The Hillsdale Connector won’t be happening until at least 2014, Seth Rosen writes in today’s Daily Progress. The mile-long street, planned to parallel 29 for the benefit of local traffic, will run $30.5M. The slow-motion car crash that is the state’s transportation funding process makes any proposed road purely hypothetical. And how much will VDOT be providing in 2014? A whopping $332,000. Short of a radical rethinking of how we fund transportation in Virginia, it’ll be at least a decade before the Hillsdale Connector is built.
Archive for the 'Transportation' Category
Area officials are giving up on plans for a 64/Sunset Avenue interchange, Seth Rosen writes in today’s Daily Progress. The traffic flow south of the city is awkward (moving between 20 S, Avon, and 5th isn’t particularly easy), and the city, county, and UVa were angling for improving things by way of a new interchange. But at $50-100M it’s just too expensive. Instead, they’re looking to connect Sunset and Fontaine, but as with just about all road construction, even that’s unlikely to happen. (The state is hurtling towards 2018, the date at which the spiraling cost of maintaining our roads will eat up 100% of the state transportation budget. With each year that goes by, we can build less and less roads.) The need for this is going to come from the massive Biscuit Run development, just south of town. But with the developers offering a paltry $1.2M towards the road, there’s no reason to think that we’ll end up with anything but more traffic.
It’s been a rough week for the Meadowcreek Parkway. First the school board deferred a decision on giving up some of their land to build the road, Barney Breen-Portnoy wrote in the Progress on Saturday. And now city council has declined to endorse any of the interchange options, Seth Rosen writes today. Now, the school board signing off is really just a formality — and they’re quite likely to do so, anyhow — but the interchange is a bigger problem. Sen. John Warner secured $25M in federal funding for the road almost three years ago, but then the interchange committee went and recommended a design $5M+ over budget.
Councilor Julian Taliaferro thinks that interchange, at seven acres, is just too big. And Mayor Dave Norris just doesn’t see how the city is going to pay for it. Council will hold a work session in a month or two to figure out what to do.
The school board is willing to give up the required 8.5 acres, but they’ve got some conditions. They want a 25mph speed limit near school property (thus reducing the benefit of this dedicated route), a pedestrian bridge, a prohibition on trucks, a guarantee that the fifty replacement acres of parkland would forever be parkland*, and for CHS teams to get first dibs on the promised replacement sports field in McIntire Park.
* The same promise that the city made in order to accept the money from Paul Goodeloe McIntire to establish the park in the first place. Clearly, promises are no obstacle for the city.
The $500,000 Charlottesville Transit System GPS installation is done: now you can track CTS buses’ locations online or at dozens of bus stops. At least, it’s possible in the abstract that they can be tracked online. I wouldn’t know, because the site requires Internet Explorer and some Adobe plugin. (Install a plugin? Really? Didn’t we already do 1998?) Like one in four UVa students, I have a Mac–there is no IE to suffer through. Want to check your iPhone/Treo/Blackberry to see if you can make the next bus? You’re out of luck. Work in an office that doesn’t allow installing software? No schedule checking for you.
The significant upside, of course, is the remaining 95% of the system. Now CTS can track, coordinate, and adjust bus schedules in real-time to meet traffic demands. And the little screens at the bus stops sound pretty great. I’ll just have to abandon my hope of putting together per-line location-triggered RSS feeds and e-mail alerts. Cue the tiny violin.
Things are not looking good for the Eastern Connector, Seth Rosen writes in the Progress. The long-discussed road is intended to move traffic between Pantops and 29N without taking the bypass, or any of the routes we take when we don’t want to deal with the bypass. Basically, to move people between these two points:
It’s not hard to see that you can’t get there from here. Either such a road would have to plow right through the city, or veer around, traversing hundreds of millions of dollars of prime real estate along 20N. After $500,000 in studies, that’s basically what the city and the county have figured out. Four routes were proposed: simply widening 250, building new bridges on either side of Free Bridge, running a road straight through Pen Park to Rio, and beefing up Proffit/Polo/20 N. All have some combination of being ineffective and impossible.
Though nobody’s declared the Eastern Connector dead, it’s hard to see how to move forward from here. The good news is that more traffic means more support for mass transit, which will help with the problem. The bad news is that it’ll have to be really bad for at least a decade or so before that support gels into anything meaningful.
Steve Ashby writes:
The Forest Lakes Neighborhood Association has placed NO TRESPASSING signs at two extremes of the walking trails behind Baker-Butler Elementary School in Proffit. These trails provide access to the school from four subdivisions (Jefferson Village, Chesterfield, Langford Hills, Forest Lakes North) and Proffit Road. The signs prevent legal pedestrian access to Forest Lakes and force non Forest Lakes middle school students from healthy bicycle/foot access to Sutherland Middle School onto buses. The option to bike on Proffit Road and U.S. 29 is just too dangerous for our kids. The streets in Forest Lakes are state-maintained, public rights-of-way. All this seems down right unneighborly.
I have made a short and silly VodCast, “Noise in the Wood“, about this development-developement.
