The proposed 10.4-mile north-south parkway would connect Manassas with the Dulles corridor.

The road would run west of the Manassas Battlefield Park from north of the Interstate 66 and the Va. 234 interchange into Loudoun County, said a Virginia Department of Transportation press release.

"The board took a significant action today to improve mobility in a heavily congested region of the state by approving a location for the Tri-County Parkway," said Acting VDOT Commissioner Gregory A. Whirley in the release.

The PWC BoCS doesn't agree with the route. Chairman Connaughton notes:

We supported the alignment that was in all three counties' comprehensive plan.

Related Posts: 4 Nov 2005

Technorati Tag: prince william county

The Board voted Tuesday to endorse the eastern route of the Tri-County Parkway.

That route starts at the intersection of Route 28 and the 234 Bypass in Manassas and runs northeast through the city to Bull Run Regional Park in Fairfax. From there it veers west, clipping the northeast side of the battlefield and turning north through South Riding in Loudoun and on to Dulles Airport.

It is that option, which was the preferred alternative in a citizen survey, that has run into problems because the Federal Highway Administration has said it may refuse to allow federal funds to be used for a segment of that route for environmental reasons.

The Board prefers "Option D" for the routing of the proposed Battlefield Bypass, which would handle the traffic after Rt. 29 is closed in the Manassas National Battlefield. [Gainesville Times]

The idea for a Battlefield Bypass was conceived in 1988 when Congress ordered a study of the feasibility of closing Route 234 and U.S. 29 inside the battlefield in order to preserve the historic park. Traffic would be rerouted onto a beltway around the battlefield.

The northern route around Manassas National Battlefield Park was the one backed by federal planners but opposed by many citizens. It was the third and final idea considered by supervisors on Tuesday, only after they had rejected the only two other feasible alternatives.

I've blogged before on the Battlefield Bypass.

One interesting wrinkle is the idea of building in protection against massive development in the new corridor:

Opponents of that option have expressed concern that it would encourage development around the county's Rural Crescent.

In order to prevent that from happening, the supervisors attached an amendment onto their endorsement of the northern route. The amendment states that the endorsement is conditional on the bypass being a limited-access road. It is also conditional on the creation of a historic bypass overlay district around the battlefield. Connaughton said the board could create a district that would ensure that the property will remain zoned for 10-acre lots. That should stop high-density development around the battlefield and keep the bypass from becoming a "developer's road," Connaughton said.

With the understanding that they will come back later to adopt the overlay, the supervisors voted 6-2 to endorse the northern route. Stewart and Stirrup opposed the resolution.

Technorati Tag: prince william county

As I mentioned here and here, I attended the final public hearing for the study of closing US-29 and VA 234 at the Manassas National Battlefield Park.

The following text is my paraphrasing of comments made by citizens who chose to speak. I was trying to listen and understand as well as take notes, so they are strictly my interpretation of what was said. For that reason (plus the lack of people's names), I've not attributed the comments.

The comments are categorized into loose types. Lillian Kafka of the Potomac News covers the hearing here.

Dump D, Fix G

• "Don't waste our money. Do the fixes now."
• "Plan "D" harms neighbors."
• "Plan "D" will encourage heavy truck traffic through neighborhoods in Sudley Springs."
• "G makes the best sense."
• "Plan D impacts the historical NW corner of the park, the site of the Union retreat at Second Manassas."
• "D is a developer's dream."
• "A northern bypass encircles and strangles the battlefield. The surroundings will be destroyed to save the middle."

Costs

• "No available funds for the actual project."
• "Tragic waste of public money."

Opportunity

• "This is the chance to get real Federal funding that can help fix a real traffic problem that we have now."
• "This is a chance to make a long-term plan for the protection of the park, even if there's no money today to do all of it."
• "We need to fix I-66. East-West commuting is the problem, not North-South."
• "Think of preserving habitat. Widen I-66."

Pragmatism

• "I-66 is already the bypass for the Battlefield, why do we need another?"
• "Attendance at the Battlefield is not impacted by traffic. Why make a bypass?
• "We should address current realities, and not blindly follow the plans made almost two decades ago."
• "No need to close perfectly good roads."
• "The 1988 legislation funded only a study, not the construction."
• "No efforts have been made to close major roads in Gettysburg, Antietam, or Chancellorsville."
• "Battlefield attendance is down because interest in the Civil War is down."
• "We should be doing retro-active EIS on other projects to see how we did the first time around. It would be an eye-opener."
• "All of US-29 down to Florida is four-lane, except for this four miles in the park."

We Love The Battlefield

• "It is essential that we close US-29, to protect this magnificent park."
• "Must protect the Battlefield, no action is not a modern choice."
• "But how do homeowners who live in the park get in and out if the roads are closed?"
• "Traffic is a distraction at the Battlefield."
• "Schools don't educate about the Civil War. This park is a tremendous jewel."
• "The area has tremendous tourism potential if we save Civil War site."

Wonkiness

• "The scope of the study is inherently flawed. The environmental impacts are not fully measured.
• "Minimize impervious surfaces."
• "The EIS is flawed without considering the Tri-County Parkway. The cumulative environmental impacts must be studied."
• "We have no data on the real impact of co-location. We should quantify the real impact with a study." [I thought that's what we're doing here. Ed.]

