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“People are a little bit like rats. They tend to follow roads and sewers,” said Richard McNear, warning Rappahannock’s supervisors that a proposed superhighway through the Northern Piedmont will bring hordes that even a Pied Piper of Hamlin can’t control.
Mr. McNear was at the board’s December meeting in his official capacity as head of Fauquier County’s planning department and at the request of the Fauquier County Board of Supervisors. He came with a warning: Virginia’s highway planners are proposing a western Washington bypass or outer beltway which will run from Fredericksburg to Leesburg, cutting through Fauquier and Prince William counties.
Its eight lanes of asphalt will bring intense development pressures not only to the counties which will be crossed but to Rappahannock and other neighboring jurisdictions, Mr. McNear said. “A new outer beltway will bring pressure here like the existing beltway brought to Prince William.”
“This is going to impact all of us,” he predicted, adding that Fauquier’s supervisors view the plans for the outer beltway “with extreme concern.” Already, $1.2 million has been allocated for preliminary engineering and “there’s been no input from any local government or any citizen,” Mr. McNear reported.
The money comes to the Commonwealth Transportation Board from the gas tax increase approved in the last regular session of Virginia’s General Assembly. That board has sole authority over expenditure of the special highway funds. “They don’t need to go back to the legislature, the governor or anybody,” Mr. McNear told the supervisors.
“I think it’s really important that this county and other counties understand the magnitude of the impact of the outer beltway,” Fauquier’s planning chief continued. “I don’t think it takes a whole lot of imagination to see 30, 20, maybe 10 years from now what a superhighway with an interchange every five miles is going to do to this area.”
No county by itself has a chance. ;o influence the highway planning process, Mr. McNear said, but a coordinated effort by local governments may achieve results. “That’s why I’m here today - to sound the
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