Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Bringing Transparency to Transportation Project Selection

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by

James A. Bacon
in , , ,

The intersection from hell... on a good day
Grrrrr.The intersection from hell.

I have concrete reasons to bitch and moan about the new prioritization process for Virginia transportation projects under House Bill 2. A major project near my home — $14 million in improvements to the hellish intersection of Patterson Ave. and Parham Road — was scheduled for 2019 but has been put on hold to be subjected to the kind of strict cost-benefit analysis that, er, uh,  I have been calling for over the years.

That miserable intersection is the bane of my existence. I have to drive through it on half or more of the trips I take. During rush hour, Patterson/Parham can stack up for four or five cycles of the traffic signal. I curse it. I shake my fist at it. I loathe that intersection with every fiber of my being. That single intersection makes me want to move from Henrico County back to the City of Richmond, which has nothing to compare.

However, I do see the virtue in ranking transportation projects according to rational criteria such as congestion mitigation, economic development, accessibility, safety and environmental quality. Every transportation project will receive a score, that score will be made transparent to the public, and the Commonwealth Transportation Board will use it when selecting projects, as Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne explains in a Times-Dispatch op-ed today.

HB2 is potentially the most significant change to transportation funding priorities to come along in years. The hope is to bring more accountability to transportation-funding decisions when the initiative is fully implemented by 2016. If the CTB chooses to fund a project with low scores, it will have to answer for its decisions. We’ll see how things work out in practice. The new process assuredly will be an improvement over current practice but I’m skeptical that it will do much to bridge the transportation-land use mismatch that underlays transportation dysfunction. Furthermore, never underestimate the power of ideologues and special interests to work the system to their advantage.

I, for one, will be watching. And if that stinkin’ Patterson/Parham project doesn’t get its funding on schedule, there will be hell to pay!

— JAB

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12 responses to “Bringing Transparency to Transportation Project Selection”

  1. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    I was going to comment that nothing prevents any locality from prioritizing an improvement by ponying up their own money.

    or to suggest that VDOT build into it’s process, the ability of a locality to add money to a project to boost it’s priority… and get it built quicker.

    so maybe VDOT should do that beyond the 10 million match money they offer right now.

    but I thought Henrico handled it’s own roads anyhow (like most Va cities and towns) so what’s going on with this one?

    1. TooManyTaxes Avatar
      TooManyTaxes

      My understanding is VDOT still controls interstate highways, US highways and state primary roads. And it must follow applicable federal standards when either federal money or roads in the federal highway system are involved.

      In the last five plus years, I’ve found VDOT much easier to deal with. It still follows its regulations, but is much more open to input from local officials and agencies, as well as recognized stakeholder groups. VDOT seems less flexible when the highways at issue carry large volumes of through traffic, but that is understandable to me.

      VDOT also seems to be providing more information about the options it considers. It has worked cooperatively with the Tysons landowners on grid of street issues. VDOT has surfaced alternatives for 123 in the Tysons area, such as replacing the intersection of 123 with Great Falls/Lewinsville with an interchange; using superstreets on several 123 intersections to keep through traffic moving better; and, even, replacing the interchange at 123 & 7 with an intersection. While some of these ideas may not hunt, it’s much better now than when VDOT simply said what is wants to do.

      Like with many agencies, it takes time and effort to build rapport with VDOT and to establish credibility. But it is possible to persuade VDOT to think beyond the box in many instances.

  2. Tysons Engineer Avatar
    Tysons Engineer

    Thats not the intx from hell. You should see the crap VDOT has done up here in Fairfax if you think THAT is the intersection from hell. 10 lane wide, double right double left turn intersections with a 12 second cross walk. How’s that sound for hell?

    Disband VDOT. It’s failed in both improving safety on roads over the past 30 years, and in reducing congestion. It is a remnant of a stupid idea in the first place.

  3. Tysons Engineer Avatar
    Tysons Engineer

    Reviewing the intersection. I don’t see anything at all wrong with the design of the intx. Of course signaling might be a problem, likely some responsive timing would work best.

