The following was transcribed from the Gallows Road Study virtual public meeting held Sept. 17, 2025.

What work was done to Annandale Road, between Wayne, going toward Annandale proper?

FCDOT Staff   
So that was a road diet that was recently done. Actually haven't been out there to see it, so if they're done with that, that's great. But VDOT as part of their restriping and repaving program, will often do those. So the county worked with VDOT to implement that road diet.

FCDOT Staff    
You want to describe what that diet was real quick?

FCDOT Staff   
Oh yeah. So we don't have to go back to the slide but in one of the slides I show the cross section where on Annandale Road you have two through lanes, one in each direction and then a center left turn lane. And so that's essentially what the road diet is. So taking four lane cross section, reducing it down to three, with bike lanes.
 

For the Northern Segment, what about houses that face Gallows Road? And are they at risk for easement concerns if the expansion requires those houses to give up some land and they are already at minimum easement from the road?

FCDOT Staff   
For the whole corridor and especially kind of looking at the northern and middle where we've got more space. All of this was done within the existing right of way and even kind of looking at the comprehensive plan, we recommend, or the county recommends in the comprehensive plan. Up until now, six lanes on Gallows Road north of I-66. So, we're actually proposing to not do that. And work within the existing right of way and then again like I said, repurpose those bike lanes that are there on road to the off street cycle track and then kind of gain a few feet here and there by reducing some turn lanes and reducing the width of some of the travel lanes, so it should not have impacts to the properties there.
 

Thank you. That easement question was mine as well. So appreciate the answer on that. Next question I had is how do we facilitate for certain increased anticipated increase in traffic and congestion, specifically in the northern segment. We have a Vine Church over there that is looking at rezoning that property into 130 to 150 apartment units, which will be a direct impact to traffic, if that does go through on congestion? As that'll be, you can multiply 130 times, even two. You're looking at a minimum 250 to 400, you know, residents moving to that area thus also traffic. So how would that plan? Either conflict with the dot plans here and is that being considered. You know when planning for these short and mid-term and even the long term, you know, planning at large.

FCDOT Staff   
So while we have tested this with the future analysis, like I mentioned, our analysis reflects the 2045 conditions.
So our travel models have taken into account, the future growth. 
 

This is like last few months, this kind of came up right and there's a community effort kind of going on because of the increased density that was completely unplanned that is being undertaken which would have a heavy impact on traffic and in my opinion you're planning here as well. I mean, only the public meetings just started and those two have been limited, you know, attendance. So that's why I was making sure that there's the coordination happening or at least adjustments to any plans needed? If there is such a significant increase going from an R3 zone to an R1 zone?

FCDOT Staff   
We have growth built into the model, which is a kind of the study that we're doing is the longer-term studies that we looked out to 2045. So we had 20-25 years’ worth of growth built in. What I'll also say is that while we have an idea kind of we build in some growth when there's changes, which do happen, in the corridor, we will have two processes to look at that, if it is a change to the plan, which is what the church would be, then they can go through a plan amendment type study to kind of see what additional changes might be needed to the corridor in order to facilitate and kind of accommodate that particular plan density. That's one way of doing it. If it's a rezoning, they have a rezoning study and they'll have to do one there to kind of show what would be needed to mitigate any sort of potential impacts in that way. So we have multiple ways of trying to be able to accommodate future growth that we have not accounted for in our particular effort, which can and which does happen because we don't have a glass ball, we can't see everything that happens, but there will be community and meetings that happens, that goes on. It came in late in the process just, you know, through this past specific plan amendment cycle. So it was not built into kind of this particular effort, which has been going on for a couple years now. So but it doesn't mean that it won't have its own way of assessing its impact and being able to find plan mitigations that might be appropriate for that site. 
 