The proposed city/county bus rapid transit system would cost over $100M, Seth Rosen writes in today’s Daily Progress. Both municipalities have agreed to petition the General Assembly for permission to create a joint transit authority, but there’s not much agreement how that will manifest itself. The most expensive option is to create bus-only lanes along 29 N, allowing mass transit to become a faster means of commuting than driving.
This seems to be a lot like the “need” for an larger, $19M sewer line running up 29 N. If we intend to continue our rate of growth then, yes, these things do qualify as needs. But if we look at the costs of a new lane, new buses, a new sewer pipe, a new fire station, new schools, etc., and decide that it’s too much, then we’re obligated to limit our growth accordingly and live within our means.
There’s been a lot of attention on bridge safety since the bridge collapse in Minnesota last year, and two of our bridges find ourselves in the news for safety reasons today. Belmont Bridge will be replaced soon, Seth Rosen writes in the Progress. Chunks keep falling off of the bridge, which dates from the early 60s, leading to the structure being rated at 49 out of 100, which is a pretty lousy sufficiency rating. The city’s looking for bids, and figure it’ll cost them around $9.2M, with the work starting late this year. Nearly all of that money will come from state and federal funding. Some folks weren’t happy that it was installed in the first place — it’s a pretty significant barrier between Belmont and downtown — so here’s hoping that some pedestrian improvements are made with Belmont Bridge 2.0.
The other bridge news is that delays will continue in replacing the Advance Mills bridge, which was shut down last year because it’s just not safe. Locals have been stuck taking a pretty goofy detour down a dirt road to get across the river. The BoS planned on installing a temporary bridge, which VDOT supports, but the Federal Highway Administration says that’s a waste, and that the next step is a new permanent bridge. And that leaves Advance Mills residents without a bridge until 2010 or 2011.
A southern Albemarle road. By David Gellner. (CC)
The Albemarle Planning Commission has recommended that the county stop paving rural roads, Jeremy Borden writes in today’s Progress. The planning commission is trying to support the county policy of building in the urban ring, and just can’t see spending the money on paving back roads. The Board of Supervisors will be discussing their priorities over the next month, and one of the things they’ll have to consider is whether they want to move towards paving the county’s two hundred miles of dirt and gravel roads.
Borden interviews Allison Mitchell, who lives on Gilbert Station Road (just off 20N, in Stony Point), who complains that her road should be paved, and it’s just not safe. Thing is, Mitchell isn’t from Stony Point. So she moved to Gilbert Station knowing full well that it’s not paved, and she ought to know by now that most people who live on Gilbert Station don’t want it paved. I live on an unpaved road near Gilbert Station, and I’d actively oppose any efforts to pave my street. People move out to the country and then complain that they have no urban amenities. Suck it up or go away.
01/10 Update: Lonnie provided some enormously useful information on this topic on his blog last month.
An Amtrak train hit a car at the 2nd Street crossing this afternoon, Henry Graff reports for NBC 29. The car was dragged about 100 feet and, luckily, nobody was hurt. The driver says that the crossing arm hadn’t come down, while the train’s engineer says that it did. The driver has been charged with failure to obey a railroad crossing signal. Amtrak trains are generally going pretty slowly at that spot, because they’re so close to the station. (I used to live on South and 1st, with an apartment directly over the tracks.) There are several thousand such accidents each year.
I can’t help but feel a bit skeptical of Amtrak’s claim that the gate was down. Like many people, I read Walt Bogdanich’s 2004 “Death on the Tracks” series in the New York Times, for which he won a Pulitzer. Bogdanich revealed that rail crossing guards are routinely broken, engineers routinely lie and claim that they were working fine, and the railroads send out repairman to fix the problem faster than federal inspectors can arrive. There are hundreds of such fatal accidents every year, dozens of which aren’t ever reported to the National Response Center.
Photo kindly provided by “gman.”
After evaluating running the city bus service without charging fares, city council is likely to keep fares for the immediate future, Seth Rosen writes in the Progress. Financial reality means that council has to pick their priorities, and they’ve got an eye towards adding new routes and having buses come more often. Eliminating fares would eliminate $315k from CTS’ $5.25M annual budget, and likewise obligate them to provide $190k to JAUNT, who would be left unable to charge for rides in CTS’ service area. All of this is leading up to a hoped collaborative transit venture with Albemarle County, turning CTS into CATS.
29 N. is being widened, again. Traffic backs up pretty terribly along the section north of Wal-Mart for hours each day, often stretching clear to Ruckersville. So another lane is being added between Polo Grounds and Airport Road, which will surely be finished just in time to get terribly backed up again, what with the new developments approved for just north of there on 29. It seems like it was just yesterday that we dealt with years of beastly traffic while 29 was expanded to its current size. NBC 29 has thoughtfully provided a Google map of the section of the highway:
The addition was approved by the Metropolitan Planning Organization last week, and will be paid for with $2M in federal funds. Suckers for punishment can listen to the audio of the meeting, courtesy of Charlottesville Tomorrow.