    The problem I see is the block nature itself in that region. The demand on that particular intersection could be drastically removed if not for the complete lack of connectivity on the side roads that surround it. You end up with a funnel effect adding more cars to this single point, than would otherwise be dispersed through several intersections that are human scale.

    VDOTs answer through this funding will likely be, make it better, making it more isolated with less connectivity to side roads. It will just compound the problem.

    1. James A. Bacon Avatar
      James A. Bacon

      Very true, block and subdivision connectivity stinks in that part of the county.

  4. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    To it’s credit – VDOT has been trying to increase connectivity but runs into folks who don’t want it through their areas – and that, in turn forces traffic back out on the main arterials.

    There are alternatives to intersections, they’re called separated-grade – interchanges and they are even more costly than the intersections and even less ped/bike friendly.

    VDOT’s primary problem is not competence or skill or technical capability – it is us.

    we love our cars. we dont want connecting roads and we don’t like to wait at intersections!

    I went back and look at the signing for Patterson – and Parham and both or Va Primary Roads. Patterson is Route 6 that runs all the way to Afton!

    still – if a locality has higher transportation wants and needs than what they are generating in fuel taxes – they still have the option of upping their own money – and it’s not that unusual as many localities do have referenda.

    I would also point out that many localities DO TAX vehicles – and yet they do not allocate those taxes towards transportation….but other things…

  5. salz Avatar
    salz

    Sec Layne’s proposal is a step in the right direction. The key will be how any formula for determining the cost-benefit values and, as JAB suggests, no doubt the financial powers-that-be will work to ensure that they continue to be on a gravy train.

    What is missing from both this article and these comments is anything which indicates that there are other ways for people to be transported than in one’s own, generally single occupancy, vehicle. As long as “we” continue to act like it’s our God-given right to drive anywhere, everywhere and even sometimes nowhere for any transportation desire, thought or need, we will continue to make congestion — and these kinds of intersections — worse. Building more lane-miles cajoles more people to drive more times for more reasons, the data is clear. Trying to build our way out of congestion, as a Virginia transportation committee put it as far back as 1998, is a “futile exercise” because, in the end, you always make the problems worse.

    It’s time we put our money into alternative, sustainable transportation rather than building more highways and more intersection turn lanes.

    1. larryg Avatar
      larryg

      Well I think the mentality of people in thinking that VDOT or some other entity is going to build them infrastructure for “free” is a problem.

      A recent poll show that people almost unanimously thought we needed more transportation infrastructure but also almost unanimously thought the money should be taken from other existing spending rather than higher taxes.

      I’m fascinated by the new plan for Rt 29 in Cville though – Philip Shucet tweets about it on a regular basis AND it has it’s own webpage:

      http://www.virginiadot.org/projects/route29solutions/home.asp

      so I wonder how that plan would rank on the new prioritization…

      by the way – we ALWAYS had a prioritization process – we, the public just never knew what it was … or how it worked – but projects got cut all the time so VDOT could balance it’s budget.

      1. salz Avatar
        salz

        The odd thing, Larryg, is that you and many others see the package of projects along 29N in Cville as “new.” At least as far back as 1990, VDOT research illustrated that building a grade-separated interchange at Rio and two parallel roads thru — one over the Rivanna River — would do more for congestion at a much better price. Mr. Schucet and his committee, as all analysts since have discovered, is that these are doable, quicker and cheaper than the so-called “bypass” (which didn’t). The difference is that now downstate interests, especially in Lynchburg, have learned that 1) the “bypass” didn’t and would next to nothing to help them pass thru the Cville area quicker and 2) that the accepted design of the “bypass” would actually increase the time it took for them to get thru, hence 3) the “bypass” price tag they were being told was a tiny fraction of the actual cost of making the so-called “bypass” address their issues. Once they learned the complexity of this, they agreed that building what VDOT had said — and reiterated a half dozen times since — these smaller, more effective projects, was the way to go.

        1. larryg Avatar
          larryg

          so the current plan for 29 has good support from folks in Cville and the bypass idea not missed?

