Shirlington Circle

Shirlington Circle is a traffic circle interchange connecting I-395 (Shirley Highway) with several surface roads in two Virginia suburbs of the United States capital of Washington, D.C.—Arlington County and Alexandria. Although the circle is named after the Arlington County community of Shirlington, roughly half of it is located in Alexandria. The circle resembles roundabout interchanges common in the United Kingdom and Ireland but rare in the US.

The circle includes multiple access points including ramps (slip roads) to and from I-395 (Exit 6) both north and southbound as well as a reversible direction ramp that provides access to and from the reversible high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes that run in the center of I-395. Surface streets in the area that intersect with the circle include Shirlington Road and Campbell Avenue (formerly 28th Street South) in Arlington County, Gunston Road in Alexandria, and Quaker Lane (State Route 402), which forms the border between Arlington County and Alexandria in that area. Traffic generally follows roundabout rules, i.e, traffic inside the circle has the right-of-way and traffic entering the circle must yield. However there are also traffic lights and stop signs regulating traffic flow and the I-395 off-ramps enter the circle from the interior of the circle, requiring a left merge into the traffic circle.