I have many observations here, if you'll bear with me and we can certainly abbreviate this if other people have questions. I'd like to follow up on what Ali observed correctly, and that is, if I recall, the study group had all the congestion and traffic impact traffic flow impacts were, if I recall correctly, based on current traffic conditions with a 10% growth factor. And it seems to me that what Ali is bringing up and what I'm bringing up is the fact that planning for the central business district of Annandale calls for a tremendous amount of high density housing and we know that housing is a community priority. So, it seems to me that the baseline traffic does not account currently, in your projections and your studies, the baseline traffic is not a good indicator of potential for growth in this 20 year planning period, implementation period. So, it seems to me that needs to be rethought. Those assumptions would have to be rethought. And the central business district that's subject to this redevelopment at high density focus extends all the way to Hummer Road. So it basically goes from Columbia Pike area and beyond Little River Turnpike, all the way to Hummer Road. So it's a huge catchment area for potential traffic growth and I don't think that the current studies done by the consultants adequately take into account the kind of contemplated growth that other planning agencies in the county are promoting. Secondly, I think I want to comment on the public outreach effort which I know you try very hard to do, but after the last public meeting which was well attended, and as Tim acknowledged, there was intense opposition from the neighborhood in the area and southern segment areas where lanes are actually going to be constricted. And it seems to me the next set of recommendations call for retaining all the four traffic lanes, as currently configured. Now this one changes again. You know, the assumptions that people might have been working on, and I'm afraid the outreach has not been adequate to let people know that this is a potential threat, that you're down again to taking traffic lanes away and that will, without a doubt, contribute to generating cut through traffic, which is terribly unsafe in these neighborhoods. Aston Street, Thornton, Trammel There will be cars stuck in traffic and motorists stuck in traffic and they are going to be taking, those cut through routes. Same thing Annandale Road, cut through traffic on Walton is easily predictable, consequence of taking away traffic lanes. Well, let me suggest that the current survey is sort of rigged because you're asking the entire community and 2/3rds of the people affected by this would like to see improvements that you've asked about, but there's nothing there that says for those of us in the southern segment that we do not wish to give up those traffic lanes, we do not wish to create cut through traffic. So in that sense, the current survey that you have online is going to produce false results. And I don't know how you rectify this and have legitimate public outreach for those of us on the Southern segment who are going to be, whose safety, our well-being and safety is threatened by these proposals.

FCDOT Staff   
I will say for the public process, we have tried to be as transparent as we can with this. We've been out in, you know, with this particular recommendation for a number of months. We went out in July. We showed this set of recommendations. We have not changed from July. This is the same duration of the public outreach process, we didn't feel it would be right to make any sort of changes when the survey is still open and we're still receiving public comment and feedback. And we will be able to summarize public comment and feedback, talk with the elected officials, you know, rehuddle our staff and see what sort of changes to staff preferred recommendations should be made in order to kind of create the best plan for Gallows Road, both northern, middle and southern segments. 

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I'm very much in favor of the preferred alternatives that employ wider sidewalks and physically separated bike lanes, two way cycle tracks and or shared use paths. For the segments that would include new two way cycle tracks, have you explored how they would be signalized at intersections? Would they have separate bike only traffic lights to manage bicycle movements? 

FCDOT Staff  
So those cyclists would actually use the kind of same signal that the pedestrians would use to cross the roadway. We don't currently have bike signals in Fairfax County. We had kind of talked about how we could implement that, but for safety reasons, we want to kind of pair that again with the crossing for pedestrians and then of course, up and down the corridor for people driving, not allow those permissive left turns, across. So, if you're a cyclist, making sure you have some predictability that you can safely cross same time that pedestrians can.
 

Can you better define short term, less than 12 months and intermediate as well, when we are talking about those improvements?

FCDOT Staff   
So for both these improvements, it would depend on the nature of the improvement, the short term, and if it's striping, I would say like within one or two years. But for the other improvements that I mentioned, it depends on further approvals and availability of funding and it could be from like within 5 to 10 years.

