Tag Archives: Charlottesville Bypass

Cville Bypass Bids Come in Under $244 Million Estimate… Or Maybe Not

Photo credit: The Hook

The low bid for the Charlottesville Bypass, submitted by Virginia Beach Skanska- Branch/JMT, came in below cost estimates, says the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), as reported by Charlottesville Tomorrow Friday. “Based on the apparent low bids all project costs are within the allocated amount in the Six-Year Improvement Program,” said Lou Hatter, spokesman for VDOT’s Culpeper District.

But foes of the controversial bypass say the cost will exceed official estimates. “The Virginia Department of Transportation opened the bids from contractors to build the Charlottesville Western Bypass–which ranged between $18 million and $96 million higher than VDOT’s estimated construction costs as best as we can determine based upon the very limited information we have received from the agency at this time,” said Jeff Werner, Albemarle and Charlottesville land use officer for the Piedmont Environmental Council in a press release.

Moreover, said Werner, the public still doesn’t know what it’s getting for its money. The bids are based on preliminary designs that haven’t been made public yet. The designs submitted by bidders under the design-build project may vary significantly from the sketches displayed by VDOT during public hearings.

Last year, the Commonwealth Transportation Board voted to allocate an additional $197.4 million to the bypass, a sum that would cover construction, design and additional right-of-way acquisition. The CTB approved the sum unaware of controversy inside VDOT over how much the project would cost. The McDonnell administration later acknowledged that the original design might have to be modified but contended that there was ample cushion thanks to efficiencies resulting from the design-build process and a track record of construction bids coming in below estimate in recent years.

The total cost of the project, including money spent on engineering and right-of-way, is estimated to be $244.5 million. Of that amount, reports Sean Tubbs for Charlottesville Tomorrow, VDOT had set aside $125.6 million for additional engineering and construction. Skanska’s bid was $136 million, or seemingly $10 million higher. (The highest bidder submitted a bid of $214 million.)

It was not clear from Tubb’s story how VDOT could claim that the Skanska bid came in below estimate. Nor was it clear from its press release how the PEC calculated an $18 million cost overrun. The issue is of more than academic importance. If the project cost exceeds the amount allocated by the CTB, the McDonnell administration might have to go back before the board and request additional funds. Getting approval might not be so easy second time around, given all the events that have transpired in the past 10 months.

Werner said the bids did not include several important elements, including landscaping, noise mitigation for neighborhoods and schools, and other adjustments as may be required by an environmental assessment that is not yet complete.

If I can sort out the issues, I’ll follow up with another blog post.

— JAB

Still No Final Design as C’ville Bypass Approaches Construction

U.S. 29 north of Charlottesville

by James A. Bacon

I’m back from Vegas (nothing  happened there that had to stay there, by the way), and I’m catching up on what I missed while I was gone. It seems that the Charlottesville Bypass had one of its periodic flare-ups, as many citizens got it into their heads that they should be able to comment upon the final Bypass design before the estimated $245 million project enters the construction phase.

It’s hard to blame them. The last official public hearing took place in 1997, and much has changed since then. All manner of design schematics have been made public but no one yet knows what the final version will look like. The route is pretty well nailed down, but no one knows how the northern and southern termini will be configured, how steep the incline over Stillhouse Mountain will be, or what other trade-offs the winning bidder might make in order to keep the project within the $197 million appropriated to complete the project.

Uncertainty is inherent in the nature of the fast-tracked process which the McDonnell administration has employed to move the controversial project ahead. In theory, the design-build process will do a better job of constraining costs than the traditional design-bid-build process in which the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) designs the project, obtains public input and only then puts the job out for bids. Under design-bid-build, cost overruns are  common because the contractor bears little risk: The builder simply bills VDOT for change orders and unanticipated expenses.

Design-build is said to be more efficient because road-building contractors can do much of the design and construction work simultaneously, dramatically cutting the length of time it takes to complete a project. Also, while VDOT sets the broad design parameters and provides a preliminary design to work from, the contractor is given considerable leeway to approach the task creatively and come up with more cost-effective design solutions.

In the case of the Charlottesville Bypass, however, the proposed solutions will kept under wraps until VDOT has evaluated the bids and selected a winner. At Once the design plan has been set, it will be difficult to implement any substantive changes that arise from public feedback. Thus, while design-build may save money, it won’t necessarily lead to the best result if the contractor makes design decisions that prove unpopular.

The issue is coming to a head in Albemarle County now that VDOT has begun evaluating the seven bids it has received for the project. There is no telling what the proposals might contain, given the many uncertainties created in VDOT’s bid offering. Randy Salzman, a Charlottesville-area writer who has delved deeply into the VDOT bid documents, provides this assessment:

VDOT’s own documents… [confuse] any potential “design-build” bidder on the Western Bypass and most likely [cause] him/her to either not bid or drive the price beyond imagining.

For example, the most common phrase in January’s “Route 29: C-ville’s Bypass Project Request for Proposal Question and Answers” was [a statement that] the bidder’s question would be addressed “in a forthcoming addendum” — which never materialized prior to bid closure. When the info was available, usually from a 1997 update, VDOT consistently added this sentence: “The Department does not represent or warrant that the information contained in the Supplemental Information Package is reliable or accurate or suitable for designing this project.”

