Photo by Fairfax County Public Library on Flickr.

The Fairfax Board of Supervisors is meeting this afternoon. This is a good opportunity for them to reconsider Chairman Sharon Bulova’s hasty proclamation over the weekend that she would order Fairfax reps Catherine Hudgins and Linda Smyth to support a destructive and expensive I-66 widening.

The Board of Supervisors shouldn’t make policy based on articles in the Washington Post. If you live in Fairfax County, please contact Bulova and your representative and ask them to stick by their earlier decision. Tell them that the Washington Post doesn’t speak for you, and that if Virginia’s leaders don’t hang together to make VDOT keep its promises to Arlington, then the next community they ignore might be Fairfax.

Besides, the TPB vote just requires VDOT to look at other alternatives as they promised. Many observers say that if they were really serious, VDOT could finish that in just one year, not the three that VDOT claims it will take. Maybe that analysis will conclude that the lanes are the right choice. But VDOT should look at all options instead of simply assuming that new lanes are the only solution to every problem.

If you don’t know your rep, see this map or enter your address here. Every Fairfax County resident can contact Bulova, as she represents the entire County.

Phone calls get more attention than emails, but both are helpful. Please urge county leaders to put the brakes on this rush to judgment today.

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.