Lynchburg’s Sen. Steve Newman has been happy to indulge his constituents’ fantasy that the only thing standing between them and vast wealth is Charlottesville building a bypass bypass — a bypass around our existing route 29 bypass. To that end, he recently asked Attorney General Bob McDonnell whether the Charlottesville-Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) has to reimburse VDOT for the money they’ve put into the bypass if the MPO won’t allow the bypass to be built. McDonnell issued an official opinion saying, yes, , as Jeremy Borden wrote in the Progress yesterday.
Newman hardly needed to ask. After all, McDonnell’s decision was based on a law passed by Martin in 2004 that states explicitly that the MPO will owe that money if it doesn’t allow the bypass to be built. The $300M road would be six miles long, saving just over a minute in travel time. Studies show it would have virtually no impact on traffic or travel time. VDOT has no money to build the road, and has not scheduled any money through 2013, the farthest out that they forecast.
Because I’m a hell of a guy, I’m going to make an offer to the state. I’m willing to assume that $45M in debt from the state. Every penny. Though I’ll want along with it all of the land that VDOT bought with that money in the early and mid 90s. Since they want their money, they’d take that deal. Right?
Both city and county staff are recommending the installation of photo red cameras, Seth Rosen writes in the Progress, which could be in place in a year’s time. The General Assembly authorized localities to install the cameras during their session earlier this year. The city is permitted to add them to four intersections, the county at nine. Municipal staff haven’t made a proposal to their respective elected bodies just yet, since they’re still reviewing the available equipment.
Opponents of photo red cameras point out that VDOT’s own study shows that installing them increases the number of accidents, and that many localities don’t make any money on them at all, because the systems are outsourced. The other problem is that the $50 fine is to be paid by the owner the car; because the driver isn’t pulled over by police, though, the driver can easily challenge the ticket and claim that he wasn’t driving.
The Hook recently demonstrated that the town’s most frequently run red light has such a short green light that only one car can get through. They found a car ran that 29/Rio red every single time that the light changed. Seems to me that there’s no need for a camera — a pair of cops could sit there and tag-team light runners all day long. Heck, I’d bring ‘em a glass of iced tea to thank them for their troubles.
Remember the sinkhole that opened up on 29 near Hollymead last year? Remember that it had opened up the year before that? Last time around they repaired it in something like three days, and I’d suggested a week might be better if they could fix it for good. NBC-29 reports that that the same sinkhole has opened again. One lane of southbound traffic is shut down.
The planned interchange at the corner of 250 and McIntire will likely pave right over the Dogwood Vietnam Memorial, Seth Rosen explains in today’s Daily Progress, and some veterans are upset about it. The memorial was the first such Vietnam memorial in the nation, established in 1966. The city has offered to move the memorial, but some Vietnam vets aren’t buying it. Also in the path of the interchange are the skate park and the rescue squad. For more about the planned construction, see the city’s interchange website.
In today’s Daily Progress, Brian McNeill looks at traffic data and finds that high housing costs are putting enormous pressure on a few roads that lead to the surrounding counties. VDOT’s numbers on travel time (516k PDF), comparing 2005 to 2001, show that traffic from the west on 250 increased by 25%, traffic from the north on 29 increased by 33%, and traffic on 53 doubled from 3,300 to 6,600 trips per day.
The city is paying $500k to let people track the location of city buses electronically, Henry Graff reported for NBC-29 on Friday. In doing so, they intend to solve two problems: chronically-late buses and would-be bus riders not knowing when their bus will be there. They’ll be outfitting 25 bus stops with touch-screen displays to track the buses’ progress but, better still, it’ll be possible to track buses via the web.
Some city officials are interested in making the buses free, Henry Graff reports for NBC 29, a move that would surrender $400,000 in annual revenue but surely result in more widespread use of CTS. The process of paying slows things down, and having to pay adds a layer of mystery to the system for those who have never ridden the buses. Beginning yesterday the buses became free for anybody with a UVa ID, and the next step would be to try a fare-free month and see what come of that.
People very rarely believe me when I point out that Albemarle County actually loses money on each new resident. “But,” they say repeatedly, followed by a mention of a revenue stream that a) has been accounted for and b) doesn’t add up to much. Charlottesville Tomorrow points to a great example of this: the cost of Biscuit Run. The county’s Fiscal Impact Analyst wrote a memo about the total costs of the development that considers the cost of all additional services and additional revenue via taxes and contains this alarming conclusion after looking at both an optimistic and a pessimistic scenario:
The numbers generated by the two scenarios that I ran indicate that, if the County approved [Biscuit Run], the differential net annual fiscal impact would be $4,399,000-$6,665,000 = -$-2,266,000. That number means that, annually, the County would be $2,266,000 worse off approving [Biscuit Run] than denying the proposal. [A twenty-year analysis] in the former reveals a deficit of $88,665,000 while, in the latter case, there exists a deficit of $134,578,000. The difference between those two numbers, $45,913,000, means that, over the course of the twenty year period, the County would be $45,913,000 worse off approving [Biscuit Run] than denying the proposal. […] After taking into account the [developer’s] cash proffers, the new differential would equal $25,213,000 so, over the course of the twenty year period, the County, according to CRIM, would be roughly $25,213,000 worse off approving [Biscuit Run] than denying it.