Given the uncertainties, bids could be all over the map, with different contractors basing their bids on different assumptions and leading to very different design solutions.

Earlier this week, Dennis Rooker and his allies on the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors tried to pass a resolution requesting VDOT to hold a formal public hearing rather than a simple informational meeting, as currently planned. As reported by Charlottesville Tomorrow:

Rooker argued in favor of a public hearing in part because VDOT does not intend to make the project’s design public until a contract has been awarded. Normal procedure for design-build projects, he said, includes opportunities for public hearings on design.

“In this case, the public won’t have the opportunity to see the design until the contract has been awarded,” he said. “Think about that.”

The board deadlocked, 3-3, on Rooker’s proposal, effectively defeating it.

At this point, it’s anybody’s guess what the bids will look like, what they will cost, what trade-offs the bidders will propose and how the final design will be viewed by the inhabitants of Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

Tarheel Lawsuit Could Change VDOT Planning Practices

The proposed Monroe Bypass south of Charlotte. (Click for more legible image.)

A lawsuit filed against a proposed bypass near Charlotte, N.C., could have a big impact on how road and highway projects are decided in Virginia. If a coalition of conservation groups win their case in U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, it would apply to all states in the court’s jurisdiction, including Virginia.

The Southern Environmental Law Center and three other conservation groups filed suit claiming that the North Carolina Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration turned federal law on its head by assuming in the environmental impact statement for the $700 million Monroe Bypass that the highway already existed when analyzing a “no build” option.

“This flawed approach led to the improbable result that building the 20-mile, four-lane bypass with nine interchanges on the fringe of metro Charlotte would have practically no impact on development patterns, the Yadkin River watershed or air quality from increased commuting,” stated the SELC in a press release yesterday. The analysis also precluded from consideration an option for upgrading the existing highway corridor that would have cost a mere $15 million.

“If this flimsy, so-called ‘analysis’ can stand,” said SELC senior attorney David Farren, “the concern is we could end up building tens of billions of dollars in massive highway projects across the region without any fiscal or environmental checks and balances.”

A lower court acknowledged that the misrepresentation had occurred but ruled it “immaterial.” A ruling from the Court of Appeals is not expected for a few months.

Trip Pollard, a senior attorney in SELC’s Richmond office, said a favorable ruling would impact transportation decision-making in Virginia. “The failure to analyze alternatives is a consistent problem in Virginia.”

The $244 million Charlottesville Bypass is a case in point, Pollard said. The Virginia Department of Transportation did not study the alternative Places 29 plan for ameliorating congestion on U.S. 29 north of Charlottesville when resurrecting the project from mothballs after nearly 20 years. Another example is the proposed rebuilding of U.S. 460 between Petersburg and Suffolk as a limited access highway, a project to which the state has committed $500 million. VDOT never gave consideration to upgrading the existing four-lane highway.

“We’re optimistic” about a favorable ruling, Pollard said. “The court asked a lot of good questions.”

— JAB

Second Thoughts on Charlottesville Bypass

U.S. 29 north of Charlottesville

The battle over the Charlottesville Bypass still isn’t over. The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) must review its Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), last supplemented in May 2003, to see if it needs to be updated. Now the Charlottesville-Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) has submitted a letter listing 11 topics that VDOT could consider in that review.

The letter, written by Stephen Williams, executive director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission of which the MPO is a part, raises numerous issues that surfaced in public hearings last year during the debate over the McDonnell administration’s plans to resurrect the project. Among the key points.

  • “At a minimum, we request that a No-Build alternative and an Alternative that includes proposals from the join VDOT/Albemarle County Places29 Transportation plan, should be studied,” writes Williams. The Places29 plan, which would reduce congestion on U.S. 29 without the need for a Bypass, did not exist when the 2003 EIS was written.
  • VDOT needs to conduct an entirely new traffic impact analysis. Development patterns have changed over the past 9 years, three interchanges on the proposed Bypass have been stripped out of the design, and a link-up with the Meadow Creek Parkway has been abandoned.

Among other items, VDOT needs to consider the impact of the Bypass upon three schools that the highway would skirt — many citizens are concerned about the effect on diesel pollution on the health of school children — and the department needs to update its noise analysis and impact on the reservoir, wetlands, stormwater and the water distribution system.

The MPO letter is not some last-ditch effort by die-hard opponents to derail the project. This is the same MPO that reversed its previous opposition last summer, allowing the McDonnell administration to resurrect the project. Indeed, Albemarle Supervisor Rodney Thomas, who also is chairman of the MPO, has gone public with the idea of extending the Bypass on the grounds that it doesn’t begin to bypass all the congestion. Thomas was a key figure locally in getting the Bypass approved. Further, ignoring the suggestions of the regional transportation planning entity might not set well with the Federal Highway Administration, which has ultimate authority over projects within the federal highway system.

To my mind, an updated traffic analysis is mandatory. Over and above the points raised in the letter, traffic-light sequencing has so dramatically reduced congestion on U.S. 29 that it calls into question the need for a Bypass in the first place. Anyone accustomed to traffic conditions in Richmond, Hampton Roads or, god forbid, Northern Virginia, would wonder what all the fuss was about.

