Sign removal program starts this week

Leesburg Pike in Seven Corners.

Beginning July 2, Fairfax County will remove illegal signs from the public rights of way along certain major roads. The county and the Virginia Department of Transportation entered into an agreement in February giving the county the authority to take down signs on land owned by VDOT.

The county has identified 63 roads for the program, including several in the Annandale/Mason area: Backlick Road, Braddock Road, Columbia Pike, Edsall Road, Little River Turnpike, Ravensworth Road, Route 7 (Leesburg Pike), Route 50 (Arlington Boulevard), and South Van Dorn Street.

The work will be done by the Community Labor Force, a program managed by the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office. The crews will work Tuesday through Thursday, with each road scheduled to be visited once a month, said county spokesperson Brian Worthy. They will only pick up signs, not litter. Certain signs that are exempt, such as signs announcing a Red Cross blood drive, will be left alone.

The program covers about 200 miles of major roads, said Worthy. It doesn’t cover neighborhood streets, private property, roads within cities, such as Falls Church or Vienna, or roads not specifically identified. The crew will not respond to complaints. Since the crews don’t work
on weekends, people could post signs for a yard sale, or really
anything, on a Friday and remove it by Tuesday without a problem.

Signs that are picked up will be taken to the I-66 Transfer Station, where they will be stored for five calendar days. If the owners don’t pick them up in five days, the signs will be destroyed. 

Groups participating in VDOT’s Adopt-a-Highway program may continue to collect signs at any time on their designated roads and can destroy those signs immediately. So while Annandale Road, for example, is not on the list of the 63 roads, at least part of it has been adopted by a neighborhood group.