Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

A Charlottesville Bypass Alternative: the New 29

—

by

James A. Bacon
in

Foes of the Charlottesville Bypass have produced a video detailing six spot improvements that would not only speed travel for drivers passing through town but for the thousands of drivers who use the road for local trips.

“The bypass only offers minimal time savings to drivers passing through the area, and it offers even fewer benefits for local drivers, who make up the vast majority of traffic on 29,” said Butler Morgan Butler, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), in a prepared statement.  “The bypass won’t provide the new connections to work, schools, and stores along the 29 corridor we so desperately need.  We should be pursuing solutions that make the corridor work for those passing through the area and local drivers alike.”

The improvements, which bear strong similarities to proposals included in the Places29 study, include:

  • Improving the interchange with the 250 Bypass near Best Buy;
  • Building overpasses at Hydraulic Road and Rio Road intersections to allow through-traffic on 29 to flow without stopping;
  • Extending parallel roads on Hillsdale Drive and Berkmar Drive to give local drivers alternatives to U.S. 29.
  • Widening U.S. 29 north of the Rivanna River to eliminate the bottleneck there.

The video, produced by the SELC and the Piedmont Environmental Council, does not say how much the six improvements would cost. But one estimate dating back several years put the cost around $197 million — somewhat less expensive than the Bypass.

VDOT has not conducted a traffic study of the Bypass in its current configuration but the Charlottesville-Albemarle Transportation Coalition (CATCO) has estimated that it would have served between 6,470 to 10,600 vehicles per day had it been opened in 2010 and that traffic would increase to 8,800 and 14,400 per day by 2022. By contrast, the six improvements highlighted in the video would benefit everyone using U.S. 29, exceeding 40,000 drivers in certain spots, as well as thousands more who use Hydraulic and Rio roads.

The Bypass has an exceedingly high cost per mile — nearly $40 million — because it must acquire substantial right of way and build over rough terrain. Bacon’s Rebellion estimates that the highway would shave two minutes, 40 seconds, on average off a trip during rush hour. SELC/PEC provided no estimate of how much time per trip its proposed improvements would save, but they would eliminate the major bottlenecks that exist today.

The video is effective, so effective that I have but one question. Why didn’t they think of this long ago? It’s late in the game to be pushing a Bypass alternative, but perhaps not too late. The Federal Highway Administration still must complete its Environmental Impact Statement review before construction can begin. Perhaps the existence of plausible alternatives will affect FHWA’s conclusions.

— JAB

Share this article

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

Comments

  1. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    the entire PURPOSE of a standard NEPA study is to COMPARE alternatives for cost and effectiveness.

    But VDOT has a long history of rejecting anything that goes against their own doctrine and their doctrine is building roads – not retrofitting for transportation effectiveness.

    Witness how long it has taken for a small contingent of VDOT to advance the idea of synchronization.

    Such synchronization WAS suggested as an alternative to be studied in the Route 3/Outer Connector kerfuffle in the Fredericksburg Region and VDOT refused to include it by saying ahead of time that it “would not work”.

    Now, a decade later, with no hope of that bypass being built, s small group of NoVa VDOT engineers has synchronized the lights on Route 3 to give – yes… that’s right the same travel time savings that the bypass would have given for 250 million dollars more.

    The cost of the synchronization? Less than 100,000.

    but remember, VDOT refused to even include it as an alternative.

    Same deal in Charlottesville. VDOT likes to build roads – that’s their culture.

    I applaud the SELC for ‘advancing’ the alternative themselves even if VDOT would not. In fact, that’s about the only way to get an alternative on the table when VDOT is in charge.

    VDOT seems to be high on the idea of requesting open-ended proposals now days – for instance their recent RFI soliciting “ideas” for consolidation and operation of their traffic ops centers.

    I wonder what would have happened if they had asked for RFI’s for Charlottesville to let companies themselves propose alternatives ?

    VDOT has been downsized but they are still a very large organization and there are parts inside that deserve huge credit for their work but their planning division does not. They are as bad as they have always been.

