Fairfax County supervisors want the federal government to pay for a bevy of needed transportation projects around Fort Belvoir — a wish list ranging from upgraded interchanges to an ambitious Metrorail extension to the base.
The southern Fairfax County installation is preparing to receive about 22,000 military workers by 2011, a move mandated by the federal government under the 2005 base realignment and closure directives.
The gigantic influx of jobs is expected to bring with it severe traffic bottlenecks on an already over-taxed road network. Many officials and transportation planners openly doubt that hundreds of millions of dollars worth of needed road and transit fixes can be planned, funded and built in time.
Now, Fairfax County supervisors are asking the same government imposing BRAC to pay for the traffic mess that will come with it.
“It really is absolutely critical that the federal government come forward with a commitment to immediately fund what needs to be done,” Mount Vernon District Supervisor GeraldHyland said Monday.
Estimates for the cost of preparing the road system surrounding Fort Belvoir have been creeping upward from earlier proposed figures of about $600 million. Hyland said off-base improvements will run higher than $1 billion.
Building Metro out to Belvoir would be a titanic undertaking, and appears one of proposals least likely to come to fruition in the near future. A plan to build 23 miles of Metrorail beyond Dulles Airport is already heavy into planning and still isn’t slated to open until 2015.
Other projects on the wish list for federal earmarks include new bus service and transfer centers, improvements to the Fairfax County Parkway and widening of Route 1 through Fort Belvoir, as well as a number of interchange upgrades on state and federal highways.
The board on Monday agreed to begin preparing applications for state grants announced by the governor earlier this month, which are to be used for communities affected by BRAC. The grants total $10 million over two years.
