Category: Stopping Sprawl & Highway Projects

State’s Transportation Board delays vote on North-South plan

Posted on by Andrew Brown

Virginia’s Commonwealth Transportation Board on May 15 delayed a vote to accept the state’s North-South Corridor master plan that includes a proposal to more directly link Loudoun and Prince William’s roadways.

The North-South plan includes several regional projects, including the so-called Bi-County Parkway, which extends Route 234 from I-66 in Prince William to Route 50 and Northstar Boulevard in Loudoun. The project is meant as a north-south alternative to U.S. 15 and Route 28 that would provide greater connectivity between the two counties.

Pro-business officials from both Loudoun and Prince Williams have been adamantly in favor of the plan, while environmentalists and more conservative-growth groups are doing their best to thwart the project.

Tony Howard and Rob Clapper, presidents of the Loudoun and Prince William chambers of commerce, receptively, favor the Bi-County proposal. They issued a statement in late April after the study was released expressing their support for the project and dismissing the vocal opponents, whom they claim are misleading the public.

“The need for improved north-south connectivity between Loudoun and Prince William Counties has been well-documented by transportation and regional planning experts for decades,” the chamber presidents said in a prepared statement. “ … improvements to Route 234 and construction of a new Bi-County Parkway (Route 234 Extended from I-66 to Route 50 and Northstar Blvd.) will not require closure of Route 29 through the Battlefield. In fact, the closing of Route 29 through the Battlefield could only be triggered by construction of the Manassas Battlefield Bypass, a project for which there is currently no funding and, in our belief, is a project that is unlikely to occur.”

U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-10th), however, is urging thoroughness in the review and advancement of the project. Before last week’s vote Wolf sent a letter to Gov. Bob McDonnell pushing for the delay.

“Thousands of people have moved to Prince William and Loudoun counties since the project’s master plan was approved in 2005,” Wolf said. “More public hearings must be held and more citizen input must be received before any final decision is made about the North-South Corridor.”

Opposition has been firm from environmental groups, notably the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC) and the Coalition for Smarter Growth. PEC officials have gone far enough to call the proposed project an “outer beltway,” something project advocates have quickly dismissed.

“Rather than solve traffic problems, a billion dollar Outer Beltway will spark higher levels of residential development within the Prince William Rural Crescent and the Loudoun Rural Transition Area, adding more traffic to already congested east-west commuter routes. It will bring noise and pollution, split properties and neighborhoods, and reduce community access to local roads and services,” states a section on PEC’s website.

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Should Virginia Build Another Highway? Study for “Outer Beltway” Released

Posted on by acustis

Plans for a major highway in Northern Virginia are taking shape. Officials say the billion-dollar road would spur growth, but opponents say that premise is flawed.

The Virginia Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment state has released a study to the influential, 17-member Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) of a limited access, north-south highway between I-95 in Prince William County and Rt. 7 in Loudoun County, arcing west of Dulles International Airport.

The 600-foot wide “corridor of statewide significance” will eventually extend 45 miles by building upon existing infrastructure, carrying car commuters and express buses to meet forecasted job and population growth. Both counties have in their comprehensive master plans the additional lane capacity, although land use disputes may arise in towns with property in the planned corridor.

“We are in the visioning stage. We have very little money in this project. We have only put $5 million dollars on the project to date,” said Deputy Secretary of Transportation David Tyeryar, who presented the corridor study to the CTB last week. The board is expected to accept the study at its next meeting in May.

“We are still in a phase where we are meeting with the transportation departments of the localities and the landowners and trying to determine a vision for the corridor,” Tyeryar added.

As Transportation Nation has reported, a north-south corridor could theoretically serve multiple purposes: help existing residents avoid traffic congestion, provide lane capacity for expected new residents and businesses, and help turn Dulles Airport into the East Coast’s premier freight hub.

“It’s going to be essential that this route eventually be established and hopefully built,” said Gary Garczynski, the CTB’s Northern Virginia representative and long-time real estate developer. “I’ve been around for 40 years in Northern Virginia and when you see the population and employment figures in this study… you need to have the vision to say we are going to need these roads.”

But studies have shown that building new roads doesn’t necessarily alleviate traffic, and opponents are marshaling objections to the estimated $1 billion price tag as well as the state’s employment and population forecasts in western Prince William and eastern Loudoun.

“Much of the growth projections are based upon plans of the local jurisdictions, not necessarily based upon some sort of demographic and economic analysis,” said Stewart Schwartz, the executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, which favors transit-oriented projects to road building.

“We just raised taxes for transportation, but we didn’t do it to throw away the money. And we have such significant needs in Northern Virginia on the key existing commuter corridors, the funding of Dulles Rail, and fixing I-66,” Schwartz added.

The coalition’s director is also concerned about the public process, accusing the CTB of acting like a “rubber stamp” for Virginia road projects.

“One of the things we’re starting to think we need is an independent transportation planning agency separate from the Virginia Department of Transportation,” Schwartz said.

The CTB would be irresponsible to ignore the need to better move people and goods in Northern Virginia, Garczynski said. “The population and the employment growth is going to happen whether we build the road or not.”

 Read the original story at Transportation Nation >>

The North-South Divide

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

Battle lines are forming over the north-south transportation corridor in Northern Virginia. Backers say it would serve a growing population and stimulate economic development. Foes say the state has more urgent priorities for spending $1 billion or more.

Tri-County Parkway
Red line shows approximate route of the North-South Corridor where it runs through the Manassas Battlefield and extensive farmland.

Northern Virginia, we hear over and over, is one of the most congested regions in the nation – perhaps the most congested. Even with new mega-projects coming on line like interstate express lanes and the rail-to-Dulles Metro service, the list of transportation needs seems endless. Most improvements under consideration are designed to ameliorate the traffic gridlock that grips the region now. But one particular cluster of projects zooming through the bureaucratic approval process is designed to address traffic congestion that is forecast to be a problem… in 2040.

