Little Relief For Choked Secondary Roads in Va.

Traffic on Route 1 near Fort Belvoir frequently clogs. A plan to widen nearby Rolling Road, which has stop-and-go traffic, from two to four lanes was scratched. (By Richard A. Lipski -- The Washington Post)
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"It's terrible getting off of 123 onto [Route] 1 in the evenings," said Barbara Price, a law firm employee who has lived nearby for 15 years. Five years ago, she would budget three minutes to get through the intersection; now it takes 10.

"It gets worse every year," she said. A condominium development being built nearby will make it "even more horrible," she said.

Gone from the plan is $15 million to widen Rolling Road from two to four lanes near Fort Belvoir in Fairfax. It would have relieved F-level traffic that will worsen when an estimated 19,300 jobs are moved to the facility as part of the federal base realignment and closing process.

"They think it's a small road, but it's not," said Amina Imran, who uses it to get to the Parcel Plus store she owns in a nearby strip mall five miles from her Springfield home. The trip can take as long as 15 minutes.

Drivers say Rolling Road needs improvements not only to handle increased volume, but also to fix its dangerous curves.

"It stinks, because the road is two lanes, and it dips. And in bad weather, it's a horrible place to travel on if you don't have a truck or front-wheel drive," said Kristin Hinkle, who lives off Rolling Road and uses it daily to commute to her family's photography studio in Springfield and to pick up her kids from school.

Northern Virginia leaders have long complained that VDOT's funding formula short-changes the region, and that was one of the main reasons local leaders agreed last year on a host of regional taxes and fees that would have raised an additional $300 million a year.

Most of the money raised by the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority was to be earmarked for the region's arterial roads, targeting choke points that could be fixed relatively cheaply but would have a big effect on daily commutes. But the state Supreme Court ruled the authority's collection powers unconstitutional.

"One of our larger concerns, as we add capacity on the freeway system, is that it will add pressure on the arterials," said Ronald F. Kirby, transportation planning director for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. "It's a system."

The lack of investment in transportation will be felt acutely in the fast-growing outer suburbs, where congestion also is growing fastest.

According to projections by the Council of Governments, although the region's population will increase 25 percent over the next 25 years, traffic -- measured in lane miles of congestion -- will increase more than 40 percent. In the outer suburbs, congestion is projected to double.

Even some relatively new roads, such as the Fairfax County and Prince William County parkways, need substantial improvements to keep up with explosive residential growth and traffic counts.

"There's a lot of study and consternation going on," Kirby said. "When you get further out, in Fairfax and Loudoun and Charles and Frederick counties, those roads just don't have enough capacity."

On a recent morning, Grant Zachary, a commuter who uses Rolling Road every day, waited in traffic while a driver ahead of him tried to make a left turn. It took three to five minutes for oncoming traffic to clear. Meanwhile, traffic had come to a standstill.

In the six years he has lived in a development off Rolling Road, his short morning drive has gone from five minutes to 15.

"They need to do something," he said while picking up his dry cleaning. "It's loading up fast."

Imran, the parcel store owner, seemed resigned to her fate.

"So it's more traffic and no more roads," she said.