Eric Torres was worried about how it might affect the environment, while Bob Fogg and Tim Welsh were more concerned with traffic in Spotsylvania County.
All three, though, were interested enough in the topic to attend a public meeting Wednesday night.
They were among more than 140 people who came to Virginia Credit Union Stadium in Fredericksburg for an open-house-style information session on the proposed construction of a new road crossing the Rappahannock River west of Interstate 95.
The meeting was held by the Fredericksburg Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, a regional transportation planning body, and it focused on five potential river crossing paths a consulting firm has been studying.
Each alternative would span from a point near Route 17 in Stafford County to one in Fredericksburg and was judged on several factors, including its impact on environmental and cultural resources, its effect on the existing transportation network, and public input.
No matter the route chosen, a new crossing would provide more north/south routes for local traffic, emergency responders, transit, and bicycle/pedestrian users, while reducing everyday reliance on trips accessing the I-95 corridor, according to FAMPO.
All options also would provide significant travel-time savings compared to not building anything, according to the consulting firm FAMPO hired, Michael Baker International.
The route chosen would need approval from FAMPO and from Fredericksburg and Stafford elected officials, and it wouldn’t be built for at least another 10 years.
It’s unclear exactly how much such a project would cost and how it would be funded, as well. The price would probably be more than $200 million, according to the agenda at Monday’s FAMPO meeting.
As of now, MBI has narrowed the five alternatives down to two preferred ones. One of those, labeled Option A, is located closer to I-95 and would start at Commerce Parkway in Stafford and end at Gordon W. Shelton Boulevard in Fredericksburg.
The other, called Option C, would be farther west and stretch from Celebrate Virginia Parkway in Stafford to Gordon W. Shelton Boulevard.
Option A would provide a lot of travel-time savings, and it has the least environmental impact of the alternatives examined. It also has garnered a high level of public support as the river-crossing study has progressed.
Option C also would mean travel-time savings, and it has a low level of environmental impact.
After taking into consideration more public comment, including the thoughts of Wednesday’s crowd, MBI will narrow the list of two preferred options down to one final proposed route. That determination will come sometime next year.
Torres, who has volunteered for the Friends of the Rappahannock advocacy group, said he came to Wednesday’s event because he wants to see the environmental impacts of a new river crossing minimized.
“So one of the things I’m thinking about is just the location, the placement, of the bridges,” said Torres, a junior at the University of Mary Washington.
Studies have shown that bridges can act as point sources of pollution, he said, so getting a new bridge as close as possible to the current I-95 spans is important. That would bring point sources together instead of creating a whole new point source somewhere else, thereby consolidating the environmental impacts.
That’s a reason many environmentalists favor Option A, Torres said.
Fogg, who lives in Spotsylvania, came to the meeting because he was interested in how the river crossings might affect traffic-heavy Route 3.
“I would like to have seen Route 3 get improved, but it doesn’t appear that any of these do improve [it] at all,” said Fogg, a former traffic engineer for the Virginia Department of Transportation and for a consulting firm.
He said he also would like to have seen another river crossing, one that would have been part of an eventual beltway around Fredericksburg, constructed when it was proposed several years ago.
“That was a big mistake the county made in not approving that,” he said of the Spotsylvania Board of Supervisors.
Welsh, who also lives in Spotsylvania, said he yelled at his county supervisors for not taking part in the current river-crossing study, which meant no locations in the locality were considered for a new crossing.
Maybe a new bridge shouldn’t be built on any of the proposed paths, he said.
“Maybe it should go farther west,” said Welsh, who chairs FAMPO’s Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee.
He said he supports having another bridge across the Rappahannock, but he thinks a new crossing should line up with Salem Church Road in Spotsylvania. Then traffic could start in Stafford, come south to Salem Church and take a four-lane road all the way to State Route 208.
FAMPO will continue to take public comment on the river-crossing study into the new year. For more information, see fampo.gwregion.org/riverstudy.