In 2011, the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) added the so-called North-South Corridor west of Dulles International Airport to its list of strategically important Corridors of Statewide Significance (CoSS), a designation that gives priority funding to projects within the corridor. It was the first time the CTB had added a new corridor not based upon an existing Interstate or rail line. Fast-tracking the project, the McDonnell administration has held public hearings and plans to present findings regarding a specific route and the cost to build a limited access highway this month.

Backers say Northern Virginia needs a north-south corridor – in particular, a limited access highway known in different configurations as the Tri-County Parkway or Bi-County Parkway — to accommodate the region’s fast-growing population and employment, and also to promote freight cargo-related economic development around Dulles International Airport.

“If you look at the population projections of the [Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments] and the Commonwealth of Virginia, you see a major percentage of future growth in Northern Virginia does occur in this corridor and points west,” says Bob Chase, president of the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance. “Loudoun and Prince William counties will add a couple hundred thousand people over the next 20 to 30 years.”

But skeptics describe the project as a wildly speculative endeavor that might enrich big landowners whose properties could be developed but otherwise do little to address Northern Virginia’s most pressing concerns. In particular, they say, Northern Virginia growth patterns in the 1990s and 2000s have zero predictive value for the future.

“The world has changed. Our population is older and is downsizing their homes. Empty nesters and younger workers want to live closer to jobs and transit, and in more urban places,” says Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth (CSG). “Moreover, the region has far more pressing needs serving existing population centers and addressing existing congestion. We need every dollar to fix existing commuter routes like I-66.”

Funding the north-south corridor, says Schwartz, would be “a misallocation of scarce resources.”

Only a year ago, the point seemed moot. Virginia was running out of state funds for new highway construction projects. But the north-south corridor controversy is sure to flare now that the General Assembly and Governor Bob McDonnell are close to approving a restructuring of transportation taxes that is expected to raise $800 million a year statewide for new transportation spending. Projects that had been pushed to the back shelves suddenly look fundable.

$2 Billion dollar project?

Northern Virginia’s major transportation arteries – Interstate 95, Interstate 66 and the Dulles Toll Road – all converge on the I-495 Capital Beltway or Washington, D.C., itself. Over the decades, population growth, job growth and development have followed those pathways out from the urban core. North-south arterials have been built to connect that growth, including the Fairfax County Parkway in the center of Fairfax County, and Rt. 28, farther west. The North-South corridor would represent a fourth such arterial but it would serve hypothetical future transportation demand, not a demand that exists at present.

Although the final plan has not yet been published, the North-South corridor likely will follow a path something like this:

  • Apexct its southern terminus the highway will start at Interstate 95 in Prince William County. It will follow the existing Rt. 234, which becomes a partially limited access highway west of Manassas.
  • The highway will proceed north across I-66 along the western boundary of the Manassas Battlefield and run parallel to Pageland Lane through miles of farmland, in areas zoned for low density — the so-called Tri-County Parkway.
  • The highway will incorporate Loudoun’s expansion of Northstar Boulevard, crossing another stretch of undeveloped land, where it will connect to Belmont Ridge Road until it reaches the northern terminus at Rt.  7.

Because corridors of statewide significance are designated multimodal corridors, not just highways, the north-south corridor plan could include other components such as tolled express lanes and, in theory, Bus Rapid Transit, although there is unlikely to be much demand for mass transit in a rural area far from major job centers. Also, the McDonnell administration is studying the idea of linking the proposed highway to the western approaches of Dulles airport and upgrading Rt. 606, which runs along the western edge of the airport. These improvements would open property on the west side of the airport for commercial development.

Smart growth groups like the Coalition for Smarter Growth and the Piedmont Environmental Council view the north-south corridor as the same as an Outer Beltway proposal that belly-flopped more than a decade ago, with the main difference being that the McDonnell administration seems willing to build it piece by piece rather than all at once. The original plan for the Outer Beltway was to continue north, bridging the Potomac River and hooking up with a major Maryland arterial, opening vast tracts of relatively inaccessible land for new subdivisions and shopping centers. Maryland officials have made it clear that they have no interest in such a collaboration but the Virginia Department of Transportation is footing the bill in a separate study to examine the feasibility of building another Potomac crossing at an unspecified location.

The Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment (OIPI) is scheduled to present its recommendations to the CTB regarding the routing and corridor improvements, says Dironna Belton, OIPI policy and program manager. The OIPI will not make its cost estimates available until then.

Schwartz with the CSG guesstimates that the north-south corridor would cost a minimum of nearly $1 billion — figure $19 million per mile for 50 miles — only a small portion of which could be paid for by tolls. Some of the highway would follow the existing Rt. 234, he says, but construction work on an operating road is very expensive. Throw in some interchanges and the cost of connecting the highway to Dulles airport, he says, and the project could approach $2 billion.

Growth Projections

The argument for a north-south corridor is based upon the proposition that jobs and population growth will continue booming on the western edge of the Washington metropolitan region. That case is buttressed by forecasts made by the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service’s Demographics & Workforce Group, which serve as the basis for state and local government planning purposes.

Here are the Weldon Cooper projections for the year 2040, listing jurisdictions in rough order of their proximity to the Washington urban core.

gorwth projections

According to the Weldon Cooper projections, jurisdictions in the urban core like Arlington and Alexandria will see no growth – or actually shrink. Following the radius out from the core, Fairfax County will continue to see substantial growth in absolute numbers but only moderate growth as a percentage of its already-large population. The bulk of the population growth will occur in outer-ring counties, especially Loudoun and Prince William but also, traveling down Interstate 95, Stafford and Spotsylvania.

In just Loudoun and Prince William counties and Manassas, the jurisdictions directly served by the north-south corridor, the population is expected to grow by nearly 500,000 by 2040.

In its study of the north-south corridor, the McDonnell administration has embraced the forecast of booming exurban growth. “Nearly 700,000 jobs, 800,000 people, and 300,000 new households are expected to join [Northern Virginia] over this 30-year timeframe,” states an OIPI newsletter. “Much of this future growth is expected to occur within Loudoun and Prince William Counties. Larger portions of the new employment and population growth are expected within the North-South corridor area.”

