A New Road to Relief for Commuters

Completion of Sudley Manor Drive Extension Opens a Key Link to Manassas

The new section of Sudley Manor Drive gets a fresh layer of asphalt. When the road opens today, it should ease the flow on nearby Routes 28 and 29. (Photos By Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post)

Beautywise, the new Sudley Manor Drive extension is no Champs Elysees or Pennsylvania Avenue. Impactwise, it is no Wilson Bridge project or rail to Tysons Corner. But listen to what the three-mile, four-lane divided road in Prince William County will mean to Michael Hildebrand once it opens today: a savings of 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the afternoon.

That doesn't sound like a heck of a lot of time, but it is enough to have a significant impact on the Hildebrand family's quality of life. That 30 minutes a day he will save in commuting will add up to 2 1/2 hours a week less time spent in his car going to and from his job at Eli Lilly in Manassas.

That is the equivalent of five more days a year he can spend with his wife and seven children. It means that he can scoot home for lunch a few times a week to see his younger kids. It means he can coach football knowing he is going to get to games and practice on time.

"For me, it's not a huge amount of time, 15 minutes, but it allows me to do some things that I couldn't do before," said Hildebrand, who lives in the Victory Lakes neighborhood off Sudley Manor Drive.

In the Washington area, where residents divide their days by work, family and car time, where roads are choked by some of the nation's worst traffic, the opening of a road is a significant event. Sudley Manor Drive is expected to carry about 20,000 vehicles a day, immediately making it one of the county's most heavily traveled roadways, said Tom Blaser, the county's transportation director.

Not only will the new road decrease commuting time, it will also draw traffic off two other chronically congested highways, Routes 28 and 29.

"Our neighbors have been moderately pleased to thrilled about it," Hildebrand said.

The new road extends Sudley Manor Drive from Chatsworth Drive southwest over a new bridge spanning the Norfolk Southern Railroad and then connects with an existing trunk of Sudley Manor Drive near heavily traveled Linton Hall Road.

"It will be used by everybody," Blaser said. "Commuters, shoppers looking to get to Route 234 and soccer moms running their children to games and going shopping."

The road cost about $24.3 million, financed through a county bond issue voters approved in November 2002.

Robert Chase, president of the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance, an advocacy group made up of Northern Virginia business and civic leaders, said the completion of Sudley Manor Drive is significant for two reasons.

"One, Sudley Manor Drive is an important addition to the Prince William County road grid. Secondly, I think where it ties into the bigger transportation picture is that Prince William County is doing its part in developing its local road network in a time when the state has failed to live up to its responsibility to build the larger road network that has been planned for a decade, and that is why we have the nation's worst congestion."

For several months, the men and women building the road have been working in two shifts six days a week to finish it in time for today's scheduled opening. This week, dump trucks loaded with asphalt were lined up waiting to empty their loads as crews were applying the road surface, installing guardrails and putting the finishing touches on the four-lane bridge over the railroad track.

Barry Bernstein, project manager for Lane Construction, one of the largest subcontractors on the job, has commuted between his home in Maryland and the job site every day for more than two years. On Wednesday, as he drove his sport-utility vehicle on the new road, Bernstein said he had seen an increase in area traffic just in the time he had worked on the project.

One of his senior foremen, George Hansbrough, who lives near Sudley Manor Drive, said he believes the new road will improve his life and his neighbors'.

"This road is going to connect the western part of the county to Manassas," he said. "There are 20,000 more people living in this part of the county than there were a few years ago, and we are finally going to have a road that is basically going to be a main highway in between Route 28 and Route 29. People can use it instead of sitting on 28 or 29. I think it is going to be an instant hit."

Supervisor W.S. Covington III (R-Brentsville), whose district includes most of the road, said constituents have told him that their lives have already been improved by the opening in October of the first phase of the project and that today's opening of the final one-mile stretch will reduce congestion even more.

"The impact of this road opening has affected more people, the most I have ever seen one road do in a short period of time," Covington said. "It just changes the whole dynamic of people's ability to get to work in a shorter amount of time."

For the seven children of Michael Hildebrand, it means getting a lot more daddy-time.