So this new development may well cost the county $134 million. All of that is on top of the $88M in improvements required to 20 South, Avon, and Old Lynchburg just to handle the additional traffic. For reference, the entire annual budget for the county is just north of $300M.
Even if we wanted to take a vote to see what percentage of Albemarle wants to pay more taxes in order to add 5,000 new residents to the county (and I guarantee you that wouldn’t pass), it wouldn’t matter: the county isn’t given the power to stop developments like this, and a majority of the BoS wouldn’t consider stopping Biscuit Run. How we deal with growth is broken. Totally and utterly broken.
In last Sunday’s Daily Progress, Jeremy Borden looked at the progress of Places29, Albemarle’s plan to turn 29 north from a blight on the landscape into a place fit for humans. The bit that really got my attention was this quote from developer Wendell Wood:
I know what my customers want. I have no customers looking to open up a small dress boutique. They are obsolete. … [Stores like Target] is where the new marketing is. A lot of people say, ‘We’re hurting the guy at the little hardware store.’ But that’s life.
Wood’s assertion that small businesses are “obsolete” is staggering in its ignorance, shortsightedness, and flat-out wrongness. To the extent to which Wood and like-minded developers have their hand on the rudder of Places29, we are all in deep trouble.
After reading Borden’s article, I was primed for Jayson Whitehead’s article in the current C-Ville Weekly describing the unusual sale of Wood’s land to the National Ground Intelligence Center. Whitehead managed to get a remarkable level of access to nearly every decision maker in the process, providing a level of detail about commercial development in the area unlike anything I’ve read before.
The sketchy deal went a little like this. NGIC (famous for a little claim about aluminum tubes, nuclear materials, and Iraq) has outgrown their brand-new facility up 29, and has decided that they need to expand by 60% in the next five years. (Developer Wendell Wood sold them the 29 acres that they’re on now, back in 1997, for $1M.) Since he owned land adjacent to NGIC, zoned as a Development Area, he offered to sell them 47 acres for their expansion. He was offered $7M for the land. Wood believed that the land was worth something closer to $16M, which you’d think would be the end of the story. ($16M being almost exactly 1,000% more than the adjacent chunk of land was worth ten years ago.) But that was when Rivanna Supervisor Ken Boyd got a telephone call from an NGIC employee, whose identity he won’t disclose, saying that if he didn’t do something, the deal would fall through, and NGIC may simply pack up and leave town.
When Boyd got in touch with Wood, the developer proposed a solution. He had 30 acres of land along 29, designated Rural, preventing any development. If the county would redesignate that land as Development Area, he’d be willing to part with his land for the offered price. The board was pressured into voting on this in just a few weeks, after being told by federal representatives that it was conceivable that NGIC could leave. When the vote was cast it was 5-1 in favor of the deal, with Sally Thomas dissenting, arguing that it was simply bad planning and a bad use of land, and that it didn’t make sense to for the county to be used as a bargaining chip with the feds by a developer. (See Charlottesville Tomorrow for the podcast.)
Places29 — or any plan for development — can never succeed with enormous exceptions being carved out. The question about this deal is whether the county was taken for a ride. That may never be answered.
In today’s Daily Progress, Brian McNeill writes that Charlottesville Parking Center Inc. intends to sell off their Water St. surface lot, the land that the Water St. parking garage is on, and 284 spaces in the Water St. garage. 
The organization long insisted that there was no danger of any such thing happening, pointing to their mission of 48-year-old mission of providing inexpensive parking downtown rather than profit-seeking. The trouble is that those pillar-of-the-community types are all elderly or deceased (i.e., Hovey Dabney), leaving a business that’s as interested in profit as any other. Former city manager Cole Hendrix seems to figure that’s it, telling the Progress that “now that the CPC people are retiring or passing away, like Hovey Dabney, maybe it’s the beginning of the end of an era.”
It was hard not to see this coming, particularly given last July’s news that CPC was raising rates while seeking to sell off their open lot. Now the city is entirely reliant on this private corporation to make downtown work, a corporation that in no way resembles the one that the city has come to count on. (It was only a few years ago that the city sold off the final free parking lot to a private developer, who put up that hideous rich-folks condo on the corner of Fifth and Water.) That’s launched an interesting debate within the city as to what the proper response is for the city. Mayor David Brown tells the Progress that the city should try to buy the parking lots from CPC, but Councilor Kevin Lynch counters that it doesn’t make a lot of sense to reward a company for treating the city so badly.
If you’ve got any advice for the city on this, I expect they could use it.
Further to the discussion of newly-legal red light cameras, Brendan Fitzgerald wrote in last week’s C-Ville Weekly about the most dangerous intersections in town, complete with a snazzy Google map of hotspots. The really alarming number comes from Ivy Road (250 West once it ceases to be bypass) and Richmond Road (250 East post-bypass), in both cases within a quarter mile of the bypass — they’re up from 97 crashes in ‘04 to 341 in ‘06. (Two thirds of that came on the west end.) Unless traffic is up 350% in that period, that seems strange.