According to maps published in the OIPI newsletter, population in the corridor study area itself will increase by 190,000 and jobs by 127,000. Population in areas immediately to the west will grow by 230,000 more.

Projected corridor population growth

Chase with the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance argues that the growth projections actually might be conservative. In a recent email, he distributed a chart, based upon National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board data, comparing a 1990-to-2010 job-growth forecast made for the Washington region with actual performance. Urban-core jurisdictions like Washington, Alexandria and Arlington under-performed the forecast by a wide margin while outer jurisdictions tended to out-perform the forecast. “These trends are expected to continue for decades to come,” he wrote.

Forecast versus actual

In the battle over a proposed outer beltway a decade ago, which would have run more or less the same route, the Piedmont Environmental Council had warned that building the beltway would generate a population explosion, says Chase. “We didn’t build the corridor but the people came anyway.”

The idea that building roads causes population growth to occur that would not otherwise is wrong, Chase says, particularly in places like Northern Virginia with a strong economy and people moving  in from all around the country.

Creating a north-south corridor makes sense, he says. As he wrote in the email cited above: “Most of the region’s workforce lives outside the Beltway and employers are moving closer to their workers. Moving jobs closer to where people live is more efficient than moving people (longer distances) to jobs. It reduces commutes and creates a better balanced, stronger regional economy.”

Inflection Point

A big problem with the Weldon Cooper population projections and all the forecasts based upon them is that they extrapolate past trends into the future. There is reason to question whether Northern Virginia can replicate the population and employment growth of the go-go 2000s during the austere 2010s.

The terrorist attack on 9/11/2001 precipitated a decade-long growth in spending on defense, intelligence and homeland security, with much of the money going to federal agencies and contractors in Northern Virginia. With Washington adither over unsustainable budget deficits, however, the main question today is by how much defense spending will shrink. Likewise, spending on discretionary (non-entitlement) domestic spending is expected to level off, according to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) data show below. While federal spending is not likely to collapse any time soon, it won’t provide the jet fuel for Northern Virginia’s growth that it has in the past.

Federal spending

Not only is population and employment growth likely to slow, smart growth advocates contend that the pattern of that diminished growth is shifting dramatically away from the peripheral counties of the Washington MSA back toward the urban core.

Many urban economists believe that the forces impelling metropolitan growth to green-fields on the periphery have petered out or even reversed themselves. That doesn’t mean there won’t be any job or population growth in places like Loudoun and Prince William, but it does suggest that growth could fall far short of projections based on past trends.

Major economic and demographic shifts are transforming growth patterns across America. Most notably, the cost of automobile ownership is outstripping the rate of inflation and household incomes. Over the past decade (2003 to 2013), the Internal Revenue Service deduction for business travel, a good proxy for the cost of owning and operating a car, surged 57% to 56.5 cents per mile, far faster than the 26% increase in the consumer price index over the same period.

There is good reason to believe that the cost of ownership will continue to rise. Global supply and demand forces will continue to push the cost of gasoline higher. Interest rates, a critical factor for automobile financing, can hardly get any lower and likely will climb. Federal fuel economy standards will save on gasoline costs but increase the cost of purchasing cars — a 2012 study by the American Automobile Association indicated that 122,000 licensed drivers in Virginia, or 1.9%, would be priced out of the market. Meanwhile, automobiles are evolving into mobile communication and connectivity hubs that add tremendous functionality but also push up the price. While the cost of driving is increasing, incomes are stagnating for the bottom 80% of income earners. Assuming the laws of economics still hold, Americans will adapt to the higher cost of automobile ownership by driving less.

That economic trend dovetails with major demographic trends. Two-thirds of all households today consist of singles, childless couples, or empty-nesters, and that proportion will rise over the next 20 years, Christopher Leinberger , a real estate developer, Brookings Institution fellow and author of “The Option of Urbanism,” has argued. Those households don’t need a big suburban yard where Little Johnny can run and play. They prefer smaller accommodations that require less maintenance and offer a variety of transportation options. Indeed, Leinberger says, there is a huge housing surplus in what he terms the “drivable suburbs” and a pent-up demand for what he calls “walkable urbanism” where inhabitants can meet many of their daily needs by walking, biking or riding mass transit.

The evolving priorities are most evident among Millennials, the rising generation of 20- to 30-year-olds, who appear to be less enamored with automobiles than their parents were. In 2008, according to the Federal Highway Administration, only 46.3 percent of potential drivers 19 years old and younger had drivers’ licenses, compared to 64.4 percent in 1998. Similarly, drivers in their twenties drove 12 percent fewer miles in 2009 than twenty-somethings did in 1995. In big cities, many Millennials are abandoning the idea of car ownership and flocking to rental services like ZipCar and ride-sharing services like SideCar and Lyft.

Consistent with these trends, the 12-month moving average of Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) plateaued in 2006 around 3 trillion miles, according to Federal Highway Administration data, and has dipped since then. Adjust for population growth, as seen in the chart below, and the decline is striking.

Decline in VMT
Graphic credit: Business Insider.

In the Washington region, developers are pouring billions of dollars into re-developing the District, close-in suburbs like Arlington, and even middle-band suburbs like Fairfax County. D.C.’s population increased by 30,000 over the previous 27 months, the Census Bureau reported in December 2012. Arlington planners, who count some 1,380 housing units under construction at present, project that 36,000 residents will move to their county by 2040 — diametrically opposite to Weldon Cooper’s prediction forecast that the jurisdiction will shed 23,500 people.

Here is the breakdown for population growth in 2012. At this point Loudoun and Prince William, which are working off a large inventory of houses and lots from the recession, are on pace with the Weldon Cooper projections. But Arlington and D.C. are coming on strong.

NoVa population increase

Meanwhile, Fairfax County is the sleeping giant. Nowhere is the shift in human settlement patterns more visible than at the 10 Metro stops planned for the Silver Line. Literally tens of millions of square feet of walkable, mixed-use development are planned for Metro stations along the Dulles Corridor. Fairfax County is undertaking a massive, multibillion-dollar transformation of Tysons from the prototypical auto-centric suburban office district into a pedestrian-friendly community. The addition of a strong residential component to Tysons alone could absorb between 20,000 and 40,000 new inhabitants by 2040.

