The orange line shows where the bypass goes through Bull Run Regional Park. The stoplight at the top depicts where it will join Route 28 in Centreville.
Prince William County’s four-lane, Route 28 Bypass project will cut a devastating swath through Bull Run Regional Park in Fairfax County before tying into Route 28 in Centreville near Ordway and Compton roads. It’s also likely to increase traffic on Route 28 here because of all the additional vehicles that’ll take this new shortcut.
Yet not only isn’t this project on Fairfax County’s Comprehensive Plan, but the Board of Supervisors seems perfectly content to just let it happen – without any concern about Prince William’s encroachment on and damage to homes and property in Fairfax County.
Indeed, at an April 19 informational meeting held by Prince William transportation staff at Centreville Elementary, Supervisor Kathy Smith (D-Sully) – whose district and constituents will be directly impacted – remained silent the entire time, never asking a question or raising a single objection.
As a result, the 100 some residents attending were left to advocate for themselves. Referring to the fact that Fairfax County’s supervisors never even held a public hearing on this project that will adversely affect this county and one of its major parks, Virginia Run resident Jim Hart said, “Fairfax County was frozen out of the public-hearing process before the route was selected.”
The nearly $300 million road – aimed at reducing traffic congestion in Prince William – is now at the 30-percent design stage and should be at 60 percent by next spring. It’s planned to join Route 28 in Centreville at a new traffic signal south of Compton Road and east of Ordway.
Rami Bazlamit, principal engineer with Prince William’s Transportation Department, gave the project overview; and Robert Morris, with its designer, WSP, discussed the preliminary design.
And along the way, some nasty surprises for Fairfax County were revealed – including the fact that the environmental impacts on Bull Run Regional Park will be greater than residents here were initially led to believe, and that some five homes in Centreville will need to be taken to make room for the bypass tie-in.
At a virtual, informational meeting Prince William transportation officials held, Dec. 7, 2020, Prince William Transportation Department Planning Manager Paolo Belita said that, to minimize impacts on Bull Run Regional Park, the bypass’s design would follow Ordway Road and “would continue to be shifted away from the park.”
Yet people attending the recent meeting learned that the route has now been shifted farther west and will definitely go through the park, impacting its trees, land and wildlife and requiring a new bridge, plus a large amount of landfill to raise up the new road since it goes through a floodplain. And the road itself will be a four-lane, divided roadway with a median and a shared-use path along the northern lanes.
Bazlamit said they’ll have to submit an application to the Army Corps of Engineers to construct that road “because we’re affecting wetlands and streams. They’ll review the impacts to them and [our proposed] mitigation measures.” And Stuart Tyler, environmental specialist with Parsons Transportation Group, said his company has studied the environmental impacts, mapped the wetlands within the corridor and looked at the impact on animals and streams.
He said the new bridge in the park will be “higher and longer [than the current one] and will reduce the impact because it’ll be above the land and not on it.” Tyler also noted that an archaeological study will be done, “once we pin down the limits of disturbance caused by the design.”
He said they “don’t want runoff from the project to raise the flood levels, so stormwater management will handle it and will also treat this water.” Regarding the route through the park, Tyler said, “Based on the hydrology studies, we have to shift the alignment west of the existing bridge so we can keep traffic flowing while we build the new bridge. And that will cause impacts to Bull Run Regional Park that we were hoping to avoid.”
According to the project timeline, both counties will officially endorse the final design in fall 2024, with an estimated two years of construction beginning in 2026. Morris said they’re currently completing the traffic, drainage, floodplain and geotechnical reports.
“We did a whole new traffic study in February 2022, counting the cars at the intersections in the study area,” said Cody Smith, traffic engineer with Kimley-Horn. “And we adjusted the information to account for lower numbers caused by the pandemic.”
Since the tie-in site – which is also in a historic-resource area – is upstream from the Occoquan Reservoir and could potentially pose threats to the public’s water source, both during and after construction, a Centreville man asked how this project would impact it.
“The purpose of the stormwater-management pond is to treat the nutrients,” replied Tyler. “And we’ll talk to Fairfax Water.”
But Centreville’s Hart wasn’t assuaged. “The impacts on Bull Run Regional Park seem to be greater than what we were initially led to believe,” he said. “The new bridge will be about four-feet higher than the existing one, and