I really wish that Charlottesville and Albemarle Police would provide metadata from incident reports on their websites, as I’ve lamented before. C-Ville’s Google map should be able to draw on regularly-updated incident data to dynamically assess what is the most dangerous intersection in the past week, month, or year, but the data’s just not there.
VDOT has announced that they’ll be shutting down 87 maintenance facilities across the state, as proposed, except for four locations. One of those four is Free Union, which serves the bulk of western Albemarle. It appears that they spared any location with citizens who were paying enough attention and had the resources to fight back. Jeremy Borden explains in today’s Progress.
The final nail in the coffin for the proposed shut down of the Albemarle location was probably when Ann Mallek, of Earlysville, pointed out to Secretary of Transportation Pierce Homer that the only viable route for snow plows to get from the Stanardsville maintenance facility to Earlysville required driving across the Advance Mills bridge — you know, the one that was shut down for many months this year because it’s crumbling, the one that has a three ton weight limit. This was news to VDOT, who was not aware of their own weight restriction, and apparently hadn’t even thought through how they were going to get their equipment from point A to point B.
There’s no reason to think that they thought through their plans any better for the doomed 87 locations across the state. Those facilities will be shut down gradually over the next year and a half in order to save money, saved money that VDOT will then give to private contractors to do the same work.
Jeremy Borden has a lengthy article about the proposed closure of the western Albemarle VDOT maintenance facility in today’s Progress with several interesting new bits of information. There are 91 such closures proposed around the state.
At last week’s community meeting in Free Union, VDOT insisted that western Albemarle County’s would continue to be maintained at VDOT’s minimum level of service. They left out an important detail that an audience member had to point out — that VDOT’s minimum level of service is considerably lower than the current level of service. But the Progress has pointed out that the story is worse still. VDOT’s been reporting in their presentations that their maintenance standard is that any given portion of road should be within a 45-minute drive from a maintenance facility. Turns out they just came up with that — the standard was long 30 minutes, but they raised it in order to reduce the quality of service without having to admit that they were reducing the quality of service. Naturally, they’ve chosen not to point this out in their presentations. Of course, they’ve provided virtually no data to the public, so this isn’t unusual.
The Progress also points out that this money-saving plan doesn’t seem to be a money saving plan at all. They’ve thrown around large figures to demonstrate the cost savings, but don’t trumpet the point that that money will then have to go to pay private contractors to do the same work.
A final point in the article that left me a bit tweaked is Del. Rob Bell’s plan to hold a conference call between concerned residents and Secretary of Transportation Pierce Homer. This whole VDOT outsourcing / shutdown plan has come about because many members of the General Assembly refuse to fund transportation at a level that will allow basic service to continue, even though a special session to accomplish just that was held this fall. Del. Rob Bell was one of the representatives who voted against the funding increases and for this outsourcing plan. Though it’s nice that he’s holding a conference call, the problem that so concerns him is of his own making. He could introduce a bill tomorrow that would fix this if he were genuinely sympathetic to his constituents’ concerns.
9pm Update: On a related note, Bob Gibson writes that Republicans are going to lose more seats if they don’t do something about transportation.
Harry F. Byrd came to power in the 1920s by championing fiscal commonsense in road funding, establishing the organization that became VDOT with The Byrd Road Law of 1932. It took more than sixty years for Republicans to regain the majority after that. How long will they be in the wilderness after they’re done screwing it up this time around?
Louisa County officials are getting annoyed with VDOT, Leyla Santiago reports for NBC 29 — VDOT has proposed closing the Louisa maintenance facility, but won’t provide any details as to why. The county sent a letter to VDOT in late November with a series of concerns that they’d like addressed before the agency’s self-imposed December 15th decision deadline, and they haven’t heard a peep from VDOT. As with Albemarle, VDOT hasn’t given Louisa any data about why the facility is being closed or how the roads will be maintained at an acceptable level without it.
Jeremy Borden reported for the Daily Progress today that the Albemarle BOS voted unanimously against closing the Albemarle facility in Free Union, specifically citing the lack of coherent data from VDOT.
This is going on in just about every county in the state. I’d provide a link to more information about this on VDOT’s website, but if they have any information available, I certainly can’t find it.
At last Friday’s meeting between Free Union residents and VDOT representatives, agency Chief of Technology Research and Innovation Gary Allen began his brief response to the questions with the following statement:
I’m happy to provide every bit of information I have. First thing Monday morning, if you’ll give me a person to send it to, I’ll give you every bit of data, every travel time we’ve run, every test of a topographic area, the fifty years worth of national weather service data on falling weather for every location in the state, all of the financial information about the Culpeper district, the rest of the state if you’re interested — I’m happy to give you all of that information.
He and the rest of the VDOT representatives there refused to answer any specific questions that could (ostensibly) be answered by reviewing the data, and apparently felt that providing this data would be a sufficiently response. Well, Mr. Allen sent that data on Monday night.
