By Christy Goodman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 20, 2010; VA19

Arlington County traffic officials and members of the Chain Bridge Forest community agree on one thing: Drivers need to slow down on North River Street. Just how to get them to do that has pitted neighbors against one another and county officials.

The Concerned Citizens of Chain Bridge Forest say a few stop signs or a speed hump would slow drivers speeding through their neighborhood at 32 miles per hour and higher when the posted speed limit is 25 mph. Instead, the County Board plans to vote later this month on an estimated $180,000 package of devices to slow traffic. Opponents say that action has disenfranchised residents.

"That is a diplomatic word for being rolled," said resident Jose Sorzano, who said he feels he was jilted out of a vote on "nubs," or corner curbing proposed on his block that would extend into the road to make it more narrow.

The county's Neighborhood Traffic Calming Committee and a small neighborhood group began working in September to devise a plan to slow speeders north of North River Street at North Glebe Road. By year's end, they had a plan that included two speed humps, three nubs and medians with trees in the center in a stretch of about three blocks.

The groups worked to "design measures that are safe and effective and that allow people access to the street, but closer to the speed limit," said Dennis Leach, Arlington's director of transportation. Stop signs were not warranted in the neighborhood because of low traffic volume, and the county does not use stops signs for speed reduction, he said.

But not all the neighbors approved of the measures, said David Apatoff, a resident opposed to the plan. "The way the community is configured, everyone is going to be inconvenienced. . . . It is grossly unrealistic to say just a few houses that hover around the entrance have a voice," he said.

The community includes 90 households in Arlington and 190 in Fairfax County. Only Arlington residents in the affected speeding area, 35 households, were permitted to vote on the improvements, said Jeff Sikes, county coordinator for the traffic calming program. Of those, 28 households approved of the plan, officials said.

The affected area is "the area impacted by the speeding. . . . It is not the neighborhood [residents] that can use that street to speed," said Leach, referring to why the entire neighborhood could not vote.

But Sorzano said, "The regulation clearly stated within a block of the nub, the households on each side of the street had to be consulted, and 60 percent within a block had to approve it."

He and his neighbors began to lobby against the plan, but months later, during an appeal, they were told the rules had been changed, a move Sorzano called "un-American."

The County Board had taken action on the procedures in 2008, but the manual had to be reissued later because some items were missed, Leach said.

Kevin Sweeney, chairman of the Traffic Calming Committee, said that with the old language, "each block would independently vote on its measures. That would mean that the comprehensive plan could be treated as an a la carte menu . . . and that really was not the intention."

Apatoff said, "If you don't tell people that the law has changed, then the law hasn't changed."

The residents said they will argue this and other points before the County Board during a public hearing on the matter Tuesday.