Category: Virginia

Arlington is Booming, And Traffic Fantastically Remains at 1970s Levels

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

Science fiction fans will recognize this plot line. A woman travels into the past, telling her ancestors about her reality in the future, only to be called a lunatic because of the incredible nature of what she is saying.

Anyone who lives and works in 2013 Arlington, Virginia might be met with the same reaction if she were to go back to 1979 and tell someone about the county’s population, employment, and transportation trends.

Arlington’s population and employment have jumped nearly 40 percent over the past three decades. Meanwhile, traffic on major arterials like Wilson and Arlington Boulevards has increased at a much lower rate or even declined.

Nevertheless, according to our latest research (also embedded below), most executives and business managers based in Arlington County think it’s a fantastical notion that the county will meet its goal of capping rush-hour traffic at 2005 levels over the next two decades.

Of course, first these leaders had to learn that Arlington even has this target. Only 11 percent surveyed knew that the county actually intends to keep rush-hour trips and rush-hour vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) at or below 5 percent growth of their respective 2005 levels by 2030 (PDF; 1 MB). This goal is in place even though Arlington County planners expect that the population will rise by 19 percent and jobs will increase by 42 percent over that same period.

Once business leaders heard about the cap, a majority (61 percent) agreed that keeping traffic near 2005 levels is important to achieve. However, given the growth projections, it’s not surprising that so many in our business community do not think that we can get to our goal. It may be worth reminding them that other jurisdictions have more aggressive targets. San José, California, for one, wants to reduce the VMT within its borders by 40 percent from its 2009 level by 2040.

Arlington County Commuter Services continues to refine the way in which the county government keeps a lid on traffic with the infrastructure already in place. In 2012, ACCS’s outreach work throughout the county shifted 45,000 car trips each work day from a solo-driven car to some other form of transportation. The Silver Line’s opening at the end of the year will give new options for the large numbers of Fairfax County residents who travel into Arlington or through it to Washington D.C.

Yet now is also a time in which many of our region’s transportation visionaries and transit providers are thinking big about the future. The Coalition for Smarter Growth just released a report that catalogues the many existing plans to improve transit across the region in order to get us Thinking Big, Planning Smart, and Metro’s Momentum plan for improvements by 2040 is a expression of what the heart of our region’s transportation success could look like for the next generation.

Clearly, the billions of dollars needed to make these and other investments possible will not appear out of thin air and, as a community, the D.C. region will need to make bold decisions (just as Arlington has by strictly following its transportation vision set out in the 1970s).

Luckily, Arlington’s business community seems to be on board. Seventy-nine percent think that improving the transit system is important. And Arlington’s track record of success and the attitudes found in our survey of business leaders indicate that meeting the county’s traffic goal is realistic after all.

Does your community have an explicit goal to cap traffic? If so, we would like to hear about it, because seeing the state of practice helps us all make the case that taming traffic is, in fact, possible. Just like in science fiction, it only seems crazy because we have not done it yet.

Photo courtesy of Mobility Lab

Read the original article here >>

Helping Virginia grow — wisely

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

The March 13 editorial “Leave well enough alone,” on the Virginia transportation bill, characterized the coalition that defeated the 2002 referendum on a sales tax for transportation as “anti-growth activists and anti-tax conservatives.” This is a false characterization.

The leading activists have consistently supported planning for robust growth in the region. During the referendum debate, the Coalition for Smarter Growth and the Piedmont Environmental Council released a plan for redevelopment and economic growth that focused on the areas around the region’s rail stations. The region has embraced this vision through its Region Forward plan and local implementation of new transit-oriented development projects.

In Fairfax County, business and political leaders recognize transit-oriented development as the pivot for continued economic growth. The Coalition for Smarter Growth has endorsed and supported millions of square feet of development and thousands of housing units that bolster a smart-growth future. The Post should recognize this.

Douglas Stewart, Fairfax

The writer is a grants specialist at the Piedmont Environmental Council.

Read the original article here >>

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 >>

VDOT’s Outer Beltway

VDOT’s Outer Beltway

Posted on by acustis

VDOT’s OUTER BELTWAY
Community Meeting
Monday, March 11
7:00 – 9:00 PM
Chantilly Regional Library
4000 Stringfellow Rd – Chantilly (map) – served by Fairfax Connector bus rt. 605
Come early to view maps & displays

Resources

At the meeting, we discussed how the Outer Beltway would affect traffic in the region, the impacts on our property and communities, how much new land the project would open to new development, and how many new commuters we can expect on I-66, Route 50, and other major routes

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.”