Remember: This is the data that proves that Free Union’s VDOT location can and should be shut down and replaced. This is the culmination of months (years?) of research, the very embodiment of the classic traveling salesman problem of mathematics, a puzzle that is NP-hard, with no known general solution. So the mathematics should be impressive, the logic unimpeachable.
Here’s what was sent:
- Area Headquarters Consolidation Review Methodology Summary (27k), a one-page document that contains no data or even a mention of Free Union.
- A pair of maps of Albemarle and a pair of tables (1.2MB) indicating how long it takes to drive from a few area towns to other area towns.
- Their stock Area Headquarters Consolidation Review slideshow (568k) that doesn’t mention Free Union.
There are only two useful bits of data that I managed to extract from these documents. (Though perhaps you’ll have more luck.) The first is that VDOT judges that it takes twice as long to travel a given distance in “winter weather” than it does in good weather, and that they judge 45 minutes to be the maximum allowable good weather travel time. The second is that it takes 39 minutes (in good weather) to drive from Stanardville to Free Union, which isn’t really news to me.
So here is the sum of the case to be made that the area currently served by Free Union (Crozet, White Hall, etc.) won’t be affected by closing down the existing maintenance facility: hey, it’s not that far of a drive. Thanks for that, guys.
In a Sunday editorial, written prior to the Friday meeting, the Daily Progress described the fight to keep the Free Union facility open as “Cold data vs. humanity,” explaining:
As of this writing, a planned public meeting by VDOT in the Free Union area has not been held. New, better data may emerge from that meeting.
The value of cold data and statistics is that they remove the human element and allow decisions to be made on a strictly practical basis.
Unfortunately, there is no data, at least nothing to speak of. No new data emerged, no better data emerged. And VDOT’s representatives confessed in the meeting that the quality of service in Albemarle will decline as a result of this change.
So that’s VDOT’s big case. How will the hospitals be affected if their employees can’t get to work? How will the schools in the area be affected? Do many key public safety employees (fire, rescue, doctors, etc.) live in the area, and what will the effect be on delaying their ability to dig out? Isn’t the travel time from Stanardsville or Boyd’s Tavern to Free Union a little extreme, given the need to drive clear across the county for every refill on salt and chemicals? Why don’t we have a map of all of the roads in Western Albemarle that indicates how long it takes for them to get salted and plowed now and another map of how long it’ll take with the proposed change?
Where is all of this data?
Turns out, it doesn’t exist.
The full text of Gary Allen’s e-mail is below the fold.
Continue reading ‘VDOT’s Closure Data’
I attended a meeting in my hometown of Free Union on Friday night (disclosure: it was organized by my mother) held to give the Virginia Department of Transportation a chance to justify their interest in shutting down the road maintenance facility that has been there for decades, serving most of the areas within about a 20 minute drive of Free Union, including White Hall, Crozet, and Earlysville. The plan is to have the work done — including snow and ice clearing — by facilities in Boyd Tavern, Yancey Mills and Stanardsville. Which is totally crazy — it’ll take them ages to get to Free Union. VDOT had previously held a meeting about this…in Culpeper, on a Friday night, at 5pm. (With the plans “on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard.”) Great for the unemployed, not so good for us mortals.
Well, it was a hell of a meeting. A couple of hundred people showed up, packed into the little church basement where my tiny Boy Scout troop used to meet, and they brought torches and pitchforks, metaphorically speaking. VDOT was given 25 minutes to present their side, and a few folks from Free Union were given 15 minutes for their side, and then there was a planned Q&A period. (VDOT was given more time because they’d asked for it beforehand.) After 40 minutes they were still yammering on about absolutely nothing with hardly a mention of Free Union or even Albemarle County — it was like they were trying to run down the clock. Eventually they were cut off, and the advocates for Free Union said their piece. Then came the Q&A period, during which, bizarrely, the VDOT officials declared that they would not be answering any questions.
The recurring question — I asked it, too — was why VDOT will not simply provide us with their research that demonstrates that the service will remain at the same level that it is now. It should be very simple for them: just give us the maps or the charts or the graphs or whatever that came of their research. They had refused to do so, but one of the VDOT representatives finally said that he would be happy to provide all of the data that they have, and that he would send it on Monday. We’ll see.
There were a couple of revealing moments. The first was when one representative declared of this proposed change to road maintenance, against all logic: “This is not a science. This is not a science. It is an art.” Of course it’s a science. If they’re treating this as an art, that’s the problem right there. The second was when the same fellow admitted, in his one and only moment of candor, that the quality of service would decline.
The only impressive bit was when one of the VDOT representatives — the lone woman — sought to soothe the crowd at the end, and did so rather well. She explained the truth of the matter: roads are hugely, hugely underfunded in Virginia. VDOT hasn’t had an increase in funding in over twenty years, but the cost of asphalt has increased by a third in the past couple of years alone. So unless we’re willing to pay more for our roads, the quality of service will keep getting worse. Building roads is like having babies: yeah, there’s an up-front cost, but it’s the years of maintenance that’ll get you. The difference is that babies generally grow up and move out of the house. Did you ever hear of a road being closed down for lack of use? Of course not — they only get wider and more used over time, and that costs money. In fact, the cost of maintenance alone will use up the entirety of the state’s road budget come 2018 — no more road construction. But we’re not going to stop construction, so maintenance will start to suffer, and that begins now, in Free Union.
