Category: Loudoun & Prince William

REPORT: Rethinking the Bi-County Parkway

REPORT: Rethinking the Bi-County Parkway

The Virginia Department of Transportation’s (“VDOT”) own traffic modeling data reveal that the proposed Bi-County Parkway (“BCP”) would worsen, not relieve, traffic congestion. The same model shows that the comprehensive alternative offered by our coalition (termed the “Substitute Vision” by VDOT) will better address congestion in the study area, and better serve the dominant need for east-west traffic capacity—now and in the future.

STATEMENT: Virginia Commonwealth Transportation Board Approval of $17.6 Billion Six-Year Capital Spending Program: A Road to Ruin?

Statement on Virginia Commonwealth Transportation Board Approval of $17.6 Billion Six-Year Capital Spending Program

A Road to Ruin?

Today with no debate, the appointed Commonwealth Transportation Board approved the largest transportation spending program in Virginia history, $17.6 billion in capital spending.

“We are shocked by the lack of discussion of the spending priorities in the Six-Year Plan, by the failure to tie the program to specific policy goals, and the assumption that simply adding road capacity will solve our transportation problems.  The plan includes a number of wasteful mega-projects that have been strongly criticized as unnecessary including Route 460 ($1.4 billion), the Coalfields Expressway ($2.8 billion), Charlottesville Bypass ($244 million), N-S Corridor ($1 billion plus), and a long range $11.4 billion plan for I-81.

The CTB doesn’t understand the benefits of more efficient land use – of cities, towns, and compact transit-oriented development —  along with transportation demand management programs (carpooling, telecommuting, etc.) that reduce driving demand.  They don’t understand changing demographics and market demand that have led to big declines in vehicle miles traveled.  The plan includes just 9% of the total for transit even though 69% of the state population lives in the Urban Crescent.

In short, we believe this program will be remembered for squandering billions of tax dollars while making Virginia’s patterns of development less efficient, more oil dependent, and less competitive.”

Stewart Schwartz, Executive Director

 

About the Coalition for Smarter Growth

The Coalition for Smarter Growth is the leading organization in the Washington D.C. region dedicated to making the case for smart growth. Our mission is to promote walkable, inclusive, and transit-oriented communities, and the land use and transportation policies needed to make those communities flourish. To learn more, visit the Coalition’s website at www.smartergrowth.net.

 

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Preservation Virginia lists land slotted for Tri-County Parkway as ‘endangered’

Historic Civil War parkland slotted for a controversial new parkway that would connect the counties of Prince William and Loudoun has made the “endangered” list of one of the oldest non-profit preservation organizations in the country.

Preservation Virginia, founded in 1889, focuses on the preservation of historic sites around the state, including Jamestown and the Cape Henry Lighthouse in Virginia Beach. For the first time, the group included land slated for the proposed Tri-County Parkway, a 10-mile, four-lane thoroughfare that would connect I-66 in Prince William with Route 50 in Loudoun, on its list of “most endangered” sites for 2013.

Part of the parkway, which has drawn increased scrutiny in recent weeks, would run through historic Manassas Battlefield land and rural Prince William.

“The Tri-County Parkway would run directly past the August 28, 1862 position of the right flank of Confederate troops led by Stonewall Jackson and the left flank of the Union General Pope’s troops, taking up to 20-35 acres of land from the national park and historic district,” the group said on its Web site.

“Opponents of the highway…believe that it would negatively impact the national park and historic district and predict that the parkway and connecting roads will open up rural land in Prince William … and Loudoun County.”

The group joins a chorus of preservation advocacy groups raising concerns about the project, including the National Trust for Historic Preservation, National Parks Conservation Association, Piedmont Environmental Council, Coalition for Smarter Growth, and Southern Environmental Law Center.

The administration of Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) and the business community in Prince William and Loudoun believe the road is vital to the success of the fast-growing region. Supporters say the parkway — which could eventually connect farther east to Interstate 95 — would create jobs and drive economic development in the area, ease congestion and provide a key connection to Dulles International Airport and between two rapidly growing counties.

Elizabeth Kostelny, the executive director of Preservation Virginia, said that the organization is interested in the project in part because the National Park Service has pushed for assurance that if the parkway is built, Route 29 through the battlefield would be closed at Route 234 and a bypass around the park would be built.

“We’re not opposing it outright,” Kostelny said of the Tri-County Parkway. “We remain concerned about the traffic through the Manassas battlefield [and] having assurances those roads will be closed to commuter traffic.”

The Prince William Board of County Supervisors recently delayed a vote on Prince William’s state transportation priorities due to an outcry about the road. The parkway proposal has long had the support of both Prince William and Loudoun supervisors.

Prince William Board Chairman Corey A. Stewart (R-At Large) said in an interview that the board’s delay does not mean that supervisors plan to pull their support. He also said that despite setback and opposition, he believes the proposed parkway will move forward.

“I think they will be successful,” he said of the state’s plans for the road. “The reason is this … we have two of the fastest growing counties in the United States that do not have adequate connections to each other.”

Despite opposition in recent weeks — including from six state area Republican legislators and U.S. Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) — state officials say they plan to press forward and hope to explain their plans for the parkway more clearly and how it would benefit residents.

