APS: Elementary Walk Zone surveys out
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Anonymous
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The "draft" map for Drew is a little baffling. I know it's for discussion purposes, but what is and is not walkable to Drew isn't really a matter for debate; anything within the triangle formed by Glebe, Four Mile Run, and Walter Reed is walkable. Anything beyond it is not. Those are very busy roads with few traffic signals.
The legend of the draft map makes clear that elementary students are not allowed to cross Four Mile Run or Walter Reed Dr. I sure wouldn't let mine do so. Yet there is no such designation for South Glebe Road at the intersection of 395! Is that a joke? There is absolutely no way a child can safely go from Arna Valley/Long Branch Creek (which is within the Oakridge walk zone) to Drew on foot. You literally have to cross two highway exit ramps and then Glebe road itself, which is five lanes wide at that point. In rush hour traffic. I guess APS REALLY wants to move Arna Valley and Long Branch Creek from Oakridge to Drew. |
Anonymous
I am the PP who posted earlier who attended last night's meeting. That is not the way that APS wants you to read the maps. The maps reflect the walk zone that exists today, which they admitted is based on assumptions that were put in place years ago that no longer reflect reality in many places. What you state above is exactly the kind of feedback they want to collect so they can UPDATE the maps. The goal of this exercise is to draw walk zones around each school that reflect today's reality and to identify where walk zones could be *easily* expanded with the placement of a crossing guard (or possibly a new traffic signal, although APS said that was out of their control but they would provide feedback to Arl Co Transportation). |
Anonymous
Nope. Some Civic Associations were not included, according to our president. Can you please provide a link that says who is on the committee? |
Anonymous
Agreed. The county is erring on the side of getting feedback on everything rather than making assumptions so they can try to make the best possible decisions about school locations. There are going to be areas where it's pretty obvious what's walkable and what's not, but there may also be areas where the answer seems obvious to someone who doesn't live there but the answer is different for the people who do. In my neighborhood, there are two PUs at one elementary school that are also largely within a half mile of another elementary school, and on paper it looks like it should be easy to move those to the other school's walk zone because there's only one major neighborhood intersection to cross and it has a traffic light with walk signals. In reality, that intersection gets tons of traffic during morning rush from people cutting through the neighborhood to major commuter routes, and drivers are really bad about respecting the walk signals and letting pedestrians cross, making crossing dangerous at times. Unless they add a crossing guard, I suspect far fewer families would walk than you might expect based on how the map looks (so I gave that feedback in the survey). |
Anonymous
I'd be curious to see a list also, but to the extent some civic associations were not included, I wouldn't assume it's because they're excluding parts of the community. I don't believe my neighborhood's civic association is participating, but I suspect that's because our civic association pretty much exists in name only, it sends out a monthly newsletter listing some community events but otherwise doesn't engage on anything. For all I know, the staff may have reached out to our civic association and not gotten a response at all, because that's par for the course with any communications. |
Anonymous
+2 I’ve seen absolutely nothing from our very active civic association and our neighborhood could be impacted by any Key/ASFS decisions. |
Anonymous
APS website doesn't identify the individual civic associations from what I can find, but says that for this phase, the task group participants include civic associations within the one-mile walk zone of each school. Given that the whole issue at this stage is figuring out effective walk zones within the possible walk zones (which are capped at one-mile for elementary schools), this seems entirely appropriate. https://www.apsva.us/elementary-school-boundary-change/walkzonereview/ |
Anonymous
All civic associations that are located within the 1 mile walk zone to an elementary school building were included in that building's workgroup. If your CA president wants to be included, tell him/her to call APS and I am sure they will include your CA. (Not trying to be snarky here... I'm on our CA board and all of this was really well publicized by APS and they seem to be bending over backwards to be inclusive.) https://www.apsva.us/elementary-school-boundary-change/walkzonereview/ Unfortunately, many of the CAs in our county are now headed by older residents because younger parents don't make the time to get involved. So it is also possible that an email was sent to your CA and nobody ever responded because these issues aren't a priority if you are a 75 year old empty nester. |
Anonymous
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FYI,
More survey links are up now. Can anyone show up to these meetings? Are they being streamed anywhere? |
Anonymous
The meetings are open to the public, but are not open for public comment. So you can go to the meeting for your school and observe what the working group is discussing, but you can't ask questions or offer input at the meeting. If you want to do that, your best bet is probably to reach out to the working group representatives from your PTA and/or civic association. |
Anonymous
APS has tried to reach all Civic Associations. If your Civic Association has not been included email engage@apsva.us |
Anonymous
They are being quite receptive to outreach by civic associations. Our CA is walkable to two schools and at first we were only invited to send reps to one. Once we pointed out geographically that we are adjacent to a second school as well, they were very open to offering us a seat at that table as well. If your unit is one that potential could walk to a school, have your CA leadership contact the APS staff. |
Anonymous
| Reed now has a survey |
Anonymous
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Now that I see the zones for Reed, McKinley, Tuckahoe and Nottingham, I realize this will be a mess! Schools are too close. Can’t believe we will spend more than $50M to tear down the structure that was renovated in 2009 for $22M.
When we were talking about a middle school there, those folks saud don’t tear down what was so recently built and displace the preschool kids. Interesting to see how the tides turned. https://wtop.com/news/2014/11/westover-residents-petition-against-moving-h-b-to-reed-school/ “The proposed new HB Woodlawn renovation, would build over the recent costly renovation, displacing The Children’s School, the Integration Station, impacting the current Westover Library and farmers market and would reduce/change the green space and fields in Westover,” the petition states.“ |
Anonymous
| A secondary school takes up a lot more space because it has more large spaces: 2 gyms, an auditorium, larger rooms & bigger kids. Reed’s walkzone will expand to include the families on the other side of Washington. It can actually be filled with walkers. It’s the right place for an elementary school based on where kids live. |