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Spotsy
Turvy
Spotsylvania
County will spend $144 million to expand its secondary road
network. But no one is reforming the
auto-intensive development that spurs demand for
roads in the first place.
by
Robert Burke
When
Spotsylvania County voters went to the polls in
November 2005, they made it clear that they’d
had enough – enough of traffic-choked roads,
tight-fisted state legislators and a state
transportation department that couldn’t keep up
with the demands of a county that has been among
the fastest-growing in the state for more than two
decades.
So
given the chance, they voted overwhelmingly – 61
percent – for a bond referendum that would let
the county raise $144 million to pay for fixing
nine congested secondary roads. If the state
won’t come up with the cash, they said, they'll do it ourselves.
Which
today puts Spotsylvania in an interesting spot
because the self-funded approach would seem to
correct an often-noted flaw in how land and
transportation are linked: In Virginia, land-use
decisions are made locally, while the burden of
road improvements falls to the state. That
disconnect, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and many others
have argued, means there’s no
incentive for localities to curb sprawling
development in order to rein in transportation
costs.
Now
in Spotsylvania, the same politicians who drool
over the potential tax revenues from big
residential projects and commercial development
are also going to have to figure out how to spend
precious tax dollars to deal with the traffic
those projects generate. So, problem solved,
right?
Not
by a long shot. For one thing, a lot of what
Spotsylvania is dealing with now is stems from
development decisions made years ago. While the
battle rages in Richmond over how much funding the
state should put toward road projects and where
the money should come from, Spotsylvania has been
booming. Its population is now about 117,000
people, up from 57,000 in 1990.
“These
are catch-up projects,” says Hap Connors,
chairman of the county’s Board of Supervisors,
of the nine roads targeted for improvements. All
are in or near heavily traveled U.S. 1 or State
Route 3, the county’s main
commercial corridors. “The bottom line is
we need to fix these problems, which have been
sitting on the shelf for 10 to 15 years.”
Similar
things are happening, too, in other fast-growing
localities that have grown weary of waiting for
state funding for transportation projects. If
localities aren’t raising the money themselves,
they’re turning to public-private partnerships
to open new pipelines of cash from the private
sector.
Instead
of adapting different land-use patterns, though,
critics say localities are simply supporting the
same auto-dependent development patterns. “Sure,
the potential is there for linking land use and
transportation, but the connection isn’t always
made,” says Stewart Schwartz, executive director
of the Coalition for Smarter Growth.
Prince
William County, for example, used bond revenues
and revenue from a special tax district to build
the Prince William Parkway. Fairfax County used a
similar funding approach to pay for the $600
million Fairfax County Parkway. The
Prince William Parkway “is certainly no longer a
parkway,” Schwartz says. “It’s a major
residential corridor… If you continue to develop
on a suburban pattern with lots of cul de sacs,
and separating your residential from your retail
and office, and not taking advantage of your
transit opportunities, it doesn’t matter whether
you’re paying for it or not. It’s very hard to
make it functional.”
Yet
Connors, who was elected to the board in 2003 on a
managed-growth platform, says the county has
already taken some steps. “We do understand the
linkage between our land-use patterns and
transportation… so yes, I think this is going to
force that larger view,” he says.
But
when Connors described his thinking, his emphasis
was more on finding ways to build the
transportation network fast enough to keep up with
development, not changing the development pattern
itself. Says he: “I think we should be more proactive in
our land-use planning and engaging the private
sector in helping us make those plans come to
fruition, including getting the transportation
infrastructure in place before any kind of
construction.”
That
approach makes sense, of course, when you’re
dealing with an unhappy electorate and the
private sector is pushing money toward
road-building solutions to congestion.
“Right
now we’re building more roads in the county than
anybody else,” says Jud Honaker, president of
Silver Commercial, a major developer in the
region. Honaker’s firm is developing a 70-acre
shopping center called Harrison Crossing, along
State Route 3, and has agreed to pay for major
road improvements to deal with increased traffic.
“Are we doing more than our impacts? Yes, a lot
more,” he says. “But there’s also a
self-serving benefit, in that if you do the
ultimate road improvements, you’re protecting
the integrity of your project.”
Here’s
where Schwartz and others argue that developers
and the localities are missing an opportunity to
see the big picture. It’s the construction of
new roads or improvements to existing ones that
offer the best chance to shift the development
pattern away from auto-dependency.
The first step
should be studying what the county would look like
at build-out under the current zoning. If
the price tag seems too high – which he
believes it would be – “then start looking at
alternate patterns of land development and street
design,” Schwartz says. “We certainly believe that
mixing uses and providing a well-interconnected
grid is a big part of the solution. The design
should minimize the number of auto trips that need
to be taken in the first place.”
Instead
of designing streets that account for all users
– autos, bus riders, pedestrians, bicyclists – localities
frequently stick to the standard approach. In
Prince William, Schwartz says mockingly, “road
improvements are triple left-turn lanes. That’s
just madness. We’re still marching toward the
edge of a cliff.”
Is
it too much to expect a locality like Spotsylvania
County to adopt Schwartz' long-term thinking. It
may be.
Clark
Bottner is a project director for the Shirley
Companies, which is part of a consortium working
on preliminary design of the bond-funded road
improvements in Spotsylvania under the state’s
Public-Private Partnership Act. Deciphering the
land-use and transportation link “is not
necessarily our responsibility,” he says. It’s
up to county leaders to lead the way.
Philosophically,
Bottner supports the long-term goal of designing
"the
right transportation network that doesn’t just
solve the problem of today or tomorrow but looks
into the future as best anyone can.” But for
now, looking into the future means finding new
ways to raise money, not changing the pattern of
development.
So,
moving road funding to the local level seems
unlikely to change how localities build. In fact,
dependence upon private-sector developers suggests
that local government control over the design of
the transportation network might become even weaker.
Honaker
of Silver Commercial says his company supports
impact fees, which would extract funding for new
development even when the projects already abided
with existing zoning. Currently, localities
usually get funding for transportation or other
improvements through proffers offers as part of a
rezoning application. General Assembly legislation
passed this year would let Spotsylvania apply
impact fees and the county is studying the idea.
Had
impact fees been in place 15 years ago, Honaker
says, housing prices would have absorbed the cost
and there’d be enough money to pay for road
improvements. Plus, all developers would be on a
level playing field. “You’d know going in what
your obligation would be and it would create a
pool of money to deal with the problem,” he
says.
Notice,
though, that in all the discussion there’s
little talk of reducing the cost of building a transportation network by
reducing the demands of vehicle traffic. At nearly
every step, the focus is on finding dollars, and
avoiding the wrath of disgruntled residents.
The
county isn’t in the road-building business
“because they want to do it,” Honaker says.
“They’re doing it because if they don’t, the
problem won’t get fixed.”
--
September 8, 2006
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