One final point: If the McDonnell administration is absolutely determined to spend more money on U.S. 29, perhaps on the ground that the citizens of Charlottesville-Albemarle should get their “fair share” of state construction dollars, then it needs to consider the alternative plan, Places29, that did not exist when the last EIS was conducted a decade ago.

— JAB

Uncertainties and Risks in the Charlottesville Bypass Bid

by James A. Bacon

Uh, oh, it looks like the bidding process for the Charlottesville Bypass is running into complications. Prospective bidders for the construction phase of the controversial project, estimated to cost $244 million, have lots of questions… and the Virginia Department of Transportation doesn’t have all the answers.

A document obtained by Charlottesville Tomorrow under the Freedom of Information Act responds to 220 questions submitted by firms formulating bids. Questions revolve around fundamental points such as traffic projections, noise analysis and bridge design. On 15 occasions in the 33-page document, writes Sean Tubbs, VDOT provides the following response:

The Department does not represent or warrant that the information contained in the supplemental information package is reliable or accurate or suitable for designing this project.

When VDOT does provide concrete answers, bidders may not always like them:

  • The contractor will be responsible for designing and paying for any environmental mitigations that might be required as part of a Federal Highway Administration review not due to be complete until later this year.
  • The contractor is responsible for acquiring any additional right-of-way that might be required to meet revised stormwater management requirements.
  • The winning contractor must produce a traffic study showing that its design for the 6.2-mile bypass and two interchanges can maintain a level of service of “C” — continuous and free-flowing — by the year 2036.
  • The builder must demonstrate to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that wetlands near the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir will not be impacted.
  • The builder must confirm with the Virginia State Historic Preservation Office that its plan avoids cultural-resource sites.
  • VDOT will not increase the $100,000 paid to each team for producing a qualified proposal.
  • To keep the procurement process on schedule, VDOT will not take time to answer any more questions.

The bidding process shows every sign of being rushed in order to meet a schedule imposed from above. Here’s what taxpayers have to worry about: Uncertainty will heighten the perception of risk among bidders. Bidders may feel compelled to pad their bids to offset those risks — better to lose the job than to win a money loser — and some may drop out of the bidding entirely.

I’m not sure what happens if the low bid exceeds the $197 million allocated by the Commonwealth Transportation Board to cover the balance of the project’s costs. Presumably, the administration will have to go back to the CTB and ask for a supplemental allocation. Given the way the administration hid the cost and design controversies raging inside VDOT at the time (see “In the Dark,”), the McDonnell team may have some explaining to do.

The Road to Wealth Destruction

The soon-to-be-built Charlottesville Bypass provides a lousy economic return on investment. Only government would spend $244 million on a project that yields less than $8 million a year in benefits to the public.

By James A. Bacon

The citizens of Charlottesville and Albemarle County think they have a traffic congestion problem on U.S 29 north of the city. Of course, everybody thinks they have a traffic problem. You should see the intersection of Parham and Patterson near my home in Henrico County around 5:30 p.m. It can take three or four cycles to get through the stop light. And try driving on Interstate 95 in Prince William County. It’s far worse than anything in the Richmond region – you can get stuck in stop-and-go traffic at 6:30 in the morning!

The question is whether the congestion on U.S. 29 north of Charlottesville is so numbingly God-awful compared to all the other traffic hell-holes in Virginia as to warrant a $244 million investment (including sunk expenses) to build a bypass, as the McDonnell administration has decided to do.

For more than a half year now I’ve been writing about the Bypass from a distance, here in Henrico. At times, the controversy seemed remote and abstract. To really understand the controversy, I decided I needed to experience the frustration, the agony and the road rage of driving on U.S. 29 first hand. So, one day in December, using a digital stop watch to track my time, I spent more than an hour driving up and down the congested highway corridor slated for bypass. I wanted to see for myself just how bad things got during rush hour.

It was a regular workday, the University of Virginia was in session and traffic conditions were routine. I set some rules for myself: no lane weaving, no bumper hugging and no gunning through yellow lights to alter the outcome. While I was behaving myself, there would be no cursing, fist shaking or banging on the steering wheel either. I would drive like a normal person.

The results were far from anything I expected.

The stretch of U.S. 29 in question runs through 14 stoplights and is lined with restaurants, shopping malls, office buildings and other development. Although the road is designated a highway of statewide significance — one of Virginia’s three major north-south freight  routes — Albemarle County zoned the land around it as a primary growth corridor. Thousands of people use the road to drive to work every day at the University of Virginia and other Charlottesville employment centers.

Figuring that morning rush hour would experience the worst congestion, I picked the period of 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. to drive back and forth between Ashwood Boulevard at the proposed northern terminus of the Bypass and the U.S. 250 Bypass underpass to the south. Driving north against the rush hour traffic established a base line: My three trips averaged 7 minutes and 42 seconds. Traffic was smooth flowing throughout, although delays did occur during lengthy stop lights at the Hydraulic and Rio road intersections.

Likewise, I drove south three times with the rush hour traffic. My first trip took the longest. I was surprised at how smoothly traffic moved but I did get hung up at the Rio Road intersection for a long stoplight cycle. Thanks to the synchronized lights, however, I whizzed through the major intersections without a hitch on the next two trips. The average drive time for all three: 7 minutes and 21 seconds – faster than when I was driving against the rush hour tide!