FCDOT Staff
And I know that we got some, there was a comment in here about the southern segment and maybe asking for they didn't quite feel that reasonable terms were offered. If you have suggestions, we're still taking suggestions for kind of ways to consider. So by all means, please suggest it in the comments. We would read everything. We see all the survey results that come through. So we do want to know your ideas, if we miss something you know, we're happy, we want to know so that we can try to consider it and see how we can best implement kind of all the comments that we're kind of getting. And then we obviously can't do everything, but you know some things you know, kind of weigh everyone's comments that kind of gives us the best ability to try to take everyone's input into account. 
 

Is that road diet temporary? Was it implemented prior to 2045 to determine problems or results in positive improvements? Is there a way to reevaluate it?

FCDOT Staff
So it could be. So it could always change back if for some reason VDOT feels that it needs to, but as far as we know it's there in order to, again, allow for pedestrian to have an extra buffer. Cyclists obviously to have the bike lane and then, again, there is a safety component as well for vehicles because now you have that center turn lane to make lefts into those businesses up and down Annandale Road there, but yes, I mean it's with striping, it's something that could easily be changed back if the need arises.

FCDOT Staff

The road diet by Woodburn Elementary School could be sort of a way to test out whether or not this could work. Again, it's something that could be temporary, right? We could do with striping and then if for some reason people hate it and traffic is terrible. Yeah, if it's just restriping the road, that can be redone pretty easily and pretty quickly, pretty cheaply. So that was sort of a way to see if it works without having to go through this big long process and invest a ton of money and then have to rip it all out if it's terrible.
 

We would love to see Gallows be more of a local road for planning purposes. This includes bike lanes rather than expanding it and making it a major car thoroughfare. Has there been an assessment to transition the regional traffic away from Gallows to major thoroughfare stretches Route 7?

FCDOT Staff
That was one of the goals that the stakeholder group identified as really making Gallows more of a local road And so when we looked at, for example, reducing the lanes in the Southern segment and even in sections like from Gatehouse up to I-66 where we went through lane reduction, we saw in the modeling that a lot of that traffic was assumed to go onto those more regional routes. So I-495, for example, and even oftentimes, if you're going to put a route in your phone today from the southern end of Gallows Road to the northern end, it's probably going to suggest, unless it's heavily congested, that you take I-495 because that is really generally speaking, the quickest, fastest way to get North and South. So that's kind of the idea is that we move a lot of this traffic off of Gallows Road. Obviously, people are going to still drive on it because people need to access the businesses, the hospital, the neighborhoods, but really try to keep it mostly for those folks while expanding opportunities for people to walk and bike, because we're not really going to get that on I-495 obviously.

FCDOT Staff 
And I'll just add that regional traffic meaning like you start in Tysons and you want to go to like Springfield or points south, you are better destined to be on the Beltway. If you're trying to go from Tysons to Merrifield or like the Fairfax Hospital area, Gallows might be your road of choice or street of choice. So it's keeping that regional part in kind of context. 
 

I have concerns about the Southern segment as well. I'm hearing you talking about the Woodburn to Hummer Road segment. I actually live right off of Gallows Road. in that segment and I have a really difficult time just making a right hand turn to get into that traffic most of the time. And that's when there's two lanes on each side and it's congested all the way up. Nonetheless, making a left hand turn, which can be very dangerous. So I can't see the one lane each way and the turn lane in the middle. I'm totally opposed to that. I like the idea the wider sidewalk's great, but losing those lanes is really going to impact the area here and that's without the future growth in Annandale. The only other thing I want say is what Susan was saying about the outreach. And I know you guys are trying to reach out and I saw this on next door, but in my course of walking around today just talking to neighbors in the area, like, do you know about this? A lot of them aren't on next door and so they're not even seeing this. And they were very concerned and I kind of sent them things to do the survey. OK, so that they can do the survey, which is, you know, I appreciate and I know it's difficult to outreach, but I think a lot of the people who are here now and will be impacted by it, either don't know or haven't found out about what the possibilities are, and I don't know if there's a way to get that out to the people, but I think if we start like doing the, you know you were going do it like a test type of thing from Woodburn to here and lose a lane, and if that just happens in the next year, I think the people who live on this corridor without knowing it are going to be quite upset. So I'm just putting that out there and just so that you know because, I just think there's a lot of people who don't know about what's going on and maybe, you know, maybe they should. But they don't.

