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Some projects being considered in Stafford include (clockwise from top left) widening Courthouse Road from Cedar Lane west to Shelton Shop Road to six lanes; extending Andrew Chapel Road to improve access to the Brooke VRE station; improving narrow, winding Forbes Street, which many use as cut-through to avoid the U.S. 1/17 intersection in Falmouth; and widening Garrisonville Road in North Stafford.
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Road construction isn't moving fast enough for Stafford County supervisors.
And the group, including four members who joined the board in January, hopes it can put the pedal to the metal, starting with the Virginia Department of Transportation's six-year secondary road plan.
Supervisors have spent the last month educating themselves about the proposal. And at a work session nearly two weeks ago they discussed their priorities and slid the county's transportation commission into the driver's seat.
VDOT's secondary road plan, which applies to roads numbered 600 and higher, must be approved by supervisors annually for the upcoming six years. In this case, they are looking at projects for 2007 through 2012. They have between $3.2 and about $3.3 million to work with each year.
Scott Shropshire, assistant residency administrator for VDOT, said it is typical for boards, especially those with new members, to spend a lot of time picking apart their county's road plan.
"If transportation is near and dear to a supervisors heart, he's going to want to know more details," he said.
With four new members on the Stafford board, many of whom pledged to remedy transportation problems in their campaigns last year, the group has had a lot of questions and suggestions for what should be added or removed from the plan.
Supervisor George Schwartz asked that several roads in and around his Falmouth District--such as Forbes Street, Sanford Drive and Sanstead Road--be added to the county plan. Those areas are already treacherous, he said. And many new developments slated for the areas threaten to make it worse.
Schwartz also asked that the Andrew Chapel Road extension part of the VDOT plan be dropped, in response to strong public concerns raised at a public hearing in early January. Many people said they believed the project would encourage the development of Crow's Nest, a 4,000-acre environmentally sensitive tract in the Aquia District.
But Aquia Supervisor Paul Milde said it would be short-sighted of the board to ignore Andrew Chapel, which carries many commuters to the Brooke rail station. Right now, he said, the road squeezes into a one-lane pass under a railroad bridge, and that doesn't encourage people to use mass transit.
He says he is working on a secure solution for Crow's Nest, and people should not dismiss the Andrew Chapel Road project because of the peninsula.
"There is no way that building roads in the Brooke precinct encourages the development of Crow's Nest," he said.
Supervisors, however, found common ground on several issues.
They shared collective concerns with a proposal to widen Courthouse Road to six lanes from Cedar Lane west to Shelton Shop Road. The plan does not yet include work for the area east of Cedar Lane toward U.S. 1, because widening the road under the I-95 bridge would require moving the Exit 140 interchange. That isn't scheduled to happen for several years, which means six lanes of traffic would be dumped into the current two-lane road.
Supervisors said they may consider arranging a temporary solution or holding off on the project until Courthouse Road can be completely addressed.
The board also agreed that the widening of State Route 610 was a major priority.
But board Chairman Bob Gibbons said he wanted instruction on how the county could get that road out of the secondary system and into the primary road plan.
"610 eats up too much of the secondary road fund," he said.
Supervisors recently approved a service district for a section between Joshua Road and I-95 to help with funding needs. Businesses in that area will pay a special tax, and the money will go directly to the road improvements there.
Gibbons has also asked that the transportation commission look at ways Stafford could maximize the money coming in for transportation efforts.
Right now, for example, the county has designated two districts--one in the Hartwood District and the other in the George Washington District--where developers must pay impact fees for future road issues that their construction might cause.
"We'd like to make it applicable to more parts of the county than it is now," Gibbons said. "We can do better on it than what we are doing."
The county also may need to look at a bond referendum to fund some transportation projects, he suggested.
The board offered these thoughts to the transportation commission, which advises the supervisors on infrastructure issues, with 120 days to come back with a new plan. The group will first meet about it Feb. 9. Byron Hinton, chairman of the transportation commission, said they will provide regular updates to the supervisors as they reach certain phases of the project.
"Between [VDOT's] six-year plan, our Comprehensive Plan, and all the other pieces of the puzzle, I think we can come up with a very good plan," he said.
"A lot of what is on the six-year plan is good, it just hasn't been explained," he said.
One of the overall concerns is that traffic now has few alternate routes to major highways, he said. And the limited and hazardous secondary road system can't support overflow if there are major accidents.
Hinton said his group will look at all the information available to them, including funding sources, current projects and suggested road priorities, and come back to the board with a long-term localized strategy that can be rationalized to the public.
"You have a lot of wheels already turning, but are they the right wheels," Hinton said. "And that's what we are going to look at."
To reach MEGHANN COTTER:
Email: mcotter@freelancestar.com
