Active Prince William

Advancing active mobility in greater Prince William, Virginia

Category: Trails (Page 1 of 2)

Our Statement at the CTB’s 2025 NoVA District Pre-Allocation Hearing

May 12, 2025 / / 0 Comments

On May 8, 2025, Active Prince William’s co-chair, Allen Muchnick, delivered the following statement at the Commonwealth Transportation Board’s spring 2025 Six-Year Improvement Program public hearing for VDOT’s Northern Virginia District:

Commonwealth Transportation Board’s Pre-Allocation Public Hearing for the Northern Virginia District, May 8, 2025, Statement of Allen Muchnick, Co-Chair, Active Prince William

Good evening.  I’m Allen Muchnick, co-chair of Active Prince William.  We advocate for improved active mobility and public transportation throughout greater Prince William, for healthy, livable, equitable, and sustainable communities.

Last December, VDOT’s NoVA District office released an analysis of the roughly 5,000 miles of locally planned but currently unfunded active transportation facilities throughout the District.  That non-exhaustive analysis estimated the present-dollar (2022) cost to create those already planned active mobility facilities to total roughly 14 billion dollars.

At the present rate at which standalone active mobility projects are funded, it would take hundreds of years to complete those already planned active mobility facilities.  The NoVA region needs a study to figure out how to more effectively fund active mobility infrastructure.

Since 2010, VDOT’s roadway reconfiguration program has wisely reallocated excess travel lane space in Fairfax County, to cost-effectively retrofit bike lanes and pedestrian safety improvements on many dozens of roadways during scheduled resurfacing, while also reducing speeding.  However, Prince William and Loudoun Counties have largely been excluded from this program, because their local transportation planners were not notified early enough of the candidate road resurfacing projects.  We urge VDOT’s maintenance division to extend this earlier notification of repaving candidates to all Virginia counties.

The alignment of US Bicycle Route 1 through Prince William County is a prime example where retrofitted bike lanes or paved shoulders are desperately needed.  Although AASHTO and VDOT established this route more than 40 years ago and a VDOT consultant re-evaluated the route’s alignment through NoVA more than a decade ago, the bicycling conditions on several Prince William route segments just get worse.  The County’s online Bicycle Skill Level Map labels Old Bridge Road, part of Minnieville Rd, Aden Rd, and Fleetwood Dr—all lacking bicycle facilities and posted at 45-MPH–as “Roads to Avoid” and tags Hoadly Rd and Tanyard Hill Rd as “Low Comfort”.  VDOT’s 2015 Bicycle Level of Service Map for the NoVA District rated those segments similarly.  It’s long past time for VDOT and the County to fix those embarrassing and potentially deadly deficiencies.

Despite the hundreds of miles of VDOT-owned shared-use paths and sidewalks throughout the NoVA District, VDOT still performs little maintenance and repair of such assets, except in response to reported complaints.  After construction, the pavement is left to deteriorate for decades and is fixed only after repeated complaints.  VDOT still has no annual budget or established policies and procedures to adequately and proactively assess and maintain its active mobility assets.  As a first step, the Virginia Transportation Research Council might be asked to study how to best accomplish this perpetual maintenance.

Thank you for this opportunity to comment.

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Our Recommendations for PWC’s Traffic Safety Action Plan

May 6, 2025 / / 0 Comments

 

On May 5, 2025,  Active Prince William submitted the following recommended programmatic actions for Prince William County’s Comprehensive Traffic Safety Action Plan that is now under development.  We look forward to seeing our recommendations incorporated in the adopted plan and implemented by PWCDOT and VDOT in the years to come.  View our official comment letter.

Active Prince William’s Recommended Programmatic Actions for Prince William County’s Safe Streets and Roads for All Action Plan

1) Reduce the design speed for all commercial arterial roadways (e.g., Richmond Highway, Sudley Road, Centreville Road, Dale Boulevard) to 35 MPH or less.  Speed kills.  If VDOT is willing to reduce the posted speed limit on parts of US-1 to 35 MPH in Fairfax County and to 25 MPH in Arlington County (with the local governing body’s concurrence), it will do the same in Prince William County.

2) Avoid and eliminate right-turn-only lanes on commercial arterial roadways, to shorten the crossing distance for pedestrians, lower vehicle speeds and improve yielding behavior at intersections, and reduce traffic crashes.