At the end of the exercise, I had one question: Traffic congestion? What traffic congestion? These people know nothing about traffic congestion!! What is all the hoo-ha about?

ROI – No, that’s Not French for “King,” although It Is a Foreign Word in Virginia

A variety of claims have been advanced in favor of building the Bypass. First, there is an economic benefit to reducing the amount of time people lose being stuck in traffic congestion. Second, the project will improve safety, reducing the number of traffic accidents on an accident-prone stretch of road. And third, it will promote economic development – not necessarily in the Charlottesville region but in points south, specifically in Danville and Lynchburg. Building the Bypass around Charlottesville’s congestion hot spot, it could be argued, will reduce truck travel times and improve the competitive posture of manufacturing businesses that use U.S. 29 as a freight corridor.

While the claims are not implausible on their face, no one has subjected them to rigorous study. The Virginia Department of Transportation has never conducted a Return on Investment (ROI) analysis to determine how much economic benefit the commonwealth will derive from its $244 million expenditure, much less how that ROI would compare to alternative transportation improvements.  Continue reading

In the Dark

The McDonnell administration omitted critical information from its presentation last summer when seeking the Commonwealth Transportation Board’s approval to fund the controversial Charlottesville bypass.

by James A. Bacon

On July 20 James Utterback, the Culpeper District administrator for the Virginia Department of Transportation, had the job of briefing the Commonwealth Transportation Board about the controversial Charlottesville Bypass. Flashing PowerPoint slides upon an overhead screen, he walked board members through the complexities of a project that had languished on the books for most of 20 years until the McDonnell administration had assigned it a top priority.

The official cost estimate for the Charlottesville Bypass. (Click on chart for more legible image.)

Utterback summarized the long, tortured history of the project.  He described how the 6-mile bypass would fit into the state’s long-range plans for U.S. 29 as a major highway for the movement of freight. He delved into a chart showing that the project would require $197.4 million to complete, including $118 million for construction plus millions for right-of-way acquisition and engineering, bringing the total cost to $244 million. (Click on image above for details.) And he displayed a rendering of the U.S. 29 corridor north of Charlottesville in which the bypass tied into U.S. 29 and U.S. 250 with interchange ramps. 

After a lengthy public hearing in which dozens of Charlottesville residents and even a few from Lynchburg had driven to Richmond to let the board know what they thought, the CTB overwhelmingly approved the project.

As it turns out, there were some very important things that Utterback did not mention in his scripted presentation. He did not tell the CTB, for instance, that central office engineers inside the Virginia Department of Transportation thought that construction could cost $100 million or more than the official estimate. He neglected to say that VDOT engineers were considering significant changes to the highway design to bring the cost down. Finally, he failed to mention that VDOT would not build the project using a “design-bid-build” process, doing the final design in-house as was customary, but as a “design-build,” which meant contracting out the final design to the winning construction team.

In other words, the McDonnell administration omitted highly germane information — that the design and cost estimates of the project were uncertain and in flux — when it asked the CTB to approve the $197 million allocation.

Would it have changed the outcome if VDOT had told the complete story about the cost and design uncertainties? One can only speculate. But it certainly would have strengthened the case of the bypass skeptics. At the very least, asks Dennis Rooker, an Albemarle County supervisor who played a leading role in opposing the bypass, “Wouldn’t it have been more honest to go to the CTB and say, ‘Here are our internal cost estimates, and we’re going to try to bring it in at a lower cost?'”

James E. Rich, Culpeper district representative to the CTB, had even stronger words. “Deliberately providing incomplete information would prevent the board from fulfilling its statutory responsibilities to the commonwealth and to taxpayers.” If the omissions were shown to be deliberate, he said, “there should be consequences.”

VDOT’s internal discussions were laid bare in documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Charlottesville Albemarle Transportation Coalition, a self-described “local citizens group.” The organization works closely with, but is not formally affiliated with, the Piedmont Environmental Council and the Southern Environmental Law Center, which have actively opposed the bypass. (Full disclosure: The PEC sponsors Bacon’s Rebellion’s coverage of transportation and land use issues but keeps an arm’s-length distance from our reporting.) The treasure trove of emails and other documents sheds light on project uncertainties and risks that Gov. Bob McDonnell’s transportation team did not discuss publicly until after the project was a done deal.

Roughly one month ago, Bacon’s Rebellion submitted a list of detailed questions to VDOT seeking to clarify or confirm points arising from the documents and to solicit any additional information that would place the department’s actions in context. Lou Hatter, public affairs manager for the Culpeper district, replied that Commissioner Gregory A. Whirley had already addressed those questions when he spoke about the Charlottesville Bypass at the Commonwealth Transportation Board meeting on September 21 and when I interviewed him shortly afterwards. Said Hatter: “The information Mr. Whirley provided stands as the Department’s response to your questions.”

Two days before publication, Bacon’s Rebellion submitted relevant passages of this article to show the case we were making and the documentation behind it, offering VDOT one more chance to respond. Hatter thanked me for the communication but declined to comment. Continue reading

C’Ville Bypass Won’t Reduce Congestion, Consultant Says

Spending $197 million to complete construction of the Charlottesville Bypass would do nothing to improve traffic congestion along the bypassed three-mile stretch of U.S. 29 north of Charlottesville, and it would induce development and traffic growth north of the South Fork of the Rivanna River, making traffic conditions there worse than they are already.

