DUMFRIES, Va. — Dumfries officials want U.S. 1 — the heavily used 4-lane highway that bisects the town — to run on the straight and narrow.
A plan, long on the books to be completed by 2030, would widen U.S. 1 to six lanes so the north and south portions of the highway would run on the same span on Fraley Blvd. where the U.S. 1 north traffic runs now. It also means Main Street in front of Town Hall would no longer carry U.S. 1 south traffic.
The 1.5 mile widening project, from Brady’s Hill Road (where U.S 1 has already been widened to six lanes) to the intersection of Va. 234 near the Potomac Shores neighborhood in Prince William County currently under construction — will cost $60 million, and Virginia transportation officials say there’s already $2.2 million of that ready to go to start work.
Town Mayor Jerry Foreman serves on the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority (NVTA), a board that determines which regional road projects will be funded with state tax dollars. He says Dumfries will move forward with a plan to place U.S. 1 widening on NVTA’s six-year funding plan, and that could mean the road would be widened about 10 years ahead of schedule.
More in a statement from Foreman:
A transportation project such as the Route l corridor (which is considered a major relief artery at the federal level) has been allowed to be piecemealed by partisan politics. The Town, working with the NVTA and VDOT should improve the remaining one mile of the town’s portion of Route 1 widening at the same time as the Route 1 and Route 234 improvements.
Rather than wait another five to ten years to improve the remaining one mile, politicians and VDOT should show fiduciary and planning acumen with taxpayer’s monies and properly widen all of Route 1 in the town in the same effort.
The improvements to U.S. 1 and Va. 234 cited in Foreman’s statement will be done as a new road, Potomac Shores Parkway, will be constructed to allow access to some 4,000 new homes to be built as part of Potomac Shores on the banks of the Potomac River.
The conventional thinking is, if construction crews are going to work to improve part of U.S. 1 at Dumfries, why not improve all of U.S. 1 through Dumfries?
The Dumfries Town Council is expected to approve the motion to lobby NTVA for funding for the widening project in September.