FCDOT Staff
Sure. And to your last point, if we were to recommend sort of moving forward with that sort of road diet test around Woodburn, there would actually be a separate outreach and more targeted outreach especially for the neighborhoods that would be immediately affected by that. So yeah, if we were going to decide even kind of barring all the feedback we're getting to move forward with that, definitely make sure that we're kind of going and doing a lot more targeted outreach. One of the things I'll just mention about this process and looking at these alternatives. So for the three lane section, you said you had a hard time turning on to Gallows Road and that that will probably still be the case if we were to do something like this, what it would allow, though, is if you were trying to make a left turn, you now have a little bit more predictability. And it is safer because then you have the center turn lane that you can kind of turn into and then continue your left turn when traffic clears. So that was one reason that we kind of  recommended that. Now of course we're getting feedback why people don't think it's a good idea and we're taking that all into consideration,, but just kind of wanted to explain the thought process behind that a little more.
 

Thank you and thanks for answering a couple of written questions as well. Yeah, I just want to support the pedestrian and cycling improvement and transit improvements, the changes that you know will invest resources in those more sustainable modes of transit, I think is really important. I know that comes at the expense of people who drive at times, but I think personally that's these are the changes we need To improve traffic and traffic congestion regionally. So, but I guess my comment was in the first couple of slides of your presentation, the vision statement, the goals and objectives. I thought they were great and I think they reflect a lot of those same concepts and there was also a slide that showed an overwhelming majority of feedback was focused on bike ped safety, wider sidewalks, etc. Yet as you went through, the alternatives you seem to be on numerous occasions talking about compromises to those sorts of objectives that you had to make in order to ensure people driving had reasonable travel times. And that's ok, that's something we can debate whether that should be the overriding concern or not, but I don't see that as a stated goal or objective of the study. Yet that seems to be what you're using primarily as a decision making tool. So I think either you add, you know, if preservation of single occupancy vehicle travel times through the corridor is a priority. I think you need to state that up front so that the public can debate that and provide feedback on it. If it's not a priority of the study, I don't understand why you've made some of the decisions you have. So I think you know it's the elephant in the room. I think you need to be honest, up front and if you are advocating for, preserving, you know, vehicle travel times and the community's not that I think that's something that needs to be discussed. So I just felt like it was, it seemed to be a primary driver of your decision making, yet it wasn't reflected in the first couple of slides of the presentation, which I understood to sort of what the goals and objectives of the study were.

FCDOT Staff   
Yeah, I would just argue that. I do think especially, if you consider the current comp plan, which calls for three lanes in each direction, that is, in the northern segment, we are removing that. So that's taking away vehicle capacity in the future. And then in the middle segment, where we currently have three lanes in each direction, we are proposing to take one of those out for a bat lane. So I do think we've made through the work that the stakeholder group has done as well, a lot of improvements here are for bikes and pedestrians but at the same time, we are still trying to balance those needs that we have up and down the corridor where people need to get from point A to point B in a car that's their primary mode of transport. So it's a balancing act and it's tough, but I do think that through this plan, there's been a lot of good gains to the goals expressed for active transportation and kind of balancing the local needs. 

FCDOT Staff   
And I'll also point out that we also move transit, our buses through the street as well. So we need to also make sure that our transit riders have an ability to get through the corridor just as much as people in their cars or people taking other forms of moving about the corridor. 
 

Has the test for Gallows Road in the area of Woodburn Elementary School already been scheduled for restriping? When and how will we know when it might be done? 

