The D.C. area is famous for its intense traffic, but one of the region's most notorious bottlenecks could be getting an update. The Fairfax County board of supervisors recently voted to apply for funding for a redesign of Seven Corners.
Even the name implies traffic trouble and confusion. Seven Corners is loaded with a laundry list of connecting routes. Located in Falls Church, near the border with Arlington, it's the junction where the following meet:
- Route 50 (Arlington Boulevard)
- Route 7 (Leesburg Pike)
- Route 613 (Sleepy Hollow Road on the Falls Church side; Wilson Boulevard on the Arlington side
- (Oh, and did we mention the side streets?)
And if you've ever driven through Seven Corners, you know what a challenge it is. You've got traffic going in two directions on one side of the circle, multiple traffic lights and plenty of signs. And if you make one mistake, you'll end up on the wrong road but still mired in traffic, so correcting your route generally means even more delays.
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"It's a real mess right here," driver Alex Jones said. "I think they need to fix this. It's always so congested and you've got cars going in different directions. It's a mess."
The county's main proposed fix would be a ring road that would shift traffic away from the center of the interchange. That road would be constructed around the outside of the existing intersection. Think of it like a mini Beltway, connecting roads outside the center so drivers won't have to enter the intersection if they don't need to.
Some businesses would likely have to move to make this happen.
"One of the things that we really did was [with] the ramps that kind of came into the center of the interchange — we brought them onto the ring road portion of it," said Michael Garcia with the Fairfax County Department of Transportation. "That allows all of our circulation to occur there. That allows for the actual Wilson/Route 7 and part of [Route] 50 to be easier to understand."
The county's plan recommends construction in four phases:
- Phase 1: a ring road on the west side of the interchange between routes 50 and 7
- Phase 2: a continuation of the ring road on the south side of the interchange between routes 50 and 7
- Phase 3: reconfiguring the central interchange above Route 50 (Route 7 and Wilson Boulevard/Sleepy Hollow Road)
- Phase 4: completion of the ring road on the east side of the interchange between Route 50 and the intersection of Wilson and Roosevelt boulevards
There would be bike and pedestrian improvements as well. That's music to the ears of people like Erin Tram who walk through the area.
Transportation
Reporter Adam Tuss and the News4 team are covering you down on the roads and in transit.
"I lived in the area my whole life and I still have a difficult way of navigating it," Tram said.
Planners have been trying to straighten out this traffic issue for decades, and the project won't be cheap: It could cost more than $100 million to fix it all. The request for funding has to be made now to get it all done. However, it's likely that the project is still years away from completion.
