by James A. Bacon
Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton returned yesterday to his old stomping grounds in Prince William County to make the case to the Board of Supervisors, a body he once chaired, to back the Bi-County Parkway. The board took no action but, Connaughton certainly got a first-hand taste of the controversy the project has engendered.
The Bi-County Parkway is the key missing link in a proposed North-South Corridor that would connect Washington Dulles International Airport to Interstate 95 to the south, providing a free-flowing route for truck traffic and supporting the airport’s bid to become an air-cargo transportation hub. Opponents fear that the parkway would open up Prince William’s so-called “rural crescent” for development and disrupt commuting patterns along U.S. 29 and Rt. 234.
Connaughton argued that the parkway is needed to accommodate future transportation growth in the region, which is expected to see dramatic population growth by 2040, according to Washington Post coverage of the event. “How are we going to move these people back and forth?” he asked. He downplayed fears that Rt. 234 would be widened and that truck traffic would increasingly use the route to reach Dulles. Reports Jeremy Borden:
“We have no intention to widen [Route] 234,” Connaughton said. He also said that the thousands of residents who live along and near Route 234 – and fear living along a new “Outer Beltway” – will not experience huge truck traffic volumes.
Air freight going to the airport is “very low volume, but very high value,” Connaughton said.
Bacon’s bottom line: What’s this? Air freight will be low volume? I would refer readers to the 2005 Dulles Access Study, which projected traffic in and around Dulles to the year 2030. Specifically, I refer readers to page 20, where they will find the following table (my highlights):
Truck traffic to and from the airport will increase 131% to 34,000 trips by 2030. Is an extra 19,300 truck trips daily “low volume?”
Assuming those traffic volumes materialize — and there is ample reason to believe they will not — where will those trucks be heading? Some will hop straight onto the highway to far-away destinations. Others will head to nearby distribution centers where the cargo will be warehoused. Other trucks will pick up the cargo at those distribution centers, and the plan is for them to use the North-South Corridor to reach markets to the north, south and west. Some will divert west along Interstate 66 at Manassas, but others will continue south along Rt. 234 to I-95.
There is only one way that the truck traffic does not materialize, and that’s if the Dulles air-cargo business never takes off. But if the air-cargo business never takes off, guess what else happens? Loudoun and Prince William Counties won’t see the surge in logistics-related economic development that would create the demand for the workers who, with their families, account for the population growth that Connaughton says will require a north-south highway.
As argued repeatedly on this blog, population growth is shifting back toward the urban core to in-fill and re-development projects in Washington, D.C., Arlington County, Tysons, and along the planned Silver Line Metro route. If economic growth and population growth in the wide-open expanses of eastern Loudoun/western Prince William does occur, it will be driven by growth at Dulles. It all hinges on Dulles. If Dulles’ plans don’t pan out, you can kiss much of the projected job and population growth forecasts good-bye.
Connaughton can’t have it both ways. He can’t argue that there will be population growth without the truck traffic. They’re a package deal.
