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in October. “But that’s about as detailed as we are.”
Just how preliminary is the highway^ status?
The list of highway allocations for fiscal year 1986-87 includes a category for critical highway improvement programs to be financed with revenue from the gas tax increase approved by the Virginia General Assembly last year.
In the Culpeper District, the critical list includes nine miles of the outer beltway - or Western Washington Bypass, as referred to by VDH & T — running from Stafford to the Prince William‘County line. The allocation for environmental studies (or preliminary engineering) is $200,000 in 1986-87 and $300,000 in 1987-88. The Fredericksburg District, for its part of the environmental analysis, will get $100,000 in 1986-87 and $240,000 in 1987-88 for 12.6 miles. For preliminary engineering of 34 miles from the Fauquier County line through Prince William and Loudoun to the Potomac River, the Northern Virginia District is allocated $282,000 this year and $122,000 next year.
That’s the $1.24 million which the Loudoun Times Mirror said will be spent on “planning the unwanted road.”
The money coming to these counties for the critical highway improvement program would come whether or not it is slated for preliminary engineering on the outer beltway, according to the state’s secretary of transportation, Vivian Watts. At a recent highway meeting in Fredericksburg, Mrs. Watts was asked just that question by Georgia Herbert, attorney for the Warrenton-based Piedmont Environmental Council. Mrs. Watts explained that the gas tax revenue is allocated to localities on the basis of the state’s road formula and would have been forthcoming regardless of the road project it pays for.
Virginia’s Department of Highways and Transportation and the Governor’s Commission on Transportation in the 21st Century included the Western Washington Bypass on Virginia’s list of “present day” highway needs. At $503 million, it tops the list in cost. And that figure may be drastically underestimated. In its study, the federal
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