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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A year-end newsletter to Alexandria City High School families has put a spotlight on the city's W. Braddock Road and N. Howard Street safety study, relaying concerns from what it calls some school staff and community members that lane changes could worsen congestion and slow emergency response, and stating that the city did not consult Alexandria City Public Schools during the project's development. The city's own records complicate that account and show ACPS staff helped produce the 2023 audit the study is built on.
The ACHS PTSA's June 8 "Celebrating Our Titans" edition urges families to comment through the city's online feedback form, open through July 3, and publishes a letter from PreeAnn Johnson, the acting administrator of the Minnie Howard Campus, opposing the project. Outgoing PTSA President Missy Estabrook said Johnson's letter was first written about a different segment of Braddock Road — the eastern stretch near the Metro, where the city has approved removing turn lanes and parking — but that Johnson asked it run to register her opposition to all phases of the city's Braddock Road work, including in front of the Minnie Howard Campus.
Two projects, one corridor
Two separate city efforts share the Braddock Road name.
The eastern Braddock Road Corridor Improvements Project, near the Braddock Road Metro station between Russell Road and West Street, was approved 6-0 by the Traffic and Parking Board in February. Opponents, including two churches, appealed to City Council, which rejected the appeal 4-3 last month and allowed the project to proceed with modifications, including preserving 11 parking spaces in front of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church.
The project the newsletter addresses is the separate W. Braddock Road Corridor and N. Howard Street Access and Safety Improvements Study, covering W. Braddock Road from N. Van Dorn Street to Crest Street and N. Howard Street from Seminary Road to W. Braddock Road. It remains in the concept phase. The city's timeline calls for community engagement this summer, a recommendation to the Traffic and Parking Board, and only then detailed design and funding.
What the city is studying
According to the city's June 4 open house materials, the study presents four options for W. Braddock Road: protected bike lanes (Option 1), a protected two-way cycle track (Option 2), a hybrid of the two (Option 3), and no change (Option 4). For N. Howard Street, three options are offered: protected bike lanes, a two-way cycle track, and no change. The city has published cross-section renderings of each West Braddock option on its project website. The city describes its "no change" options as offering no additional design features and no identified safety benefits.
Separately, the city lists corridor treatments it says could accompany any option, including high-visibility crosswalks, leading pedestrian intervals, signal-timing adjustments, consolidated bus stops, no-turn-on-red restrictions, curb-radius tightening and slip-lane removal.
The city frames the lane question through what it calls "right-sizing" — adjusting road design to match actual traffic volumes. Its capacity analysis found peak-hour traffic at measured cross streets along W. Braddock Road running well below even two-lane capacity, the city's basis for arguing that fewer lanes need not worsen congestion. On the project corridor, the city counted 56 crashes between 2021 and 2025, 22 of them involving injuries, including two pedestrian crashes.
Detailed Options: The design team created conceptual design options for West Braddock Road and North Howard Street to convey some of the possibilities to right-size the roads and introduce measures to improve roadway safety. Please use the links below to review the individual options for each roadway.
West Braddock Road:
Existing Conditions & Option 4: No Change
Option 1: Protected Bike Lanes
Option 2: Protected Two-Way Cycle Track
Option 3: Hybrid
North Howard Street: The link below will take you to a second website, similar to google maps, where you can click through three design options, scroll, and turn on different base layers to look at the design options.
Link to North Howard Street Design Options: Options include Existing Conditions & No Change, Option 1: Protected Bike Lanes and Option 2: Two-Way Cycle Track
The newsletter's summary of the options differs from the city's materials in places. It describes Option 4 as keeping the current configuration while still allowing enhanced crosswalks, reduced speeds and signal-timing changes, and as acknowledging that the high school operates as a "closed campus" where students are not permitted to walk or bike during the day and must use inter-campus shuttles. The city's Option 4, by contrast, is a no-change baseline with no features attached. The "closed campus" characterization is also at odds with the documentary record: the city's 2023 Safe Routes to School assessment notes students walk between the Minnie Howard and King Street campuses, the city reports up to 350 to 450 students choose to walk between them across three daily class-transition periods, and shuttle buses run between the two as an option rather than a requirement.
The consultation dispute
At the center of the newsletter's concern is its statement that the city "did not consult with Alexandria City Public Schools or any Alexandria City High School Administrators in the development phase of the plan."
The city's record complicates that claim. The 2023 Safe Routes to School assessment that underpins the study was conducted, in the city's words, "in partnership with ACPS," and its walk-audit participant lists name multiple ACPS staff — including Lance Harrell, now the school's interim executive principal. That audit's recommendations for W. Braddock Road, which ACPS staff helped produce, included exploring options to reduce vehicle speeds "such as dedicated bicycle facilities" — the seed of the current lane-change options.
Estabrook, however, said the dispute concerns the current design phase, not the 2023 audit. She said that at the June 4 open house — held in the Forum at the Minnie Howard Campus, 3775 W. Braddock Road, an ACPS facility — project planner Sara Brandt-Vorel told attendees that administrators had been consulted; that Johnson, the acting administrator at Minnie Howard, stood up to dispute that; and that when a city staffer said ACPS Central Office's Capital Programs, Planning and Design Office had been contacted, an assistant director from that office who was present, Arthur Carpenter Holmes, said no one from his office was involved in the design phase and that they first saw the project on June 4.
The Alexandria Brief has not independently confirmed that exchange and has reached out to project planner Sara Brandt-Vorel and to Ebony Fleming, the city's director of communications, for comment. The Alexandria Brief has also contacted ACPS communications, which had not responded as of publication. Estabrook, who directed further questions to Harrell, said ACPS intends to raise other concerns with the city directly, indicating the district has not taken a formal position.
The Seminary Road comparison
Johnson's letter cites the 2019 Seminary Road reconfiguration as a cautionary example, writing that drivers face substantial delays and that bike use "often appears minimal."
That characterization is at odds with the city's 2022 evaluation of that project, which found crashes on Seminary Road fell 41 percent, that severe-injury and fatal crashes dropped to zero, and that travel times decreased 17 to 24 percent despite the lane reduction. The same report found bike ridership rose about 75 percent at peak times, though from a small base.
Residents can review the options and comment through the city's feedback form through July 3.
