Escalating costs have convinced an advisory board that Fairfax County should scale back its ambitions for funding transportation projects with special taxes collected from Reston property owners.
The Reston Transportation Service District Advisory Board voted at its Sept. 16 meeting to recommend taking three intersection improvement projects out of consideration for funding from the service district:
- An interim reconfiguration of the Fairfax County Parkway and Sunrise Valley Drive intersection
- A realignment of Sunset Hills Road at Hunter Mill Road
- And changes to Reston Parkway at Baron Cameron Avenue
The projects were targeted for removal “to better align available service district funding with the initial projects the plan was intended to fund,” Fairfax County Department of Transportation spokesperson Benjamin Boxer says.
Projects were added subsequently to tax district
The Reston Transportation Service District was created by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors in April 2017 to generate additional tax revenue from residential and commercial property owners that would be funneled toward new roads and intersection upgrades in Reston’s transit station areas (TSAs).
Under the Reston Transportation Funding Plan originally approved by the supervisors in February 2017, the service district was expected to contribute $139 million over 40 years toward the identified projects, including $45 million for eight intersection improvements and $94 million to implement a new grid of streets near the future Wiehle, Reston Town Center and Herndon Metro stations.
With an estimated price tag of $2.27 billion, the transportation funding plan also included a number of roadway improvements separate from the service district’s obligations. Those projects and the remainder of the costs for the grid of streets would be supported by a mix of federal, state and local government money as well as developer contributions to the Reston Road Fund.
FCDOT staff presented the Fairfax County Parkway and Sunset Hills Road projects to the 13-person advisory board established to oversee the district at its second-ever meeting on March 29, 2018, identifying the former as a “candidate” for service district funding.
At its April 5, 2018 meeting, the advisory board unanimously voted to support providing $500,000 in service district funds for preliminary engineering on the Fairfax County Parkway at Sunrise Valley project, a recommendation approved by the Board of Supervisors on May 15 of that year.
A similar process led to the Board of Supervisors approving $500,000 in service district revenue for preliminary engineering studies and design work on the Reston Parkway at Baron Cameron project in June 2019. Completed in fall 2023, the design study found no significant, immediate need to implement any changes.
The advisory board later agreed at its March 31, 2022 meeting to allocate another $1.5 million to the Sunrise Valley project and $2 million to the Reston Parkway improvements, according to the meeting minutes.
While the Sunset Hills realignment was added to the Reston Funding Plan, no service district funds appear to have been specifically allocated to the project, whose estimated cost has been listed in county documents as simply “TBD.”
Project costs outpacing tax district revenue
Over the past half-decade, however, the amount of service district revenue needed to fund all of the identified projects has ballooned to an estimated $268 million, including $99.5 million for the intersection projects and $169 million for the grid of streets, FCDOT staff told the advisory board at its Sept. 16 meeting.
“Project expenditures are growing at a faster rate than service district revenues,” Boxer confirmed. “The gap is due primarily to inflationary project costs” for construction materials, labor and other needs.
As of Sept. 3, the service district has generated roughly $19.6 million in revenue since it was established in 2017, including $1.3 million in the current fiscal year, which began on July 1, according to FCDOT’s presentation to the advisory board.
FCDOT anticipates that, over its 40-year span, the service district will collect between $175 million and $200 million at the current tax rate, creating a deficit of approximately $70 million to $95 million in additional revenue needed to fully fund all projects.
Removing the three intersection projects would reduce the gap by $17 million, but the remainder will need to be addressed by dropping more projects or raising the long-standing tax rate of 2.1 cents per $100 of assessed property value.
Boxer says the projects now being considered for removal were previously deemed appropriate for the service district because the county believed the improvements “would provide traffic relief at the intersections and for the adjoining roads.”
“In terms of where we are today with respect to project costs and available funding, it was necessary to adjust the service district project list to align with the available funding to perform the work — which is why these projects are being recommended for removal,” Boxer said.
He added that all of the projected costs are “extremely preliminary” estimates based on general concepts and will likely change as the designs become more refined.
The Board of Supervisors still needs to approve the projects’ removal from the service district’s funding plan.
According to Boxer, FCDOT will likely present the advisory board’s recommendation to the supervisors when requesting approval of an updated, countywide Transportation Priorities Plan (TPP) for fiscal years 2025-2030. That’s expected to happen by the end of 2025, but an exact date remains to be determined.
The TPP highlights the county’s transportation funding priorities and is updated every five years.
Presented to the public in July, the proposed FY 2025-2030 plan encompasses an estimated $3.9 billion in projects, but nothing new has been added outside of some spot pedestrian and bicycle improvements that the Board of Supervisors hopes to fund with $100 million through 2027.
The draft TPP recommends $2.54 million for the Reston Parkway/Baron Cameron project, $3.5 million for the Sunset Hills realignment and $1.9 million to study potential Fairfax County Parkway/Sunrise Valley improvements. If the supervisors approve the advisory board’s recommendation, the projects would stay in the plan, but the county would have to identify other sources of funding.