Read the original article here >>

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

Read the original article here >>

Virginia’s Transpo Future: Charge Drivers Less to Build More Roads

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

Congratulations are owed to Bob McDonnell. He’s scored a victory on his transportation funding plan, cementing his legacy (though infuriating conservatives, including his hand-picked successor). His achievement is being called the first bipartisan initiative to pass in Virginia in decades. And what does this great deed accomplish? Secure revenue to fuel a new era of wasteful road-building in the commonwealth of Virginia.


McDonnell’s new transportation funding plan will pay for the wasteful and unnecessary expansion of Route 460. Photo: Doug Kerr/flickr

Virginia’s state House and Senate both voted this weekend to approve McDonnell’s funding plan for transportation, despite opposition from anti-tax activists. McDonnell’s original proposal to eliminate the gas tax entirely got massaged a little bit, turning into a 3.5 percent tax on the wholesale price of gas.

His proposal to raise the sales tax survived the legislature, as did the $100 tax on alternative fuels – an idea that is somewhat less backwards now that some semblance of gas tax remains. Democrats hate it, though, and McDonnell has already signaled a vague willingness to “review” it.

The sales tax hike, however, is as backwards as ever. McDonnell is raising the sales tax 0.3 percent in most parts of the state but 6 percent in the populous Hampton Roads and northern Virginia areas. Much of the extra funds raised in those areas will go to local projects, but it still means the most urban and transit-rich areas, where most of the state’s non-drivers live, will pay more for a plan that disproportionately funds rural roads.

Drivers will pay five cents per gallon less than they did under the old gas tax, given current prices — shrinking their contribution by about 30 percent. Rather than strengthen the gas tax’s small but important incentive to drive less, McDonnell’s plan turns it the other way.

The other reason the sales tax hike won’t do the trick is that sales taxes aren’t an appropriate tool when what you need is a stable source of funding.

FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff said the same thing last month when outgoing AASHTO Director John Horsley proposed a percentage sales tax on gas instead of a flat tax. “In transit-land, sales taxes rise and fall with sufficient amplitudes here that it makes or breaks projects,” he told an audience at TRB later in the day when Horsley made his proposal. “Just because it’s a sales tax doesn’t mean that it’s stable.”

According to economists Michael Madowitz and Kevin Novan, writing in the Washington Post, California’s transportation sales tax fluctuated 13.5 percent over the past decade while the fixed gas tax fluctuated just 1.2 percent.

“Given that it is far easier to predict gas consumption than prices,” they wrote, “it is prudent to tie transportation revenue to consumption.”

The one thing that’s predictable about gasoline consumption is that it will continue to drop. People are driving less, and the cars they’re driving are using less gas. Any gas tax solution is only a temporary fix. Does this mean McDonnell is right to want to drop the gas tax altogether? Not at all. Does it mean he’s smart to look to other sources of income for transportation? Of course – though he’s still looking in the wrong place.

Worst of all, the transportation expenditures envisioned in McDonnell’s plan are heavy on sprawl-inducing highways. He touts the multimodal aspects like high-speed rail and finishing the silver line to Dulles airport. But Stewart Schwartz of the Coalition for Smarter Growth characterizes the legislation as “truly a highway bill.” Even the maintenance funds it allocates ($538 million a year) will only serve to free up construction funds for rural highway-building.

Trip Pollard of the Southern Environmental Law Center called the package “too road-heavy” and said, “Virginia has to move toward a more balanced approach that provides greater transportation choices and a cleaner, more efficient system.”

Pollard’s and Schwartz’s organizations, together with other smart-growth groups, lamented the lack of reforms required in the funding bill. “It doesn’t require wiser spending by VDOT even as it effectively allows for about $500 million a year in additional highway construction funding for VDOT,” they wrote in a statement.

In his article for Greater Greater Washington about the bill, Stewart Schwartz wrote about where the money is going:

Just last week, VDOT announced it would allocate another $869 million in federal Garvee bonds to Route 460 and the Coalfields Expressway, two of the most wasteful, unnecessary projects in the history of Virginia. Four questionable projects—Route 460 ($1.4 billion), Coalfields Expressway ($2.8 billion), Charlottesville Bypass ($240 million), and the Outer Beltway in Northern Virginia (estimated $1 billion)—total a potential $5.5 billion in misallocated spending.

Many expect that Secretary Connaughton intends to divert a substantial portion of the new statewide money to the controversial and sprawl-inducing Outer Beltway, rather than to the critical commuter corridor needs of the metro regions.

