July 25, 2002
By the end of August drivers should be able to take Wiehle Avenue from Reston across Fairfax County Parkway into Herndon, where the road will intersect with Dranesville Road near Herndon High School.
But the Fairfax County Department of Transportation, which is funding the project, is hesitant to give a specific date for the opening of the road. Depending on the amount of delays, the stretch of road might not open until after Labor Day, on Sept. 2. If no delays occur, though, the project might open before the last week in August.
"In the past we have had utility conflicts," said Nahid Farsad, project engineer with the Fairfax County Department of Transportation. "If it starts raining and keeps raining we cannot have the contractors working out there. Sometimes things happen, but hopefully nothing will."
SOME MINOR CONSTRUCTION projects need to be finished, and the road needs to pass some Virginia Department of Transportation inspections, before opening.
Larry Ichter, chief of the transportation design branch of the Fairfax County Department of Public Works and Environmental Services, said the road will be an "integral part of the transportation network in that area." Wiehle Avenue, when finished, will be the only road between Route 7 and Baron Cameron Avenue that connects Reston and Herndon.
"This will provide a bypass for people traveling on Fairfax County Parkway," Ichter said. "They will be able to get off and go over to Dranesville Road, instead of having to go through the town of Herndon."
THE NEW STRETCH of road will be the third phase of a project that was approved for funding 14 years ago, in a 1988 Fairfax County bond referendum. The overall project, at a cost of $15.9 million, also included road widening and turn lane installation on Dranesville Road, along with the extension of Wiehle Avenue from Reston Avenue to Fairfax County Parkway. That last extension of Wiehle Avenue was finished two years ago.
"In the 1980s the county determined that we needed a lot more transportation improvements than what the state could provide," Ichter said. "We got a lot of bond money approved. And this is probably the largest project we're doing now."
Ichter said the Wiehle Avenue extension is a "large project, but not out of the realm of what we have done."