Prince William County, a suburban county south of the Washington Metropolitan Area, is going to be receiving a lot of new major road improvements in the coming years, including new interchanges and intersection improvements along Prince William Parkway (VA 234/294) and miscellaneous improvements to I-95, such as a new southbound auxiliary lane to hopefully speed up the nightly slowdown across the Occoquan River as well as new southbound HOT lane ramps at Opitz Boulevard to provide better access to a new PRTC commuter garage.
The most notable of these upcoming changes just recently broke ground in March. This is the new complex interchange for Prince William Parkway, Dumfries Road, and Brentsville Road, also simply known as the Brentsville Interchange project. Currently, there are two signalized interchanges, met at by four different highways: VA 234, VA 234 BUS, VA 294, and SR 649. With all these high-traffic commuter routes, most of them high-speed, meeting at two close-together signalized intersections, this is a very accident-prone area and is unsafe to other cross-traffic, pedestrians, and cyclists. Here is what it currently looks like:
Initially, VDOT considered using a double diamond interchange, like the ones seen along Fairfax County Parkway, which would have the road alignment look similar to this:
Instead, they came up with a half-interchange, half-intersection design, which looked like this:
The intersection, which would be a 4-way intersection paired with a half-trumpet ramp connection between VA 234 South and VA 294, was replaced with a fully grade-separated interchange design, retaining the half-trumpet but adding more ramps and replacing the intersection with an overpass:
For a second time, they once again redesigned the proposed interchange, with the final product going to be the second interchange design, just more condensed:
This is just one of the new highway projects along Prince William Parkway. The diverging diamond interchange at Balls Ford Road is about halfway complete, and there are several other proposed projects too, including a single-point urban interchange at Sudley Manor Road (which includes an overpass for Wellington Road), a quadrant intersection at University Boulevard which will extend Discover Boulevard to PWP, a dumbbell intersection at Clover Hill Road, which uses roundabout to make left turns between the intersecting roads, and a single-point urban interchange at Minnieville Road to go along with the new Quartz District mixed-use neighborhood development project.
To give my opinion, I'm hoping that VA 234 around Manassas is fully-upgraded to a freeway rather than having its at-grade intersections improved. This road gets backed up for miles and has constant collisions due to the signalized intersections and investing in SPUIs for University Boulevard and Clover Hill Road sounds better in my opinion, but it seems this all has to do with costs. Maybe for another time in the future.
All that aside, I'm interested to see how this new interchange will turn out, and perhaps these new road projects, particularly the ones around Manassas, open a window for more frequent bus service between Manassas and the Dumfries/Woodbridge area, as well as an extended shared-use path along VA 234, both offering easier commutes for people who don't own cars.
What do you all think of the new interchange (and other projects)?