Following a closed session Monday night, the Falls Church City Council voted unanimously to approve the City intervening in the Northern Virginia Transportation Authoity (NVTA) bond validation suit to protect the City’s projects in the list of NVTA projects approved for funding out of regional transportation funds provided by new Richmond legislation earlier this year.
“A bond validation suit is like a lightening rod for challenges both to the statute and the decisions made by NVTA as to what projects to fund. Certain parties have already threatened litigation and an agenda seems to be to monopolize all of the regional spending to fund a few road projects that they like,” F.C. Vice Mayor David Snyder explained to the News-Press. The Council will vote this Monday on a proposal to designate funds approved for transportation capital projects in the current year’s budget in order to obtain $800,000 more in state transportation funds.
The City’s projects on the NVTA 2014 program include an assessment of existing conditions for a pedestrian bridge, preliminary completion of designs for bus shelters, preliminary completion of improved pedestrian access to transit, and the second phase of a “transit alternatives analysis study of the Route 7 corridor.”
The first phase is due to be completed this October, when four or less of proposed alternatives will be selected for further analysis.