Alternate investments

Given the pent-up demand for transit-oriented development and the massive resources committed to building it in Northern Virginia, diverting resources to the North-South corridor makes no sense, contends Morgan Butler, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC). Investing in the Silver Line so Tysons can be the center of growth while building a highway that facilitates sprawl are mutually contradictory aims, he says. Transit-oriented development represents the future, he says, and state and local authorities should focus limited resources on making it work.

Northern Virginia has many transportation needs that are urgent right now, much less three decades from now. Just one example: A recently issued Environmental Impact Statement found, for example, that nearly half of a 25-mile stretch of Interstate 66 outside the Capital Beltway operates at a Level of Service E or F (worse than free-flow conditions) during morning rush hour. Nearly two-thirds are deficient during the afternoon rush hour.

What kind of traffic relief could Northern Virginia buy with the $1 billion or more proposed for the Tri-County Parkway?

A coalition of smart-growth and conservation groups has published an alternative to the Tri-County Parkway that would not only protect Loudoun and Prince William farmland and steer traffic away from the Manassas Battlefield Park but ameliorate congestion that afflicts commuters here and now. States their “Updated Composite Alternative”:

Our alternative is designed to address the much greater need for east-west commuter movement and to provide for dispersed, local north-south movement for current and future traffic. Access to Dulles is provided by the completion of upgrades to Route 28 from I-66 north, improvements to the I-66 corridor, and upgrades to the Route 234/Route 28 connection and Route 28 on the east side of the Cities of Manassas and Manassas Park. The composite set of connections is designed to improve traffic movement throughout the area, benefitting more travelers and trip types than would the single large north-south highway proposal.

The document does not contain a cost estimate for the alternative projects, which includes mass transit and lots of local road fixes, so it’s not clear if the proposals constitute an apples-to-apples comparison with the proposed north-south corridor improvements. What is clear is that there is no lack of pressing projects competing for that $1-$2 billion.

The Air Cargo Push

Backers of a north-south corridor cite a second justification for the Bi-County Parkway: By improving access to Dulles International Airport, a highway would promote warehouse and logistics investment around Dulles Airport and even in Prince William County.

The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) plans to develop 400 acres of airport property on Route 606, while Loudoun County is promoting 500 acres on the north-south corridor for cargo expansion, according to a December 2012 presentation made by Garrett Moore, then-district administrator for Northern Virginia. VDOT is conducting an environmental assessment for widening Rt. 606 on the western edge of Dulles’ property and a variety of other projects to improve western access to the airport.

“My gut tells me that Dulles in terms of cargo is about where we were with passengers in 1982. In those days, … there was very little passenger activity,” says Leo Schefer, president of the Washington Airports Task Force. But passenger service did take off. Dulles now is one of the busiest airports in the country and an economic engine of Northern Virginia. Schefer sees a parallel process underway with air freight. The established air cargo gateways are becoming more congested and more expensive to operate. The big logistics companies can cover their bets, he suggests, by establishing a presence at Dulles, which has enormous expansion potential and superior operating economics.

Schefer concedes that cargo-related development is not a sure thing. Unlike passenger service, in which airlines respond to rising traffic volume, “air cargo is more of an economic development exercise.” Northern Virginia economic developers need to persuade the big logistics companies to use Dulles as a strategic gateway where they can consolidate operations. That won’t be the easiest sell because the Washington region is not itself a huge market for air cargo. “We don’t produce much here besides paper,” he quips.

Northern Virginia is too expensive for the manufacturing sector, a major customer of air freight. However, Schefer sees that changing as new super high-tech manufacturing technologies are deployed and increasingly automated manufacturing processes rely upon fewer, more highly skilled employees. That kind of manufacturing could thrive in the region, he suggests, especially if manufacturers could avail themselves of superior air-freight access.

Be that as it may, Dulles has the real estate to accommodate large warehouses. “Logistics companies will want to see better truck connections,” Schefer says. “That’s where the north-south corridor comes in: A highway would provide superior access to markets to the west and south.”

Local economic developers view the situation similarly. “We view [the corridor] as an asset,” says Brent Heavner, marketing and research manager for the Prince William County Department of Economic Development. “One of the advantages of having better north-south transportation capacity is the market it opens up for industrial, warehouse and distribution users” in Prince William County, particularly the western county. “Right now those operations are at a disadvantage due to the circuitous route they have to move their freight to reach Dulles.”

A beefed-up air freight operation at Dulles might find itself competing with Richmond International Airport (RIC), which also has positioned itself as an air cargo handler. At this point, however, Dulles’ air-cargo ambitions have not made much of an impression on RIC. It’s not something airport management has studied, says Troy Bell, director of marketing and air service development. “We’re not anti-Dulles. But we have capacity and a very capable field.”

Schwartz remains skeptical of the economic-development argument. “Dulles is pushing its dreams on the rest of us. … They’ve justified the corridor by cargo growth at Dulles Airport. We think that’s a red herring. Air freight is a tiny percentage of total freight traffic.” While Dulles boosters have been promoting the north-south corridor, he adds, the air freight companies themselves have been conspicuously quiet.

There may be sufficient locally generated traffic demand to justify four-laning Rt. 606 on the west side of Dulles, a project that would cost $50 million, Schwartz says. But the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) wants eight lanes and four interchanges, which could bump the project up to $300 million. “They’re asking for the taxpayer to pay for the expansion of Rt. 606. Why shouldn’t they pay for it?”

The way forward

In sum there are several imponderables the state needs to consider before putting money into the north-south corridor:

  • Federal budget. Will the federal government deal with chronic deficits and a mounting national debt by cutting defense and discretionary spending, the lifeblood of the Washington metropolitan economy, and what impact would a spending slowdown have on population and job growth in Northern Virginia, particularly in the area served by the north-south corridor?
  • End of sprawl. Do economic and demographic trends portend an historic shift in the pattern of growth and development in the Washington region, away from the growth frontier served by the north-south corridor and back toward walkable urbanism served by mass transit?
  • Dulles air freight. Does Dulles air-freight traffic have a realistic shot at growth, and how significant is the economic impact of that growth?
  • Alternative investments. How much will North-South corridor improvements cost, and how else could funds be deployed to mitigate congestion and create economic value?

