Tag: North-south corridor
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Too Early to Celebrate Demise of Bi-County Parkway
by James A. Bacon Foes of the proposed Bi-County Parkway, which would skirt the Massassas battlefield, are more optimistic than ever that the highway mega-project will never be built. Del. Tim Hugo, R-Fairfax, and Sen. Richard Black, R-Loudoun, proclaimed at a press conference yesterday that the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) “is not actively working…
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Whither McAuliffe on the Bi-County Parkway?
Over at the D.C. Streets Blog, Katie Pierce asks whether Governor-elect Terry McAuliffe will give thumbs up or thumbs down to the Bi-County Parkway. The answer: Nobody knows. (She quoted me in the article but I didn’t shed much light.) Still, it’s interesting that D.C. Streets, a pro-smart growth publication with a focus on Washington’s…
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MWAA Gets Its Kicks on Route 606
by James A. Bacon Construction of the “Dulles Loop,” 18 miles of high-capacity roadway around Washington Dulles International Airport, will take a big step forward with the recently announced $106 million widening of Rt. 606 along the airport’s western edge. Financing will come from multiple sources, including $40.5 million from the Virginia Department of Transportation,…
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The Ladies of Pageland Lane
In Prince William County populist conservatives and liberal smart-growthers have found common ground in fighting Northern Virginia’s proposed Bi-County Parkway.
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McDonnell Team to Spend $289,000 in Taxpayer Money to Sway Taxpayers on Bi-County Parkway
by James A. Bacon The McDonnell administration has agreed to pay a Washington, D.C., communications consultancy $289,000 to help win public support for the proposed Bi-County Parkway in Northern Virginia. The details are laid out in a Scope of Services agreement obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Del. Robert Marshall, R-Manassas. The…
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Air Cargo Case for Bi-County Parkway Crashes and Burns. Will McDonnell Pivot to New Justification?
by James A. Bacon Cognitive Dissonance, anyone? There is an interesting juxtaposition of articles in The Washington Post today…. The local section carried an article about George Mason University President Angel Cabrera expressing support of the Bi-County Parkway, while the business section ran an article about a new report emanating from The Center for Regional analysis at GMU,…
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Low Truck Volume on Rt. 234? Really?
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…
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The Eminence Grise Behind the Bi-County Parkway
by James A. Bacon Everybody who’s followed the politics of real estate development in Virginia has heard the name of John T. “Til” Hazel, the high-profile attorney and developer who did so much to shape the human settlement patterns of Northern Virginia. Hazel was gregarious, combative and willing to campaign like a politician to counter…
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Should Dulles Co-opt NoVa Economic Development?
by James A. Bacon Last week, Reed Fawell III noted in his article on this blog, “A Mortgage on Northern Virginia’s Future,” that few Northern Virginians or Washingtonians had paused to ask whether the massive road investments proposed to advance Washington Dulles International Airport as an air-cargo hub made sense. But clearly people are beginning to…
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A Mortgage on NoVa’s Future
Dulles’ speculative bid to become a national air-cargo hub dominates the transportation, growth and economic-development agenda of Northern Virginia. Can it succeed? And if it does, will it crowd out other paths to prosperity?
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Dulles’ Grand Plan
How is it that Northern Virginia, with some of the worst traffic headaches in the country, has embarked upon an economic development plan to bring thousands more trucks into the region? by Reed Fawell III In October 2005, the Washington Airports Task Force (WATF) got a wake-up call. Its transportation consultant reported that traffic heading east…
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VDOT Terms Conservationist Alternative an Impractical “Thought Exercise”
by James A. Bacon The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) has fired back at conservation groups opposing Northern Virginia’s Tri-County Parkway, asserting that their proposed alternatives would cost $6 billion to implement compared to an estimated $450 million to build the parkway. Ignoring the realities of the transportation planning process, says VDOT, the “substitute vision”…
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Battle for the Battlefield
The Manassas Battlefield has become the scene of yet another irreconcilable conflict: this one involving VDOT, the park service and local residents.
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PW Supervisors Delay Endorsement of Bi-County Parkway
So much news today, I can’t keep up! … The Bi-County Parkway, the key missing link in the proposed North-South Corridor, took another hit yesterday when the Prince William County Board of Supervisors delayed a vote to reaffirm its support for the project. The issue has pit Republican vs. Republican. PW Board Chairman Corey A.…
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Governor Bob as King George?
This quote from Del. Bob Marshall, R-Manassas, at the Commonwealth Transportation Board was just too good to bury in the longer news story I filed last night…. Here’s the context: Marshall was making the argument that the Virginia Department of Transportation and McDonnell administration had provided insufficient transparency to the approval process for the Bi-County…