But this isn’t just Free Union — VDOT is doing this all over the state. They’re reducing the number of maintenance facilities in order to save money and, by their own admission, service will get worse. The only way that can be prevented is by our representatives getting the nerve to raise the money to pay for roads, which is one of the most basic services that government needs to provide. Del. David Toscano and Sen. Creigh Deeds have a solid track record there: it’s Del. Rob Bell, Del. Bill Janis, Del. Watkins Abbitt and Sen. Emmett Hanger who have got to muster up a little courage to do what needs doing. They like to go before the voters and brag that they’ve never voted for a tax increase, but when the plows don’t come, we’ll all remember that it’s their fault. And we citizens of Albemarle have got to talk to our representatives and tell them that we’re willing to pay to have our roads cleared, our ditches dug and our streets regraveled. Oh, and VDOT plans to make their decision about this plan on December 15, so you’d better get moving if you want to stop it.
Jeremy Borden had an article about the event in yesterday’s Progress, and I understand that the paper has an editorial about it today.
I recorded the whole thing on my little memo recorder, mostly so I could have some good notes, but the audio turned out to be good enough to share. Sean Tubbs has podcast the audio on Charlottesville Podcasting Network. The sound quality isn’t great; particularly embarrassing are the bits where you can hear me talking quietly to the folks sitting on either side of me. But you’ll hear some excellent points being made by many audience members about how illogical that this proposal is and how important that it is that we maintain the current level of service.
VDOT has approved the Proffit Road Bridge to handle up to 16 tons o’ vehicle, John Yellig reports in today’s Progress, a four-ton increase that will allow Stony Point’s firetrucks to cross it.
They stopped sending trucks over it in 2002 when they realized that sending their 15.5 and 16.5 ton trucks over a bridge with a fifteen ton weight limit wasn’t a great idea. After the bridge was replaced this summer, the SPVFC was annoyed to discover that the weight limit had been dropped to twelve tons. Though they don’t normally respond to fires west of the bridge, they figure they should have the option. Now they do, at least for their smaller truck.
It was when parts started falling off of the Belmont bridge that it became clear that it needed to be replaced. NBC 29 reports that the fifty-year-old structure is collapsing, and the city will need to spend $9M to replace the structure. It’s going to be a headache to do, since it’ll be seriously disruptive to the flow of downtown traffic to close either the bridge or Water Street underneath it. It’ll be in next year’s budget, and the process may take a few years.
I’ve never been a fan of the thing in the first place — it divides Belmont from downtown in a way that never should have been done in the first place. Too late now.
Further to the city transit discussion, The Cavalier Daily’s Daniel Reinish took a spin on CTS to see how good it is. He caught a bus from grounds to Barracks Road, another one to Wal-Mart, and then one back to grounds. The first bus (which came on time) failed to stop for him, so he took a UTS bus to Barracks Road. The bus to Wal-Mart was on time departing and arriving. But it was the last bus there for the day (which he knew in advance), necessitating a $14 cab back to grounds. Reinish concludes that CTS is well worth it, though a little research first is necessary, and recommends improving signage and having buses actually stop at bus stops when people are waiting.
With the advent of traffic in Charlottesville has come demand for public transit, and that means lots of people are using the Charlottesville Transit Service, John Yellig writes in today’s Progress. Though the population of the region has increased 20% in the past eighteen years, use of CTS is up 90% in the same period. The use of JAUNT is up 70%. There’s a tipping point of congestion that’s required for people to bother taking public transit — perhaps we’ve finally hit it.
The new Proffit Rd. bridge isn’t strong enough to bear the weight of firetrucks, Jeremy Borden wrote in yesterday’s Progress, and the Stony Point Fire Department isn’t particularly happy about it.
Stony Point’s two trucks weigh 15.5 and 16.5 tons, while the bridge can bear just 12 tons of weight. Stony Point is not the primary responder to that area — Charlottesville and Earlysville can get there as quickly as Stony Point — but a three-alarm fire may well require Stony Point to show up. Thing is, the old bridge was only rated at 15 tons (15 < 15.5), and that was dropped to 12 tons a year and a half ago.
Jeremy Borden was kind enough to provide some more detail via e-mail. It seems that the Stony Point Fire Department, back when it was being run by arsonists, figured that the bridge would hold twice the posted limit, so they just went ahead and drove over it. When the adults took over in 2002 they brought a stop to that and began seeking an official blessing to use the bridge.
So, nothing has changed, but this does seem like a good example of what can happen when development patterns don’t respect the realities of existing infrastructure and resources. The county shouldn’t provide building permits to structures on the west side of that bridge that could have fires so severe that they’d require a prompt response from Stony Point. But that’s just common sense. Isn’t it?
