A number of factors reportedly brought Prince William County’s long-gestating plans for a Route 28 bypass to a halt, but top Fairfax County officials say they were surprised to find fingers pointed at them.
The Prince William County Board of Supervisors voted 5-3 on Feb. 4 to cancel the Route 28 Bypass Project, which aimed to relieve traffic congestion by extending Godwin Drive at Sudley Road in Manassas to Route 28 (Centreville Road) near Compton Road in Fairfax County’s Centreville area.
When recommending the project’s cancellation, Prince William County Department of Transportation staff cited financial and design challenges as well as the impacts on the environment, utilities and historic sites.
Officials also asserted that Fairfax County stalled progress on right-of-way discussions and declined to support the project — claims that Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay and Sully District Supervisor Kathy Smith denied in a letter to the Prince William board, county executive and transportation department.
In the Feb. 4 letter, McKay says it was “extremely disheartening” to hear the project’s cancellation and delays in permitting being attributed in part to Fairfax County after “the County has consistently stated our support for what is a significant regional roadway project.”
“The County absolutely understands that there are factors related to the cost of the project, as well as environmental issues, that have led to this decision, but in no way do we feel Fairfax County has been a reason for this project’s inability to move forward,” McKay wrote.
According to McKay, Fairfax County had regularly supported funding for the Route 28 bypass through the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority (NVTA), and staff continued coordinating through last fall.
“The County has consistently stated our support for what is a significant regional roadway project,” the chairman wrote.
Prince William sought endorsement
Supervisors and staff from both counties met most recently on Aug. 29, 2024. At the meeting, Fairfax County staff raised concerns about the project’s right-of-way impacts and how it will affect the Route 28 intersection at Ordway/Compton Road, just north of the bypass endpoint, according to a follow-up letter sent on Sept. 18 by Prince William County Board of Supervisors At-Large Chair Deshundra Jefferson.
In the letter, Jefferson requested that the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors formally approve resolutions endorsing the current project location and committing it to addressing right-of-way needs in Fairfax’s boundaries. Those “official actions” would enable staff to advance the design process, she said.
“Without these commitments to continued interjurisdictional support, Prince William County will need to reassess our ability to complete this crucial regional project,” Jefferson wrote.
Jefferson reiterated that expectation in a Feb. 13 response to McKay and Smith’s letter, stating that her county had needed “an endorsement from the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and a commitment to acquire the right of way” for the project design to move forward.
However, the design was only 30% complete — which McKay and Smith felt was too soon for the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors to formally endorse a specific alignment, though the board had supported the project in general for NVTA funding with resolutions in 2018, 2019 and 2021.
Smith says she asked Prince William transportation staff to hold a meeting in the Sully District for affected Fairfax County residents. The last public meeting on the Route 28 bypass in the county was on April 19, 2023 at Centreville Elementary School, according to Smith’s office and materials on the project website.
“This idea that we were going to endorse exactly what it was at 30% design… We really felt like we needed to have our community involved and get some feedback for our community and let Prince William say where they were,” Smith told FFXnow.
She anticipated that a meeting would be held in January or February of this year, but nothing was ever scheduled.
According to a Prince William County spokesperson, no meeting was arranged, because the request came two months after the Sept. 18 follow-up letter, and Fairfax officials didn’t guarantee that they would endorse the project after the proposed meeting.
“Prince William County had already held two public hearings in the Sully District as part of the design project/process and was not willing to spend any more money on the project without Fairfax County support,” the spokesperson said by email.
Smith confirmed that the meeting request came two months after Jefferson’s letter was sent, stating that she and McKay needed to coordinate with staff on their next steps.
Jefferson told FFXnow that Prince William needed Fairfax’s endorsement of the project route to do additional design work before going to the Army Corps of Engineers for permits.
But Smith disputes that an endorsement of a specific route was needed from Fairfax County for Prince William to continue working on the design, based on her conversations with Fairfax County’s transportation staff.
“They were trying to make this connection that they couldn’t go to the Army Corps of Engineers unless they got a letter from us,” she said. “… I followed up with a lot of our staff and some of the staff that’s retired, and that has never been an issue.”
Challenges raised by proposed route
Prince William also appears to have encountered other obstacles in developing its design.
The Prince William board had endorsed a bypass design on Sept. 8, 2020 known as “Alternative 2B,” selected from a feasibility study that started in 2017, and allocated $89 million from NVTA for the project.
However, once staff began working more closely on the design, they found difficulties in acquiring rights-of-way both inside and outside their jurisdiction, “significant” environmental, utility and historic impacts, and “challenging and costly bridge and retaining wall designs,” according to materials for the Prince William board’s Feb. 4 meeting.
Alternative 2B was “determined not viable,” the presentation says.
The Prince William board voted on Oct. 10, 2023 to look at another route, dubbed modified Alternative 2A, that would follow a similar path to Alternative 2B but stay out of Fairfax County. That was determined not to be viable either due to higher costs and “additional major impacts” that wouldn’t bring the same level of congestion relief benefits.
According to Prince William staff, the modified alternative was deemed infeasible around late 2023 to early 2024, so 2B remained the preferred option. But Prince William officials say they needed more support from their Fairfax counterparts to address the issues that emerged with the 2B design.
“Prince William County needed the support, commitment and endorsement of Fairfax County to help address some of those identified issues, like the right of way and design challenges,” the Prince William spokesperson said. “This would have allowed the project to move forward.”
Smith, who had been involved with the bypass project since the 2017 feasibility study, maintains that the design wasn’t at a point where Fairfax County could or needed to vote on it.
“They were at 30% design, so they still had a lot of work to do on this project,” she said. “We were very clear that we thought this project was beneficial for all constituents.”
Route 28 widening on the table
Voicing support for Prince William’s “excellent” transportation staff, Jefferson says she wanted to ensure Fairfax County supervisors were on board with the project’s direction because Prince William residents would be dealing with the majority of the construction impacts.
She recalled a resident who approached her at a town hall and said they wanted to be able to move their washer and dryer to their house’s main level but were leery of funding any improvements if their home was eventually going to be taken for the bypass.
“We had a lot more takings. We’d have a lot more homeowners that would be impacted on our side, and I wanted to get a resolution — yay or nay — to what’s going on,” Jefferson said. “So, we continued to engage Fairfax County officials, but again, we simply reached an impasse.”
With Prince William wanting an endorsement to continue design work, but Fairfax County not wanting to give a formal endorsement until the design was further along, the bypass project, like the Route 28 traffic it was intended to divert, came to a standstill.
“We’re sad that we weren’t able to bring this to completion, but it’s a regional project, and we needed to have regional partnership,” Jefferson said. “… We just came to an impasse, and so, we had to cut our losses, and we went to a different direction.”
At Coles District Supervisor Yesli Vega’s request, the Prince William board directed staff last Tuesday (Feb. 18) to craft a resolution formally removing the Route 28 bypass from the county’s mobility plan and replacing it with a project to widen Route 28 from four to six lanes between the Manassas City and Fairfax County lines.
That road widening would mirror a project to expand Route 28 from Prince William County to the Route 29 interchange that the Fairfax County Department of Transportation completed in November 2023.
With approximately 60,000 vehicles traveling that stretch of Route 28 daily, Smith says congestion has improved since it was widened, but there are still bottlenecks near the county line.
“As you get closer to Prince William, there’s still backups,” the Sully District supervisor said. “So, there needs to be a solution, and I’m very concerned that [after] they got rid of this, it’s going to be another 10 years for a solution, and that’s a problem for everybody.”
