Evidently, Northern Virginia has grown exponentially in the past twenty years, especially within the last ten. After 9/11, defense contractors (Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman) quickly relocated to Northern Virginia to take advantage of the proximity to the national government and the highly affluent, highly educated cohort of young, working-age Americans. With this relocation, more people moved to Northern Virginia to take advantage of the job opportunities. It's cyclical. With more people, communities grew larger and larger, and branched out farther and farther.
As a result, Northern Virginia provides a huge tax base for the Virginia state government. Not only are there hundreds of thousands of habitants who pay taxes to the state of Virginia, but there also thousands of profitable companies that contribute to this tax base as well. However, the tax allocation for transportation and infrastructure has hardly been proportional. Transportation hasn't kept up with the rapid growth and expansion of Northern Virginia. Gridlock and general traffic are huge problems. Roads are in need of repair. With all the contributing taxpayers, one would think that these problems could be taken care of with taxpayer money. Unfortunately, this isn't the case, and the rest of the state has little sympathy for Northern Virginia. Despite the inordinate amount of taxes coming from NoVa, the money is being unequally distributed to the whole state; it's not exactly fair when rural Virginia is receiving the same amount of transportation funding when there are so few people.
Although there has been success with the funding of the incoming Silver Line of the Metro system in the Dulles Corridor, for the most past, there is still huge controversy over how taxpayer money should be allocated. As of now, it is still fairly unresolved.
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