Manassas Journal Messenger | County announces road improvements

The last 0.8-mile link of the Prince William Parkway to U.S. 1 should be completed by the summer of 2005, according to county public works officials.

Bids are scheduled to open Nov. 5 for the estimated $5.63 million project that will align the parkway with the intersection of Longview Drive and Route 1.

A traffic light will be installed at Church Hill Drive, the existing driveway at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church, and will also be used by Fred Lynn Middle School traffic.

The Prince William Parkway currently stops at a dead end near the Summerland Heights Apartments after crossing Interstate 95.

Building the rest of the road to Longview Drive and Botts Avenue will be quick because most of the area is “virgin land,” said R?ne Harris, a county transportation engineer.

The challenging portion of the project will be shifting the intersection with Botts Avenue and directing traffic on Longview as construction crews build the parkway on what is now Longview Drive, he said.

Bids opened Wednesday to widen Spriggs Road to four lanes between Dumfries Road and Hoadly Road.

Those improvements will include an eight-foot asphalt bike trail and a five-foot sidewalk on either side of the existing two-lane road, where the county spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy rights of way.

Sharp curves will be removed and the intersection of Spriggs Road and Dumfries Road will be realigned, according to Tom Bruun, assistant public works director. The widening of Spriggs Road is slated for $19.6 million.

The widening of Spriggs Road is slated for $19.6 million. Funds for both projects were created by the sale of a 1998 road bond. Since 1988, voters have approved five county road bonds totalling $256 million.

Traffic lights will be installed at Spriggs Road and Fincastle Drive, C.D. Hylton High School and Saunders Middle School.

Elm Street Developers, which built the Ashland development near Forest Park High School, has proffered to realign the Spriggs Road and Dumfries Road intersection at a right angle.

The existing intersection will become a right turn in and right turn out intersection onto Dumfries Road, which is scheduled to be widened to a four-lane divided highway.

The $2.78 million bid to widen Hornbaker Road, just west of Manassas, and to extend University Boulevard across Va. 234 was awarded to A&W Construction on Oct. 7.

Hornbaker Road is scheduled to be widened to three lanes on a 700-foot stretch from U.S. 28 north.

These expansions of Hornbaker Road and University Boulevard are in anticipation of future development at [email protected] William business park on both sides of Va. 234.

Hornbaker Road provides a boundary to a 350-acre portion of Innovation on the west side of Va. 234.

These Innovation road projects will be funded by land sales at Innovation and money from the county’s general fund.

Other improvements are planned using the county’s 1998 road bond money.

The widening of Spriggs Road and Linton Hall Road from U.S. 28 to U.S. 29 were originally scheduled as joint Prince William County and state projects, said Supervisor Chairman Sean T. Connaughton, R-at large.

But since the Virginia Department of Transportation pulled major amounts of funding from numerous road projects state wide, the county fell short by millions on its Linton Hall Road project, said Connaughton.

Widening Linton Hall Road from two to four lanes is estimated to cost $50.6 million.

The Linton Hall corridor is notorious for its rush-hour traffic jams, as thousands of homes are built surrounding a mostly two-lane rural road network.

About $4.5 million in county bond money that was originally slated for the Linton Hall Road project will supplement where the state fell short in its Spriggs Road funding, said the chairman.

“There is still money left in the Linton Hall fund that we plan on using at the Linton Hall and Route 28 intersection,” Connaughton said. “We were left with doing one project or doing neither project, and the only project we were able to do was Spriggs.”

He added that the county decided to fund the $19.6 million Spriggs Road project instead of the $50.6 million Linton Hall Road widening because “we didn’t have enough money to do that under any circumstances.”

But the $6.5 million Linton Hall Road and U.S. 28 intersection project is dependent upon the county’s ability to gather federal bridge money to widen the U.S. 28 span over Broad Run, he said.

Linton Hall Road and Broad Run are approximately parallel and two-lane U.S. 28 intersects them both at right angles.

If the bridge isn’t widened to four lanes, the county won’t widen the Linton Hall Road and U.S. 28 intersection, he said.

That’s to avoid a half-mile, two-lane section of road between four-lane sections of the same road.

“We feel fairly confident we can get federal and state funds,” said Connaughton.

VDOT is scheduled to begin widening Linton Hall Road from U.S. 29 to Devlin Road at the end of next year, he added.

To alleviate traffic backups on Linton Hall Road, Connaughton said 2002 road bond money would be used to extend Sudley Manor Road to Va. 234.

“That, right now, is one of our biggest priorities,” he said. “At least building Sudley Manor from its current terminus from Linton Hall to the 234 bypass will greatly reduce local traffic on both 28 and 29.”