Council members voted unanimously last night on a bureaucratic measure that basically asks the Virginia Department of Transportation to start allocating money for the project.

VDOT has said $300,000 may be available in fiscal year 2009 for a project that could cost more than $30 million.

That pace is not going to be fast enough to meet a July 31, 2010, deadline for groundbreaking on the widening that is attached to a $1 million pledge the Silver Cos. made toward the portion of the road that lines its Celebrate Virginia development.

City Manager Phillip Rodenberg said the project could be sped up by using a state law that allows public-private partnerships to bypass the typical VDOT process of designing and then building a road under separately-bid contracts.

If that doesn't get things moving fast enough, the city could have to look at either renegotiating the deadline on Silver's contribution, or breaking up the project, so that part of it could begin in time to get the money.

At a public hearing on the road project earlier this month, several landowners across from Celebrate Virginia complained that they'd seen designs for the road that didn't allow access through the planned median at the entrance to their properties.

Public Works Director Doug Fawcett wrote in a memo that since design hasn't even started on this project, none of those details have been decided yet.