Duke Street in Motion

Duke Street in Motion is a series of distinct efforts with a singular goal: improving the effectiveness and safety of transportation on the Duke Street corridor in Alexandria, VA. Duke Street is a dynamic area, stretching from Alexandria’s West End neighborhood to Old Town. In between are various established and upcoming developments, including the Landmark Mall Redevelopment, a library, parks, multiple shopping centers, apartments, single-family homes, and mid-rise office buildings. 

Within the collective efforts to make ‘Duke Street in Motion’ a reality, Gorove Slade played a key role in enhancing transit within the corridor. In collaboration with WSP and the City of Alexandria, Gorove Slade worked on Phase 2 of the project, including conceptual designs for high-capacity transit improvements between the West End and the King Street Metro station. During this project, Gorove Slade built several detailed models using the VISSIM microsimulation traffic modeling software and used those models to analyze numerous intersection design and operational scenarios. We then used that analysis to make recommendations to improve the design for all users. 

While transit improvements were the primary focus, the conceptual designs also considered traffic safety and bicycle and pedestrian facilities. Our work on this project included coordinating the extensive collection and processing of traffic data, a Synchro conceptual screening analysis, VISSIM analyses of conceptual design alternatives, and VISSIM analyses of the preferred corridor design. Our work on the over 30-intersection long corridor VISSIM models incorporated many Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) elements, including both center-running and curb-running bus-only lanes, queue jumps, and transit signal priority. Each of these alternatives had its own specific traffic signal operations, which were coded into the microsimulation software. 

Using detailed microsimulation modeling of the corridor alternatives, Gorove Slade developed multimodal metrics, including bus travel times, vehicular side street delay, and pedestrian street crossing travel times, to help provide City staff with the information they needed to select a preferred alternative.