Politics & Government

New W+OD Pedestrian Bridge Opens Over Capital Beltway

Longer, wider bridge replaces 1960s structure

After a year and a half of construction, pedestrians and officials on Wednesday celebrated the opening of a new W&OD Trail bridge over the Capital Beltway at Sandburg Street, an improvement to what Board of Supervisor Chair Sharon Bulova called the "superhighway" of trails in Northern Virginia.

The new $2.4 million bridge is 30 feet longer and four feet wider than the structure that first carried walkers, runners and bikers over the highway in the early 1960s.

"[It used to be] that you'd be on the trail and all of the sudden there was this Great Wall of China," said Bulova, who spoke at a ribbon-cutting ceremony with representatives from the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority, Transurban-Fluor and the Virginia Department of Transportation. "People couldn't get across the beltway."

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Construction crews first began preliminary work on the new bridge in November 2009, but major work did not begin until August 2010.

The bridge is one of several along the 14-mile stretch of Capital Beltway included in VDOT and Trans-Fluor's HOT Lanes project, which will replace $268 million of bridges, overpasses and other infrastructure from the Springfield Interchange to Dulles Toll Road by late 2012.

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But Providence District Supervisor Linda Smyth said the W+OD Trail is the equivalent of an interstate highway itself. On this year's Bike To Work Day, the checkpoint at nearby Sandburg Road had the most bikers signed up, she said.

"This project is about pedestrians, not cars, and that's a good thing," Smyth said.

Every new beltway crossing will have a pedestrian bridge, said Tim Steinhilber, General Manager of the project for Transurban-Fluor, including Gallows Road, Leesburg Pike, Jones Branch Drive and the recently-completed Idylwood Bridge.

"Everyone who rides a bike leaves a car behind and provides more room for those who have no other choice," said Larry O. Cloyed, Project Manager of the project for VDOT.

, which completely closed the road for six months, crews were able to leave the old bridge open while the new one was built, so pedestrians could continue to travel across the beltway.

"That was a really big thing for us, otherwise we'd have no way to get through. We'd have to go through really terrible streets," said Bruce Wright, chairman of Fairfax Advocates For Better Bicycling.

The old bridge will be taken down now that the new crossing is open, officials said.

Transurban-Fluor also presented the Friends of W&OD Trail with a $2,500 community grant.

Barbara Hildreth, one of the advocates who helped fight for the trail 40 years ago, said the trail is "the quintessential people project."

"You are .. the riders, the walkers, who police it," she said. "You defend it at the hearings on land development, you use it and comment on the surfaces. ... Defend it, and use it and teach your kids to do the same and it will indeed be here in perpetuity."


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