Executive Summary The Bailey’s Crossroads community is home to a large immigrant population where many residents rely on walking, biking and the bus to get to work and daily activities. This Virginia community has a high density of housing within a walkable distance to grocery stores, restaurants, schools, religious institutions, and other services. Yet, the main arterial road, Route 7 (Leesburg Pike) is unsafe because of missing sidewalks, few safe crossing options, bus stops without crosswalks, and heavy high-speed traffic. The Coalition for Smarter Growth (CSG) the region’s leading smart growth organization and immigrant advocacy powerhouse CASA have partnered on a Safe Streets for Bailey’s Crossroads campaign to engage and organize local residents in the Culmore neighborhood of Fairfax County to make the community’s streets safer and improve access to walking, biking and transit. The campaign is guided by a stakeholder advisory committee of local community residents and volunteers, and the Fairfax Alliance for Better Bicycling (FABB) and Fairfax Families for Safe Streets (FfxFSS), in addition to CSG and CASA. CSG and CASA, in coordination with the campaign’s Stakeholder Advisory Committee, developed a walkability survey to hear directly from residents their concerns about walking, biking, and accessing the bus and what they feel would make it better. We received 202 responses, which have been compiled and analyzed in this report. A walking audit was done to augment the survey and to assess and document firsthand the experience of walking along and crossing Route 7 in the Culmore neighborhood. Key observations, problem locations and supporting images from the walk audit can be viewed on this interactive google map. Overwhelmingly, people in Culmore indicated they do not feel safe walking, biking or getting to transit. They cite crime, dangerous driving, poor lighting, lack of bike infrastructure, not enough time to cross the street, and the lack of connected sidewalks and safe crossing options. Based on the results we have identified a series of near-term (within one year) and medium-term fixes (two to three years) that are critical for making the area safer, along with a fuller list of improvements that are needed. Reducing the speed limit on Route 7, providing more safe crossing options, adding high visibility crosswalks and pavement markings, and installing brighter pedestrian scale lighting are all interim steps that can be taken ahead of the Envision Route 7 Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project expected within the next decade. The larger BRT project will provide the opportunity for a holistic redesign of Route 7 into a walkable, bike-friendly, transit-oriented corridor.
As of June 10, 2022
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