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Renaming major roadways
When a driver is traveling down a road and the name changes, one, twice, even three or four times, it is not only confusing and frustrating – it is also potentially dangerous.“People are looking for street signs and getting lost,” said Supervisor Steve Snow (R-Dulles).
On June 19, Snow brought the issue of discontinuous road names before the Board of Supervisors, who in turn forwarded the issue to the Transportation/Land Use Committee.
The issue at hand is that some major roadways in the county are hard to navigate because of changing names. For instance, from Route 28 into Ashburn, a driver would take Waxpool Road, which changes to Farmwell Road, then to Ashburn Farm Parkway, then to Sycolin Road.
Developers choose the names during the subdivision review process.
“Our naming system, we don't have a naming system,” Snow said. “Developers can name their own name.”
The board asked county staff to research the issue of street names and come back with solutions “to solve some of the worst problem areas,” said Larry Stipek, director of Mapping and Geographic Information.
According to staff documents, a process has been adopted for renaming streets.
To save on costs, the street segment with the fewest addresses is selected, and all property owners with legal access to the street are notified of the pending change and asked to submit nominations for the new name. All names that meet certain criteria are sent to owners, who are asked to vote for their favorite. The majority wins the vote and the county replaces the signs, which cost about $400 apiece.
“We want to go back and ask the citizens impacted what they would like,” Snow said.
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