Those are among the conclusions of a review of official Virginia Department of Transportation traffic forecasts for the Charlottesville Bypass by Norman Marshall, a Vermont-based traffic engineering consultant hired by the Southern Environmental Law Center. The SELC issued a press release and released Marshall’s report earlier this afternoon.

Marshall based his analysis on a 1990 VDOT report on the grounds that, despite its flaws, the research was more comprehensive and authoritative than more recent updates. Even if the bypass is built, the Level of Service on the bypassed portion of U.S. 29 would remain an F, Marshall notes. Thus, the putative benefits of the project would accrue not to local drivers but to thru traffic — trucks and motorists passing through the Charlottesville area to another destination.

What the 1990 VDOT study doesn’t take into account is the phenomenon of “induced demand,” says Marshall. The bypass would tie into U.S. 29 just north of the South Fork of the Rivanna River, an area that has seen considerable development since the study. There are already nine traffic lights on a 6-mile stretch north of the river with proposals for three more. In 2003, Albemarle County approved construction of another 3,000 residential units plus 3 million square feet of commercial space in that area, much of which has yet to be built. In the meantime, there is increasing development further north in Greene County, where many people live and use U.S. 29 to drive to work in Charlottesville.

Writes Marshall: “If the 29 bypass makes travel to and from areas in Albemarle and Greene Counties in the greater Route 29 corridor more accessible, it will encourage both residential and commercial development in those areas. This increased development will cause increased traffic volumes, again partially offsetting any benefit of the project.”

Marshall says that VDOT should analyze alternative investments, such as grade-separated intersections at Rio Road, Hydraulic Road and Greenbrier Drive as well as other other elements listed in the Places29 master plan.

I have asked VDOT for a response, which I will append to this post if I receive one.

— JAB

Restructuring the Gas Tax

by James A. Bacon

Virginia’s 17.5-cent tax on motor fuels is like an over-the-hill ball player. Back in 1986, when the rate was last set, the tax could run, leap and throw like a champ. These days, it wheezes just walking around the block.

With each passing year, the gas tax is less able to fulfill its task of paying for the maintenance and construction of Virginia’s roads and highways. Within five years, Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton has warned, there won’t be enough gas tax revenue to pay for new construction. Beyond that five-year time frame, one can only presume, gas tax revenues won’t even cover proper maintenance. As maintenance is deferred, the deterioration of roads, bridges and highways will accelerate, requiring even more money to fix. Unless something changes, Virginia’s highway infrastructure will slip into a death spiral.

The obvious solution is to raise the motor fuels tax. Trouble is, the tax is widely loathed. Voters perceive, with some justification, their tax dollars funding mega projects that benefit developers, ideologically driven money-losers like mass transit, or roads to nowhere that please powerful politicos. Until that distrust is dispelled, it will be exceedingly difficult to persuade the electorate to increase the tax.

What I propose here is far from a complete transportation financing solution  but it would accomplish two things. First, it would fully fund Virginia’s road maintenance program far into the future, which the current arrangement will not. Second, it could be sold to the public. My proposal would not raise revenue for new construction — that would have to come from somewhere else. But citizens would be assured that the state’s massive investment in streets, roads and highways would be kept in top condition.

As I see it, the motor fuels would be adjusted annually to ensure enough revenue to accomplish three goals: (1) service state transportation debt, (2) provide state matching funds for federal highway projects and (3) fully fund the maintenance of state and local roads and highways. If more money is needed to accomplish those three goals, the tax ticks up; if less is needed, the tax inches back down. That’s it. When citizens gas up their cars at the pump, they will know that their gas tax is paying to maintain the roads they drive on — not to enrich some politicians’ developer buddy — and that they are paying in proportion to which they add wear and tear to the system.

I can’t imagine how this would get push back from taxpayers. No one contests the need to meet the state’s debt obligations. Very few would dispute the desirability of raising enough money to qualify for hundreds of millions of dollars yearly in federal highway grants (for which Virginians have already paid through the federal motor fuels tax). And not even the most hardened taxaphobes could object to maintaining the existing transportation network by means of a user fee like the gas tax.

As an aside, I would suggest re-balancing the share paid by heavy trucks and ordinary motorists. Every analysis I have seen suggests that heavy trucks in Virginia pay less than it takes to offset the disproportionate pounding they dish out to state roads. If trucks paid their full freight, so to speak, automobile drivers would pay a slightly smaller share and might, until maintenance costs inevitably marched higher, enjoy a momentary reduction in the tax rate.

The floating gas tax would accomplish one other important goal: finance the devolution of secondary road maintenance to the counties. Nearly everyone agrees that secondary roads should be the responsibility of local governments to build and maintain. Why? Because county supervisors make land use decisions that create the demand for those roads. If local officials think that paying for those roads is VDOT’s problem, not theirs, they will make very different decisions than if they are held accountable for dealing with traffic congestion themselves. Pushing counties into coordinating land use and transportation will lead to better decision making for each.