3) Eliminate overly wide (e.g., all 12-ft) travel lanes and excess roadway capacity through roadway reconfigurations (e.g., lane diets and road diets).   Wide and unwarranted travel lanes promote speeding and consume valuable public street space that could be reallocated to better accommodate non-vehicular travel modes and/or turning or parked vehicles.

 4) Establish a robust roadway reconfiguration program–in conjunction with scheduled VDOT roadway resurfacing projects–to retrofit bike lanes and pedestrian safety improvements, at little or no cost to Prince William County, through lane diets and road diets.   As Fairfax County DOT has accomplished for well over a decade, roadway reconfigurations during scheduled VDOT resurfacing projects can substantially and cost effectively expand a locality’s bikeway network and improve pedestrian comfort and safety.

5) Improve intersection safety for pedestrians, where warranted, by installing pedestrian crossing signals with Leading Pedestrian Intervals, high-visibility (and raised) crosswalks, and improved street lighting.  Reduce pedestrian crossing distances with lane reductions, bike lanes, pedestrian refuges, and/or curb extensions (aka bulb outs), and slow turning vehicles by reducing curb- return radii.

6) Add signalized pedestrian crossings of commercial arterials where the existing signalized crossings are too widely spaced.

7) Improve sidewalk safety and comfort for pedestrians and reduce mid-block traffic crashes by consolidating commercial driveway entrances and by installing raised medians during road reconstruction and rehabilitation projects.  Meanwhile, all existing driveway aprons on sidewalks should receive high-visibility crosswalk markings until such driveway aprons are eventually removed.

8) Grade separate all trail crossings of multilane roadways, especially as part of interchange construction projects.  Install raised crosswalks at at-grade sidewalk and trail crossings to enhance the visibility and reinforce the right-of-way of crosswalk users and to slow approaching traffic.

9) Ensure that all roadway crossings of streams are planned, designed, and effectively inventoried by VDOT to accommodate existing and future stream valley trails beneath the roadway or within the steam culvert.

10) Avoid and eliminate all at-grade sidewalk and trail crossings of multilane turn lanes or highway ramps, to preclude dual-threat or multi-threat crossing situations, where the drivers in every lane must stop for (or yield to) vulnerable road users and already-stopped vehicles may block the view of crossing pedestrians.

11) Install signs, pavement markings, and flashing beacons, as appropriate, to alert turning drivers to crossing vulnerable road users at free-flow right-turn lanes (aka slip lanes).

12) Ensure that all segments of US Bicycle Route 1 within Prince William County attain an acceptable Bicycle Level of Service (BLOS) of C or better, through roadway reconfigurations, route realignments, paved shoulder retrofits, and/or shared-use path construction or reconstruction, following up on this circa 2013 route evaluation.  The deficient route segments currently include Fleetwood Dr, Aden Rd, Joplin Rd, Bristow Rd, Hoadly Rd, Minnieville Rd, Old Bridge Rd, and Tanyard Hill Rd.

13) Establish Prince William County procedures for snow and ice removal from sidewalks and shared-use paths, especially along bus routes.  VDOT, by established policy, does not remove snow or ice from its sidewalks or shared-use paths, but after the roads have been cleared, sidewalks, paths, and bus stops may be blocked for many days and even weeks by mounds of plowed snow and ice, forcing pedestrians and bus riders to walk in the roadway.  Do Prince William County and its four towns have and enforce snow-removal ordinances?  Could volunteers be enlisted to adopt a road segment for snow clearing?  Are both the County and PWCS equipped and mandated to remove snow and ice on sidewalks and paths that front PWC- or PWCS-owned parcels?

14) Establish and enforce Prince William County procedures to ensure the maintenance of traffic (MOT) for people using sidewalks or shared-use paths during nearby construction projects.

15) Establish programs to identify, inspect, prioritize, and annually fund the construction, repair, replacement, and upgrade of sidewalks and shared-use paths, by the County and by VDOT.

16) Establish a program to identify, prioritize, fund, build, and maintain neighborhood cut-through paths that connect low-traffic subdivision streets.

17) Develop and promote a bicycle comfort level (level of traffic stress) map for Prince William County, building upon a previous effort.

18) Establish a PWC quick-build program to test road reconfiguration concepts in a cost-effective and timely manner.

19) Implement a strategic and data-driven program of automated traffic law enforcement to the fullest extent allowed by the Commonwealth of Virginia.

20) Continuously track and report annually on traffic crashes, injuries, and fatalities to identify their leading causes and locations and to monitor progress.

21) Develop a strategic and comprehensive active transportation master plan for Prince William County, guided by an expert team of outside consultants.