In yesterday’s Daily Progress, Jeremy Borden wrote about the Polo Grounds Road underpass, where the road goes to one lane while it goes under the CSX tracks. In the daytime a brief tap on the horn ensures that nobody is coming through, while a headlight flash does the trick at night. Traffic was increased considerably there while Proffit Rd. was closed, so the VDOT set up a temporary traffic light to handle the flow through the one-lane underpass. Rivanna district supervisor Ken Boyd was disappointed to see the light come down when Proffit opened up again, and is advocating for a permanent light there.
I drive through that a few times each week, as do many friends and family members, some of whom have done so their entire lives. I’ve never heard anybody complain about it. If there’s ever been an accident there, I’ve never heard of it; in fact, VDOT says it has a flawless record for at least the past five years.
The Proffit Road bridge opened up again yesterday, with VDOT and CSX officials saying it finished right on time. Which is true if, by “right on time,” they mean months later than advertised.
VDOT should win some kind of an award for the alternate route they had set up in the meantime. Reasonable human beings who want to get from 29N to 20N simply take Polo Grounds Road rather than Proffit, a detour of maybe five miles, depending on where you’re going. VDOT, on the other hand, used signs to direct people south on 29, onto the 29/250 bypass, then onto 64 to wrap around town, then off of 64 onto 250 east of town, and then finally on 20N. It’s probably twenty miles long.
Opponents of the Meadowcreek Parkway — myself included — have long complained that the road is just a wedge that would be used to pry open the park and develop the land. But proponents came up with the parkway concept, meaning that the road would travel straight through the park without any possibility of intersections, driveways, etc. Now WINA reports that “an unnamed developer is offering to pay for a section of the Meadowcreek Parkway that goes through his land…in exchange for having access to the road for a project he’s planning.” My supervisor, Ken Boyd, says it’s worth considering, because it would save the county the expense of buying any of his land for the right-of-way.
Even ignoring the abdication of the parkway concept, accepting such a proposal would be against the entire point of the road: an A-to-B, no-delays-possible express route from downtown to uptown. It’s allowing development that has made the 29 250 bypass steadily less effective — every traffic light, feeder road, fast food joint and gas station creates cross traffic and the very delays that made people want to bypass 29 250 in the first place. Why would we do that to the Meadowcreek Parkway?
This is why we can’t have nice things.
City Council has sold off downtown’s free parking lots over the past fifteen years, transitioning to a private model in which the city relies on the Charlottesville Parking Corporation’s garages and open lot to provide adequate parking for those who live, work, and visit downtown. Last year the rates increased by 50% an hour, from $1.00 to $1.50. Now the hourly rates are going up again, from $1.50 to $2.00. (The Water Street garage stays $0.50 behind the other spots, and is just now going from $1.00 to $1.50.) In today’s Daily Progress article about the change, John Yellig and Liesel Nowak toss out this bit without further elaboration:
In March, CPC raised the fee downtown businesses pay to validate customers’ parking stubs. Under the program, a business can stamp a paying customer’s ticket for up to two hours of free parking. The minimum fee went from $60 to $75 per month, but larger businesses saw higher increases, [CPC President Bob] Stroh said.
Motorists will no longer be able to use the two-hour validations at the Water Street lot.
(Emphasis mine.)
It’s not clear to me whether that means that the Water Street lot will not accept any validated tickets, or just not two-hour validated tickets, but in either case, I worry that this is the camel’s nose in the tent. The model for parking under which City Council has eliminated the free lots has been one in which the merchants foot the bill for customers and employees to park downtown. It’s awkward for out-of-town visitors, but it’s basically worked. Eliminating validated parking would completely change the model.
Something that I can’t fit into this puzzle is last year’s news that this very lot on Water Street is for sale. That chunk of land has been assessed at $7M, which must make it a tempting sale for CPC shareholders. But the company, established in 1959, has always prided itself on having a mission of providing inexpensive parking downtown rather than profit-seeking, so it’s not clear how the two interests intertwine.
As a private enterprise, CPC can do whatever it likes; if they want to charge $50/hour and the right to take your car on a joyride, that’s their business. Here’s hoping that the two garages — unlike the open lot — are governed by arrangements with the city that would prevent the elimination of validation. If the city has allowed itself to become dependent on CPC for parking without ensuring that the company would continue to provide free-to-visitors parking, that would be a tremendously nearsighted move.
The ginormous sinkhole on Rt. 29 is back. It’s nine feet deep, seventeen feet wide, and it’s getting bigger. Southbound 29 in front of the Seminole Commons shopping center is down to one lane. Presumably it’s caused by the same drainage problems that caused it last year, indicating that repair crews probably didn’t fix the problem, just its sinkhole symptom. VDOT intends to get the road opened in a couple of days. I think we’d give them a whole week if they could make sure it wouldn’t happen again next year.
Charlottesville Tomorrow points out that the 250 Interchange Steering Committee has just met for the fourth time as they work on figuring out how the 250 / Meadowcreek Parkway intersection will look. They’ve got thirteen designs to choose from, ranging from a straightforward stoplight-based intersection all the way up to a pair of roundabouts, and there’s even a whole website about the project where you can find out more. Think you know how the interchange should work? Tell them.
After I asked what the funny antennae on the traffic lights are here on cvillenews.com,