          One of the interesting things about a prioritization system – might be to compare two competing proposals for a given project – like, for instance, developing the prioritization data for a bypass vs an “in-place” upgrade.

          or say there is a project with several different proposals like you’d see in a NEPA document – and now – there will be on additional column which will have the prioritization “score” in it.

          I’m not 100% sold on the prioritization scheme as I think some of the criteria can be “interpreted” differently depending on who is analyzing.

          I think the prioritization process is VDOT’s way of saying they’re not necessarily going to put money into a given area whose MPO or officials have identified a project as their top priority.

          In our area – in the last few years – elected officials and the MPO have prioritized projects that serve the localities access needs over projects that improve the flow on I-95.

          VDOT would have picked the I-95 improvement projects had they had sole ability to do so.

          I-95 from Fredericksburg to NoVa and Md is such a disaster than people from other areas on the East Coast trying to get through that area are so severely impacted by regional commuter traffic that they plan their trips at 4am or just take I-81 to get around the DC area.

          To a certain extent the same thing happened to Rt 29 through Cville.

          whose responsibility is it to assure that RT 29 functions for people trying to get through Cville on a US-signed highway?

  6. salz Avatar
    salz

    Yes, Larry, you are correct in thinking the majority of Cville and Albemarle citizens think the package of projects along 29N are better than the bypass. The only group who doesn’t think this, however, is the North Charlottesville Business Council which wants its own brand of corporate socialism. Scared of losing business during construction of, especially, the Rio Road overpass, they are presently demanding tax relief.

    Which I’d have no issue with IF/WHEN they agreed to greater taxes once construction is complete but they, who have benefited from millions in costs for expanding 29N, don’t want to “pay back” what they claim to be losing when construction starts. The NCBC wants, in effect, the government to pick winners/losers as long as the NCBC is included via tax relief in the winners.

    I don’t pretend to know how the prioritization scheme will work in reality. I just know that we should be spending our tax dollars much more wisely than Sean Connaughton did when he headed VDOT. He threw away $12 billion in a single year of the “public private partnerships” without any safeguards for taxpayers.

  7. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    highways like Rt29 are legion across Virginia – and other states and the essential tension is that businesses naturally want to locate where there is a lot of “traffic” – and they will and in fact when the US Aid highways (like rt 29) were proposed initially as the predecessor to the interstate highway system – cities and towns lobbied fiercely even went to court, to have the FHWA route these “connecting” roads THROUGH THEIR TOWN.

    at that time FHWA did not recognize that routing the roads through the towns was at conflict with the other purpose of allowing people to get AROUND towns towards other towns.

    it sounds stupid but it was not until the interstate highway system that they realized that they could not have curb cuts but only interchanges.

    In places like NoVa Rt 29 and Rt 50 are essentially no longer roads that function as connectors but really more as commercial and retail commerce venues and traffic-moving roads second.

    Cville has the same problem with Rt 29 and in a perfect world – VDOT would have abandoned it to Cville businesses like they have done with many of these roads – and just built a bypass around it all – like they have done in Lynchburg.

    If you can’t do that – then you go back – and backfit access management which is messy but at it’s core – access management attempts to claw back transportation functionality – at the direct expense of businesses in that median crossovers are closed, left turns are stacked and and have fast cycling greens that do not move all the cars in the left-turn lane but strand them there for more than one light change. The same things happens to side traffic that has to wait longer and then the greens are super fast… before going red and staying that way for a longer time.

    when this no longer “works” for major intersections – then they go to a grade-separated interchange which even in the smaller SPUI ( Single-point urban interchange) footprint – displaces businesses.

    what VDOT now advises localities to do – is to build parallel roads to the main road – like Rt 29 and use those parallel roads as business venues with multiple curb cuts, etc.

    but make no mistake – that’s what VDOT is doing to Rt 29 in Cville and the businesses will be impacted – and they know it.

    People here often talk like it’s the city’s prerogative on these decisions but it’s not, it’s the DOT – trying to insure that the transportation grid is functioning for it’s intended purpose not as a commercial or retail venue.

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