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Linton Hall Road widening due to wrap up in summer 2009
Prince William County voters, who approved the widening of Linton Hall Road 10 years ago, will be waiting one more year before the whole thing is finally widened.Motorists heading northwest along the road after turning from Route 28 now pass a series of construction crews expanding the road through Sudley Manor Drive.
“It’ll be four-lane divided with turn lanes from Sudley Manor [Drive] down to the Route 28” corridor, said County Executive Craig Gerhart on Tuesday, projecting construction to wrap up in the summer of 2009.
According to a quarterly project report released by the county in January, the end date is supposed to be Aug. 31, 2009.
The project, with an original budget of $42.5 million, also included the widening of the Broad Run bridge along Nokesville Road (Route 28).
All of that was approved by county voters in a 1998 bond referendum. That referendum came after the state failed to work on the southeastern half of Linton Hall Road during the early 1990s, though it had been in VDOT's six-year plan.
As a consequence, the road is now six lanes around Gainesville but still two lanes in sections between Braemar and the new Bristow Shopping Center.
As the Prince William population grew during the economic boom at the start of the decade, transportation projects also boomed within the county. The local government then found it did not have the money to adequately fund the Linton Hall Road widening without jeopardizing its prestigious AAA bond rating.
“As construction costs soared over the intervening years, we didn’t have sufficient bond capacity to that, so we actually funded that through the Virginia Resources Authority,” said Gerhart.
According to its Web site, the 24-year-old state-run agency “provides cost-effective financial solutions to local governments and other public bodies for projects that improve the quality of life of Virginians.”
In this case, “quality of life” in Prince William is directly tied to transportation.
The Virginia Department of Transportation funded improvements to Linton Hall Road northwest of Devlin Road while the county worked to finish the section east of Devlin through Sudley Manor Drive during the last few years.
County officials normally have to go through a lengthy process where each phase of road construction — designing, acquiring right of ways, awarding the construction contracts, for example — gets step-by-step approval.
Because Prince William awarded the designing contract of the road through a public-private transportation act (PPTA) though, the contractor has been able to multitask.
“While they’re working on design, they can actually start acquiring right of way,” said Gerhart. He later added, “They have a little bit more flexibility in how they construct a project.”
What’s nice about a PPTA agreement from a financial point of view is the county pays for the entire project instead of paying by the hour. That means contractors have more incentive to get the job done quickly.
A similar action took place last year along Nokesville Road at Broad Run where the road was widened to four lanes from the intersection of Linton Hall Road north toward Hornbaker Road. Commuters were able to start using all four lanes about six months ahead of its due date and two months before the construction contractor’s December goal.
Given the large new commercial complexes along Nokesville Road, such at Target to the north and the Bristow Shopping Center to the south, having all the road widening done soon is as good for retailers as it is for harried motorists.
“Well obviously, the better the road network, the better it is for all commercial properties along the road,” Gerhart said.
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