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Virginia Bicycling Federation’s 2025 Legislative Asks Presented to Prince William Legislators

January 11, 2025 /

On December 19, 2024, the nine members of Prince William’s state legislative delegation depicted above held a pre-session town hall meeting to discuss their individual priorities for the coming legislative session and to hear from their constituents.  Active Prince William Co-Chair Allen Muchnick, who has also served on the Virginia Bicycling Federation’s board of directors since 1994, presented the statement below to summarize the Federation’s current state legislative priorities.

Prince William State Legislative Delegation Pre-Session Virtual Town Hall, December 19, 2024, Statement of Allen Muchnick, Virginia Bicycling Federation

Good evening.  I’m Allen Muchnick.  I live in the City of Manassas, and I’m a long-time board member of the Virginia Bicycling Federation.

In recent years, the Virginia Bicycling Federation has focused on reforming Virginia’s traffic laws to improve the safety and comfort of people bicycling on Virginia’s roadways.  Specifically, we have sought to remove dangerous and needless restrictions on bicycling two-abreast within a standard travel lane, to allow bike riders to treat stop signs as yield signs under limited circumstances, and to allow bike riders to start crossing a signalized intersection with the pedestrian Walk signal.  Between legislative sessions, we met with VDOT and State Police representatives to find common ground and iron out bill language, and our bills have been well supported by the House and Senate Democrats.   However, due to strong opposition emanating from the current Secretary of Transportation near the end of the 2024 session, we are not seeking such legislation for the coming Session.

Expanding the local authority for automated speed enforcement would be an effective way to reduce our current epidemic of traffic violence, especially pedestrian fatalities.  With the increased use of speed cameras in school zones across Virginia, support has grown to allow automated speed enforcement at any high-crash location.  We hope this expanded authority is enacted in 2025.

For the 2025 Session, the Virginia Bicycling Federation is currently seeking patrons to carry three pre-filed bills:

  • A bill to establish point-of-sale rebates for electric-assisted bicycle purchases has been pre-filed by Delegate Thomas, who patroned a similar bill in 2024.  E-bike rebates are currently in place in 10 states, and this bill, like others, would focus the rebate on low-income individuals.  E-bikes have been found to effectively replace many local motor vehicle trips and to expand mobility options for low-income households.
  • A second bill would tweak Virginia’s bicycling laws to overcome VDOT’s current objection to installing bicycle signals on two-way cycle tracks and shared-use paths.
  • Finally, we seek an authoritative study by JLARC (or possibly the Virginia Transportation Research Council) to prompt VDOT to adequately and proactively maintain its pedestrian and bicycle facilities. To this day, VDOT has no dedicated funding or asset management program to adequately maintain its pedestrian and bicycle facilities, and it’s been 22 years since JLARC last completed a comprehensive assessment of VDOT’s highway maintenance and operations programs.

Thank you for your consideration and for this public comment opportunity.

 

Promote Public Input on New Transportation Funding Requests BEFORE the Local Governing Body’s Endorsement

February 19, 2024 /

Active Prince William believes that early and proactive community involvement in the development of significant transportation improvement and planning projects would better integrate the community’s needs and preferences into the selection and scope of those projects.

Presently, however, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors (and the local governing bodies for greater Prince William’s cities and towns) routinely endorse staff recommendations for non-local transportation funding requests with minimal public notice or opportunities for citizen comment.

Typically, the public first learns of such funding requests for new transportation projects by discovering them on a Consent Agenda for an upcoming governing body meeting, held before any public comment period.  This lack of transparent decision-making, limited public notice, and precluded public comment effectively deprives the public of any opportunity to meaningfully influence the nature and scope of the transportation projects that are advanced for funding.

In the Fall of 2023, we included the following question in our survey for all Prince William Board of County Supervisor candidates:

Question 1: Do you support requiring the PWC [Prince William County] Department of Transportation to hold advertised public hearings before the Board of County Supervisors [BOCS] is scheduled to endorse any future applications for regional (e.g., NVTA, NVTC Commuter Choice), state, or federal transportation improvement funds?

Four of the current BOCS members (Andrea Bailey, Deshundra Jefferson, Bob Weir, and Margaret Franklin) responded “Yes”, three others (Victor Angry, Tom Gordy, and Kenny Boddye) selected “Need more information”, and nobody selected “No”.

