On June 6th, Councilmembers Jon Stehle and Janice Miller will be hosting a session to discuss the redesigned University Drive plans. There will also be a City Council meeting and vote on June 13th. Mark your calendars for both Tuesdays. We need a large turn-out again. ____________________________________ When: Tuesday, June 6th from 7 PM - 8 PM Where: Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers 10030 Fairfax Blvd, Fairfax, Virginia 22030 ____________________________________ There are plenty of reasons to continue to be concerned and skeptical about this new road design: 1. In the past month, a car hit a utility pole and flipped over on its side on University Drive in broad daylight. The driver was carted off on a stretcher. There is no data that shows that this new design will reduce the previous estimates of a 15-25% increase in traffic on University Drive. Demand that councilmembers vote against any project that will increase traffic on University Drive. 2. The traffic study indicated a worsening of traffic at intersections throughout Northfax. Taxpayers shouldn't pay for projects that make traffic worse. This redesign doesn’t address that. Demand that taxpayer dollars not be squandered on projects that worsen traffic. 3. The new design shows curb cuts all along the new roadway. Those curb cuts imply that the road will be surrounded by parking lots, making it in effect less walkable than it is today. What happened to the walkable community concept? Council has also said there will be no tree lined streets, as presented in the master plan. Demand a clear plan for the future, not a half-baked rush to spend $10M taxpayer dollars, with $7.5M to private landowners, just because we can. 4. The new design takes up more land yet the city has said they don't expect a cost increase. How the costs have stayed the same when the road is longer and requires more right of way acquisition is unclear. However, what is interesting is that if the cost estimate changes by more than 10%, the project is supposed to be rescored. Is it realistic that the costs haven’t changed? If the costs now exceed $10M, are city taxpayers paying for the excess? 5. Demand that the project be rescored both because the project was awarded funding before the traffic study was done and because the new design could potentially lead to much higher costs. 6. Ask why we’re so afraid to give back the money. Are we afraid VDOT won’t want to award us Smart Scale funding in the future? If we spend $10M on a project that ends up being bad for Northfax, doesn’t that look worse than if we evaluated the project carefully and gave back the money instead of just trying to “make it work”? 7. The vision for additional roads to complete a road network implies significant additional right of way acquisition for potential future streets. The City has not yet estimated the future costs of additional right of way acquisition to complete the road network. Request a complete estimate of the future costs for Northfax. See if the council is prepared to pay for that using city taxpayer dollars without additional awards from VDOT. If it looks like the future acquisition costs are prohibitive, demand transparency. If it looks like city taxpayers are looking at large future bills for the road network in Northfax, demand transparency. It's entirely possible that we'll just end up with a cut-thru and nothing else. 8. The University Drive road extension is going to take 5 years to build. We’re therefore looking at an empty Northfax for at least ~6-8 years. With Fairfax Circle also empty, that's the last thing we need. Why aren’t we looking at development plans that developers can proceed with right away without the road? 9. The new design either leaves very awkward parcels of land that don’t align to the grid design or implies a consolidation of additional properties. If consolidation is necessary before commercial development, how much further out does that push the timeline? 10. If the consolidation doesn't happen, we end up with a bunch of very oddly shaped land segments that might not be attractive to commercial developers. Demand that council votes against any plan that leaves Northfax fragmented before we even know how and what developers will be able to build there.