The future of Southern Fairfax County’s road network remains foggy but increasingly bleak as planners scramble to prepare for a massive influx of jobs to Fort Belvoir.
Officials have reached no clear consensus on total cost and a realistic timeline to complete needed road projects in anticipation of 22,000 new military jobs slated to hit the base by 2011 through the U.S. government’s base realignment and closure mandate.
State, Army and local officials gathered at the enormous installation Tuesday to again discuss the logistics of the move. The meeting, however, turned out to be largely a retread of grievances and worries that the already over-taxed roads will be swamped with new cars before improvements can be paid for and built.
Lee District Supervisor Dana Kauffman, an outspoken opponent of the BRAC shift to Fort Belvoir, expressed frustration after the meeting. “It’s getting close to the 50th community meeting, and it’s the same meeting over and over again: It’s ‘this is our plan, you’ll eventually like it’ and I don’t,” Kauffman said. “Because it’s not tied to reality. It’s tied to future federal appropriations at a time when the cookie jar is empty.”
About 18,000 of the workers would move to the 800-acre Engineer Proving Ground off Interstate 95 under the Army’s preferred plan. The military unveiled on Tuesday about $248 million in immediate road projects surrounding the proving ground for which it will seek federal funds, including new interchanges on Interstate 95 and upgrades to the Fairfax County Parkway. That figure is only a fraction of the total projected cost of upgrading the region’s roads, for which estimates run as low as about $600 million and as high as $1 billion, depending on the source.
But funding uncertainty is only one of the many complications now facing the planning effort. Environmental cleanup is still ongoing at the proving ground in the path of a planned two-mile extension of the Fairfax County Parkway. That extension will also need aredesign to accommodate the greater traffic, which is expected to create further costs and delays.