Anyone can say anything. Anyone can make unsubstantiated claims. As Nassim Taleb, author of “The Black Swan” and “Antifragile” observed, however, players with “skin in the game” — with something to lose if they’re wrong — deserve to be taken more seriously than outside pundits and prognosticators.

One option for the commonwealth would be to solicit bids to build the Tri-City Parkway and other corridor improvements by means of a public-private partnership, in which private-sector partners would invest their own money. Private investors, unlike parties with a political or ideological axe or something material to gain or lose, would have every incentive to develop realistic projections for the key drivers of traffic volume and toll revenue: population, employment and air-freight growth. If corridor improvements create sufficient economic value, it should be possible to pay for the project with toll road revenue. If the demand is lacking or takes too long to materialize, as happened to private investors in the Dulles Greenway, private players will pay the cost of their miscalculation with their own money — not the taxpayers’.

The McDonnell administration’s experience with the U.S. 460 project between Petersburg and Suffolk, designed to serve a projected increase in port-related traffic, is instructive. Soliciting bids from three construction consortia, the Office of Public Private Transportation Partnerships discovered that the private sector was willing to fund only a tiny portion of the project. Demand for the facility would be more uncertain and take longer to materialize than originally anticipated. In a controversial decision, the administration chose to commit more than $1 billion in public funds anyway in the hope that the highway would attract major industrial investment.

Soliciting public-private partnership proposals for the North-South Corridor could yield similarly useful information. How much of their own money would investors bet on the prospect of massive population and employment growth in eastern Loudoun and western Prince William? Investor willingness to fund the project would eliminate grounds for complaining that the project is diverting state funds from Northern Virginia’s other transportation needs. Similarly, the unwillingness of investors to put their own money into the project without a massive state subsidy would be a clear sign that the anticipated benefits are either too meager, too chancey or too slow to materialize to warrant investment at this time.

Images courtesy of Bacon’s Rebellion

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Why Tolls Will Be Waived On One Virginia Highway This Weekend

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

Nearly five months after opening, the operators of the 495 Express Lanes are struggling to attract motorists to their congestion-free toll road in a region mired in some of the worst traffic congestion in the country.

Transurban, the construction conglomerate that put up $1.5 billion to build the 14-mile, EZ Pass-only corridor on the Beltway between the I-95 interchange and Dulles Toll Road, will let motorists use the highway free this weekend in a bid to win more converts.

“It takes a lot of time for drivers in the area to adapt to new driving behaviors. A lot of us are kind of stuck on autopilot on our commutes. That trend might continue for a while, too,” said Transurban spokesman Michael McGurk.

Light use of HOT lanes raises questions

McGurk says some drivers are confused about the new highway’s many entry and exit points. Opening the Express Lanes for free rides this weekend will let motorists familiarize themselves with the road, he said.

After opening in mid-November, the 495 Express Lanes lost money during its first six weeks in business. Operating costs exceeded toll revenues, but Transurban was not expecting to turn an immediate profit. In the long term, however, company officials have conceded they are not guaranteed to make money on their investment. Transurban’s next quarterly report is due at the end of April.

To opponents of the project, five months of relatively light traffic on Virginia’s new $2 billion road is enough to draw judgments. Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) has not recovered since the recession knocked millions out of work and more commuters are seeking alternatives to the automobile, according to Stewart Schwartz, the executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth.

“They miscalculated peoples’ time value of money. They overestimated the potential demand for this road,” said Schwartz, who said the light use of the 495 Express Lanes should serve as a warning.

“We should not have rushed into signing a deal for hot lanes for the 95 corridor, and we certainly shouldn’t rush into any deal on I-66,” he said.

Transurban is counseling patience.

“We’re still in a ramp-up period. You’ve probably heard us say that since the beginning, too, but with a facility like this it’s a minimum six months to two years until the region falls into a regular pattern on how they’re going to use this facility,” McGurk said.

In its first six weeks of operations toll revenues climbed on the 495 Express Lanes from daily averages of $12,000 in the first week to $24,000 in the week prior to Christmas. Traffic in the same period increased from an average of 15,000 daily trips to 24,000, according to company records. Despite the increases, operating expenses still outstripped revenues.

It is possible that traffic is not bad enough outside of the morning and afternoon rush hours to push motorists over to the EZ Pass lanes on 495.

“It may also show that it takes only a minor intervention to remove enough cars from the main lanes to let them flow better,” said Schwartz, who said the 14-mile corridor is simply pushing the bottleneck further up the road.

Even Transurban’s McGurk says many customers who have been surveyed complain that once they reach the Express Lanes’ northern terminus at Rt. 267 (Dulles Toll Road), the same terrible traffic awaits them approaching the American Legion Bridge.

Express Lanes a litmus test for larger issues

The success or failure of the 495 Express Lanes will raise one of the region’s most pressing questions as it looks to a future of job and population growth: how best to move people and goods efficiently. Skeptics of highway expansions, even new facilities that charge tolls as a form of congestion pricing, say expanding transit is cheaper and more effective.

“An approach that gives people more options and reduces driving demand through transit and transit-oriented development may be the better long-term solution. But we’ve never had these DOTs give us a fair comparison between a transit-oriented investment future for our region and one where they create this massive network of HOT lanes,” said Schartz, who said a 2010 study by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments pegged the cost of a tolled network of 1,650-lane miles of regional highways at $50 billion.

Transportation experts say a form of congestion pricing, either tolled lanes or a vehicle miles traveled tax, may be part of a regional solution to congestion. The public, however, needs to be explained why.

“As long as the majority of system remains non-tolled and congested then you are not going to solve the problem,” said Joshua Schank, the president of the Eno Center for Transportation, a D.C.-based think tank.

“Highways in this region are drastically underpriced. People are not paying enough to maintain them and they certainly are not paying enough to pay for the cost of congestion. The American people have been sold a bill of goods because they have been told that roads are free. Roads cost money,” he added.

