As a follow-up to our recent articles about Prince William County transporation and land use planning…
Prince William County, much to its credit, surveys its citizens every year to gauge their satisfaction with county amenities and services ranging from public safety to help for the elderly, waste management to voter registration. The 2006 telephone survey of 1,439 randomly selected individuals is overseen by a third party, Dr. Thomas M. Guterbock, a University of Virginia sociology professor. (View the report.)
The overall picture is very positive. States the 2006 report: “Prince William County residents are on the whole very satisfied with their County government and quality of life.” On most items, changes since the baseline survey of 1993 have been positive. Among the critical indicators, satisfaction with the county’s “value for tax dollars” is up 11 percentage points since 1993.
(As an interesting aside, blacks and Hispanics consistently gave higher rankings to the County’s quality of life than did whites. Income was not a significant variable in influencing opinions.)
However, there are two major exceptions to the happy picture: land use and transportation. States the report: “Satisfaction with how the County is doing in planning how land will be used and developed … is down 9 points.” As a generality, the longer residents have lived in Prince William, the more dissatisfied they are with the way growth was outpacing the County’s ability to accommodate it.
Remarkably, only half the residents pronounced themselves dissatisfied with traffic conditions; half actually declared that they were “satisfied” or “very satisfied.” There were pockets of deep discontent, however, in North County, Gaineville/Linton Hall and Brentsville.
The Prince William Conservation Alliance drew these conclusions in a press release commenting on the survey:
This years’ survey reports that only 39.6% of citizens say they are satisfied with in-county travel conditions. This is an 18 point drop since 2002, and a 23 point drop since 2000.
This steady and statistically significant decline in citizen satisfaction with in-county travel is perhaps especially troubling because it coincides with the time period during which Prince William invested substantial amounts of local tax dollars to construct new and improved roads.
Prince William’s 2006 Citizen Satisfaction Survey continues to show declining citizen confidence in land use planning, growth and transportation processes. This information echoes the visible and growing consensus that we cannot build our way out of traffic congestion.
