Dan Nabors, Design Team Supervisor and Bureau Chief, Arlington DES Transportation Engineering and Operations, came to my house for a brief exchange January 29 before we walked down to the intersection at Patrick Henry Dr. and N. 18th St. that has been a focus of TLHCA (Tara-Leeway Heights Civic Association) efforts over the last year or two.  Nabors’s visit was postponed from the “monsoon” day of torrential rains and rescheduled.  John Ford cancelled participating at the last minute.  Dan is a nationally respected traffic engineer who is a member of a 100-person committee responsible for setting national standards for fixed traffic signals (Chapter 9 in the newly-updated federal traffic manual, which for the first time included endorsement of “community views” in certain traffic situations when statistical evidence does not justify a proposed solution.)  The intersection and TLHCA’s activism fit precisely within the new standards.
 

During our exchange at the house, Dan basically corroborated County Board Member Takis Karantonis’s status summary at the TLHCA Zoom board meeting January 10.  Dan was unwilling to be as precise as Takis, however, in predicting when and possibly if the mobile speed/red light cameras and a 4-way stop sign would be installed.  Dan explained that a number of procedural hurdles must be crossed for either or both steps to be taken.
 

Not surprisingly, our visit to the intersection had the biggest impact, since I demonstrated the dangers – particularly from the eastbound stop sign/crosswalk  on 18th St., where it is extremely difficult to see oncoming cars northbound and southbound on Patrick Henry.  It “helped” that the owner’s SUV was in the driveway of the house on the southeast corner of Patrick Henry and made it impossible to see northbound cars until they are almost within the intersection.  I also was able to show how looking north on Patrick Henry from the same corner, one sees little more than the tops of southbound cars until they are virtually in the intersection.  Dan took photos of these specifics.
 

Two unrehearsed incidents bolstered our case.  The first was a lady driver who stopped at the westbound sign on 18th St. and – suspecting that we were discussing the intersection – asked, “When will we get the 4-way stop sign?”  The second incident occurred as we were crossing Patrick Henry westbound in the lower crosswalk when a lady driver refused to acknowledge the pedestrian right-of-way and would have hit us had we not stopped.
 

OVERALL: Dan is a professional who is knowledgeable and dedicated to traffic safety public service.  He has been with the county for seven years and has lived in the Cherrydale neighborhood for ca. 24 years.  He is a military veteran and worked for many years as a consultant on a national basis.  He has young sons whom he coaches in soccer and has been to Cardinal School many times in both a professional and avocational capacity.  I think that the immediacy of our on-site visit to the intersection brought home to Dan its dangerous peculiarity and why community input highlights realities that the statistics can’t convey.