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Updated Aug. 28, 2026, 4:15 p.m. with responses from all three appellant groups and from the Department of Transportation and Environmental Services.
Correction: This story originally spelled the name of one of the appellants as Carrie Giddins Pegram, the spelling that appears on the cover letter filed with the city clerk. The correct spelling is Pergram.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Three separate groups of residents have appealed the city transportation director's Russell Road Safe Routes to School decision to the City Council, according to petitions released to The Alexandria Brief on Wednesday by City Clerk Gloria Sitton. Sitton said no hearing date has been set.
Two petitions were stamped received Aug. 18, one submitted by Carrie Giddins Pergram and Nancy Lopez and the other by Megan Carraghan Langley and Missy Santoro Estabrook. A third, from John Leary of the 400 block of Russell Road, was stamped Aug. 24, the deadline. Each carries more than the 25 signatures city code requires.
All three challenge Transportation and Environmental Services Director Leah Riley's Aug. 7 decision to implement "Alternative C," the design she selected after the Traffic and Parking Board voted 5-2 on July 27 for a deeper parking removal than city staff had recommended. All three argue the process did not allow for meaningful community input.
Beyond that, they diverge.
The Leary petition is the only one seeking specific relief. It asks the council to set aside Alternative C, direct the department to implement the original staff recommendation and require that future changes to parking or intersection design on Russell Road go back through the community process and the board before taking effect. It argues the parking removals in Alternative C do not match what the board voted on in July, saying they differ block by block and drop the 300 block entirely.
The Langley and Estabrook petition objects to the design, including the placement of the loading zone and the dimensions of the median refuge islands, and endorses the staff recommendation. The Pergram and Lopez petition is the broadest, listing nine decisions under appeal, among them the parking the city proposes to add.
The two petitions filed Aug. 18 arrived under near-identical cover letters.
The appeals put the design and the parking removals, elements the department has described as settled, before the council.
The Alexandria Brief has sent questions to the listed contacts on all three petitions, and has asked the department whether the Sept. 28 board vote on the parking additions still goes forward with appeals pending. Questions to the clerk's office about how the appeals will be docketed, whether three appeals on one decision are heard together and whether signatures are verified against city records are also outstanding.
This story will be updated.
Update: Appellants respond
Added to story at 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 27
Two of the appellants said Thursday that they appealed the decision as a whole deliberately, and that they would prefer the City Council not take up their appeal until after the Traffic and Parking Board acts on the parking additions next month.
Nancy Lopez and Carrie Giddins Pergram, the contacts listed on the petition that names nine decisions under appeal, said in a joint email that the elements of Alternative C are interconnected and should not be evaluated separately.
"We do not believe the community should be asked to consider individual pieces in isolation," they wrote. A piecemeal review, they said, risks missing how the individual elements work together and whether the overall plan makes sense.
That confirms the petition's inclusion of the parking the city proposes to add — five unrestricted spaces and two loading zones on the 600 block and six spaces on Johnston Place — was intentional rather than an artifact of drafting.
On the Sept. 28 board meeting, the two took a position that would slow their own appeal. They said the council should consider the project as a whole, which may mean their appeal should not be docketed until after the board acts and the window to appeal that decision has closed. Taking up pieces of the project at multiple council meetings would be inefficient, they said, and would make it harder for the public and for decision-makers to evaluate the project as a whole.
Asked what the community process lacked, they said the director's Aug. 7 letter does not provide sufficient data, analysis of alternatives, or reasoning to justify the changes or to show that Alternative C will deliver the safety benefits it promises. Residents, teachers and others who use Russell Road, they said, deserve a fuller explanation of the tradeoffs among the options and why one design was chosen.
They also explained a blank line in their petition referring to an "amended decision issued on August ___." After the discrepancy in parking counts between the director's letter and the board's decision was reported, they said, they expected the city to post a corrected letter. When they prepared their filing, no amendment appeared to have been issued, so the date was left blank.
The correction that was made, and the one that wasn't
The city has corrected the parking figure at the center of that account, but not everywhere it appears.
The standalone comparison table posted on the project page now lists 120 total spaces under Alternative C, down from the 128 it showed when the design was announced. Complete Streets Coordinator Silas Sullivan told The Alexandria Brief on Aug. 12 that 120 was the correct figure and that the webpage would be updated.
The same table attached to Riley's Aug. 7 letter still reads 128. The letter posted on the project page Thursday remained the original, and no amended version has been issued.
The project page, which the city marked as last updated Thursday, does not note that the decision has been appealed. When the Braddock Road corridor decision was appealed earlier this year, the city's page for that project stated that the board's decision had been appealed to the City Council under city code section 5-8-6(a) and gave the hearing date.
The two said the three petitions were filed separately and that the groups have overlapping concerns but each chose to present its own appeal. They did not address whether the filings were drafted in coordination; the two petitions received Aug. 18 arrived under cover letters sharing substantial language.
Lopez said she had been told a fourth appeal was filed but could not vouch for the accuracy of that information. Three were filed.
The Alexandria Brief has not yet received responses from the other two appellant groups or from the City Clerk, or the Department of Transportation and Environmental Services.
