Wally Covington Brentsville Supervisor Discusses Current and Future Road Projects

Brentsville District Supervisor, Wally Covington Discusses Current and Future Road Project

BristowEnews.com recently met with Brentsville District Supervisor, Wally Covington to discuss current and future road plans for the Bristow, Gainesville and Nokesville areas.

One of Mr. Covington's major accomplishments as Supervisor and one which he campaigned on four years ago when he ran for the position on the County Board of Supervisors was completing Sudley Manor Drive and getting the funding for the widening of Linton Hall Road. Sudley Manor Drive was originally planned as a PPTA or Public Private Partnership but he was able to get a change order and make Linton Hall a PPTA project. Linton Hall was always on the plan to be improved and was supposed to be partially funded by the State of Virginia and partially funded by Prince William County. When the State of Virginia pulled its money out, Prince William County also pulled its money out and it was left unfunded when Mr. Covington came into office. Now it has been funded with the Recordation Tax money and is the first project completed with this type of funding. Linton Hall would have taken another three or four years to complete without the change order to a PPTA partnership. Currently it is scheduled to be completed in about two and one half years.

Linton Hall Road from Devlin to Gainesville is part of the State of Virginia funded road projects and is scheduled to be completed in early September and looks to be keeping within this time frame. This will be a great relief for this corridor since it has caused some headaches as well as some accidents, but it is coming together.

Mr. Covington has heard from a few constituents about Heathcoat Road, which is in the Gainesville District. This looks like it will be completed in September.

The widening of Route 66 from 234 Business to Haymarket town limits will take some time to complete but he believes there is a lot of progress.

The road project that is the most frustrating is the Route 66 interchange since it will be involving fly overs of both the railroad tracks and Linton Hall Road and is slated to begin in 2013, which is a bit of a disappointment. What's percolating right now is the PPTA to widen Route 28 to six lanes from the Manassas Cit Limits to Vint Hill Road and redoing the new portion of Vint Hill Road. Originally Vint Hill was designed to come out near the old stock yards in order to separate the two intersections of 28 and Linton Hall as well as 28 and Vint Hill Road. This widening of 28 will help with the flow through traffic in addition to the extension of University Boulevard which will help with the separation of Route 66 traffic and the Manassas traffic. Right now the construction bid is open until August 9th to business interested in bidding on this project. Currently the company that completed Sudley Manor Drive is the first to one out of the box to bid on this road project. PPTA projects have speeded up the process of completing projects and Mr. Covington look forward to seeing this one come before the Board of Supervisors in early October.

Construction on developing areas has slowed down because of limited areas accessible for development and the restrictions on designated rural land areas. The State of Virginia requires that the Prince William County Comprehensive Plan be reviewed every five years and in light of the high density development in Fairfax and Loudon Counties, Prince William County is in the process of reviewing its plan with the help of its Citizen's Committee. Five years ago the plan was kept as is and ten years ago the County defined the rural area. The rural area follows Vint Hill Road and hits Glen Kirk, Saranac, and the middle of Lake Manassas, into Haymarket, dives down 15 to Waterfall Road and into Catharpin. Linton Hall Corridor is considered medium density. Higher density is close to the Innovation Development. Mr. Covington doesn't see any changes coming with the current review, however the rural areas don't have any sewer lines and that is something he has pushed for so that there is more orderly development and it prevents underground sewage from going into the Chesapeake Bay. Some people associate sewer lines as extending development and that you shouldn't have it that way. The rural area designation took off a lot of the roads that were contemplated for it. In 1998 they took off Sudley Manor extending to Route 28 and they never dealt with the Aden Road issues. Eventually Route 28 will have four lanes extending to Fitzwater Drive in Nokesville. The problem with this now is that Fauquier County never got the memo. They are building their density areas along the Prince William County line, like Fairfax did fifty years ago and Arlington did one hundred years ago, so that they can take advantage of the network of roads. Fauquier County is putting most of their density along Route 28 near Catlett, Bealeton and Calverton.

Mr. Covington thinks Prince William County has done a pretty good job with Route 29 but we continue to promote a By-pass to Route 66, but Fauquier wants Prince William County to widen Route 29 which costs one billion dollars. Prince William County is playing a waiting game since Fauquier decided to develop 5,000 homes in New Baltimore and Mr. Covington figures that with allowing this development there will come big bottlenecks of traffic and then they will agree to a solution.

During this fall campaign, Mr. Covington will propose partnering with Loudon County on the construction of a Route 234 By-pass to go around Manassas Battlefield and connect to Dulles Airport. Currently this project is on the Federal Plan and the State of Virginia Tri-County plan. Twenty to thirty percent of the people living here actually work up in Loudon County or on the border of Fairfax because the business development is coming out from Tyson's Corner and Route 28. Most people commute Route 66 to Route 28 or take Gum Springs Road and the back roads. But Prince William County needs the connection to Dulles from a business stand point since we have put many resources into the Innovation Development for example George Mason University and it's arts center, ATCC and the FBI. People worry about Route 28 because they think it will go to Maryland but Mr. Covington thinks that Maryland has done such a poor job with the roads that a lot of businesses are relocating to Virginia. The State of Maryland charges higher fees for businesses and it is there problem that they don't build roads. There seem to be more people who live in Maryland and work in Virginia than people who live in Virginia and work in Maryland. The business vitality in Prince William County is fine. It is the same problem with Arlington because they don't want to widen Route 66 since a few houses will be lost but at the same time businesses will be gone if you don't do it. Prince William County will take the businesses here and Arlington can have the people. It is a difficult decision for politicians but you end up losing a lot of businesses because of it.

Mr. Covington thinks we have the state of the art transportation system developing here in western Prince William County. The Innovation Development will be the center with Linton Hall as a corridor. With roads such as Sudley Manor and Wellington, coupled with the planned Virginia Railway Express locations, planned retail and office spaces, Prince William County will have all it needs so people don't have to commute to Fairfax County to do anything. He would like to see the VRE go out toward Dulles rather than here which would make a full circle mass transportation system, with the VRE acting like a Metro system and connecting to other means of mass transit. Currently Mr. Covington is the only Supervisor who is on all the mass transportation boards.

The plans are to also look at having a fly over for both Balls Ford ad Sudley Manor to alleviate the back ups on Route 234. The plan is for Innovation to be a town center development but that it would have to include the fly overs and the University Boulevard to be part of this connection.

Contact information:

Brentsville District
8506 Wellington Rd. Manassas, VA 20109
Office Phone:(703)792-6190
Office Fax:(703) 257-9792

Email Wally Covington at wcovington@pwcgov.org

 

 

Date Published: 2007-08-01 06:00:00

Section: Top Headline,