My last meeting review (prior post) was second-hand. This one is third hand. And unsurprisingly, given that, I got some key details wrong, which I have now fixed.
Briefly, the extension of the MAC moratorium passed on a 6-3 vote. The moratorium extension will now be considered by the Town Council at its next meeting, and presumably the MAC moratorium will be extended to June 30 2020.
Continue reading Post #440: CORRECTED: The 10/30/2019 Planning Commission meeting.
My wife attended the meeting on 380 Maple West/Sunrise Assisted Living two nights ago, in the Vienna Community center. This is a brief and second-hand summary. Continue reading Post #439: Community meeting on 380 Maple West/Sunrise Assisted Living
The Town of Vienna Transportation Safety Commission frequently gets requests from citizens to have the town install a red light camera or speed camera at some problematic location in Vienna. These cameras would then be used to catch red-light runners and speeders, and presumably reduce both speeding and red-light-running.
At the 10/29/2019 meeting of the Transportation Safety Commission (TSC), a representative from the Town of Vienna police department summarized Virginia law regarding speed cameras and red light cameras. And the short answer is no, the Town isn’t going to install speed cameras or red light cameras, for some very good reasons.
Continue reading Post #438: Red-light cameras, speed cameras
This is just a brief pointer back to Post #404 . Posts are soon forgotten, and this one has become timely again.
Councilman Majdi has been asking the Town to consider using a consent agenda approach to speed up Town Council meetings. (That is, all the non-controversial routine business would be packaged into a single agenda item and voted on just once, rather than having a vote on each individual item.)
At the 10/22/2019 Town Council meeting, Town Council directed staff to look into this consent agenda approach. (Although, weirdly, that item is not on the agenda posted on the Town website. You had to have been at that meeting to know that was on the final agenda.)
This analysis will including finding out which local governments use it.
To cut to the chase, the answer is that more-or-less all local governments in this area use a consent agenda approach, except Vienna. That was the point of Post #404 ).
Here’s hoping that the Town adopts this, and many more such measures, to speed up Town Council meetings.
This post is mostly for benefit of the people in my immediate neighborhood. This is about the study that Town Council called for, of the neighborhood bounded by Courthouse, Nutley, and Maple.
I went to the Transportation Safety Commission meeting last night with one goal in mind. I wanted a clear answer to what I thought was a fairly simple question. Boiling it down, in the context of the Town’s decision to allow high-density housing along Maple via MAC zoning, my question had two key parts
Will the Town of Vienna act prospectively, to preserve a low-traffic neighborhood, and defend it against the traffic increases brought on by MAC development?
On the first part — prospectively — I got a clear answer. The “prospective” part of this study is that the Town will take existing traffic counts, and add the projected traffic increases from approved MAC projects to them. So for this study, the Town will not use existing traffic, they’ll construct a projection of traffic by tacking on the developers’ estimates of traffic to be generated by their new buildings.
Putting aside the quality of those projections (e.g., Post 364), all this means is that the Town will repeat the same calculations that the developers of 444 and 380 Maple did. The sole difference is that they’ll refresh the traffic counts.
On the issue of acting to preserve a low-traffic neighborhood, the answer was not at all clear. So, major caveat: What you will read next is my reading of the tea leaves, based on what was said.What I got, when I pushed the question, is that they weren’t going to consider that at this point. But my impression, when the dust had settled, is the following:
My best guess is that no, the Town will not act to preserve a low-traffic neighborhood. I’m guessing — actually, I’m fairly confident — that the next step in the Town’s study will be to compare the projected traffic in each neighborhood with the existing standard that the Town uses to determine whether “traffic calming” measures may be warranted. I.e., the threshold used to determine whether or not to put a speed hump on a residential street.
In other words, literally the only difference between this study (of our currently low-traffic neighborhood) and the Town’s standard analysis for traffic calming will be that the Town will add in projected traffic from the approved MAC buildings, based on the developers’ projections.
To summarize where I stand on this: My wife and I bought our house in large part because it was in a quiet neighborhood adjacent to Maple. The Town then changed the zoning to encourage the construction of high-density housing (“mixed use”) along Maple. The result — so far — is approval of two large new buildings whose users will almost certainly view my street as a convenient cut-through. We were hoping that the Town would act to try to preserve the quiet character of the neighborhood. We were hoping the Town would act to offset some of the negative impact its rezoning decisions would have on my neighborhood. We were hoping it would do what it could to prevent my street from turning into yet another of those Vienna streets whose residential character is marred by high traffic.
