Alexandria/Arlington local roads

[1995hoo]

Right, and I've always heard those locations pronounced as you describe, but I was referring to Gov. William Berkeley, who was in office from 1660 to 1677. His last name is properly pronounced like "Barkley." I'm certain most people who see his name wouldn't pronounce it that way, though (especially given that the Mantua neighborhood in Fairfax has a street named Barkley Drive).

His brother has a town named after him in New Jersey.

Its definitely not pronounced "Barkley".

The town may not be, but the governor's name was.

[NJRoadfan]

I've never heard John Berkeley's last name pronounced "Barkley" either. Could be a case of bucket vs. boo-ket. They were, after all, British.

[The Nature Boy]

This discussion begs for this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUDQQ32bgJk

[VTGoose]

This discussion begs for this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUDQQ32bgJk

Close but no cigar for Powhatan -- it's Pow-a-tan, not Pow-hatan.

[The Nature Boy]

This discussion begs for this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUDQQ32bgJk

Close but no cigar for Powhatan -- it's Pow-a-tan, not Pow-hatan.

I'm also not convinced that their pronunciation of Fauquier is correct.

[AlexandriaVA]

Big local news is a long-awaited redevelopment plan for the old Landmark Mall (https://www.alexandriava.gov/news_display.aspx?id=119488)

As it relates to roads:

1) There will be a few local roads added to Alexandria as part of this project. The nature of the surrounding road network and topography (Landmark is on a hill) makes them pretty cut off from the rest of the area. I figure they may wind up being similar to the internal road networks of Mosaic (i.e. Merrifield) or Shirlington.
1a) Incidentally, Landmark used to be an open-air shopping district in its first iteration, before it became an enclosed mall

2) It would appear from the tentative plans (https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Bg80fnL-Xuo/X-K3oFSQwHI/AAAAAAABkH0/ybJ5I14ZiEQHEZRi4o4sjyVuUcVU-WveACLcBGAsYHQ/s1208/Landmark%2BInova.JPG) that at least some of the complex of flyover ramps from Van Dorn St onto the Landmark property will go away, although the plans are hard to interpret at detail.

[1995hoo]

Very hard to tell about the flyover because you can see the ramp from Duke Street is still there and they just rendered the new stuff over that.

[AlexandriaVA]

My guess is that they try to eliminate as many as possible, or at least repurpose them for bus use only.

There is going to be a new transit center for the project; currently some DASH and Metrobus routes call near the parking garage, but it's a painfully long distance from the main roads and adds an annoying amount of time.

The transit center will be closer to Van Dorn, I think. Relatedly, the city is going to be working on BRT facilities for both Duke Street and Van Dorn Street. Obviously Landmark would be a key lynchpin of such a network.

[1995hoo]

I suspect you are correct on both issues. The entrance and exit traffic patterns for Landmark Mall have always been weird, going all the way back to the 1970s. That whole property could benefit from a re-think of the strange configuration. The exit near Sears may be the weirdest spot of the bunch.

When I lived in Charlottesville, the K-Mart store on Hydraulic Road was sort of one major hub of the city's bus system. I could see Landmark serving a similar role for the DASH system.

[AlexandriaVA]

Particularly because of the situation where Metrorail is optimized for eastern Alexandria, but the most dense part of the city, and the highest transit ridership numbers, are in the West End.

[froggie]

Everything I've seen from the city for Landmark, going back over a decade, and included in the city-approved area plan, calls for eliminating the flyovers.  Furthermore, while the area plan retains the Duke/Van Dorn grade separation (topography playing a factor here too), it would replace the ramps between Duke and Van Dorn with quadrant roads with at-grade intersections on Duke.  The quadrant road in the western quadrant of Duke/Van Dorn would continue into the Landmark property as a new street.

[AlexandriaVA]

The ramp from southbound Van Dorn to eastbound Duke St is not for the faint of heart. It's a sharp declining ramp, so you can't really see the free-flowing traffic already on Duke, and there's no acceleration lane, you have to potentially come to a stop at the yield sign, and then gun it when you see an opening.

https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8145889,-77.1296299,3a,75y,242.47h,78.32t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s2vPnanDBSkVpIBrQ9rSw1w!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

[cpzilliacus]

This discussion begs for this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUDQQ32bgJk

Close but no cigar for Powhatan -- it's Pow-a-tan, not Pow-hatan.

I'm also not convinced that their pronunciation of Fauquier is correct.

Sounded correct to me - fau-keer.

[AlexandriaVA]

While going for a run the other day, I noticed that named interior roads continue to be built in the Potomac Yard development areas of Alexandria. I didn't catch the names of either. Because Alexandria is effectively fully-developed, the only way that the city add street names anymore is by adding interior roadways to large development projects.

1) One bisects, along an east-west axis, the former superblock bounded by Main Line Blvd, Maskell St, Potomac Ave, and Swann Ave (https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8301443,-77.0491311,290m/data=!3m1!1e3).

2) The other is immediately south of the Target parking lot, and north of the National Institute for the Blind building (it's currently an unnamed grey stub on Google Maps): https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8337759,-77.049185,292m/data=!3m1!1e3