The state has offered county governments the opportunity to take control of their own road maintenance but none have agreed (other than Arlington and Henrico Counties, which opted out of the current system back in the 1930s). The reason is basic: Counties don’t think that VDOT will pay the full cost of ongoing road maintenance, much less enough to work down the backlog of roads and bridges in disrepair. Therefore, the gas tax would have to be set at a level sufficient to induce counties to assume responsibility for their secondary roads.

How, then, would Virginia pay for new transportation projects? There still would be buckets of bucks to draw upon: federal transportation dollars, tolls, public-private partnerships, proffers, impact fees and special tax districts, not to revenue streams from the sales tax, the motor vehicle sales tax, motor vehicle registration fees and miscellaneous sources.

Floating the motor fuels tax as I have suggested won’t create more money for new construction. But given the mood of the electorate, positioning the tax as a user fee may be the only way to persuade taxpayers to inject more money into the system. In the years ahead, it will be no small accomplishment to preserve what we’ve already got.

Fast, Efficient and… Less Accountable?

A design-build approach worked beautifully on the 495 Beltway widening, Connaughton says.

The McDonnell administration hopes that VDOT’s “design-build” approach to highway engineering will advance projects more quickly and save millions of dollars. But public accountability may suffer.

By James A. Bacon

Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton liked this story so much that he told it twice this week during the September meeting of the Commonwealth Transportation Board in Portsmouth. When Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) engineers conducted the initial design for the I-495 Beltway, he said, they estimated that the project would cost $3 billion. But when Transurban, the Australia-based toll road builder/operator, took a crack at the same design challenge, the cost dropped to $1.5 million. What’s more, said Connaughton, “They added four lanes; we would have added only two.”

One big difference between the two designs was that VDOT envisioned the necessity of acquiring more than 600 houses and commercial buildings while Transurban figured out how to build the project with a much smaller footprint, saving hundreds of millions of dollars in right-of-way acquisition costs.

And that is why Connaughton is a big believer in “design-build” contracts. He wasn’t knocking the professionalism of the VDOT engineers. But he did make the argument that soliciting a design from a private-sector group like Transurban could yield fresh, creative thinking on how to design a project more economically.

Under the McDonnell administration there will be more design-build contracts in Virginia’s transportation future, a philosophical shift that represents a big change in how VDOT manages road projects and how it interacts with the public. Design-build offers the potential to cut the cost of big-figure mega-projects. But because the projects move so much faster, the approach also threatens to reduce meaningful public involvement. Indeed, the controversial Charlottesville Bypass, which is being rushed to bids, may be a case in point.

Traditionally, VDOT used the “design-bid-build” approach to designing and building roads. It was a linear process, Charlie Kilpatrick, chief deputy commissioner, explained to the CTB. Projects moved sequentially from one phase to the next, a process that could take years. The contracts were very “prescriptive,” with the quantity of materials specified precisely. Contractors liked it because it was low-risk. If there were overruns in the quantity of materials, VDOT would pay for them. The process had all been worked out, and everyone was comfortable with it.

The design-build approach transfers much of the risk to the contractors but gives them more flexibility in solving problems. Contractors, who typically partner with engineering firms, are required to meet broad specifications and guidelines but have considerable latitude in figuring out how to meet them. If they miscalculate the volume of materials required, they are liable for the overrun. An advantage of the process is the ability to run many of the design and construction phases concurrently. Construction could be underway on one section of the project even while engineers were designing another section. In theory, completing projects more quickly cuts construction costs.

Another reason VDOT is resorting to design-build projects right now is that the department has largely run out of off-the-shelf project designs. In the past, VDOT engineers would do rough designs entailing about 30% of the work in order to develop cost estimates and move quickly to take advantage of unexpected funding opportunities. When the 2007 recession hit, VDOT curtailed its engineering work in an effort to cut costs. Later, when the Obama administration started distributing highway construction dollars under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the so-called “stimulus” bill), VDOT drew down its off-the-shelf plans. Now, said Virginia Highway Commissioner Gregory A. Whirley, the cupboard is almost bare. VDOT’s updated strategic plan calls for setting aside 10% to 15% of the state’s construction program budget for preliminary engineering in order to beef up its project inventory. Until then, the department will use more design-build, in effect outsourcing the design to engineering-construction firms and partnerships.

James A. Davis, former president of Shenandoah University in Winchester, said Virginia’s higher education sector went through a similar transition two decades ago. Colleges and contractors were comfortable with the design-bid-build process and were reluctant to change. “You have to be very clear about the specifications,” he told the board. “It’s a very different management process. It’s more creative, and you don’t know until you reach 90% [project completion] what the final cost will be.”

Despite the anxieties, design-build did cut the construction time of college buildings dramatically and saved considerable money. It’s largely standard for the higher ed sector today.

On the other hand, as Davis conceded, highway projects are typically more complex than college buildings. Also, he might have added, highways have a far greater impact on the public than college buildings do.

“How do we reconcile this with our obligation to consult with taxpayers?” asked James E. Rich, the Culpeper District representative on the CTB, who opposed the Charlottesville Bypass. It wasn’t an academic question. Read more.