Update: Leary responds
Added to story at 2 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 27
John Leary, who filed the third petition, said Thursday that he supports the safety goals of the project and that his appeal is about process.
Leary said he attended Naomi Brooks Elementary himself and that his three sons attended while he served as PTA president. He lives on Russell Road, on the 400 block, which would lose five parking spaces under Alternative C.
His block is also the example he uses. City staff, after consulting the Rosemont Citizens Association's planning committee, recommended removing two spaces there, he said. The Traffic and Parking Board voted to remove six from that block, and the director settled on five. Neither figure matches the staff recommendation, he said, and neither is supported by the city's data on parking occupancy and speed.
Leary said he does not dispute that the director has authority to take alternative action, and declined to say she exceeded it. His objection is narrower: the specific removals in Alternative C were never taken to the community or voted on by the board in that configuration, and the director has said they will not return to the board. Whether the board's consideration of the subject extends to a different configuration is a fair question, he said, and one he would rather see the council resolve in the open than treat as settled.
He said he included specific relief — implement the staff recommendation, and route future parking and design changes back through the community process and the board — because the council deserves a concrete request, and because the episode shows what happens when an established process is short-circuited.
Leary also cleared up two questions raised by his filing. He filed once, on Aug. 24; the Aug. 11 date on his continuation sheet was the day he drafted it and should have read Aug. 24. The two struck lines on his first signature sheet were administrative cleanup during the confusion after the clerk announced that appeals of the board's July decision were moot, not a question about anyone's eligibility. His petition carries 29 valid signatures.
The occupancy, speed and public comment figures in his petition come from the city's own staff report, presentation and engagement summary, he said, rather than his own analysis.
He said he filed independently, knows the other petitioners and shares their central concern, and would welcome the council considering the three appeals together.
The Alexandria Brief has not received responses from the remaining appellant group or from the Department of Transportation and Environmental Services.
Update: Langley and Estabrook respond
Added to story at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 27
Megan Carraghan Langley and Missy Santoro Estabrook said Thursday afternoon that their appeal reflects concerns from the Naomi Brooks school community and nearby neighbors about how the design would affect student safety, parking and traffic flow.
Safety is the primary goal, they said, and it should be pursued in a way that is efficient and transparent and that accounts for how students and families actually use Russell Road and the surrounding streets each day.
For the claims in their petition about emergency access on Johnston Place and about the median refuge islands, the two pointed to remarks by Complete Streets Coordinator Silas Sullivan at the board's July 27 meeting rather than to a separate source. On the islands, they cited Sullivan saying the refuges would not be fully compliant from a safety perspective, because the narrow roadway geometry would leave people crossing without protection from traffic.
The two said their initial concern was the possible loss of 20 parking spaces, the figure in the board's recommendation rather than in Alternative C, and that on-street parking is essential for teachers and families. They said they are now unsure how the plan will be implemented given what they described as a fragmented process.
They did not address whether their petition and the one filed the same day by Carrie Giddins Pergram and Nancy Lopez were drafted in coordination. The two cover letters share substantial language.
All three appellant groups have now responded. The Department of Transportation and Environmental Services has not.
Update: T&ES responds
Added to story at 4:30 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 28
The Department of Transportation and Environmental Services said Friday afternoon that the Sept. 28 board vote will go forward.
The proposed parking additions will go to the Traffic and Parking Board on Sept. 28 as planned, Senior Communications Officer Ursula Ramos said, answering a question the appeals had left open. Two of the appellants had asked that the council hold their appeal until after that meeting so the project could be considered as a whole.
On the argument that the removals in Alternative C were never reviewed in their current form, the department restated the position it has held since the design was announced. The director is authorized to take alternative action on subject matter within the board's purview so long as the board considered that subject matter, Ramos said, and the board considered various configurations of locations where parking could be removed at its July 27 meeting. Every space designated for removal in the director's letter, she said, sits on a block the board considered.
The response did not address the appellants' more specific claim that the removals differ block by block from what the board voted on and drop the 300 block entirely, or the director's statement that the removals will not return to the board.
On the parking count, Ramos said an updated comparison table was added to the project website. She did not say when, and did not address the table attached to the director's Aug. 7 letter, which still lists 128 spaces under Alternative C. No amended letter has been issued.
Previous coverage
- City seeks input on Russell Road parking changes near Naomi Brooks Elementary — June 2
- Traffic and Parking Board to weigh revised Russell Road safety plan Monday after community feedback reshaped proposal — July 22
- Traffic and Parking Board goes beyond staff plan, votes to remove 20 parking spaces on Russell Road — July 28
- T&ES director rejects both plans for Russell Road, proposes a third — Aug. 8
- Board's Russell Road vote will not take effect; appeal deadline moves to Aug. 24 — Aug. 11
- T&ES clarifies Russell Road parking numbers, process moving forward — Aug. 12
Ryan Belmore is an Alexandria resident and the founder and publisher of The Alexandria Brief. Send tips, feedback, and story ideas to ryan@alexandriabrief.com.
