The Problem

The Route 15 highway between the Town of Leesburg and the Point of Rocks Bridge, a 12 mile section of the highway, was engineered to handle approximately 12,000 vehicles per day in the late 1940s and early 1950s.  Today’s volume of daily traffic is almost three times of what this highway was designed to handle creating both a safety and congestion problem.  This dangerous regional highway lacks medians and paved shoulders.  These necessary safety improvements are now further delayed by the Loudoun County staff who has recommended a 10-year project timeline to widen just a 3.5 mile section of road (that should take only 3 years to complete).  This 10-year project timeline is unacceptable and must be addressed and accelerated by Supervisor Geary Higgins (Catoctin District), Supervisor Kristen Umstattd (Leesburg District) and Supervisor Phyllis Randall (Board Chair)

Write to Supervisor Higgins at [email protected], Kristen Umstattd at [email protected] and Phyllis Randall at [email protected] to request that this project start NOW and be completed in a 3-year timeline – because these delays are putting our families and school children at risk of injury or loss of life.  Special interest groups continue to block safety and widening improvements through obstruction and delay tactics for decades!

Project schedule:

The DRAFT project schedule for Route 15 Widening – Battlefield Parkway to Montresor Road is presented below.  Loudoun County’s Department of Transportation and Capital Infrastructure (DTCI) created the schedule and presented it to the Finance/Government Operations and Economic Development Committee for the Capital Project and Procurement Process (see Item 12 of the June 14, 2016 Finance/Government Operations and Economic Development Committee meeting).  Additional project development information was obtained from VDOT:  VDOT Project Development Process flow chart and VDOT – How a road gets built. 

The DTCI states that “overall, depending on the various issues associated with a roadway project, including the size and complexity, the entire project delivery from the point of appropriation in the CIP for a design-bid-build project can take from 36 months to 86 months to complete with full project closeout to follow.”