The 495 Express Lanes are dynamically-priced, meaning the tolls increase with demand for the lanes. The average toll per trip in the highway’s first six weeks of operations was $1.07, according to Transurban records. As motorists enter the lanes they see signs displaying how much it will cost to travel to certain exits, but no travel time estimates are displayed. “It is important to be very clear to drivers about the benefit of taking those new lanes, and I am not sure that has happened so far,” said Schank, who said it is too early to conclude if the Express Lanes are working as designed.

“It’s hard to know if it works by looking whether the lanes are making money. I don’t know if that is the right metric. It’s the right metric for Transurban, but it’s not necessarily the right metric from a public sector perspective,” he said. “The real metric is to what extent does it improve economic development and regional accessibility, and that’s a much harder analysis that takes some real research and time.”

Photo courtesy of Transportation Nation

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Manassas battlefield must be protected from traffic

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

Regarding Robert McCartney’s March 7 Metro column “Deal is near to shift traffic out of Manassas battlefield park”:

Everyone involved agrees on the need to direct commuter traffic away from the national battlefield park to protect the park’s history, meaning and visitors. However, not everyone agrees that the proposed new highways can solve traffic problems.

Omitted from Mr. McCartney’s column was the Virginia Department of Transportation’s agreement to analyze a package of practical, lower-impact transportation projects that could provide relief for east-west commuters and the park. That analysis must be completed and considered before this process moves forward. The draft agreement does not yet provide specific, enforceable provisions to close Route 29 and Route 234 inside the park if the new highways are built.

The ghosts of Manassas’s fallen soldiers deserve better. To move forward without an ironclad guarantee that the roads will be closed would put the history and culture of Virginia’s most recognized battlefield in jeopardy.

Joy M. Oakes, Washington

The writer is senior regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association.

Read the original article here >>

Deal is near to shift traffic out of Manassas battlefield park

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

The National Park Service and Virginia authorities are close to signing a major Civil War battlefield preservation deal that eventually would close two congested roads that slice through the twice-hallowed ground at Manassas.

The agreement, which could be signed by the summer, would provide for routes 234 and 29 to be shut down inside Manassas National Battlefield Park. That would happen once new highways are built along the western and northern edges of the battlefield and serve as bypasses.

“We’re down to the wire here. It looks good,” said Ed Clark, the park superintendent, a key architect of the pact. “It puts the goal of removing all the traffic from the battlefield within sight.”

There are downsides, of course. It could be more than 20 years before both highways, sometimes called the Bi-County Parkway and the Battlefield Bypass, are completed.Local residents and environmental groups said they would destroy the rural character that drew them to western Prince William County. Some accuse the Park Service, which previously has resisted new roads and development, of selling them out.

On the bright side, however, shutting the roads inside the park would be one of the biggest achievements ever to restore the authenticity and improve the visitors’ experience at the premier Civil War battlefield closest to Washington.

The 1861 Battle of Manassas, known in the North as Bull Run, was the war’s first full-scale engagement. It’s the one where Washington’s elite naively took carriages 30 miles to the scene for a picnic, thinking war was a spectator sport.

They were shocked when the Rebels routed the Union troops and sent them scampering back to the capital.

The same ground was the site of a second battle a year later, even bloodier than the first. It marked one of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s greatest victories and helped encourage him to invade Maryland, where he was turned back at the historic battle at Antietam.

The Park Service and preservationists have long been unhappy principally with the steadily rising traffic inside the battlefield. On a typical workday, more than 50,000 vehicles pass through the intersection of 234 and 29 in the center of the park.

Congestion is so bad that it’s often impossible to complete the driving tour that traces the highlights of Second Manassas.

“What we’ve been saying for more than a decade is the biggest threat to this park is the commuter and industrial traffic that goes through it every day,” said Jim Campi, spokesman for the Civil War Trust.

Campi’s group hasn’t yet formally endorsed the deal, known as a Section 106 programmatic agreement under federal historic preservation law. His group wants to be sure the final form guarantees that both roads, and not just one, will eventually be closed. That’s important because plans provide for the closures to be in two phases.

In the first phase, when the north-south, Bi-County Parkway is completed west of the park, 234 would be closed inside it. State and local authorities are keen to push that ahead quickly. Local residents who stand to lose property, and other groups, are agitating to block it.

The park would have to give up four acres of land for the Bi-County Parkway and allow a noisy, four-lane highway to be built nearby. Clark, the park superintendent, doesn’t like that but says it would be worth it to eliminate a road that’s also pretty noisy and cuts right through his battlefield.

“We’re giving some on the periphery to get an awful lot in the core, in the center of the park,” Clark said.

In the second phase, possibly as late as 2035, the Battlefield Bypass would be built north of the park. Only then would 29 be closed within it.

Clark said that as part of the deal, he insisted that the Virginia Department of Transportation pledge firmly to close both roads once the new highways are built. His nightmare would be that he agrees to new highways just outside his park, only to see the state renege on its promise to shut the roads within.

“They would have to double-cross us to do that,” Clark said. “We have to operate in good faith here that they’re going to stick to their word.”

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Community Meeting on the Proposed Outer Beltway

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

Join Us for a Community Meeting

VDOT has been moving ahead with plans to build a new “Outer Beltway” — an expensive road project that would cut through Loudoun and Prince William (east of Rt. 15, but west of Rt. 28).

The road would open up new land to development, cut through Manassas Battlefield National Park, and has the potential to make traffic on east-west roads, like Rt. 50 and Rt.66, even worse. Recent VDOT presentations confirm that the road is being designed to carry freight and cargo at 65+ mph — splitting neighborhoods from schools — and increasing sound and air pollution.

VDOT held public information sessions the week before Christmas. If you weren’t able to attend, or want to know more about what is happening, join us at this meeting.

  • Informational Materials – 7:00pm
  • Presentations – starting at 7:20pm
  • Q & A discussion

This meeting is co-hosted by the Piedmont Environmental Council and Aldie Heritage Association.