Suspicion

• "These plans were cooked up in the dark of the night in Washington, DC."
• "There's no organic mandate for this large expenditure to consultants."
• "It's all a pipe dream."
• "This is all preparation for the Western Bypass, the Outer Beltway."
• "The cure is worse than the disease."
• "Local officials over the years are to blame for traffic problems."
• "Don't forget we are using the power of the government to displace people with power of eminent domain."
• "D lays the groundwork for the Western Bypass."
• "Don't be fooled, people. This is preparation for the Western Bypass. Don't treat us as fools."

Strange

• "With the price of gas, you shouldn't double the length of the drive through the park."
• "Businesses bring people, not developers."
• "Don't underestimate the restorative powers of a walk in nature. It's your children's heritage."
• "We have technology to create wetlands."
• "Don't forget the war. US-29 might have to be used as an evacuation route. We'll be doing triage on the Battlefield."

Technorati Tag: Battlefield Bypass

The General Assembly is at odds over how best to spend transportation funds. House Speaker Howell lays it out:

House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) was cordial but blunt with the small group of business leaders and transportation advocates he invited to his office Tuesday. You fought for tax increases last year, he said. Now you have to fight for transportation.

If you don't, and the Senate kills my transportation proposals, don't expect me to lift a finger for roads or transit next year, Howell indicated, according to several participants in the meeting.

The House is trying to get legislation passed this session to commit money to transportation, while the State Senate apparently prefers to attac this problem next year, albeit in a larger (read more expensive) way.

Dulles Toll Road fare increases ahead. All in the name of rail. Right..... You can respond.

Sucking up to Warner in the name of transportation. Or is it in the name of bipartisanship? Or in the name of election-year grandstanding? Oh, hell, "statesmanlike?"

The Kremlin, er, the Loudoun County Board of Superviors reveals the Six-Year Plan for shortening the tempers of the proletariat and smoothing the trip to the official dacha in the Blue Ridge. "Grandstanding" mentioned by name!

Fauquier ranks as the best place to live in rural America, according to The Progressive Farmer magazine.

Hey, not so fast, you: Clevengers Village approval means more Warrenton gridlock. So says the Fauquier County Board of Supervisors Chairman Ray Graham. [Details on Centex and Clevengers Corner]

And lastly, battered and bruised, our precious Rural Crescent hangs on, but for how long?. Is 39% open space too much to ask? Apparently so, if the value of your home will double.

And is "local control" a euphemism for passing the buck on a contentious, thankless, and expensive task?

The budget writer for the Virginia legislature, Senate Finance Chairman John H. Chichester (R-Stafford), suggested that localities could have an impact on local transportation by maintaining local roads beyond the traditional one year period. Virginia's Department of Transportation (VDOT) accepts roads into its system one year after their completion. Chichester will announce his own transportation initiative in January. VDOT has a Local Assistance Division.

Echoing this sentiment, Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) has suggested that local jurisdictions take a larger role in road construction, as a way to increase road-building capacity and speed projects.

Given the records of many counties in managing their budgets and and waging internal and often petty political battles, I have to disagree. County supervisors in Northern Virginia typically serve a four-year term and road-building or engineering skills are not on the list of required skills. Any substantial highway project requires multiple impact studies and can stretch to years in planning and building. The idea that local politicians can manage much beyond getting potholes filled strikes me as the work of a dreamer.

I'm no fan of pushing control and responsibility up the chain to the State or Federal government, but they do have a role in doing the real heavy lifting of building and maintaining our road infrastructure. The local guys have historically had quite enough to do, at least here in Prince William County, with leaving proffer money on the table and accepting unusable land from developers for parks and schools.

After a bit of digging and some attention to learning the traffic lingo, the VDOT site turns up this in-depth site describing changes and studies for the transportation systems in NOVA by the year 2020.

The summary report has county and city links to detailed tables of changes and studies. The Western Transportation Corridor (WTC) is noted with "Western Trans. Corridor construct I-95 to VA/MD state line - (lanes now) 4 (lanes then) 2020"

It's getting late, so I'll be trying to correlate this "VA/MD state line" with information from the Maryland DOT site another time. I only mention it because there was substantial and effective resistance to a western Potomac bridge by the residents of Virginia and Maryland. I believe it would have been an extention of US 28 north, past Dulles Airport, to cross the Potomac, into some very swanky Maryland neighborhoods.

Links: WaPo Coverage, Sustainable Loudoun, and Coalition For Smarter Growth.

And I don't necessarily endorse any of those groups above.

The Loudoun County (VA) Board of Supervisors has formed a Route 50 Task Force.

The purpose of the task force is to gain public input and recommendations on key issues facing the corridor. The issues include transportation improvements; a unified theme for the area's architectural style; access and linkage to key historical and cultural sites; and recognition of the area as a gateway corridor.

I drive this stretch of Route 50 daily and it's a beautiful area, but the traffic can be brutal at times. It's good to see Loudoun addressing that part of the county. The "unified theme" for architectural style seems a little silly, though.