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.
Shut out in the last round of jockeying for state transportation funding, Fairfax County officials are taking steps to be more successful next time.
For the next round of applications for “Smart Scale” grants, due over the summer, county staff intends to “focus on smaller projects” that require no more than $30 million through the program, said Noelle Dominguez, coordination and funding division chief for the Fairfax County Department of Transportation (FCDOT).
Fairfax County’s first comprehensive school boundary rewrite in decades will affect only a handful of its approximately 177,000 current students, but Superintendent Michelle Reid believes the resulting transportation costs could still be too high to absorb.
The superintendent is expected to recommend tonight (Thursday) that Fairfax County Public Schools provide transportation only to high school seniors who were affected by the boundary changes and opt to remain at their currently assigned school, as permitted by the district’s phasing policy.
Fairfax County officials sent mixed messages last Friday (Feb. 13) over General Assembly progress, or lack of it, toward dedicated transit funding for Northern Virginia.
Legislation to establish dedicated transit funding is unlikely to be acted on during the month remaining in the 2026 legislative session, county staff reported at a meeting of the Board of Supervisors’ Legislative Committee.
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.
A key Tysons leader is working to ensure state leaders provide dedicated new funding for transit that she says will help the region thrive.
“Transit in Northern Virginia is cool again,” said Katie Cristol, CEO of the Tysons Community Alliance.
Despite political drawbacks, a sales-tax surcharge across Northern Virginia could end up being the main source to increase transit funding in the coming year.
Increasing the sales tax regionally is “probably going to be looked at,” Hunter Mill District Supervisor Walter Alcorn said in a Dec. 4 legislative forum sponsored by the Dulles Area Transportation Association (DATA).
Fairfax City is considering whether to keep a fare-free policy in place for its CUE bus system.
The city’s CUE buses stopped collecting fares in mid-2020 when the pandemic started. In 2022, the city adopted a four-year zero-fare pilot program that will expire at the end of fiscal year 2026, according to city documents.
A state legislative panel set up to identify potential new funding for Northern Virginia transit completed its work this week by delivering a firm starting number: $400 million annually.
But the panel opted against prioritizing which funding streams would work best as it readied its report for consideration during the 2026 General Assembly session.
The Fairfax County School Board voted last week to delay consideration of new middle school start times in order to focus on ongoing school boundary adjustments and identify an option that won’t affect the school system’s budget.
Mount Vernon District Representative Mateo Dunne, who introduced the motion during the school board’s meeting last Thursday (Oct. 23), reaffirmed his support for later start times but emphasized the importance of waiting until other changes are finalized.
