Prince William officials fear a new deal cooked up by state lawmakers to offer Metro $154 million in additional funding each year could imperil major road projects throughout the region, like improvements to Va. 28 or the widening of U.S. 1.
A compromise bill hashed out over the weekend by a small group of legislators would redirect tax revenue from a variety of sources to provide some relief to the troubled rail service, as lawmakers in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., work to come up with $500 million in dedicated annual funding for Metro to make badly needed repairs to tracks and trains. But lawmakers had to divert roughly $80 million from regional transportation projects administered by the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority to hit that dollar amount, perturbing officials in counties without Metro stations.
Prince William’s Board of County Supervisors passed a resolution in January warning lawmakers to avoid such a funding strategy, after then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe proposed a similar diversion of funds from the NVTA. With just a few steps left in the legislative process before the new Metro bill becomes law, county supervisors are sounding the alarm once more.
