Fairfax County will receive millions of dollars in state funding for major transportation improvements, but it didn’t get everything it asked for from the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority (NVTA).
Members of the regional organization, including Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay, adopted a new six-year program for fiscal years 2024-2029 on Thursday (July 11) that allocated $696.6 million to 23 projects designed to reduce congestion and add travel options, including five projects in Fairfax County and two in Fairfax City.
“This Six Year Program adoption truly demonstrates the power of regional cooperation,” NVTA Vice Chairman and Falls Church City Councilmember David Snyder said in a press release. “By looking beyond jurisdictional boundaries, we’ve achieved a milestone that will significantly benefit Northern Virginia’s transportation network.”
Funded by sales taxes and other state funds, the largest portion of money — about $362.8 million — will go to Fairfax County, led by over $111.9 million to an extension of Frontier Drive from the Franconia Metro station to Loisdale Road.
The county will also get almost $101.4 million for a project to add a lane in each direction along about one mile of Route 7 (Leesburg Pike) in Pimmit Hills between the Capital Beltway (I-495) and I-66. Accompanied by new shared-use paths, the widening will expand the Route 7 median to accommodate planned bus rapid transit service (BRT) that will eventually connect Tysons to Alexandria.
For both projects, the NVTA’s allocation falls short of what the county requested when it submitted applications in the spring. The county sought nearly $165 million for Frontier Drive, which previously got $27 million from the authority and is expected to cost a total of $244.4 million.
The newly awarded funding for the Route 7 multimodal improvements is the first money that the NVTA has given to that $244.4 million project, but it’s only about half of the $210 million requested by the county.
According to recommendations presented to the NVTA before its vote, the authority’s Planning and Programming Committee ranked both projects toward the bottom of the 24 submitted requests for their congestion reduction potential relative to their cost. The Frontier Drive project came in at no. 21, and the Route 7 project was second-to-last at no. 23.
At the top of the ranking was a signalization project from Falls Church City, which requested $1.4 million to install technology at five Broad Street intersections that will give buses priority at traffic lights — another change that could support the future Route 7 BRT.
Fairfax County will also get $27.3 million out of its requested $90 million for Braddock Road improvements and all of the full $122 million for the first segment of a ring road in Seven Corners, an estimated $132.7 million project.
Fairfax City will receive funding for two projects: $12.9 million for Northfax network improvements — specifically, a new roadway between Route 123 (Chain Bridge Road) and an extension of University Drive — and $5.4 million for multimodal improvements on Blenheim Blvd between Layton Hall Drive and Ridge Avenue.
Local commuters will also benefit from NVTA’s award of $6.1 million, the full requested amount, to the Virginia Railway Express for upgrades to its Backlick Road station.
This is the seventh six-year funding program that NVTA has adopted since the Virginia General Assembly established a dedicated revenue source for it in April 2013. The authority has committed over $3.8 billion to 140 different projects, per the press release.