He notes that just 21 percent of the statewide funds go to transit and passenger rail in 2018.

Photo courtesy of Doug Kerr on flickr

Read the original article here >>

McDonnell pushes through landmark transpo bill – Sequester rhetoric ratchets up – W.H. warns states of cuts – Will you change your travel plans?

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

McDONNELL’S LEGISLATIVE LEGACY: To Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, Saturday was a big deal. After nearly three decades of population growth, increasing gridlock and waning transportation revenues, the potential 2016 contender got done a comprehensive transportation revenue that evokes many of politics’ great compromises: No one loves it, but a majority didn’t vote against it, either. “It’s a broad, bipartisan compromise to [address] an intractable problem, that will serve Virginians well for a generation,” McDonnell said in an interview Sunday, just a few hours after his landmark bill passed. It wasn’t easy, even for him, to come around to the package that passed. But it had to be done, he explained, describing Virginia as having a “math problem” rather than a political one. “I really struggled with this early on, about the fact that as part of the final agreement, there were going to have to be some new revenues,” McDonnell said. “Reagan said, ‘Look, we have not raised the gas tax in 20 years and our infrastructure is crumbling.’ … He said the same thing I said: ‘I don’t like it, this is not my first choice, but we don’t have another solution.’ So he signed the bill.” Alex Burns and Burgess take it away: http://politi.co/VH4M47

What D.C. can learn: If McDonnell’s successful push to rejigger his state’s tax system to deliver more transportation money is any guide, the federal government needs to get out of the per-gallon gas tax game to get conservatives onboard. His state will spread new transportation revenue across the board: a reduced at-the-pump tax, new wholesale fuel fees, a larger share of sales tax revenue for transportation and a $100 annual fee on hybrids and alternative fuel vehicles. And though it doesn’t kill the state gas tax like he originally envisioned, he got a lot of what he wanted — and avoided receiving a bill he would feel compelled to veto. “I said at the beginning, we’ve got to reduce our reliance on the gas tax. Gas tax is on a long-term death spiral,” he told MT. So does this bill send a message that Virginia doesn’t expect any more revenue help from the feds? “At least in the short term, yes. They’ve got the same problem,” he said. “As long as the state or federal gas tax … is a flat cents [fee], you are going to have the same problem.” Burgess has more: http://politico.pro/15Jfknz

Want more? It’s a fairly complicated scheme, and WTOP has the conference report in legislative form: http://bit.ly/136lVc4. And Coalition for Smarter Growth has a good, simple summary: http://bit.ly/15b1nxs

LaHOOD: SEQUESTER SPOKESMAN: Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has been the administration’s loudest voice against the sequester, going on a media blitz in recent days to warn of long lines and fewer flights if the automatic spending cuts go through. On Sunday, LaHood went on CNN’s “State of the Union” (http://politi.co/UXXYjC), where he talked about furloughs and his job as an ambassador to his former House GOP colleagues. Right after that, the secretary hopped over to NBC’s “Meet the Press” (http://politi.co/YoNbwP), where he said that, even with less than a week to go, “there is still time to reach a compromise.”

For shame, good sir: A few big-name Republicans weren’t too happy with LaHood’s remarks on the Sunday talk shows. “Shame on Ray LaHood,” Arizona Sen. John McCain said on CNN after the secretary spoke (http://politi.co/WcvcgB). And Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, after LaHood spoke on “Meet the Press”, told the president to “stop sending out your Cabinet secretaries to scare the American people.”

Fact-check one two, one two: The White House released a series of White House fact sheets Sunday evening on the sequester’s impact on all 50 states, each offering the latest version of its warnings that cuts to the FAA and TSA would have a national effect on aviation. They caution that the FAA “would be forced to undergo a funding cut of more than $600 million,” prompting the agency “to undergo an immediate retrenchment of core functions by reducing operating costs and eliminating or reducing services to various segments of the flying community.” Team Transportation takes it away: http://politico.pro/137QrCx

Prognosis negative: The Senate Democrats will try to pass a package of cuts and tax increases to avert the automatic cuts, but the outlook isn’t too positive right now. Rogers report: http://politi.co/X5gruK