Building a bypass

Posted on by acustis

Outer Beltway, North-South Corridor, Tri-County Parkway, Bi-County Parkway, Corridor of Statewide Significance.

It’s been called many things in the 30 years since Virginia’s leaders first recognized the need for a bypass linking Interstate 95 in eastern Prince William to U.S. 50 near Dulles Airport in Sterling. Today, it’s inching closer to reality.

Once projected to be complete in 2035, the Bi-County Parkway – as it is now called in Prince William County – has the support of Secretary of Transportation Sean Connaughton, as well as many regional leaders and interest groups.

Decades ago, Congress also recognized the need to preserve the Manassas National Battlefield by relocating Va. 234 Business out of park, passing two pieces of legislation addressing the issue.

The proposed Bi-County Parkway would do both.

‘A 19th century road system’

“The need for this is growing every day and it is more than obvious we need to go forward. Between Prince William and Loudoun counties we are near reaching a point that there will be almost 800,000 people,” Connaughton,  former chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, said in a recent interview.

“When we talked about this 30 years ago, people were concerned about growth and what this road would do,” he said. “We’ve now gotten the growth, but we do not have the transportation facilities. That is what this road would do.”

While there are critics, both the Prince William and Loudoun boards of county supervisors support the plan and have included it in their comprehensive plans.

“Prince William and Loudoun counties are two very quickly growing communities and yet if you’ve ever tried to drive between them, you know it’s very difficult,” said Prince William County Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewart, R-at-large during the Prince William Chamber of Commerce’s State of Prince William event last week. “We’ve got a 19th century road

system between those two counties and it’s got to change.”

Deciding a route

When the Virginia Department of Transportation began studying the corridor in the 1980s, it came up with several routes, some traveling through Fairfax County.

In May 2011, the Commonwealth Transportation Board defined the 45-mile corridor in question as “the area generally east and west of the Route 234/Prince William Parkway and the CTB-approved location of the Tri-County Parkway between Route 95 and 50, and connections to the Dulles Greenway and Route 7.”

Last June, the CTB approved $5 million to start engineering and design work for a 10.4-mile section of the project.

The Bi-County Parkway would begin near the intersection of Interstate 66 and Va. 234 Bypass/Prince William Parkway. It would make a zigzag around Manassas National Battlefield Park, run along U.S. 29 and then follow Pageland Lane along the northern side and western edge of the park. The parkway then would extend north to U.S. 50 in Loudoun County near Dulles.

A second part of the corridor project, now being called the Loudoun County/Tri-County Parkway, would link State Route 7 in eastern Loudoun County to western Fairfax County and Interstate 66. Eventually, the corridor would wind its way to Interstate 95 in eastern Prince William.

Proposed routes and timeframes for the rest of the project are still on the table. For now, Connaughton and county leaders are pushing to see the 10-mile stretch from the 234 Bypass to U.S. 50 complete sooner rather than later.

Highway through history

Over the years there have been plans, studies and public hearings. However, the Bi-County Parkway project now has momentum and Connaughton wants to it continue.

“The situation is going to get worse before it gets better and that’s why we need to move forward now,” he said.

As one of the next steps, many major governmental and historic entities need to sign off on a “programmatic” agreement, an agreement in principle, to build the road. Among them are VDOT, the Federal Highway Administration, the state Department of Historic Resources and the National Park Service, which is a key player in what happens next.

Connaughton and Ed Clark, superintendent of the Manassas National Battlefield Park, both said they felt an agreement is near and should be ironed out this year.

“If we can reach a point where the park service believes that the conditions are such and the mitigations are such that it is to the net benefit of the park then we will sign on,” Clark said.

“We are working to ensure that we and other preservation-minded people have the ability to be very directly involved with the design of the (Bi-County) Parkway along the edge of the battlefield to make sure that things like sight and noise are addressed so that you minimized their impact on the battlefield,” Clark said

While the state had always planned to close U.S. 29 and Va. 234 inside the park when the parkway was completed, Connaughton said it is now considering closing portions of those roads as the parkway is built in stages.

Clark said that couldn’t come soon enough. About 52,000 vehicles, of those 13 percent are trucks, travel through the intersection of U.S. 29 and Va. 234 within the park every day.

“A lot of people say, ‘Why would you want a road beside you?’ To get the road out of the middle of it,” Clark said. “We want to get as much of the traffic that we can out of the battlefield.”

Connaughton calls the traffic inside the battlefield “a dishonor to the people who fought the two battles.”

There’s also the tourism lost to congestion.

“We believe this will create a true green space in Prince William where today it is essentially a commuter route,” Connaughton said.

The constant rumble of traffic makes experiencing the battlefield difficult for visitors trying to imagine the park as it was in 1861, Clark said.

Fighting traffic and always having that modern intrusion really distracts from that,” he said.

Finding funding

VDOT estimates the parkway could cost about $210 million to build.

Connaughton said the state does not yet know when it will get under way or exactly how it will be funded.

The General Assembly’s passage of a broad transportation plan to bring money for road and rail to Northern Virginia will likely help, he said. He said some state funds could be spent on engineering for the parkway and right-of-way acquisitions.

But he is hopeful that a private-public partnership, not unlike the one between the Potomac Nationals and the state for a new stadium and commuter parking in Woodbridge, could help fund the parkway.

“It would be our hope to get this project under way in the next five years,” he said.

Support and Opposition

That’s good news to Bob Chase, president of the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance.

“The need for this and other north-south corridors has been well established for decades,” Chase said. “The need is obvious to people who live in Prince William and Loudoun counties, who need to get to the airport, who need better connectivity to jobs in those two jurisdictions.

“The list of why this is important and necessary is quite extensive,” Chase said.

Yet there are environmental groups and others that disagree. They worry the road will encourage more development in the western Prince William region known as the “Rural Crescent” and encourage more commuting, Instead, transportation improvements should be focused on I-66, U.S. 50 and U.S. 1 in Prince William, they say. They also worry about the impact on the battlefield.

“This ‘dumb growth’ road is designed to bust the rural area. The rural area steers growth so new public facilities that cost residents less in property taxes,” said Charlie Grymes, Prince William Conservation Alliance Board chairman.

