L/KLA served as the landscape architect on a multi-disciplined team that prepared conceptual, preliminary and final engineering plans for traffic calming measures along twenty miles of U.S. Route 50 in Virginia. The award-winning conceptual plan resulted in a $13.8 million federal demonstration grant for rural traffic calming.

 

Traffic calming measures have been designed to increase highway safety by reducing speeding and aggressive driving through roadway design that naturally encourages motorists to drive at slower and safer speeds, while at the same time maintaining the character defining features of each of the town’s historic context.

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The project began in 1995 with a community-designed traffic calming conceptual plan prepared with the assistance of Ian Lockwood, an international expert in traffic calming. The award-winning plan resulted in a $13.8 million federal demonstration grant for rural traffic calming.

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The design includes:

•     Entryway treatments for Upperville, Middleburg, and Aldie

•     Special warning strips approaching the entrances to villages and towns

 

 

•     In-town measures including raised intersections, valley gutters, and the use of different pavers to narrow the look and feel of the road

•     Rural intersection treatments to protect left turning traffic

•     Changes to in-town horizontal alignment deflect the path of vehicles

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Construction in Upperville was completed in 2008 (above and right) and in Aldie in 2012. Roundabouts at Gilbert’s Corner (top left) were constructed in 2009 as part of a separate design build contract (by others).

 

L/KLA continued its fifteen year effort as the landscape architect on a multi-disciplined team, led by HW Lochner that prepared conceptual, preliminary and final engineering plans for traffic calming measures along twenty miles of U.S. Route 50 in Virginia. The award-winning conceptual plan resulted in a $13.8 million federal demonstration grant for rural traffic calming.

 

In Middleburg, L/KLA worked with the Town, its streetscape committee, and VDOT to incorporate the federally funded traffic calming measures into an ongoing streetscape renovation, completed in 2016.

 

L/KLA was responsible for developing design concepts to ensure the project fit within MIddleburg’s historic context, including preliminary and final design plans for:

•     Curb extensions incorporated into eight intersections within the historic downtown

•     Working with the Town to select historically appropriate materials including vehicular clay pavers for crosswalks and matching existing brick pavers for the sidewalk areas

•     Installing new and expanding existing tree wells and incorporate soil cells, where appropriate to expand the root zone

•     Detailed design to carefully match existing conditions along the construction limits for the project

•           Worked with VDOT staff to develop special provisions for specialized project details not utilized on previous VDOT projects including soil cells and vehicular clay pavers