Tag Archives: Charlottesville Bypass

Connaughton to Charlottesville: Implement a Plan to Prevent More U.S. 29 Congestion

Posted on August 5, 2011 by | 7 comments

Photo credit: Charlottesville Tomorrow

If Charlottesville and Albemarle County want millions of dollars for transportation improvements in the U.S. 29 corridor promised to them by the state, they will have to deliver something in return: Implement a credible plan to protect the highway from encroachment by future development.

That’s a message I got loud and clear this morning in an interview with Sean Connaughton. And it’s a message I should have absorbed when I reported a week ago on the discussion of a letter that the state transportation secretary had sent the Charlottesville-Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization regarding approval of transportation projects bundled with the Charlottesville Bypass.

In that letter, Connaughton said he would ask the Commonwealth Transportation Board to fund or expedite four projects deemed crucial by Charlottesville and Albemarle County officials. These include three projects within the U.S. 29 corridor — the Berkmar extension, Hillsdale Drive and a new ramp at the intersection of U.S. 29 and U.S. 250 — as well as the Belmont Bridge in the city.

In my article, “Promises, Promises,” I focused on the issue debated by the MPO board members: What stock could local officials could put in Connaughton’s promises? Had he lived up to assurances he had given two MPO board meetings in a previous, private meeting? And was “recommending” something to the CTB as good as promising he would deliver?

As Connaughton pointed out to me this morning, I omitted mention of the last two paragraphs of his letter — the quid pro quo he was asking of local officials. Let me reproduce those paragraphs because they have significance far beyond Charlottesville and Albemarle County:

As you are aware, the CTB has identified Route 29 as one of eleven transportation corridors as Corridors of Statewide Significance (CoSS). The purpose of a CoSS designation is to provide a multimodal vision for the corridors to guide localities in their land use and transportation plans. Without guidance, local decisions can degrade a corridor’s ability to move people and goods, causing bottlenecks and problems that are costly to fix, and undermine economic and quality-of-life goals. As Virginia continues to grow, it must take steps now to ensure the right balance of development, transportation capacity, and natural resources. …

In consideration of the aforementioned transportation investments the Commonwealth is making in your MPO’s area of responsibility, it is our expectation that the MPO will commit to work with the CTB to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy that will protect your segment of the Route 29 Corridor from the types of encroachment that causes the bottlenecks and problems that we are currently planning to fix. We believe that the Albemarle-Charlottesville region has the opportunity to become a leader in this regard and, with your assistance, we look forward to making the CoSS initiative meaningful for localities and the traveling public.

Connaughton paraphrased the thrust of the letter this way: “We’re going to make you the test bed for corridors of statewide significance.” He wants to ensure that Charlottesville and Albemarle County avoid making the same mistakes again “so we don’t have to spend millions of dollars to build another bypass.”

Lesson to other jurisdictions: Connaughton is serious about implementing “access management” strategies in Virginia’s Corridors of Statewide Significance.  (For more about access management, see “When Less is More.“) Charlottesville and Albemarle are first. You may be next.

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When Less Is More

Posted on August 4, 2011 by | 4 comments

Sometimes, the cure for traffic congestion isn’t more asphalt, it’s less. By managing local vehicular access to state highways, VDOT can increase capacity at lower cost.

By James A. Bacon

U.S. 29 Bypass near Lynchburg

U.S. 29 Bypass near Lynchburg

The Virginia Department of Transportation created a problem when it built the U.S. 29 Bypass around Lynchburg, merging it with U.S. 460 for about 10 miles southeast of the city. While most of the shared roadway was limited access, allowing cars and trucks to move freely, a 1.7-mile section near Falwell Airport was used heavily by local traffic.

Vehicles traveling at highway speeds do not mix well with vehicles pulling out of restaurants, driveways and industrial access roads. In the 18 months before the bypass completion, the crash rate on that stretch of road was 16 per one million vehicle miles driven (VMD). In the 18 months following, the crash rate surged to 102 – more than six times higher.

