County hosting BRT meeting Tuesday
Fairfax County will be hosting an information meeting on the Richmond Highway Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project Tuesday at Bryant High School.
The meeting is the first large informational meeting since January. However the county also hosted a number of smaller meetings this past summer.
At Tuesday’s meeting the county’s BRT project team will present new information about the system’s design and its projected property impacts, according to a flyer for the meeting.
The BRT project’s compete website can be viewed here.
BRT, which is currently projected to cost $735 million, is one of two major Richmond Highway-related transportation projects currently in their early stages. The other project is the Richmond Highway widening project, which will soon move into its right-of-way acquisition phase.
Together the two projects are part of a plan to transform the corridor in the coming decades. BRT will run down a widened Route 1 from the Huntington Metro station to Fort Belvoir. It will have stations in the each of the planned high-density community business centers (CBCs). Separated bike lanes and sidewalks will be on both sides of the road, and a number of intersections will be realigned.
At this point utilities are planned to remain above ground, but there has been an effort to include undergrounding utilities as part of the projects.
Construction for both projects is scheduled to begin in 2023, with the widening project — which only includes the area between Sherwood Hall Lane and Jeff Todd Way — scheduled to finish in 2025. Construction on the BRT project will happen in two stages: The first one includes the area between the Metro station and Hybla Valley, while the second covers Hybla Valley to Fort Belvoir. At present the project is in its preliminary design phase.
Tuesday’s meeting will include an open house from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m., and a presentation at 7 p.m., according to FCDOT. Bryant High School is located at 2709 Popkins Lane (see map).
The proposed BRT design seems more focused on moving people up and down Richmond Hwy on mass transit to the detriment of traffic going across the highway. The design proposes to block off cross traffic to and from Mount Vernon Plaza at Fordson Rd by making it right turn only north onto Richmond Hwy (at Buffalo Wild Wings). This will force more cars onto Boswell Ave which is already overloaded. A goal of revitalization is to increase interconnections within Richmond Hwy and blocking off Fordson Rd reduces the interconnections. Recommend neighbors attend this meeting.
This is a crock. Make pedestrians safer first before we have 10 ton behemoths poised to run them over.