Today, the Commonwealth of Virginia, City of Alexandria and Monumental Sports & Entertainment officials are providing an overview of a new, comprehensive transportation and traffic management plan for the sports arena and Entertainment District at Potomac Yard. The plan comes following a detailed analysis by transportation expert Kimley Horn, commissioned and paid for by the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Key findings of the analysis include:
- Because the site has already been planned for 9 million square feet of density, the transportation enhancements necessary are focused on addressing the peak trips that come from the new uses affiliated with the arena and performance venue, with impacts being the greatest on 40 home games that overlap with a weekday rush hour.
- The plan allocates up to $215 million of improvements to address peak traffic, but those improvements will also significantly improve the experience in off-peak periods.
- The necessary improvements to Route 1 and adjoining roadways are compatible with investments to support Amazon HQ2 including the Route 1 urban boulevard.
- With a 2,500-car parking garage on site and thousands of available spaces at nearby garages, the number of adjacent parking spaces accessible to the arena in combination with parking management strategies (e.g., resident permits, enforcement) in the city will mitigate neighborhood impacts.
- A suite of multimodal strategies can achieve at least a 50% non-auto mode share by aligning the timing and amount of rail and bus service with the demand of event attendees and staff; identifying potential pinch-points in Metro capacity during peak event flows; and improving pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure and access, among other strategies.
The assumptions in the underlying Kimley Horn analysis were conservative including traffic modeling based on a 100% full arena for every event and all events occurring during the highest traffic loads.
The $135-215 million in transportation enhancements and operating costs identified will come from transportation budgets from the Commonwealth over the next several years.
Community Engagement
The City will host additional transportation-focused public engagement opportunities on the plan in the coming weeks. Please visit the City’s project webpage to learn about those events currently scheduled.
Public feedback is important, and the City invites residents to submit comments online through its dedicated comment and question form.
For more information on the project or to view the detailed analysis, visit MonumentalALX.com.
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