Clearly, something had to be done. Upgrading that 1.7-mile stretch to a full limited access highway with exit ramps would have cost between $50 million and $55 million, says Rob Cary, VDOT’s Lynchburg district administrator. That seemed like a lot of money. Instead, VDOT adopted a strategy of pruning local access points to the highway. Since the completion two months ago of Phase 1 at a cost of $1.5 million, the number of crashes has been… zero. That safety streak won’t last forever, but a second phase costing $11.7 million should make the road even safer. Says Cary: “We get a lot of the benefit for one-third the cost.”

(Click on map for more legible image.)    

Access management is not a novel concept, but its application to Virginia roads is relatively new. Only in 2007 did the General Assembly direct VDOT to develop access-management regulations and standards with the goal to reduce traffic congestion, enhance public safety and reduce the need for new highways. The rules cover such aspects of design as the location and spacing of entrances, intersections, median openings and traffic signals. Since 2007, principles of access management have started turning up in VDOT documents such as the U.S. 29 Corridor of Statewide Significance (CoSS) plan.

U.S. 29, known as the Lee Highway in Virginia, stretches 1,000 miles from Pensacola, Fla., to Baltimore. Like other highways across the United States, U.S. 29 attracted commercial and residential development in the metropolitan regions it served as land owners exploited their proximity to a major transportation artery. But each new gas station, fast food outlet, shopping center and cul de sac neighborhood required an access point and an increasing share of the traffic became purely local. With traffic came signaling lights. As ever more vehicles halted at stoplights and pulled into the highway from driveways and store entrances, travel speeds decayed and congestion worsened.

The traditional response to highway congestion in Virginia was the bypass. When highway traffic bogged down on U.S. 29 in Danville, Lynchburg, Charlottesville, Culpeper and Warrenton, VDOT simply ran a new, limited access highway around the congestion. When the bypass got gummed up like the original highway, VDOT build another bypass. Warrenton has two, and Charlottesville is about to get a second one.

The Rt. 29 Corridor Plan fleshes out the new way of thinking in considerable detail. The vision for the corridor is one that allows access to the highway only at “designated and appropriately spaced locations.” VDOT and local governments along the route can clean up the accumulated detritus through a number of techniques, such as:

•    Changing zoning to shift growth pressures away from properties immediately adjacent to Route 29.
•    Putting land along the highway into conservation easements.
•    Having VDOT purchase access rights-of-way.
•    Developing parallel road systems to take local traffic off the highway.

   (Click on graphic for more legible image.)

•    Employing novel roadway designs such as roundabout crossovers and bowtie U-Turn configurations.
•    Requiring plans for any new traffic signal to have an “exit strategy” for removing the signal at some point in the future. Read more.

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Promises, Promises

Posted on July 28, 2011 by | 4 comments

The Charlottesville Bypass is a go, thanks to approval by the Charlottesville-Albemarle MPO. But it’s unclear when the money for other promised U.S. 29 corridor improvements will be forthcoming.

By James A. Bacon

Duane Snow (left) and Rodney Thomas. Photo credit: Charlottesville Tomorrow

The Charlottesville region will get $197 million for a western bypass plus $33 million to widen a stretch of U.S 29 north of the city, but citizens may have to wait years before funds come available to build other priority projects in the U.S. 29 corridor.

In a split decision, the Charlottesville-Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization voted to amend its Transportation Improvement Plan to include the two projects but did not make the approval contingent upon state funding for the other projects, as two MPO board members had hinted they might. Instead, the board attached a letter from Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton that outlined his promise to “recommend” the improvements to the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) for incorporation into the state’s Six Year Plan next year.

The value of the promises in Connaughton’s letter became the object of contention between MPO board members. “I’ve got the letter that I sought,” declared Albemarle County representative Duane Snow, who also serves on the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors. “We’ve got two major projects funded. I think Connaughton’s letter is sufficient” for the rest.

But Charlottesville representative Kristin Szakos said the letter “doesn’t offer any concrete assurances.” Moreover, she said, she didn’t like the fact that the letter had been delivered the day of the hearing, giving neither board members nor the public time to examine it carefully.

Having received approval by the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, the CTB and the regional MPO, the Charlottesville Bypass is now on the fast track after languishing for  20 years. But the project has not seen the end of controversy. Before construction begins, the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) will have to conduct an extensive environmental impact study, complete the design, acquire more right of way and bid out the construction contracts. Continue reading.

