Fairfax County leaders say a road construction project central to the county’s plan to handle tens of thousands of new military-related commuters slated to jam area roads in 2011 is behind schedule.
The Federal Highway Administration’s Mulligan Road project to link Richmond Highway and Telegraph Road originally was slated to be done in spring 2012. But the FHA has notified local officials that land acquisition negotiations and recent project expansions could push back the completion date of the four-lane connector road by a year or more.
“The Federal Highway Administration recently informed me that they’re behind schedule and looking at 2013, which is just completely unacceptable,” said County Supervisor Jeff McKay, D-Lee.
Fairfax is expecting an influx of roughly 20,000 new workers at Fort Belvoir in fall 2011 as a result of the military’s Base Realignment and Closure program. Those new commuters threaten to debilitate the county’s already congestion-stricken roadways, and the Mulligan Road connector — though arriving months after the new workers — was the county’s most well-developed remedy.
Mark Canale, BRAC coordinator for the Fairfax Department of Transportation, confirmed that the project is lagging, but said the FHA was doing its best to “bump the schedule up” to an earlier completion date.
Commuters a decade ago could use either Woodlawn Road or Beulah Street — both of which span sections of Fort Belvoir — to reach Richmond Highway from Telegraph Road, or vice versa.
But Army officials closed Woodlawn and Beulah to the public after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Local leaders and residents prodded the Department of Defense to install a replacement road near Fort Belvoir, but the Army didn’t respond until after instituting the BRAC program in 2005.
“The military, who was reluctant to build a replacement road before BRAC was announced, realized that there’s absolutely no way that Fort Belvoir can work without that road,” McKay said.
“BRAC made this project much more important,” Canale said. “This will provide the most significant [traffic] improvement compared to anything else we’ve got going on.”
Fairfax businesses are chipping in roughly $12 million toward the $72 million project. The Army, state and FHA also are contributing.
The FHA did not return phone calls for comment.