FCDOT Staff 
It’s not scheduled and we don't actually have that as a final recommendation yet. So that's what we put forward now we're receiving feedback on that. Let's say it does move forward and that's a recommendation of this study, we still also need to work with VDOT on that and we need to have their buy in. So we'd have to show them that this is something that can work, they need to agree and if that's the case, do another round like I mentioned earlier, a community outreach. That's more targeted and that will make sure that we're, you know, holding more meetings and getting out to more people to make sure that they're aware of the potential changes.
 

Thank you. Appreciate the balancing act. I agree with another community member on the bike lanes and active transportation. I'm a fan of that, so definitely agree with that. Just a recommendation and suggestion from you know personal experience. I live in the northern segment right off of Gallows Road. Couple of years ago we had a high speed car come in and crash into our yard. In fact, it actually crashed right at my kids school bus stop, right? Just to find out that before we bought the house, many years before that, another car crashed in the same area, not too far away. Recommendation would be, if we are going towards more localized, more active public transport, you know or more active transport options, that we look at deploying speed cameras and or inactive speed cameras that we can have in place. More deterrence in the medians, that would slow down the traffic because Gallows, you know, people you know, if you, if you ever walk there at night, especially in the northern segment, from Idlewood down, it's like people hit on the gas and I've seen people go up to 70-75-80 miles an hour over there at times, right? So all appreciative of the planning and not going towards the six lane approach and reduction in traffic and going towards active transport, I would say you could look at potentially supplementing it further. By adding some of these controls or deterrence in place, specially because when you have more cyclists, more kids on the road, we have so many schools off of Gallows, that's ridiculous, right? You have anywhere from Kilmer to Stanwood to that new school that's going to be open elementary school and further down, you know, three other schools that I can count off the top of my head. So those things I would truly recommend would help us feel like more of a local road rather than regional road. So just wanted to provide that recommendation as well.
 

Thanks for taking my comments. I just wanted to speak up in support of the reduction of lanes on Gallows along the southern section. I also live in those neighborhoods, and it's just a very unsafe feeling road to drive on and imagine, being able to ride my bike from my neighborhood to anywhere outside of the neighborhood would be fantastic. But given the current road situation and how unsafe it feels, the speed of traffic there, it just it doesn't feel safe to ride or walk. And so I feel empathy for anybody that's their only available mode of transportation is riding, getting on that bus stop, having to cross the road to get to elementary school. Thank you.
 

One of the answers I think you've provided to cut through traffic is the notion that posting a sign that says local traffic only would somehow deter frustrated motorists from cutting through the neighborhoods and I would just like you to explain to me how you could possibly enforce that.

FCDOT Staff 
So it would have to be more than a sign because maybe I think what you're alluding to is correct, you know, people would see that and kind of ignore it. We could have enforcement, but that only goes so far and we have limited resources to actually do enforcement. So there are other strategies we're looking at, currently, actually with a grant program we have where we have signage that actually goes in the roadway. And so you're forced to slow down. There's other things that we can kind of put in the roadway to make people slow down. And go the recommended speed which in these cases is usually 15 mph or lower. Again, this is something that we're testing, so it's not something that we've rolled out yet in the county, but there are other ways to calm traffic speed humps, for example. Chicanes is sort of another method of getting people to not kind of drive in a straight line but put things in the roadway to get people to sort of have to navigate and slow down their vehicle,. not using residential streets as a racetrack. So that's sort of the idea whether this road diet thing happens or not, I think that's something that we're looking at again, to make these parallel routes safer for folks. But just putting signage up like you said, I don't think that's probably going to solve the issue.
 

