FAIRFAX CITY, VA — Fairfax City Council members unanimously approved a $725,551 construction contract Tuesday night for improvements to University Drive that will add bike lanes, reduce portions of the roadway from four travel lanes to two and make pedestrian safety improvements near Layton Hall Drive.
The council voted to award the contract to Arthur Construction Company Inc., a Virginia-based contractor located in Falls Church. The award is contingent on approval by the Virginia Department of Transportation.
The project will add on-road bike lanes between the Old Town Plaza and library garage area and Layton Hall Drive, while retaining shared lanes through the busier portion of Old Town. University Drive north of Old Town currently carries about 9,500 to 10,000 vehicles per day, and city analysis found that converting the road to one travel lane in each direction with a center turn lane would not cause a significant increase in traffic delays.
"We're balancing the safety and the comfort of bicycle riders with the ability to keep moving vehicle traffic," Multimodal Transportation Planner Chloe Ritter told the council. "This was intentionally designed to make sure that we're not having significant impacts on the traffic at all of these different intersections."
The project dates to the city's adoption of the Old Town and Northfax Small Area Plans in 2020, which envisioned University Drive as part of a pedestrian and bicycle "spine" connecting Northfax, Old Town and George Mason University. The city's 2021 Bicycle Master Plan subsequently recommended a road diet and bike lanes on University Drive.
Under the approved design, the existing four-lane section north of Old Town will be converted to one vehicle lane in each direction, a center turn lane where needed and bike lanes along both sides of the roadway.
The bike lanes will begin and end near the entrances to the Old Town Plaza and library garages. South of that point through Old Town, bicyclists and motorists will continue to share travel lanes. City officials said heavier turning movements in Old Town made extending the road diet farther south impractical under the current design.
At Layton Hall Drive, the project will remove a northbound right-turn lane and convert a westbound slip lane into a conventional right turn. Crosswalks will be moved closer to the intersection, a new crosswalk will be installed across the south leg and a median refuge island will be added.
Green pavement markings will also be installed at intersections and other potential conflict areas. An uphill bike lane will receive an additional painted buffer.
The city considered installing flex posts or another physical barrier between bicycles and vehicles but did not recommend them because of concerns about fire-truck access and snow removal. Ritter said barriers could be considered later.
Councilmember Stacy Hall said she supports bike lanes but questioned whether the city's different approaches to bicycle infrastructure — including bike lanes, shared-use paths and other facilities — could be confusing.
"I am all for bike lanes. I don't love these bike lanes," Hall said. "I just think it's mixed messaging. I think it can be confusing."
Ritter said the city intentionally uses a "context-sensitive" approach rather than applying the same type of bicycle facility everywhere. Traffic, pedestrian activity, surrounding land uses and demand for such things as on-street parking vary significantly along the corridor, she said.
Councilmember Billy Bates defended the approach, saying University Drive has different characteristics from larger city roads such as Fairfax Boulevard, Pickett Road and Germantown Road.
"I think that our staff are the experts, and they put a lot of due diligence into this, and I think that this solution makes sense here," Bates said.
Bates also noted that the project is largely confined to the existing roadway and does not require acquiring property.
"I think that this is perhaps the lowest-impact form of multimodal improvement, where we're not even disturbing the land around the roadway," he said.
City staff said University Drive has more roadway capacity than its current traffic requires. A typical road diet can be considered on streets carrying fewer than about 16,000 vehicles daily, Ritter said, while University Drive carries roughly 10,000.
Traffic has also declined rather than increased in recent years. Daily traffic was around 11,000 vehicles in 2017 and 2018, compared with approximately 9,500 to 9,600 last year.
The city's 2023 traffic analysis assumed traffic would grow by 0.5 percent annually over 10 years and incorporated projected traffic from nearby development. Even under those assumptions, analysis of weekday and Saturday peak periods found no significant increase in delay from the bike lane project.
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Recent counts at University Drive and Whitehead Street found about 50 people per hour using the crosswalks and approximately three bicycles per hour traveling in the roadway.
Councilmember Tom Peterson asked whether the project could encourage more people to bicycle without worsening vehicle congestion.
"This is not going to make traffic congestion better, but it's not going to make it worse," Ritter said.
She said the goal is also to provide a facility that people who aren't comfortable riding alongside cars can use.
"Some people will ride down University Drive as it is, but a lot of people won't feel comfortable until we give them their own lane," Ritter said.
The city is separately studying circulation through Old Town, which could determine whether bicycle improvements can eventually be extended farther south.
Councilmember Anthony Amos praised planned changes at Layton Hall Drive and also supported separate restriping proposed at University Drive and Kenmore Drive, where city officials say drivers frequently fail to stop at the existing stop sign.
"I've seen a significant number of people blitz straight through and even hit the crosswalk without a second thought, and that's become kind of normalized," Amos said.
The Kenmore work is not part of the federally funded bike lane project but could be coordinated with its construction.
The city received six bids after soliciting more than 1,000 potential bidders. Arthur Construction's $725,551 bid was about 29 percent below the engineer's estimate of approximately $1.02 million and 35 percent below the average of the bids received.
The city received $1.14 million in Transportation Alternatives funding for the project and has spent about $200,000 so far, leaving approximately $940,000 available. The construction contract is therefore fully funded within the existing appropriation.
Councilmember Stacey Hardy-Chandler moved to award the contract, with Peterson seconding. Councilmembers Anthony Amos, Billy Bates, Stacy Hall, Hardy-Chandler, Rachel McQuillen and Peterson all voted in favor.
Construction remains contingent on VDOT approval.
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