Whirley Defends Cville Bypass Cost Estimates

Virginia Highway Commissioner Gregory A. Whirley

by James A. Bacon

Virginia Highway Commissioner Gregory A. Whirley is sticking with his $197 million estimate for how much money it will take to complete the Charlottesville Bypass, although he acknowledges that the final bids could come in above or below that number. The estimate was called into question yesterday by the Charlottesville Albemarle Transportation Coalition (CATCO), a citizens group that had found a much higher estimate in a Freedom of Information Act request. (See the previous post for details.)

Addressing an article in Charlottesville Tomorrow that detailed the CATCO findings, Whirley explained to the Commonwealth Transportation Board today how the estimate was derived. The original estimate came from the Culpeper District staff. An engineer in the central office staff got wind of the estimate, thought it was too low and developed his own estimate. But the engineer was basing his estimate on an outdated design, the VDOT chief said. The thinking at the district level had evolved on how to cut costs, he said, so he stuck with the district estimate.

The central-office estimate inflated costs in two major ways, Whirley said. First, the engineer used used old plans for the interchanges at both ends of the bypass that the district staff thinks can be significantly simplified. Second, it assumes that the construction crew will have to remove large volumes of rock and dirt. But the excavation costs can be cut significantly by elevating the highway. “I reviewed it (the central-office estimate),” he told the CTB. “I felt that the Culpeper district engineering estimate was closer to the project we planned to build.”

Whirley also noted that even the Culpeper estimate is not based on the final design. VDOT is issuing a design-build RFP, which means that bidding firms will execute the final design with the goal of bringing down costs even more. The hope, says Whirley, is that the winning contractor will “bring his creativity to the table and just maybe find a better way.”

James E. Rich, the Culpeper District representative on the CTB, expressed umbrage at the fact that VDOT had not informed the board of the full range of estimates before it voted to allocate $197 million to complete the project. “I feel left out of the process. I don’t want to have to FOIA the department” to get a full briefing on transportation projects in his district. Rich said that he still is not confident that the board has access to the correct financial and technical data.

Transportation Secretary Connaughton acknowledged that VDOT needs to complete a “cultural shift” in how it approaches costs. He’s seen too many instances of the department gold-plating projects, spending far more money than necessary. But he predicted that the Charlottesville Bypass bids would come back “dramatically less” than the official estimate. He also assured CTB members that no final decision will be made without their participation. “The board will be given the opportunity to say if we should go forward with this project.”

This article was written thanks to a sponsorship of the Piedmont Environmental Council.

Did VDOT Understate Cville Bypass Costs?

by James A. Bacon

A citizens group opposed to the proposed Charlottesville Bypass has unearthed documents showing that official Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) estimates of the project’s cost may be gravely understated. Just weeks before the Commonwealth Transportation Board voted to allocate $197 million to the project (to supplement the sum already spent on design and right-of-way acquisition), VDOT engineers calculated a total project cost as high as $436 million.

The Charlottesville Albemarle Transportation Coalition (CATCO) obtained the documents under a Freedom of Information Act request. “It is obvious that this project will cost substantially more than has been presented and approved,” said a CATCO press release. Albemarle County, the Charlottesville-Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization and the CTB all should reconsider their approval of the project in light of the new information, the organization said.

Some of the higher costs may be more apparent than real. In an interview with Sean Tubbs, a reporter with Charlottesville Tomorrow, VDOT commissioner Gregory A. Whirley said that the $436 million estimate assumed the “ultimate design.” By stripping out the over engineering, the project can be simplified and costs reduced before the project is put out for bids. The high number also includes a 10% contingency figure of $26 million.

However, the CATCO documents brought to light significant engineering issues associated with the 6-mile project, which would circumvent a congested strip of U.S. 29 north of Charlottesville.  As Tubbs sums up the problem, “This estimate factored in the cost of at least $46 million to excavate 3 million cubic meters of land, as well as $76 million to extract 340 cubic meters of rock. This third estimate also added $26 million for more accurate bridge costs. None of this information was made available to members of the CTB.”

Important questions arise from this new information. Did VDOT officials knowingly understate the real cost of the Bypass to the CTB and local authorities? If so, why would they understate costs, knowing that construction bids on the project could come in embarrassingly high only a half year later? Were the cost issues suppressed for political reasons and, if so, by whom?

The issue could evaporate if construction bids for the project meet VDOT’s cost estimates. But if overruns run into the tens of millions of dollars, as the documents suggest they could, someone’s going to have a whole lot of ‘splaining to do.

Update: Responding specifically to the Charlottesville Tomorrow article, Whirley briefed the CTB at the close of today’s meeting about the cost estimates for the Charlottesville Bypass and how they were derived. See the next post for details.

This article was written thanks to a sponsorship of the Piedmont Environmental Council.

Zoom Zoom Zoom!

Albemarle Supervisors declined to ask state highway officials to update an 18-year-old analysis of the Charlottesville Bypass before putting the project out for bids. It’s full speed ahead for the controversial, $245 million project.

Sound barriers — will they be in the RFP?

by James A. Bacon

The Albemarle County Board of Supervisors nixed a resolution Wednesday to ask the state highway department to update a traffic and environmental analysis of the Charlottesville Bypass before putting the $245 million project out for bids. The board voted instead to ask the Virginia Department of Transportation to complete the update before construction commences.

Why the controversy? Ann H. Mallek, the board chair, and Dennis S. Rooker argued that it is crucial to get updated information in circulation before VDOT issues the Request for Proposal. That way, contractors will know exactly what they are bidding on and the state won’t have to come back later with expensive change orders.

