Fairfax City has received funding for a study to identify potential safety improvements along heavily used but crash-prone Pickett Road.
The city was awarded $80,000 for the planned roadway safety audit by the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (TPB), which approved a total of $980,000 in grants last month for 12 different local transportation consulting projects in Virginia and Maryland.
Despite a relatively stable year-over-year homelessness count in new data, Fairfax County’s level of those experiencing chronic homelessness ticked up more substantially between 2025 and 2026.
A total of 302 people were counted as chronically homeless in Fairfax County and the cities of Fairfax and Falls Church in this year’s Point-in-Time Survey, coordinated by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG).
The Washington region lost over 62,000 federal jobs from January 2025 to January of this year, putting the region’s federal workforce at its lowest figures since 1990, according to a new Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments analysis.
The D.C. region’s 16.5% dip in federal workforce was topped only by nearby Baltimore, which shed 20.5% of its federal jobs over the same time frame. The New York statistical area lost 7.4% of its federal jobs, and Philadelphia dipped 10.1%.
Data centers present both opportunities and challenges, and at a recent regional meeting, local leaders were urged to become acquainted with both, regardless of whether their jurisdictions are directly impacted.
“Don’t ever have a conversation of ‘all-good’ or ‘all-bad’ — there are a lot of nuances,” Loudoun County Board of Supervisors Chair Phyllis Randall said at a March 11 meeting of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG).
The City of Fairfax will have to look for other funding means to add a new sidewalk after it missed out on potential financing from the regional Transportation Planning Board.
The city had applied for $3.25 million in funding to construct a sidewalk on Norman Avenue between the Chain Bridge Road Service Road and Hill Street. The funding would have covered a significant part of the project’s $10.8 million estimated cost.
Fairfax County Public Schools resumed regular classes on Monday (Feb. 9) for the first time since a double whammy of snow and ice hit the D.C. region in late January, but many students still encounter blocked sidewalks and intersections on the way to their school or bus stop.
That was the case earlier this week in the Franklin Farm neighborhood near Herndon, where sidewalks around a school bus stop at Old Dairy Road and Tyburn Tree Court remained stubbornly covered in ice.
Lower-income Fairfax County residents rely more on their own vehicles to get to and from work, and are less likely to be able to telework throughout the week, than those at the top of the income spectrum.
Though not necessarily surprising, the data from the 164-page 2025 State of the Commute report recently issued by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) does have public policy implications.
Post-pandemic commuting trends appear to be stabilizing in the D.C. region, with workers spending more days at the office, but remote work remains prevalent.
“We seem to be approaching a much more settled ‘new normal,'” Dan Sheehan, transportation operations program director for the Transportation Planning Board (TPB) said at a Jan. 21 meeting, where staff unveiled the new State of the Commute report.
Franconia District Supervisor Rodney Lusk wrapped up a year as chair of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) with a call for continued regional collaboration.
“Regionalism isn’t something that’s easy,” Lusk said in valedictory remarks at COG’s meeting on Wednesday (Jan. 14). During the meeting, he passed the gavel to Reuben Collins II of the Charles County Board of Commissioners, who will chair the body for 2026.
Leaders from across the D.C. region voted on Wednesday (Jan. 14) to ask Congress and the Trump administration to bring back predictability when it comes to funding homelessness response services at the local level.
“These programs provide critical support to thousands of our neighbors,” said Christine Hong, who chairs the Homeless Services Planning and Coordinating Committee of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG).