I think that a lot of these so-called traffic calming ideas work well on grid pattern streets, but what we have in these neighborhoods are truly very primitive roadways. They are hilly, here's little distance that you can see ahead, curves, trees that obstruct vision and people walk along these streets, roads and that's the walkability in the neighborhood. And I don't know that even if you slow down traffic you are going to avoid the problem of pedestrians being at great physical jeopardy of their lives, even at 15 or 20 miles an hour. So the fact of the matter is as well, some people may live on Gallows or looking at that, that streets that roadway has been improved in to a much greater extent than any of those surrounding neighborhoods. And I think the focus on Gallows Road alone, you know, where you can accommodate active transportation improvements and transit improvements within the existing very wide right of ways and very modern streetscapes, I think that's not the issue. I think the issue is addressing the very different environment that you have physically in the southern segment. So maybe breaking that off and having a more extended study would be a preferable way of approaching this. And then you can evolve the community, that's actually impacted adversely by some of these concepts in the process, and I reiterate, I don't think people again in summertime, people are not necessarily paying attention to what's on the website from County Planning Office about, you know, revisions and the recommendations that were made from the earlier position of the study group and the staff. This is my thoughts and maybe we have to have a lot more dialogue, an intensive study of the conditions in the surrounding neighborhoods to try to come to some reasonable accommodation.

FCDOT Staff  
Thank you. This is the county's second look at Gallows Road in the past few years. We did a short-term project where we looked at just the northern part of the Southern segment. We're trying this approach to see a little bit more holistic approach to look at it. So again, we're looking for ideas, if the community doesn't feel we've hit the mark and there's other things that we should consider or something else we need to look at, please, you know, give us feedback in the survey in the chat so that we can start to formulate an idea for this area and see what we can do in terms of talking with the supervisor about ideas for consideration. Maybe we make the plan flexible in terms of, or give up a number of options to kind of help lead us to a more kind of evolving type of character for the southern part that allows it to take advantages of opportunities that could potentially come along should say traffic patterns change, the desire for, you know, more active transportation users come in or, you know, maybe there's more transit that we need, a little bit more transit enhancement amenities. So maybe we'll try to see how we can kind of adhere to the vision and guide that we put together at the beginning of this study and leading to recommendations in the back half of the study. 
 

You mentioned feedback, will it be in the form of another input survey or will you only be meeting with stakeholders representing the neighborhood associations? 

FCDOT Staff
This is our third round of survey. I don't anticipate that we'll do another one, but that doesn't mean that we aren't still kind of taking ideas. This is just a study portion of it. We're taking all your input. We're trying to figure out what gives us our best options. When we move to a plan amendment piece and I assume that we will, we'll see what makes kind of sense to kind of add for long range guidance for the comprehensive plan. There will be more community input with that particular piece. So I'm just kind of letting you know the next steps, but this isn't the end all be all and we are going to obviously summarize the community comments and make sure people are aware of what we have, so that if there's additional feedback we're always taking up community comments and feedback to see how we can create the best plans for everyone in the area.
 

Will the number of bus stops in the southern segment between I-495 and Annandale/Hummer Road be reduced?

FCDOT Staff   
No, we don't plan to reduce the stops in this segment.
 

One through lane and each way on Southern segment will not only support cars but also buses stopping along the roadway. 

FCDOT Staff
Yes, they would have to stop in the same lane if there's one lane, and that's where they would stop. Again, if there's opportunities to adjust some of the bus stops so that the buses don't stop in that segment, then we could take a look at that and see if that's a desire to move the Gallows Road road diet area south of Woodburm Elementary forward. But again, nothing is in plan, consider these as ideas and recommendations, and then we are obviously collecting everyone's feedback. And we have had a good amount of responses in the survey so far. So and if you could tell your neighbors, tell your friends you know, if you're not aware of it, word of mouth really helps in terms of getting this out there, getting the ideas out there We appreciate all the help we can get. We can't do it all, we look for the community to kind of help us. 
 

I had seen earlier graphics where bus stops had been eliminated and this is in the one lane segment, the road diet segment. 

FCDOT Staff
I think with this particular study, it's just a little bit too premature to kind of say what would be removed and what wouldn't. I think, if you see a bus stop in that area, just assume it would stay until further evaluation. 

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