In short, we were hoping the Town would act to clean up the mess this is going to make of my neighborhood. And, as I read the tea leaves at this point, the answer is no, they won’t do that. We have to wait until traffic trashes our neighborhood, to the same extent as it trashes the rest of Vienna, before the Town will feel any obligation to do anything to reduce the impact of the changes that it caused by rezoning Maple. So, if I have interpreted this correctly, only when we get to the point that we’d qualify for (e.g.) a speed hump, under the standard rules, will the Town consider taking action. As I read it, projected traffic on our street will have to exceed the standard threshold of traffic misery before the Town will do anything.
So — again, assuming I have interpreted this right — the Town simply isn’t in the business of preserving quiet neighborhoods. That’s not on the agenda. It isn’t in the business of trying to maintain quality of life, as far as traffic goes. Not even when it’s the Town’s decision (to rezone Maple) that’s degrading quality of life in a neighborhood.
Finally, we got a clear indication of how little the Town is not willing to do. Department of Public Works stated, unambiguously, that they will never recommend any type of no-entry or no-turn-during-rush-hour signs. The (sole?) rationale is that such signs merely divert traffic to other streets. Town Council may always override that decision if it chooses to do so.
(I’ll explain why this no-sign policy matters critically in this case. The Tequila Grande/444 Maple West project is going to result in maybe 250 adults living at the corner of Maple and Nutley. Who knows how many will be added when and if the rest of that block redevelops under MAC. The path of least resistance, connecting them to southbound Nutley in the AM rush hour, is probably going to be my little street. But a cheap and simple no-right-turn-during-rush-hour sign at Maple and Wade Hampton would prevent that. Another one at Pleasant would do the same there. But if neither one is an option, we’re going to have to ask for much more radical changes than just putting up a sign.)
And, weirdly, that’s completely consistent with the rest of it. The message is that we all have to be equally miserable from traffic. Even if it’s the Town’s rezoning decision that creates the traffic in your neighborhood. The Town simply has no interest in keeping a peaceful neighborhood peaceful, regardless.
Well, at least it’s good to know the rules. The clear takeaway from this is that if you are planning to move to Vienna, don’t buy a house near Maple. And by all means, buy on a cul-de-sac. Because anything else puts you at risk for being in a high-traffic neighborhood. And if your neighborhood is as unlucky as mine has been, the Town won’t act until your neighborhood hits the required level of traffic misery. That’s my best guess for how this will all shake out.
Codas and minor technical notes.
First, I guess that some will read this posting and consider it nothing more than pleading for special treatment. But I look at it more as a question of cleaning up your own mess. It’s not as if this additional traffic came out of nowhere. It’s a result of the Town’s actions. The Town’s decision to rezone Maple is going to add a mess of traffic to my street. And because we have a pleasant neighborhood now — relatively low traffic — the Town will likely do nothing to clean up that mess. Or, more to the point, do nothing to keep that mess off my street.
Second, as envisioned, this is a one-off study. It does nothing new, and it does nothing to modify the MAC rezoning process. There isn’t going to be any standard set of “neighborhood protection” measures to be added to MAC. And I think that makes sense, because there’s no intent to protect the Maple-adjacent neighborhoods. The fact that the additional traffic is cause by the Town itself — by its decision to rezone — makes no difference.
Finally, maybe my neighborhood was the last quiet neighborhood adjacent to Maple. So maybe the Town just plain doesn’t have to worry about trashing any more neighborhoods with MAC development, because the rest of the streets connecting to Maple either don’t go anywhere, or are already trashed by traffic?
My guess is, no, that’s not right. Because no matter how bad traffic gets, it can always get worse. So I suspect that this problem isn’t going away. Neighborhoods that are going to bear the brunt of the additional traffic generated by these MAC projects are going to continue to raise objections.
But at least when this study is finished, we’ll all know what the rules are. My best guess, at this point, is that the only accommodation the Town will offer will be to add projected traffic from a new MAC building to their standard process for determining whether a street qualifies for traffic calming. And so the clear messages are 1) MAC projects are going to dump more traffic into your neighborhood and 2) tough luck. Until you’re as miserable as the rest of Vienna, it’s not the Town’s problem. The Town will not, in fact, try to clean up its own mess.
That’s how I see it.
See my just prior post. I had not planned to talk, but here’s what I’m going to say, asking for TSC to clarify some fairly basic points about this proposed study of my neighborhood.
Continue reading Post #435: My comments asking for a clarification from TSC tonight
The Town Council — specifically Councilman Noble — asked the Transportation Safety Commission to undertake a study of the neighborhood bounded by Nutley, Maple, and Courthouse. Outlined in red above.
That was, in fact, discussed at the last Transportation Safety Commission (TSC) meeting, documented in this post.
Apparently, there’s going to be some discussion of that at tonight’s TSC meeting. In fact, they’re going to lay out the entire workplan for this item. But I only know this because a) my neighbor emailed them, and then b) emailed me when he got a response.