Friday surprise: Before hitting the talk show circuit, LaHood swung by Friday’s White House press briefing. The secretary said the cuts could mean “calamity” for travelers and will have “a very serious impact on the transportation services that are critical to the traveling public.” At the same time, FAA put out comprehensive lists of air traffic control towers where overnight shifts could be ended (http://1.usa.gov/12Ymq80) and a separate list of control facilities that could be closed (http://1.usa.gov/X07npr). But top aviation Republicans weren’t sold. “Before jumping to the conclusion that furloughs must be implemented, the administration and the agency need to sharpen their pencils and consider all the options,” Commerce ranking member John Thune, House T&I Chairman Bill Shuster and T&I’s Aviation Chairman Frank LoBiondo said in a joint statement. Burgess and Kathryn break it down: http://politi.co/X2ygKR

Want more? Those wanting the full exchange between LaHood and White House reporters can check out everything in the transcript: http://bit.ly/ZxKLjY

MONDAY FUNDAY. Thanks for reading POLITICO’s Morning Transportation, your daily tipsheet on trains, planes, automobiles and early-morning TV hits. If it moves, it’s news. Do stay in touch: beverett@politico.com and asnider@politico.com. Twitter: @AdamKSnider and @BurgessEv. More news: @POLITICOPro and @Morning_Transpo.

“So don’t jump in front of my train …” http://bit.ly/UAN4yM

SEQUESTER, STATE-BY-STATE: Three states — Rhode Island, South Dakota and Vermont — avoid any of the sequester’s aviation closures or cutbacks. California, on the other hand, has 23 facilities slated for outright closure. And Texas would be hardest hit during midnight shifts, with six facilities in cities from Austin to El Paso and Fort Worth identified for overnight shutdowns. Burgess take a state-based look for Pros: http://politico.pro/XPxG1q

Get the facts from a Republican: According to some background info distributed by a GOP source, FAA could weather the storm better than the administration is suggesting. The info notes that flights are down 27 percent since 2000 and that FAA’s operations account is up nearly $3 billion from 2002 and stands at $9.7 billion right now. “Before implementing furloughs, the FAA should review their $2.7 billion in non-personnel costs, such as $500 million for consultants, and $200 million for supplies and travel,” the two-pager concludes.

Metro morsel: The subway system expects to see fewer riders and would lose some of its federal funding as part of the cuts, according to Post Metro maven Dana Hedgpeth. http://wapo.st/WfDpv8

Scrumquester: We’d like to direct you to the POLITICO podcast “The Scrum,” on everything sequester with Maggie Haberman, Alex Burns, Jonathan Allen and Kate Nocera, hosted by Alexander Trowbridge. http://politi.co/13feRcW

WANT MORE SEQUESTER WATCH? — The specter of sequestration looms, and Jonathan Allen’s Sequester Watch delivers Pro readers a daily roundup of all of the twists and turns. To continue getting emails on all things sequester, sign up here: http://politico.pro/lvfnLQ, go to “Customize Your Topics” and select “Sequester Watch.”

WHAT THE FAA IS SAYING: LaHood and FAA Administrator Michael Huerta, in a letter to the major aviation groups, rounded up some of what we already knew about sequester but added a few more details that the secretary talked about at the White House. “We are aware that these service reductions will adversely affect commercial, corporate and general aviation operations,” they wrote. Read the letter: http://1.usa.gov/YMiCQb

LOTS OF REACTIONS: Senate Commerce Chairman Jay Rockefeller called the sequester cuts “reckless” and said that “everyone who travels for business or pleasure will be adversely affected.” NATCA President Paul Rinaldi cautioned that the cuts “may not be reversed,” adding that “closing air traffic control towers means the system will be even more compromised than anticipated.” Regional Airline Association President Roger Cohen said the “government is playing an irresponsible game of chicken — with no winners — and the traveling and shipping public will be the losers.” ACI-NA President Greg Principato thinks “decisions on cutting air traffic control services should be made based on most efficiently serving the needs and safety of the traveling public and in consultation with airports, airlines as well as affected communities.” A4A’s Jean Medina said that “no one wants to see the sequester happen,” and AOPA President and CEO Craig Fuller said he’s “deeply concerned” that the cuts “will compromise aviation safety and severely damage the efficiency of general aviation flight operations nationally.”

Busy week for controllers: NATCA also has a busy week talking about our other favorite “s” word (the first one isn’t fit to print). On Wednesday morning, the group puts out a report detailing the sequester’s effects on the aviation network, including a “detailed analysis” of more than a dozen airports. Later that day, Rinaldi speaks at the AeroClub luncheon and will chat with reporters afterwards. NATCA is also making some of its representatives available for media talks at major airport towers.