(Read related story published by Charlottesville Tomorrow.)

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A Bridge Too Near

Posted on July 27, 2011 by | 9 comments

There’s a new wrinkle in the Charlottesville Bypass controversy. The bridge across the Rivanna River may prove to be far more expensive than anyone anticipated.

By James A. Bacon

U.S. 29 north of Charlottesville

The Charlottesville Bypass could cost a lot more than the $197 million approved by the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) last week, contends the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) in a statement released earlier today. The preliminary design work for the controversial road project, undertaken years ago, did not take into account the fact that the Bypass would cross the Rivanna River at the same spot as a proposed extension of Berkmar Drive.

SELC based its claim of potential cost overruns on an analysis by Michael J. Wallwork, a professional engineer with Florida-based Alternate Street Design, P.A. Design considerations will be more complex than originally envisioned because the Bypass and the Berkmar extension have to pass through the same chokepoint, threading between U.S. 29, a water treatment plan and a major subdivision. “The three main options … face significant cost, engineering, and other challenges due to the number and length of bridges and under or overpasses needed,” Wallwork wrote. “These challenges underscore the need for careful consideration of the costs and impacts of the proposed Bypass on the planned Berkmar Drive Extended.”

Wallwork’s analysis complicates the decision-making of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization, the approval of which is needed for the project to proceed. The report highlights the need for additional information rather than rushing the controversial 29 bypass through the approval process, the SELC argues.

“This is further evidence that the [Albemarle County] Board of Supervisors and MPO are lacking key pieces of information about the bypass and its impacts,” said Morgan Butler, director of SELC’s Charlottesville-Albemarle Project. “The public has been promised that the bypass would help advance Berkmar Drive Extended, a top priority in the county’s Places29 master plan. But today’s report indicates the opposite may be true, even if the two projects share a bridge. Our local leaders need to get a much better grasp on how the bypass would impact Berkmar Drive Extended before they vote on it, not after.”

The MPO is scheduled to meet Wednesday night to address the western bypass issue.

One of the bridge scenarios in the Wallwork report.

The Bypass long existed as a line item in the state’s Six-Year Plan, but no money was allocated to it and nearly everyone had written it off. Partial rights of way, acquired more than a decade ago, are due to revert to the original owners if construction doesn’t get underway by 2012 — effectively killing the project. But the McDonnell administration surprised the project’s foes by resurrecting the Bypass earlier this month, persuading the Albemarle County supervisors to reverse their previous opposition earlier this month and then gaining the approval of the state transportation board last week.

Rodney Thomas and Duane Snow, two of the Albemarle supervisors who voted in favor of the project, also sit on the five-person MPO board. A third member is James Utterback, Culpeper district administrator for the Virginia Department of Transportation, answers ultimately to Secretary of Transportation Sean Connaughton, who has worked extensively behind the scenes to move the project forward. The two other board members, who serve on Charlottesville City Council, are widely presumed to oppose the Bypass.

Between Thomas, Snow and Utterback, the pro-Bypass forces would seem to have a majority on the MPO board. But there’s a complication. Thomas and Snow say that they switched their opposition to the project only because Connaughton promised them funding for four key U.S. 29 projects – a widening of the highway north of the proposed Bypass terminus; a new ramp at the interchange of U.S. 29 and U.S. 250 (widely referred to as the Best Buy ramp); completion of Hillsdale Drive, a road running parallel to U.S. 29; and the Berkmar extension, another road running parallel to U.S. 29 – in addition to the Bypass.

“When Duane Snow and I started on this, we were called by Sean Connaughton to have a meeting,” Thomas explained. “We were asking for money to widen U.S. 29. He threw the idea of the Bypass on the table. Duane and I looked at each other, ‘Hmm, what’s this?’” Read more.

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Bypass Surgery

Posted on July 21, 2011 by | 13 comments

The McDonnell administration has pushed through $200 million in funding for the Charlottesville Bypass over strenuous local opposition. The big question: Will the bypass need a bypass five years from now?

by James A. Bacon

The Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) voted today to provide $197 million in funding to build the 6-mile Charlottesville Bypass and another $33 million to widen a 1.6-mile stretch of U.S. 29. The controversial bypass project is almost certain to receive final approval in August by the Charlottesville-Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization.

