crashes.
“The impact of speed correlates to the chance of survival,” VDOT Northern Virginia District Traffic Engineer Gil Chlewicki said. “The lower the speed is when the vehicle hits the pedestrian, the better chance the pedestrian has to survive or less severe injuries. It decreases significantly, even with just five to 10 miles per hour.” Read More