COLLISION COURSE: Truckers and safety advocates have run headlong into each other in a public spat over who to blame in crashes between cars and trucks. Both trucking groups and safety advocates are trying to bring science to bear in their arguments, with each side citing studies full of obscure terms and charts that would easily be at home in a scientific journal. Beyond the science, the problem has real-life implications: Thousands of people die every year from crashes involving big rigs, and truck-car crashes are twice as likely to cause fatalities as two cars colliding. The heated debate bubbled up again with a recent ATA study finding that car drivers are usually at fault for crashes with trucks. The Truck Safety Coalition was “appalled” at that report and shot out a strongly-worded letter. ATA replied by pointing to a FMCSA-commissioned study to back up their claims. Like every good drama, there’s a twist — the deputy FMCSA administrator who stood by the study in 2010 used to be a Truck Safety Coalition spokesman. Adam runs it down for Pros: http://politico.pro/X4Ofbh

DREAM DREAM DREAMLINER: The tête-à-tête between Boeing and the FAA on Friday afternoon on a potential fix for the company’s 787 Dreamliner fleet was “productive,” according to a statement from Boeing spokesman Marc Birtel, who said the airplane manufacturer is “encouraged by progress made toward resolving the issue.” But even in the best-case scenario, the 787 fleet may still be in chocks for weeks or longer while the FAA analyzes Boeing’s proposals. If the FAA signs off on the plan, it will still have to conduct some sort of recertification process, which is usually a monthslong process, if not longer. Birtel gave no details on the meeting except that Ray Conner, the president and CEO of Boeing’s commercial wing, and Huerta attended.

MT POLL RESULTS — Most-missed senator: It was a close one, but with 51 percent of the vote, MT readers dubbed Commerce Chairman Jay Rockefeller the most-missed transportation senator of the five who have so far announced their retirements. Frank Lautenberg was a close second, with 46 percent. With those two transportation titans, Sens. Tom Harkin, Saxby Chambliss and Mike Johanns didn’t stand a chance. Of note: Two readers think another big transportation name will call it quits before the year is up.

NEW MT POLL — Sequestration vacation: You’ve read all the stories about sequestration, air traffic controllers and long TSA lines. But if the cuts kick in, will you rethink your travel plans? Will you just get to the airport much earlier or look for alternate methods? Maybe you’ll just keep doing the same thing and hope you don’t regret it. Let us know what you’re doing to deal with air travel, just do it before Sunday at noon: http://bit.ly/1247xS5

REPORT-BAG — Insert tolling pun here: HNTB has a new white paper on “maximizing toll collection on multistate facilities.” The summary has a good description of the issue: “Aging bridges and four-lane interstates can’t keep up with the ballooning populations of multistate regions. Neither can departments of transportation, when budgets rely on funding sources as antiquated as the infrastructure.” The paper explores the background, the climate shaping policy and much more. Read a summary and download the report here: http://bit.ly/ZxAioX

THE AUTOBAHN (SPEED READ)

– Is it taking too long for NHTSA to do its work? NYT: http://nyti.ms/VGiTXz

– France clams it will be offering the cheapest HSR tickets in the world. Transport Politic: http://bit.ly/136XpI2

– California High-Speed Rail Authority settles a second CEQA lawsuit. http://bit.ly/YuLdZG

– California Senate puts forward CEQA reform effort. CAHSR Blog: http://bit.ly/ZCbEU1

– Majority of Californians support licenses for undocumented immigrants. The Field Poll: http://bit.ly/WcyAZ1

– A fascinating look at contrails and climate change, featuring some great satellite images. Atlantic Cities: http://bit.ly/XQllaG

– The Century Foundation has added Michael Likosky as senior fellow; he will focus on infrastructure issues. http://bit.ly/YIjIxN

TRIVIA NIGHT: POLITICO Pro Trivia is back tomorrow at 6 p.m., featuring POLITICO Pro’s Tony Romm and Juana Summers teeing up questions on all things policy, politics and D.C. RSVP with teams of four to eholman@POLITICO.com.

THE COUNTDOWN: The new sequestration deadline is in four days. It’s been 27 days since Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced his departure, and DOT funding runs out in 31 days. Passenger rail policy runs out in 218 days, surface transportation policy in 586 days and FAA policy in 948 days. The mid-term elections are in 617 days.

CABOOSE — Awesome bus stop: Qualcomm got creative with its advertising at a bus stop, putting up posters asking, “In a hurry?” or “Seen it all?” with a web page. Brave bus-waiters who visited the site were then surprised with rides from an attractive woman driving a Lamborghini, an on-the-road dog sled — and even a bus full of circus performers. The two-minute video, via Gawker, is definitely worth a watch: http://gaw.kr/XQlQBD

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