Fairfax County supervisors are set to decide Tuesday whether to spend $10 million to ease congestion at perhaps the most detested intersections near Fort Belvoir, expected to worsen with the arrival of 20,000 military personnel at the base next year.
Supervisors will consider widening Telegraph Road from two to four lanes between South Kings Highway and South Van Dorn Street.
During rush hour, drivers routinely spend 20 minutes waiting to pass through the two Telegraph Road intersections, just hundreds of feet apart, said Supervisor Jeff McKay, D-Lee, who pushed for the road improvement.
“There was an enormous growth in traffic after Sept. 11 that hasn’t let up at all,” he said. “It’s Armageddon out there. Without this, you would have a situation that is completely unbearable.”
Citing security concerns, the U.S. Department of Defense after the Sept. 11 attacks shut down Woodlawn Road, a public road within the fort, causing traffic to double on Telegraph Road. Route 1 and Telegraph Road are the lone major roadways near the base.
The military’s Base Realignment and Closure program is expected to bring thousands more people — and vehicles — to the area beginning in September 2011.
Many of the transportation projects planned around Fort Belvoir are little more than stopgap measures, transportation officials have acknowledged. They say it is impossible to finish all the projects needed in advance of the BRAC traffic.
The $10 million effort would widen roughly 1,000 feet of roadway. The widening was originally a Virginia Department of Transportation project, but state funding disappeared in the wake of budget constraints.
McKay said the expansion would begin in the summer of 2011, at the earliest.
Coupled with the construction of Mulligan Road — the Richmond Highway and Telegraph Road connector — Fairfax officials say the most nightmarish of traffic scenarios will be avoided.
An Army Corps of Engineers study found that without any road improvements the additional military traffic would likely create three-to four-hour backups around the fort.