The vote represents a significant victory for the McDonnell administration, which lobbied Republican board members on the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors earlier this month to reverse its previous opposition to the project, thus creating an opening for the CTB deliberation. After years of transportation funding cutbacks across Virginia, the Charlottesville Bypass is likely just the first in a series of mega-projects likely to receive funding as the administration dispenses the proceeds from $3 billion in transportation bond issues leveraged, in many instances, by public-private partnerships.

Ironically, the project received its strongest backing from CTB board members from outside the Charlottesville area, while James Rich, representing the Culpeper transportation district of which Albemarle County is a part, spoke passionately against it. Business and civic leaders in Lynchburg and Danville deem U.S. 29 to be an economic lifeline for the region’s manufacturing sector, and they regard the severe congestion north of Charlottesville as a hindrance to their economic development.

Opponents accused the administration of moving too fast, with too little transparency, in doling out the money. The Charlottesville Bypass will be funded at the expense of other more pressing projects. “Virginia has many transportation needs competing for limited money, and shifting these funds will shortchange other projects statewide,” said Trip Pollard with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “That’s not sound planning, especially when there are far more effective and less costly alternatives to reduce congestion.”

(Click on map for more legible image.)

The controversy highlighted an irreconcilable contradiction that plagues many of Virginia’s transportation corridors. On the one hand, U.S. 29 is a classified as a “corridor of statewide significance,” meaning that it plays a role in providing connectivity between urban centers. It is also a U.S. highway stretching from Pensacola, Fla., to Baltimore, Md. One stretch between Danville and Greensboro, N.C., is touted as “future Interstate 785.” On the other hand, the highway doubles as the primary development corridor in Charlottesville-Albemarle County. It is the location of 20,000 jobs, most of the region’s retail business and its largest residential real estate developments, accounting for 40% of the region’s tax base. Peak traffic reaches roughly 50,000 cars per day.

The lack of access controls along the U.S. 29 corridor means that anyone can build a strip mall, subdivision, office park or even a single-family home and connect directly to the highway. That practice, combined with Albemarle County’s decades-long policy of making it the count’s major growth corridor, has created nightmarish congestion. As one of the Albemarle dissenters summed up the dilemma in the public hearing, “It is not possible for a road to function as a highway and a commercial main street.”

In voting to fund the Charlottesville Bypass, the CTB board made clear its policy preference for maintaining the system integrity of the state’s corridors of statewide significance. “No one project is the solution,” said Doug Koelemay, representative of the Northern Virginia transportation district. “We need to look at all projects as a whole. We’re trying to make a system work.”

“This has gone on too long,” said Lynchburg district representative Mark Peake, alluding to the on-again, off-again history of the Bypass. “This is a United States highway, not the City of Charlottesville’s main street. … We’ve studied this for 20 years. We have the money now. Let’s do it!”

Because U.S. 29 is classified as a U.S. highway, it must be approved by the Charlottesville-Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization, but that should prove to be a formality. Two of the five MPO board members are Albemarle County supervisors who voted to rescind the county’s previous objection to the Bypass. A third is a VDOT official who answers ultimately to the Secretary of Transportation.

The 6-mile Bypass will run from Rt. 250 in the south to just north of the Rivanna River, bypassing about a 3 ½-mile stretch of U.S. 29 with 14 traffic lights. In a 1997 study, traffic was forecast to reach 24,400 vehicles per day by 2022, said James Utterback, Culpeper district administrator for the Virginia Department of Transportation. Utterback offered no estimate of how much travel time the Bypass would save.

Although there is a broad consensus that the $33 million allocated to widening a section of U.S. 29 is worthwhile, foes predicted that the $197 million spent on the Bypass will be largely wasted. The “bypass” is not even a bypass, they argued. It’s better labeled a “connector,” for it circumvents only half of the congested area. The “bypass” will dump travelers onto U.S. 29 just past the Rivanna River, where they will encounter many more miles of stop-and-go traffic. In the years ahead, congestion will only worsen as development continues to crowd the highway as far north as Ruckersville in Greene County. “In another five years, we’ll need to build another road to bypass the bypass,” predicted Albemarle resident Denny King during the public hearing.

Read more.

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