But a majority of board members were satisfied that the project schedule laid out by VDOT at a previous board meeting would accommodate any needed changes. They worried that putting off bids until the completion of the Environmental Impact Statement would create unnecessary delays for a project that has languished for nearly 20 years.

In remarks after the board meeting, Mallek conceded that the compromise resolution “has no power.” VDOT is not obligated to honor the board’s request. Further, once a contract is awarded, it will be too late to request changes to the project design without incurring extra charges. Morgan Butler, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, termed the final resolution “meaningless.” Even Neil Williamson, president of the Free Enterprise Forum, described it as a “toothless resolution.”

The original Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the U.S. 29 Bypass was written 18 years ago, and a supplemental impact statement, focused mainly on protecting the county’s drinking-water reservoir, was completed eight years ago. Although the project has received all necessary approvals, VDOT is required to conduct a written re-evaluation before construction begins. Mallek and Rooker contended that the data in the old evaluations are seriously out of date and that new data could influence the final design. Not only are the traffic numbers obsolete, but recent scientific research has documented the detrimental effects of highway pollutants on the health of children – a particularly sensitive issue given that six schools are located near the proposed Bypass route.

The resolution called on VDOT to update traffic modeling of the bypass, consider the scientific research on the effects of highway pollutants, conduct an analysis of health and noise impacts, engage with citizens in a public hearing, and consider a reduction in the bypass design speed from 60 miles per hour to 50 miles per hour.

Supervisor Kenneth Boyd contended that it was not necessary to hold up the RFP, which VDOT has scheduled for September. “They’ve told us they’re going to award a design-build contract with the caveat that they’ll come back after the public hearing and may make change orders.”

Read more.

The Wonk Salon, September 14, 2011

Dental School for SW Virginia? Maybe Not Such a Great Idea
Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service
No question: Southwest Virginia would benefit from having a dental school. But there are three big challenges: finding the money to build the school, recruiting faculty, and enrolling college grads with the necessary skills and ability to pay the tuition.

Pittsburgh Promise Fulfills Its Promise
Rand Corporation
Pittsburgh Promise offers $40,000 scholarships to public school kids who excel academically with the goal of fostering high school completion and college readiness. The program works.

Expanding Access to Health Insurance Will Drive Up Hospital Utilization
American Enterprise Institute
Obamacare advocates say their health reform will drive down costs by expanding access to primary care. Foes say it will mean more hospitalization and higher costs. It ain’t even close. Buckle your seat belts and brace yourself for higher costs.

Single Parenthood, Risky Behavior, Dropping Out and the Perpetuation of Poverty
Urban Institute
It’s the indirect influence of single parenthood that perpetuates poverty. Children of single mothers are more likely to engage in risky behavior like sexual activity, drug abuse and crime, and are more likely to drop out of school. Those behaviors turn poor children into poor adults.

Preventing Sexual Assault in Prison
Urban Institute
One out of 33 inmates in local jails reports being sexually assaulted in the past 12 months. Some practices that can reduce the problem: Put cameras in cells, provide training to correctional officers, and encourage officers to wander around and interact with inmates.

Battle over C-ville Bypass Moves to Next Phase

James Utterback, Culpeper District administrator, addresses the Albemarle Supervisors. Photo credit: Charlottesville Tomorrow.

By James A. Bacon

The battle over the $200 million Charlottesville Bypass isn’t over, not by a long shot. The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) and Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC) held a press conference earlier today to “send a clear message” to the Charlottesville-Albemarle community that the U.S. 29 Bypass “has a long way to go.”

“We want to make clear to the community that the bypass is not a done deal. There are many critical steps still to go, many questions that need to be answered, before the first shovel of dirt is turned,” said Trip Pollard, SELC Land and Community Program Director in a prepared statement. “Citizens need to demand that local and state officials provide a full accounting of the impacts and costs of this project before any further steps are taken to advance it.”

The project received the thumbs up this summer from the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors and the Charlottesville-Albemarle County Metropolitan Planning Organization, paving the way for funding approval by the Commonwealth Transportation Board. But the Virginia Department of Transportation has to complete a number of steps before it can start moving dirt.

“No work has been done on this project since 2002 other than administrative update,” James Utterback, Culpeper District administrator yesterday told the Albemarle supervisors yesterday. (Read the story by Charlottesville Tomorrow.)

VDOT soon will commence with an environmental reevaluation, right-of-way acquisition and issuance of the request for proposals, with the goal of awarding a contract by the first quarter of 2012. Additionally, the Federal Highway Administration must “review” the project under the  National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a process that will require public input. A key question is whether the circumstances have materially changed since the previous environmental impact statement, which is now 18 years out of date. If so, the FHA could order VDOT to conduct new studies.

“There are still a lot of unanswered questions, but it is clear that this ‘ready, fire, aim’ approach is not adequate to get the data to make an informed decision and the public involvement they suggest would be too little too late,” Pollard said. “The 29 bypass is not a NIMBY issue. Every community, every citizen in the Commonwealth should take note and be concerned about the waste of resources, the willingness to bulldoze ahead without adequate information, and the disregard for public input demonstrated here.”