N.Va. Is Ready to Jump-Start Road Projects

With Stimulus, Region Looks to '07 Wish List

By Eric M. Weiss

Thursday, February 5, 2009

If President Obama and U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood are looking for "shovel-ready" road projects in the federal stimulus bill, they needn't look hard in Northern Virginia.

They could just blow the dust off the books of the practically defunct Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, which compiled a list of ready-to-go projects in 2007.

Before the Virginia Supreme Court said last year that the way the authority was going to raise money was unconstitutional, staff and authority members had prioritized relatively small projects that could have been done quickly and immediately alleviated traffic in the region.

"We have a list of $100 million worth of projects ready to go and about $400 million behind that," said Arlington County Board Member Christopher Zimmerman (D), former chairman of the authority.

Among the Loudoun County projects on the authority's 2007 list were the widening of Route 15 between Evergreen Mill Road and the Leesburg town limits; construction of an interchange at Edwards Ferry Road and the Route 15 Bypass in Leesburg; preliminary work on an interchange at Route 7 and Belmont Ridge Road; extension of Pacific Boulevard from Dresden Street to Sterling Boulevard in the Route 28 corridor; construction of a collector road in Purcellville from routes 690 to 7; a Route 50 traffic-calming project in Aldie; and land acquisition for a park-and-ride lot in Sterling.

According to state officials, Virginia would get $700 million to $800 million in transportation funding from the federal stimulus bill. Although it might sound like a lot, that amount falls far short of the region's needs.

Washington has the second-worst traffic in the country, behind Los Angeles, according to the Texas Transportation Institute. And the Census Bureau recently reported that two of the U.S. communities with the 12 longest commutes are in Northern Virginia: Bristow and Dale City, both in Prince William County.

By focusing spending on the region's overburdened secondary roads — such as Braddock Road and the Fairfax County and Prince William County parkways — the proposed projects have the potential to eliminate many of the trouble spots that drive commuters mad, officials said.

Transportation analysts say the biggest effects can be made through projects such as widening the Fairfax County Parkway from Route 123 to the Dulles Toll Road and raising the parkway to go over Monument Drive and Fair Lakes Parkway.

Other possible fixes include lengthening the left-turn lane at routes 123 and 50/29 in Fairfax City, upgrading the intersection of Braddock Road and Route 29, and retiming traffic lights throughout the region.

Some of the transportation authority's projects could be funded by Virginia's share of the stimulus, said state Transportation Secretary Pierce R. Homer.

Homer said the state's priorities would be pavement and bridge replacement projects and paying for some of the $2.2 billion in projects cut from the state's six-year transportation funding plan.

Tagged: Department of Transportation, Northern Virginia, State news, transportation

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