Route 3 Widening

Branch Civil teamed up with design partner Johnson, Mirmiran, and Thompson to widen a historic section of Route 3 from Culpeper to Lignum, VA, for the Virginia Department of Transportation.  Once known as the Germanna Highway, named for an early community of German ironworkers, this stretch of highway has been widened to four lanes to increase capacity and safety for motorists.  This is the final phase of a larger project to widen Route 3 from two to four lanes between Culpeper and Fredericksburg.

The project involved constructing a new two-lane alignment outside of existing traffic.  Other factors that contributed to the complexity of the project included large-scale storm drainage, right-of-way acquisition, utility relocations and significant borrow requirements.

The primary need for this project was to help reduce the number of vehicle accidents on this stretch of Route 3.  The number of vehicles, including tractor trailers, that travel this road has been steadily increasing since the 1990’s and is forecast to continue to rise in the decades ahead.