By Sydney Kodama | skodama@alextimes.com
An ambitious plan to reshape land use and increase housing along the city’s Duke Street corridor has prompted concerns from existing residents and City Council about worsening the corridor’s traffic.
City officials have acknowledged the concern and insist the plan isn’t anticipated to make traffic worse. But Christian Brandt, an urban planner in the Department of Planning & Zoning who has managed the plan’s community engagement process, also acknowledged it’s not likely to improve traffic, either.
A draft of the Duke Street Land Use Plan, released Sept. 29, is open for public feedback with a virtual “engagement hub” closing Nov. 13.
The plan will then be considered at a Dec. 1 Planning Commission public hearing and Dec. 12 City Council public hearing.
Residents in the plan area and members of City Council have echoed similar concerns about whether the sprawling plan – 1.6 square miles – for land use can be properly supported by Duke Street, considering the realities of traffic congestion on Duke Street and in the surrounding area.
“Can the Duke Street area and the side streets that exist today handle the pressure of increased density and how people will move around the city?” Eve Anderson, president of the Taylor Run Citizens’ Association, posited to the Times. “What we don’t want to see is more pressure on our side streets.”
These concerns are backed up by the plan itself: “Congestion and traffic were the two most frequent topics throughout the community planning process,” the draft plan states.
Brandt told the Times that the city’s transportation study for the plan found that the land use will not hurt or improve the traffic problems Duke Street faces.
“The study doesn’t identify the development proposed along the border as changing the existing traffic issue,” he said. “So it’s not going to make it worse, which I think is what a lot of folks are concerned about. Unfortunately, it’s not really going to make it better. Land use plans are not really a great vehicle to address some of the big traffic problems that we have, which are often regional.”
The Duke Street Land Use Plan is a nearly 250-page document that, if approved by Council, will inform land use along the Duke Street corridor, from the Van Dorn Street Metro station to the King Street stop, for the next 20 years. The northernmost point of the plan area is near Juniper Place and the southernmost point is in between Wheeler Avenue and Eisenhower Avenue.
The document is full of visuals, including AI-generated images that Brandt confirmed are all identified as such. He said AI was not used in any of the plan’s maps.
The community engagement process was supported by a $550,000 Federal Transit Administration grant with a $250,000 local match and kicked off in June 2025. City staff have hosted nearly 70 community pop-ups, more than 50 community meetings and met with civic associations and other local groups.
Anderson said city staff have presented to TRCA about “four or five times” since the process began.
“They’ve been very accessible to us,” she said.
The process has also included a passport program for local businesses in the plan area which ran through September. It encouraged residents to visit a variety of businesses for prize incentives.
Bill Butcher, founder of Port City Brewing Company, told the Times that “the program has been well received, and our team has been happy to participate as well.”
Butcher said he is supportive of the plan overall.
“The main concern that we have is traffic on Duke Street, which has gotten worse and worse over the years, and this plan looks like a good way to mitigate that and improve circulation throughout the city,” he said.
He has requested a crosswalk on Wheeler Avenue between the brewing company and its customer parking.
“I haven’t seen that included in the plan, but I’m hoping that it will be added, and we’ll have a safe crosswalk from the brewery to our parking lot,” Butcher said.
Brandt told the Times that the plan itself will not specify where a crosswalk is needed on Wheeler Avenue.
“Something that the plan is identifying is Wheeler [Avenue] as a place for Transportation & Environmental Services to study more specifically to understand how to make mobility improvements on Wheeler without really disrupting some of the existing uses,” he explained.
Anderson expressed concern that housing development could force small businesses out of the plan area.
“There’s potential that the property, the landowners, may choose to sell their land to redevelop as residential,” she said. “There’s always potential for redevelopment that changes or squeezes out small business.”
The plan states it “does not recommend additional density or building height” in designated small business areas.
The FTA grant also supported environmental and transportation studies to research the impacts of regional transportation trends on Duke Street, potential safety improvements at intersections and climate change mitigation tactics.
The plan is meant to operate in tandem with the Duke Street Transitway and Duke Street in Motion. Duke Street in Motion is a plan, with a final design anticipated in spring 2027, meant to improve transportation in the corridor for residents, and the Duke Street Transitway is part of that project that would include rapid bus transit.
Brandt said while Duke Street in Motion maps out changes to Duke Street itself, the land use plan is “picking up where [it] left off.”
“The plan does not make changes to [Duke Street in Motion]. The plan does, however, include quite a lot of mobility updates in the neighborhoods included in the plan,” he said. “So there are new streets … new bicycle facilities … a bunch of new park trails proposed throughout the corridor, and those are all things that are being proposed north and south of Duke, as opposed to on Duke itself.”