To not burden the already-crowded BOCS meeting agendas, this public comment on the County’s proposed new transportation funding requests could be solicited at standalone public meetings or at a scheduled meeting of an appropriate advisory body, such as the Prince William County Planning Commission.  Ideally, however, 1) public input would also be solicited online, 2) any staff presentation and advertised public hearing would include a virtual meeting component, and 3) the PWC Department of Transportation would be required to provide both a written summary of the public comments received and a written response to those public comments.

Since non-local transportation funding programs typically have an annual or biennial schedule for new project submissions that is announced many months in advance, the Prince William County Department of Transportation should be able to present all their proposals for new transportation projects being considered in the coming months at one or two consolidated advertised public hearings each year.

We call on the Prince William Board of County Supervisors to issue a directive to the Prince William County Executive with the following components:

  1.  Require the Prince William County Department of Transportation (PWC DOT) to present–for public comment at an advertised public hearing–any proposed first-time request for regional, state, or federal funding for a new transportation or trail capital project or planning activity, in advance of bringing that funding request to the Board of County Supervisors for its endorsement.
  2. Cite all applicable non-local funding programs, including the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority’s (NVTA) 70% and 30% funds; federal RSTP or CMAQ allocations which are endorsed by the NVTA; the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission’s (NVTC) I-66 and I-95/I-395 Commuter Choice programs; National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (TPB) technical assistance grants (e.g., Transportation-Land Use Connections, Transit within Reach, Regional Roadway Safety Program); Transportation Alternatives Set-Aside requests submitted to either the TPB or VDOT; VDOT’s SMART SCALE, Revenue Sharing, and HSIP programs; the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation’s Recreational Trails Program; USDOT discretionary grant programs (e.g., RAISE, SS4A); Congressional earmark requests; and the Federal Transit Administration’s Enhanced Mobility Program.
  3. Allow the PWC DOT to conduct these public hearings at any appropriate venue that includes online viewing and public comment submission components, including at scheduled Planning Commission meetings.
  4. Specify that the public hearing must be held at least 30 to 60 days before the endorsement request is scheduled to be placed on the BOCS agenda.
  5. Require the PWC DOT to compile a written summary of–and response to–the public comments received and include that summary with the other BOCS meeting materials when they present their funding request for BOCS approval.

We believe that the process outlined above would provide valuable community input–near the very beginning of the project development process–for both the PWC Department of Transportation and the Board of County Supervisors.

The Rte 234/Brentsville Rd Interchange Needs Better Bike & Ped Access to and from Bus. Rte 234/Dumfries Rd

February 11, 2024 /

Routing for bicyclists and pedestrians in the approved Route 234/Brentsville Road Interchange Project design

In early February 2024, Active Prince William asked the Prince William County Department of Transportation to improve pedestrian and bicycle access and safety between the Business Route 234/Dumfries Road corridor in the vicinity of Godwin Drive and the Route 234/Brentsville Road Interchange project, which is nearing the end of its construction.  County staff replied that they will look into our request but did not commit to any action.  Our written request is copied below.

Potomac Local’s recent update on the Route 234/Brentsville Road Interchange project reported that this $55 million project is currently $2 million under budget.

We are inquiring about the County’s plans for safe and convenient pedestrian and bicycle access along the Business Route 234/Dumfries Road corridor between the new interchange and the City of Manassas.  From previous correspondence, Mr. Belita indicated a ten-foot wide shared use path will be built along the west side of Business Route 234/Dumfries Road between the Bradley Cemetery Way area and Godwin Drive.

We firmly believe that 10-foot wide shared use paths are needed along both sides of Business Route 234 to provide reasonable and much-needed pedestrian and bicycle access to and from this Interchange.

Along the west side of Business Route 234, the shared-use path between at least Godwin Drive and the Bradley Cemetery Way area will provide safe foot and bicycle access to and from Godwin Drive heading west (including to the adjacent Mayfield Trace community) and could also connect to a future northwestern extension of the regionally significant shared-use path along the Prince William Parkway leading from the Brentsville Road Interchange.  In addition, the nearest shared-use path within the City of Manassas is along the west side of Business Route 234, between Hastings Drive and Donner Drive.

Along the east side of Business Route 234, a shared-use path from the Bradley Cemetery Way area would provide optimal access to the shared-use paths being built within this Interchange project that a) head south to cross over Route 234 to reach both Brentsville Rd heading south and the existing regional path along southbound Route 234 and that b) meander east through the Interchange to reach Liberia Avenue Extended/Route 294 toward Manassas.

