Road diet on Lawyers Road in Fairfax a big success

This is data from FABB on VDOT's results after reconfiguring the road to remove a traffic lane and replace it with two bike lanes.

• Average speed dropped by about 1 mph, from roughly 45 to 44 mph, but there was a more notable change in the fastest speeds. Before the road diet, 13% of vehicles were recorded at 50 mph or above. After, only 1% of vehicles were recorded at or over 50 mph. These speed results led VDOT to reduce the speed limit on Lawyers from 45 mph to 40 mph.
• In the four years prior to the road diet, Lawyers averaged 15 crashes per year. In the first year after the road diet, we observed only 3 crashes in the same segment of Lawyers, for an 80 percent drop. It is too early to make any firm conclusions about the safety results, but the initial trend is very encouraging.

And from a survey

• 69 percent of respondents said Lawyers seems safer after the road diet was implemented, compared with 15 percent who felt that it seems less safe.
• 47 percent of respondents bicycled on Lawyers more often than before, indicating that the road diet encourages cycling as a travel mode.
• 69 percent of respondents said auto travel times have not increased, even though 59 percent said speeds dropped.
• 74 percent of respondents agreed that the project improved Lawyers Road.
• 71 percent of respondents agreed that other road diets should be considered in Northern Virginia.

That is really encouraging, and kudos to VDOT for pursuing this project.

Comments

[charlie]

While I like the idea of suburban road diet, moving the speed limit to 40 after you successfully got rid of speeders is a bit rich.

[Jack]

The name of the road probably has an intimidating effect on scofflaw drivers. You should see the names of the cross streets: "Reckless Drive" and "Traffic Court".