Tag: Charlottesville Bypass
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U.S. 29… The Saga Continues
The battle over the Charlottesville Bypass may be over, but the battle over what to do instead is heating up. After pulling the plug on the super-controversial, $240 million bypass early last year, the McAuliffe administration dusted off a plan to upgrade the U.S. 29 commercial corridor north of Charlottesville by investing in a series…
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McAuliffe Team Continues Transportation House Cleaning
by James A. Bacon I’ve been out of town attending a conference so I wasn’t able to cover the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) meeting this month. But based on press coverage and press releases, it sounds like Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s transportation team is getting a good handle on things, correcting some of the more grievous policy decisions…
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VDOT Seeks New Solution to Charlottesville Congestion
by James A. Bacon Effectively pulling the plug on the proposed Charlottesville Bypass, the McAuliffe administration has set up an advisory panel to recommend improvements to the U.S. 29 corridor north of Charlottesville. Lead by former Virginia Department of Transportation Commissioner Philip Shucet, the group must submit recommendations by May 14 — less than two…
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Busy Day at the CTB
Many meaty stories from the Commonwealth Transportation Board meeting today. It will take me a long time to do them all justice, so, for the moment, I will settle for whetting your appetite with the highlights. The Charlottesville Bypass is dead. It may not be buried — a few ritual oblations remains — but it…
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FHWA Deals a Body Blow to Charlottesville Bypass
Big news! The Federal Highway Administration has informed the McAuliffe administration that it will need to conduct an environmental assessment of the Charlottesville Bypass before getting federal authorization for the controversial, $240+ million project. The decision creates an enormous procedural barrier for the project which, combined with a likely vote by the Albemarle County Board…
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GOP Road Kill
Among the more interesting election results from Wednesday, Democrats trounced three Republican candidates for Albemarle County Board of Supervisors. The county split close to even in the gubernatorial and lieutenant governor’s races, indicating that the Democrats sweeping to power in the board of supervisors rode were not riding on Terry McAuliffe’s coattails. The vote was…
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The Road to Wealth Destruction Revisited
There’s an interesting new wrinkle in the never-ending debate over the Charlottesville Bypass, a project that has been stalled for a year or more while the Federal Highway Administration figures out whether to approve the project or send the Virginia Department of Transportation back to the drawing board, effectively nixing it. A real estate agent…
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Who Will Report the News? Weeklies, Monthlies and Blogs
In the last couple of days, I have come across two instances of excellent reporting on transportation and land use issues from obscure local publications. Both articles deserve exposure beyond their immediate circulation areas. In Chesterfield Monthly, Scott Bass writes about the lack of a walkable city center in Chesterfield County. Chesterfield is largely a…
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Dude! WaPo Columnist Ventures Look at Downstate Road Project!
Robert McCartney, a Washington Post columnist, has done a remarkable thing: He has taken a look at a transportation project outside the Washington region and decided he didn’t like what he saw. Not only is the Charlottesville Bypass ill conceived, it is part of a pattern in which the McDonnell administration “relentlessly pushes a major…
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Bobbing and Weaving on the Northern Terminus
by James A. Bacon The Charlottesville Bypass pile-up keeps getting bigger… Last night some 300 Charlottesville-area residents packed a meeting at the Holiday Inn to view three design options for the southern terminus of the controversial, $244 million project. After public outcry over flaws in the preliminary design submitted by Skanska-Branch Joint Venture (SBJV) as…
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Safety Last?
The McDonnell administration’s defense of the $244 million+ Charlottesville Bypass as a boon to traffic safety on U.S. 29 falls apart under close scrutiny. by Randy Salzman With apologies to Lewis Carroll, Charlottesville’s so-called Western “Bypass” project gets “curiouser and curiouser.” Each argument for the 6.2-mile highway collapses quickly if anyone does third-grade math. This…
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The Stroad to Hell …
by James A. Bacon Americans, asserts Charles Marohn in his book “Thoughts on Building Strong Towns,” do not understand the difference between streets and roads. That conceptual confusion has resulted in untold billions of dollars in bad investment as traffic engineers have melded the two in what Marohn and others have contemptuously term “stroads.” I…
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Bend, Buckle and Crack
The case for the proposed Charlottesville Bypass is collapsing like an old bridge. Even a VDOT consultant questions how well Skanska-Branch’s design for the controversial highway can handle projected traffic loads.
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Raising Taxes, Building Roads, Inducing Traffic
by Randy Salzman In fighting the waste of taxpayer dollars on the so-called “Western Bypass” of Charlottesville, I met a woman who favored the bypass because her family owns a beach house in Virginia Beach. As best as I could decipher her logic, she was willing to drive 15 miles out of her way to…
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Tell Us What You Really Think, Jim
by James A. Bacon A month after getting the sack from the Commonwealth Transportation Board, James E. Rich, former Culpeper District representative, has unloaded on the $245 million Charlottesville Bypass and Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton in far harsher terms than he did immediately after his resignation. (See “Our Way or the Highway.”) “Despite the contrary…