Add Spotsylvania County to the list of local governments taking responsibility for local transportation improvements. Voters approved the issuance of $144 million in bonds in a referendum last fall. Now the County is negotiating a preliminary design contract for the projects with Spotsylvania County Infrastructure, LLC., a consortium of construction and engineering firms, according to the Free Lance-Star.
Once the contract is approved, SCI can begin collecting data–including vehicle counts, and the county’s growth and development patterns–in order to develop solutions for unclogging the congested roads. “It’s done in a very open way,” Clark Bottner with Shirley Contracting, told the newspaper. “You also have to look into the future, and say, ‘What is the plan for this road? Is it going to stay residential? Is it going to be high-density, low-density?’ You’ve got to come up with something that has some [life] length to it.”
There may be more to the story than appears in the newspaper, so I base my comments on limited knowledge. It appears that the County and the Consortium are projecting the future path of development and planning road improvements accordingly. That’s good. What’s bad is that there is no indication in the article that the County plans to alter its land-use policies in any way.
Added money for Spotsylvania roads could be a very good thing if it supported the creation of a Balanced Community with a mutually supporting mix of housing (serving varying income levels), offices, retail, recreation and amenities in a relatively concentrated area. It will be disastrous if it perpetuates the Business As Usual pattern of scattered, disconnected low-density development. In that case, the Board of Supervisors will find that $144 million will buy it only temporary traffic relief.