He said the parkway would perpetuate high taxes on homeowners and limit the funds needed to meet the Comprehensive Plan goal for new parks, managing stormwater to protect the Chesapeake Bay, and creating the live-work-play community described in the county’s Strategic Plan.

“Our strategic vision is to develop into a place where businesses choose to locate,” Grymes said.

The conservancy wants the county to invest in bringing in new jobs.

“Roads that export workers to other jurisdictions undercut our vision,” Grymes said.

A 39-page letter signed by several opposition groups was sent last summer to comment on the proposed programmatic agreement.

“Our organizations recognize the irreplaceable value of Manassas National Battlefield Park. We share the important goal of removing commuter traffic from the two highways that currently cross the battlefield. However, we are committed to ensuring that the chosen solution does not increase the overall impacts to the battlefield from traffic or simply shift the negative impacts from one area of the battlefield to another – especially when far less damaging alternatives have not been adequately considered,” the letter stated in part.

It was signed by Southern Environmental Law Center, the Piedmont Environmental Council, the Coalition for Smarter Growth, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and the National Parks Conservation Association.

Connaughton dismisses criticism that the parkway will encourage growth since it has already happened. He said he believes the impact on the battlefield will be positive.

“We think this is just a great opportunity for everyone. It will be good for historic preservation, good for the environment and good for transportation. It’s a win-win-win,” Connaughton said.

 Read the original article at Inside NOVA >>

Photo by Jeff Mankie for Prince William Today

 

Pageland Lane residents see renewal of old fight against Bi-County Parkway in Pr. William

Posted on by Ted Van Houten


Page Snyder, a longtime resident of Pageland Lane across from the Manassas Battlefield, points to where a proposed four-lane highway would cut through swaths of historic rural farmland. (Jeremy Borden – The Washington Post)

Legendary activist Annie Snyder, before she died in 2002, told her daughter that a road she battled against for decades would never come to fruition.

Snyder spent her life advocating for the preservation of rural lands, particularly those around the Civil War battlefields in Manassas near her home. She doubted that those who wanted to build a 10-mile Bi-County Parkway — which would skirt the battlefield and sit near the front of the Snyders’ family farm — would ever get the funds for such a controversial project, which would run from I-66 in Prince William County to Route 50 in Loudoun County.

The north-south route, supporters say, would create jobs and drive area economic development, ease congestion and provide a key connection between two rapidly growing counties. Detractors, including conservationists and smart growth advocates, say the road would be a boon to rural area land speculators, open up a rural area to development, and bring even more congestion that would result from a large Northern Virginia highway.

It would skirt hallowed Civil War ground, and resistant neighbors bristle at the thought of a four-lane highway competing with what is now bucolic spareness in their front yards.

Page Snyder, Annie Snyder’s daughter, now finds herself ensnared yet again in the fight, and she says she feels that the scales are tipped well in favor of the road. The road’s supporters — namely the administration of Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) — have little in their way of seeing the road through, she said.

Still, she’s not resigned. “We’ve won many lost causes that nobody thought we could win,” Snyder said. Since the 1960s, a shopping mall, large cemetery and dirt bike track, among others, have been proposed for nearby lands and were defeated.

While the road project has been with planning boards since the 1980s, several recent events have caused Snyder and others to see Bi-County Parkway (which is often called the Tri-County Parkway because past alignments brought it through Fairfax County) as increasingly a done deal.

In May of 2011, the Commonwealth Transportation Board declared the area as part of a north-south “Corridor of Significance” that could eventually connect Dulles Airport with Interstate 95 and provide a more easily accessible cargo hub, a concept that has wide support among many conservatives and business groups across the state. The National Park Service has largely agreed to the project, and a federal review that assesses the impacts of the roads, called a “section 106” review, is well under way. Officials say they hope to have it completed and signed off on by federal agencies this summer.

Also, last week, the CTB formally adopted a minor tweak in the road’s alignment to avoid a historic property. All told, residents are preparing for the reality of the road even as they continue to fight it.

If the road is built, Pageland Lane residents want to ensure that it does not cut off their access to surrounding roads. They said language in state documents gives the impression that the neighborhood would be cut off, without access to U.S. 29 and the surrounding community. Some alignment proposals could have them getting on the parkway simply to get off to go in the opposite direction.

Those access problems would have other effects. “We have our life’s savings in [our property],” said Mary Ann Ghadban, who lives on Pageland Lane. “If we don’t have access, our property is totally devalued.”

Maria Sinner, a VDOT official who helps oversee projects in Prince William, said that VDOT has not designed or engineered the road’s specifics yet. She said that the state is doing what it can to assure that Pageland Lane residents maintain access to U.S. 29 and the surrounding community.

“We’re going to do anything possible to continue to provide them access,” Sinner said.

There are still key hurdles to the parkway’s construction, even as the McDonnell administration sees the road as a “high priority,” said Sinner. The biggest is the road’s price tag: $300 million. A new funding plan for Virginia transportation means that some long-delayed projects should move forward, but there are competing needs, Sinner said.

“The administration has a high priority on this, but we know they don’t have $300 million right off the bat,” she said. So far, $5 million has been allocated for design work, and officials hope to get about another $15 million for studies this June, subject to a decision by the Commonwealth Transportation Board, the governing body that controls VDOT.

That board is lead by its chairman, Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton, a former Prince William supervisor, who has long advocated for the road.

“It is our desire to fund and build it as soon as practical,” Connaughton said in an e-mail.

Still, residents feel that VDOT has not been straightforward with them. Del. Timothy D. Hugo (R-Fairfax), whose district includes the area, has scheduled a town hall meeting on Monday at 7 p.m. at Bull Run Middle School with VDOT officials to address concerns.

Stewart Schwartz, the executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, said that the north-south connection when most residents travel east-west in notorious traffic conditions is a waste of state resources. He has called the parkway the “Zombie Road” — because, he says, it’s not needed, and it never dies.

The road, officials say, was formally approved in 2005 and should rightfully be on its way toward construction.

Photo courtesy of Washington Post

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