The cost of building a crucial missing piece of the Fairfax County Parkway has almost doubled in just three years, Virginia transportation officials reported this week.
The two-mile stretch of road through Fort Belvoir’s Engineer Proving Ground has jumped in cost from $89 million when it was designed in 2004 to $174 million based on figures released Tuesday.
The road has long been the subject of contention and has suffered setbacks, disputes and delays. It is considered perhaps the most important road project to prepare the area for the 19,000 new jobs coming to the southern Fairfax baseby 2011 as part of Base Realignment and Closure.
The project was held up as the Army Corps of Engineers cleared unexploded munitions and petroleum contamination left over at the former explosives-testing range, and was further delayed by arguments between the Army and state over how clean the site must be before the road could be built.
Bridging the parkway gap was conceived as part of a development project and estimated to cost only $30 million in 1996, said Fairfax County Supervisor Dana Kauffman, who represents the Lee District. But getting a developer to fund the road would have required approving a massive private development at the same time, he
said.
The parkway’s construction would have moved forward sooner had the Army begun cleanup when Fairfax County officials urged it to, said Bob Chase, president of the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance.
“Clearly, these improvements could have been constructed at less of a cost to taxpayers if this had been approved and moved forward a couple years ago,” he said.
The scope of the project is the same as the 2004 design, when it was predicted to cost $89 million, said Tom Fahrney, state Base Realignment and Closure coordinator for the Virginia Department of Transportation.
He said the military is in the final stages of cleanup and is awaiting approval from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Under an agreement approved last week, VDOT will provide $114.7 million to the Federal Highway Administration to build the road. Additional interchange work will be conducted later because about $60 million of funding has yet to be found.
Climbing cost
» 1996: $30 million
» 2004: $89 million
» 2007: $174 million
