Embark Richmond Highway public meeting tonight at West Potomac

Fairfax County is hosting its second public meeting on the Embark Richmond Highway plan tonight at 7 p.m. at West Potomac High School.

Embark Richmond Highway is the county’s outline for the future of the Route 1 corridor. Embark envisions improving transportation along Route 1 through “multimodal” means  and building high-density areas of the corridor to support the transportation changes.

Under Embark, Richmond Highway would have a dedicated bus lane in the middle of the road (referred to as bus rapid transit, or BRT), six lanes, dedicated bicycle lanes in both directions and sidewalks safely away from traffic:

From the Embark Richmond Highway advisory group’s website. Click for a larger image.

Embark also calls for expanding the Yellow Line by two stops (Beacon Hill and Hybla Valley).

During the first public meeting on May 9, county politicians and planners gave an overview of the project followed by an open house with stations that focused on various aspects of Embark. Monday night’s format will be similar, according to the county’s news release on the meeting.

Chris Soule, the head of the Lee District Association of Civic Organizations and part of the 13-member Embark advisory group, said a lot of the feedback from the first meeting has been analyzed and incorporated where it could. Part of tonight’s presentation will include a listing of the comments and feedback from the May 9 meeting.

Since the May 9 meeting, the Embark advisory group has met three times to discuss the project. Those meetings are also open to the public, and have been well-attended, Soule said. While many citizens have expressed concern over how the Embark changes will affect their neighborhoods, people have been mostly receptive.

“I think [Embark] is starting to pop on people’s radars,” Soule said. “There’s a lot of optimism.”