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

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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Virginia Pushes For ‘Outer Beltway’ That Critics Say Isn’t Needed

Opponents of the so-called "Outer Beltway" say that Virginia traffic numbers show that the new roadway isn't needed.

Virginia transportation officials are pressing ahead with plans for a major north-south highway connecting I-95 in Prince William to Rt. 7 in Loudoun County, even as VDOT figures show the far greater demand for lane capacity lies on east-west routes, with the exception of Rt. 28 where it intersects I-66.

The Virginia Department of Transportation has released its traffic study for the proposed ‘north-south corridor of statewide significance,’ a 45-mile, multilane highway running west of both Dulles Airport and Manassas Battlefield and also connecting I-66 and Rt. 50. The study, based on population and job growth projections, found that if the new highway—the bi-county parkway—is not built traffic would increase significantly on some north-south routes. (The study’s executive summary is below.)

“By 2040 we anticipate the bi-county parkway is going to have 45,000 to 61,000 cars per day using the facility between Route 66 and Route 50,” said Maria Sinner, VDOT’s transportation and land use director in Prince William County.

Without the new highway “Gum Spring Road, Virginia Rt. 659, anticipates to increase in traffic anywhere from 70 percent to 203 percent,” Sinner said. “Rt. 15 is going to increase an additional 11 to 20 percent higher, depending on the segment.”

The debate over where Virginia should focus its congestion relief efforts centers on mountains of VDOT statistics showing which roads have the most traffic. Opponents of the proposal to spend an estimated $1 billion to construct another north-south highway—referred to by critics as an “outer beltway”—point to these figures to support their argument.

In Prince William, Rt. 15 (from Rt. 234 to the Loudoun County line) carries about 15,000 vehicles per day, according2011 VDOT traffic tables. Two other north-south routes, Rt. 234 (from Rt. 29 to Rt. 659) and Rt. 659 (from Rt. 234 to the Loudoun line), carry even fewer cars daily.

The major east-west route in Prince William in the general study area of the north-south corridor, however, is significantly more crowded.  I-66 (from Gainesville to Rt. 234) carries about 60,000 vehicles per day. The exception is the north-south Rt. 28 and its 54,000 daily vehicles. Rt. 28 carries traffic into Fairfax County to I-66 where travelers either turn onto the interstate for east-west movement or continue on Route 28.

“If they are saying that they need this road because of the pressures on Rt. 28 then this investment would be a complete failure, because their own [study] shows there is minimal effect on Rt. 28 north of I-66 if this road were to be built,” said Stewart Schwartz of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, a vocal opponent of the proposed bi-county parkway. VDOT’s traffic study found that Rt. 28 would see a one to two percent increase in traffic if the new highway is not constructed.

In Loudoun County, the north-south Rt. 659 carries between 8,000 and 16,000 vehicles per day, depending on the segment, while the east-west roadway Rt. 50 carries between 15,000 and 40,000, depending on the segment. Again, Rt. 28 in Loudoun is a north-south highway that carries as much traffic as the east-west routes, but Schwartz says those cars are traveling to job centers near and east of Dulles Airport. The proposed “outer beltway” would lie west of Dulles.

“If you look at current traffic numbers immediately around where this highway would be built around Manassas Battlefield, the traffic volumes north-south are very low, and the dominant traffic problem that we all recognize is on roads like I-66 and Rt. 50,” he said.

State transportation officials say they are attempting to tackle both east-west and north-south issues, pointing to plans to expand I-66 along with its interchanges at Rts. 15 and 28. It’s not an either-or proposition.

“We need to do both,” Sinner said.

Supporters of building the 45-mile highway in the “corridor of statewide significance” also argue a new north-south highway can improve east-west traveling. A driver in Loudoun or western Fairfax trying to get to I-95 today might take Rt. 267 east to I-495 to I-95. A better connection south to I-95 would alleviate that east-west movement, this argument goes.

Moreover, planners say the case for a new north-south highway in Northern Virginia is obvious when you consider the impact of job and population growth in the region in 20 to 30 years.

Schwartz counters those projections fail to make a convincing case. “A lot of the projections are based on horse trading in between the counties and optimistic thinking.”

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A North-South Highway for Northern Virginia

The McDonnell administration has unveiled its vision for a north-south highway and other improvements to Virginia’s newest Corridor of Statewide Significance. The McDonnell administration has unveiled a recommended alignment for a limited access highway to be built as the backbone of the North-South Corridor of Statewide Significance in Northern Virginia. The 45-mile circumferential highway would start at Interstate 95 in the south, swing west of Dulles International Airport and terminate at Route 7 in the north. The route would following existing highways, roads and projects contained in the comprehensive plans of Prince William County and Loudoun County. In a brief presentation of the proposal yesterday to the Commonwealth Transportation Board, Deputy Secretary of Transportation David Tyeryar justified the project on the grounds that it would help Dulles airport compete in the air cargo arena and would serve an area on the fringe of metropolitan Washington whose population is expected to grow by hundreds of thousands over the next three decades.

The North-South Divide

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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Manassas battlefield must be protected from traffic

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.

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Deal is near to shift traffic out of Manassas battlefield park

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

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.