PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY, Va. — A proposed pedestrian bridge at a dangerous Haymarket intersection is in limbo. In December 2022, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors voted unanimously to allocate $2 million for the project.
The bridge would provide a safe crossing for pedestrians over James Madison Highway also known as Route 15. The push for safety changes came after two 13-year old middle school students were killed in separate pedestrian crashes along the busy highway at the intersections of Graduation Drive and Dominion Valley Drive.
At Tuesday night's supervisors meeting, there was a resolution on the table to cancel the pedestrian project, citing funding concerns.
According to the resolution, during the engineering phase, the team determined the total cost of the project would be more than $23 million. With a price tag that high, based on cost benefit analysis, the resolution stated the project would be unlikely to receive grants or other sources of funding.
However, supervisors agreed Tuesday night to defer any vote on the resolution until February, directing county transportation staff to conduct an additional pedestrian safety study.
Parents in the neighboring Dominion Valley Country Club community have long expressed concerns for their kids who would cross the intersection to attend Battlefield High School, which is just past the traffic light. Parent Renee Brennan helped formally create the group Coalition for Route 15 Passage. She said she has been pleading for county and state officials to make major safety improvements and worries someone else will die if changes are not made.
"We simply want safe passage for our students to be educated to go to school," Brennan said. "We either want a bridge or a tunnel so no children need to be in this dangerous intersection."
County transportation staff is expected to have the results of the pedestrian study sometime in January 2024.