A shared-use path along the east side of Business Route 234 would optimally connect to the existing Bradley Square townhome development and the proposed Bradley South (REZ2003-00027) development.  From Bradley Manor Place, the existing Bradley Square subdivision streets readily lead to South Grant Avenue in the City of Manassas, a pleasant, existing low-traffic route for bicycling and walking that connects to Wellington Road (and from there to downtown Manassas via multiple routes).

We are disappointed that the current Bradley South rezoning proposal is rather inhospitable for bicycling and walking.  Business Route 234/Dumfries Road would have a 50 MPH design speed and a 45 MPH posted speed limit, and the developer of Bradley South would only be required to proffer a sidewalk along the east side of Dumfries Rd.  By contrast, the connecting segment of Dumfries Road at the south end of the City of Manassas has only a 35 MPH posted speed limit (which is better but also too high in our opinion).

Furthermore, with continued residential, commercial, and mixed-use development along the Business Route 234/Dumfries Road corridor (including the Prince William County Fairgrounds), just south of the Manassas City Limits, the density of development will be comparable to that planned along Centreville Road (Route 28) in Yorkshire.

We ask that the budget surplus from this project and proffers from the Bradley South rezoning be used to provide a 10-foot wide shared-use path along the east side of that roadway (Dumfries Rd), from the Bradley Cemetery Way area to at least Bradley Manor Place.

Beyond that, to the extent feasible, the Interchange Project budget should also provide much-needed pedestrian infrastructure for crossing Business Route 234/Dumfries Road at Godwin Drive, including high-visibility crosswalks, at least one raised pedestrian crossing refuge within the roadway median, and either a pedestrian-activated crossing beacon (e.g., HAWK signal) or a conventional traffic signal with full pedestrian crossing components for at least two of the existing intersection legs.

Please let us know how the Route 234/Brentsville Road Interchange Project will suitably accommodate active mobility to and from the already well populated Business Route 234/Dumfries Road corridor.

Without safe and convenient foot and bike connections to the new Interchange from Business Route 234, the new Interchange will degrade active mobility to and from that populated corridor, and the new active transportation infrastructure within the interchange will be very underutilized.  Waiting five or more years for possible future rezonings along Business Route 234/Dumfries Road is not acceptable to complete these critical sections.

If the surplus funds from the Interchange project cannot be tapped to build either another shared-use path or a signalized pedestrian crossing of Business Route 234/Dumfries Road at Godwin Drive, we believe that low-cost or no-cost alternative interim improvements could readily be implemented along the east side of Business Route 234/Dumfries Road that would still substantially improve pedestrian and bicycle access and safety between the Bradley Cemetery Way area and Bradley Manor Place.

Google Street View shows that–before the Interchange was constructed–the paved width of Business Route 234/Dumfries Road was already about four or five lanes wide (i..e., 48 to 60 feet of asphalt pavement) for most of the distance between Bradley Cemetery Way and Bradley Manor Place.  There appears to be only a short stretch between Godwin Drive and the south end of Bradley Square where the pavement narrows to about 36 feet, but only two lanes are presently needed for vehicular travel along that segment.

Thus, the restriping of that roadway segment (with or without any asphalt resurfacing) should allow for at least a continuous 10-foot or wider northbound paved shoulder area leading up to the long right-turn-only lane approaching Bradley Manor Place.  That shoulder area could be protected from roadway traffic with some sort of hard physical barrier to serve as an interim shared-use path along the east side of Business Route 234/Dumfries Road between the Bradley Cemetery Way area and Bradley Manor Place.

This recent photo (below) of northbound Route 234 Business/Dumfries Road near Bradley Cemetery Way shows that a wide paved shoulder is already present at that location.  While less wide than optimal, that existing paved shoulder could serve as an interim two-way shared-use path if it’s protected from the roadway traffic with a suitable hard barrier.

Northbound Business Route 234/Dumfries Road just north of the Interchange on February5, 2024

In addition, a striped conventional bike lane in each direction may also be feasible.  In the southbound direction, a striped on-road bike lane would be especially useful, from the Manassas City Line to Godwin Drive, for the dozens of bicyclists who participate in Bull Run Bicycles Tuesday Evening Shop Ride, almost every Tuesday evening during daylight saving time.  South of Godwin Drive, a southbound bike lane should not be needed because a new shared-use path will be located along that segment.

Finally, we again request that whatever pedestrian and bicycling improvements cannot be accomplished under the current Interchange project become required proffers as part of the Bradley South rezoning.

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