So, Where’s Waldo? Here’s a copy of the TSC agenda for tonight. Find the discussion of the MAC-adjacent neighborhood study. If you can intuit where that is, you’re a better person than I.
AGENDA-60The final kicker here, in addition to no public notice of this, is that there’s a different meeting, tonight, for residents of Wade Hampton and adjacent streets to meet the people who (are? may be?) buying the rights to develop at 380 Maple West (see Post #432). So, don’t expect anyone from my neighborhood to be there. Not only did we not know this was on the agenda, all the civic-minded among us will be at the other meeting scheduled for tonight.
If my neighbor hadn’t emailed Town staff about this, I never would have bothered to go to the Town website, pull up the audio recording, and listen through it — on the off chance that this traffic study would be mentioned. Let alone go and seek clarification (see next post). As hard as I try to keep up with these things, I really shouldn’t have to find stuff like this out purely by happenstance.
This post has nothing to do with zoning. Instead, it’s a plea to keep the Vienna farmers’ market open later in the year. And related issues.
Continue reading Post #433: Farmers’ market, first frost, and adaptation
Some topics to be discussed this week include:
For Town meetings and work sessions, audio recordings will be available the “archives” section of this web page: https://www.viennava.gov/index.aspx?NID=567
In addition, for Town Council and Planning Commission meetings, the Town broadcasts meetings, the Town broadcasts those live on Cox channel 27, Verizon FIOS channel 38, and streaming at http://vienna-va.granicus.com/player/camera/3?publish_id=5
Monday, 10/28/2019, at 7:30 PM in Town Hall, Town Council will hold a work session to discuss, among other things, the scope of a proposed (roughly) quarter-million-dollar contract for a consultant to help update the Town’s zoning ordinances. Separately, they will discuss a proposal to allow 30% lot coverage in residential areas (up from the current 25%) if homeowners implement a stormwater management system.
The relevant materials can be found here:
Tuesday, 10/29/2019, at 8:00 PM in Town Hall, the Transportation Safety Commission will meet to discuss, among other things, a pilot program for rental electric scooters (and other “shared mobility devices”) in the Town of Vienna. Separately, they will discuss red-light and speed cameras in Vienna.
Prior to this, starting at 7 PM, the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety advisory committees will meet, but no agenda is yet available for that meeting.
The .pdf agenda for the meeting (no materials are provided) can be found here:
https://www.viennava.gov/Archive.aspx?ADID=4387
Tuesday, 10/29/2019, at 7:30 PM in the Community Center, there will be a meeting to introduce (probably) Sunrise Assisted Living as the (possible) new owner of the 380 Maple Avenue (Maple and Wade Hampton) MAC development.
As far as I know, there has been no official public announcement of this by the Town of Vienna. I believe that some individuals received an email. Citizens are welcome to hear Sunrise’s plans and to ask questions or offer concerns.
Wednesday, 10/30/2019, at 8:00 PM in Town Hall, the Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on extending the MAC moratorium to June 30, 2020. (The extension should not be controversial, but this public hearing is a legal requirement.) Prior to this, starting at 7:00 PM, they will hold a work session for discussions with the Town Attorney.
This is a public hearing, so I believe citizens may speak for up to three minutes.
Public hearing materials are here:
https://vienna-va.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=673421&GUID=7151C270-9A02-4776-8671-ED1C81520C81&Options=info&Search=
Prior work session notice is here (read the .pdf agenda to see the content of the meeting).
https://vienna-va.legistar.com/DepartmentDetail.aspx?ID=35871&GUID=5F43A6E1-E522-486D-A271-B83ED29861B9
In the diagram of the front of the Chick-fil-A-car-wash above, with Maple Avenue at the top, the drive-through window for the Chick-fil-A exits at the right side of the building (nearest Nutley), where the blue rectangle is.
In the original design, drive-through users would have then driven down the front of the building to return to the access road that runs past McDonalds. I.e., they would have taken a left, using the brick “plaza” as an extension of the drive-through-lane. Functionally, that brick “plaza” was just a driveway connecting the drive-through exit to the access road.
The Town changed that, requiring that the drive-through lane exit right-turn-only, directly onto Maple. In theory, then, you can’t get back to the access road, if you go through the Chick-fil-A drive-through.
I have now seen several people comment on how fundamentally goofy this traffic flow is. Upon inspection, it’s unlike any other fast-food drive through that I’ve ever seen. It’s practically designed to result in a traffic jam.
Let me walk you through it, and give you my best guess as to what’s actually going to happen. To cut to the chase, my guess is, people are going to drive across the brick plaza anyway. It’s set up to allow it (physically), and it will be vastly easier. And as a result, that brick “gathering space” will be nothing of the sort. It’ll just be the exit of the drive-through lane. Exactly as was envisioned in the original plans. Continue reading Post #431: Is the Chick-fil-A “gathering space” a sham?