Anderson said the TRCA has previously expressed concerns about the city’s plans for transit along Duke Street.
“If we look at the Duke Street corridor, the Duke Street Transitway and the West Taylor Run-Telegraph Road interchange, when you put all of those pieces together, we still have concerns about how the traffic will flow,” Anderson said.
Traffic congestion, including from regional sources, is a major issue on the Duke Street corridor, particularly between North Quaker Lane and Telegraph Road, according to the plan’s transportation study.
“So much of the traffic … is folks that are passing through our city, and it is not a surprise [that] 30 to 40% of folks who are in that corridor [are] cutting through our city,” Jeff Farner, deputy director in the Department of Planning & Zoning, told Council Tuesday. “… They’re cutting the distance between [I-]395 and 495, and technology is taking them in that direction.”
Though the plan maps out new transportation possibilities along the corridor, much of the plan is dedicated to laying out where commercial and residential developments are encouraged across 12 districts, from west to east: Vista, Hillside, Blueway, Exchange, Myers, Parkside, Commerce, Fort Williams, Orange, Market, Ridgeview and Temple.
The plan also outlines where the tree canopy can be expanded to mitigate extreme heat and where public spaces, with art and green spaces, can be concentrated along the corridor.
Each district is named for a defining characteristic: Exchange is named for having the Shoppes at Foxchase, for example. The plan maps out about 40 potential housing developments across the 12 districts, with a focus on affordable housing.
Phoebe Coy, Alexandria lead for YIMBYs of NOVA and a resident in the plan area, told the Times the organization’s members are excited about the potential for more residential development. YIMBYs of NOVA advocates for more high-density housing to make housing more affordable.
“We definitely need more homes to address our housing shortage, as well as to provide more opportunities to live near the bus rapid transit and transportation improvements coming to Duke Street that we’re really excited about,” she said.
Coy said she has been engaged to make sure “we’re maximizing how many affordable homes” can be part of the plan area.
Farner told Council that the engagement process for the land use plan is not the last time that the community can weigh in on these new developments.
The plan area is also home to many small businesses, a wide range of existing homes, the Alexandria Police Department headquarters and the Charles E. Beatley Jr. Library. Patrick Henry K-8 School and Samuel W. Tucker Elementary School are near the plan area.
Anderson expressed concern about the planned increase in residential development without another school.
“If you step back and we talk about increased housing, increased density, how will the infrastructure of the city support that?” she asked. “Where will … the children go to school? How will social services handle the increase?”
The plan states that “forecasted development is expected to generate approximately 370 net new [Alexandria City Public Schools] students over the next 20 years, spanning all grade levels K-12. … Based on projected enrollment across the City, ACPS indicates that new public education facilities are not needed in the area.”
Bill Bavin, resident in the plan area and Seminary Hill Association board member, also expressed concern about the land use plan being considered when Duke Street still faces traffic issues.
Bavin told the Times he attended an early meeting on the plan at Port City Brewing Company and noticed that the majority of attendees agreed that “you needed to fix transportation on Duke Street for any land use projects to make sense and to be viable.”
Bavin added that he is still parsing through the plan but believes “they really just punted on the transportation issue.”
City staff updated City Council Tuesday night on what the draft looks like now, before Council considers approval of the plan in December.
During the presentation, Farner said development will be slow and does not “necessarily correlate to increased traffic.”
“One of the questions the community has asked us is, ‘How much development is going to happen over time?’” he said. “… It’s probably going to be one building a year or one building every other year, sort of over the lifespan of this plan, so it’s not going to happen at once.”
City Councilor Jacinta Greene asked at the Tuesday meeting how density could grow without traffic increasing.
Farner responded, though people will often still choose to drive, “if there are local grocery stores, local retail, transit options, walking options [and biking options,] people are going to use [those] options.”
Councilor John Taylor Chapman said city staff should look at other options for people who cut through Alexandria, not Alexandria residents.
Councilor Abdel Elnoubi said he is “not necessarily convinced that more development will not yield to more traffic.”
Vice Mayor Sarah Bagley said the alternative to the plan would be “doing nothing.”
Bavin said he is excited about the vision of the plan, including potentially being able to walk to a nearby sports game or restaurant with his family, but thinks transportation issues could limit what the plan could achieve.
“Change is going to happen, … but it needs to be thought through in a pragmatic way that addresses the current needs of the people that are going to live it, as well as the future potential of it,” he said.
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