    SNARL!

  2. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    this statement in the local paper bodes ill, perhaps big ILL for the project:

    “The last study, known as an environmental impact study, was concluded in 2003.

    The Federal Highway Administration is expected to determine in the fall if further scrutiny is required. The environmental groups hope the FHWA will make a decision that stops the bypass once again.

    If changes have been made to the proposed project — or new information has become available — since the original EIS that would lead to significant environmental impacts, a supplemental EIS may be warranted,” said Doug Hecox, a FHWA spokesman”

    http://cvilletomorrow.typepad.com/charlottesville_tomorrow_/2012/07/bypass-alternatives-video.html

    this project in all likelihood is going to get slowed down – and the more information that comes out is probably going to be adverse to a fast approval.

  3. johng Avatar
    johng

    Good points in the video and comments section. I expect over time the solutions depicted in the video will come to pass, and I hope they do. (Though imagine the disruptions to local traffic while the overpasses are constructed.)

    For a different perspective, imagine you are driving to DC via 29 and I-66. And, you have been notified that the Culpeper and Warrenton by-passes have been shut down for good. But, not to worry; the traffic lights through those towns have been timed to optimize through traffic. They have even eliminated a couple of stop lights.

    I’m afraid the world is full of by-passes for a reason. They usually work.

  4. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    re: bypasses “work”.

    they do, I agree but they don’t come free in terms of money nor impacts to the built environment.

    The bypasses around Culpeper, Warrenton and Lynchburg went through fairly rural areas where even though there were some impacts – no where near the scope and scale of Cville.

    The correct analogy (I think) would be to ask how a 29 “bypass” would be built in NoVa.

    A bypass is philosophically an abandonment of the original road instead of maintaining and preserving it as much for it’s transportation utility as for a local commercial strip venue.

    but perhaps just as important a question is who should pay for a bypass – the community for which it serves or all Virginians?

    Would the people of Cville or Warrenton or Culpeper or Lynchburg have agreed to pay higher taxes for their bypasses?

    One of the reasons that VDOT is out of money is paying for projects that primarily serve a locality with money collected from other Virginians

    So you build bypasses but you exhaust your funding ability in doing that.

    What I DO agree with is that now days when a bypass is built, it is limited access and cannot easily be co-opted for commercial venues (and ultimately ruined as a result).

    but they do not come cheap and a policy of building them sucks up state resources and ultimately results in zero-funded locality 6 yr plans as is now the case.

    Across the state, the funding for localities has dried up because we’ve spent it all on new roads (that require maintenance and operations) and there is virtually no money left for anything but maintenance and ops.

  5. pekoe Avatar
    pekoe

    So why does VDOT insist on spending more money for worse results? Because they can. Developer greed blended with political payoffs is the usual cynical answer, and while that explains the impetus to begin these projects, it does not explain the passive acceptance by the public. VDOT reeks of authoritarianism, a “we are big and you are small so sit down and shut up” attitude. Sadly, we teach our children to defer to authority, and not to question it, and then wonder why developers get exactly what they want at our expense.

    1. James A. Bacon Avatar
      James A. Bacon

      Pekoe, I sympathise with your frustration but I don’t think it’s accurate to pin the Charlottesville Bypass on VDOT… or greedy developers. A political decision was made at a high level of the McDonnell administration, the transportation secretary gave VDOT its marching orders, and VDOT is doing what it’s told.

  6. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    I still think VDOT is at it’s heart a road-builder. If you ever have the opportunity to walk the right-of-way for I-95 in an area undisturbed since it was built, you will find concrete markers that say VDH.

    VDH = Virginia Dept of Highways.

    VDOT is the son of VDH.

    VDOT still prefers building new roads over synchronizing signals and access management .. it’s a central part of their culture.

    Engineers like to build …. operation and maintenance is not “engineering”.

  7. cheezy Avatar
    cheezy

    the video has good ideas to fix the spots. They will need to be done in addition to the bypass.

Leave a Reply

Read More