Amid the crickets chirping, the children playing, and the Porsches humming, the residents of a tony stretch in McLean would like to ban one thing: big, noisy trucks. The McLean Citizens Association recently took its gripe to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, asking in the name of safety and sound pollution for an end to truck traffic on the stretches of Georgetown Pike and Balls Hill Road that form a triangle with Dolley Madison Boulevard.
Along the two-lane, winding thoroughfares lie seven schools, six churches, two parks, four crosswalks, one playground, and more than your average neighborhood’s share of multimillion-dollar mansions.
“There is only one retail outlet,” a gas station, said association representative James Robertson. “So there is practically no commercial traffic that must use these roads.”
Instead, residents suspect the trucks use their quiet streets as shortcuts around the congested Beltway.
Robertson, whose Evans Mill Pond neighborhood sits off of Balls Hill Road, abutting the exclusive Langley School, cited safety above sound as the primary concern. He recounted tense efforts to pass tractor-trailers along sharp turns buffered only by a ditch on one side, and a fence on the other.
Fairfax supervisors agreed, voting to pass along to the Virginia Department of Transportation a recommendation to close the road to trucks.
“It’s a vehicular safety issue as well as a pedestrian safety issue,” said Supervisor John Foust, D-Dranesville, whose office is near the affected area.
Darrin Roth, director of highway operations for the American Trucking Association, said residents’ efforts are fair enough, but a prohibition might not provide the desired solution.
“There’s generally an assumption that there are more through trucks than there really are,” he said. “If they’re two-lane, residential areas, it’s likely the trucks are making a local delivery. Trucks try to avoid those roads when they can.”
Truckers prefer reliable routes without stop signs and traffic lights, Roth said. And while he’ll admit they’re noisy, he defended the safety record.
“School buses are the only vehicles with a better accident rate than trucks,” he said.
