Archive for the ‘Transportation’ Category
Thinking “outside the box” to save money: can we reduce costs of school administration?
In the old days, schools were local institutions. Different communities had different priorities for education. The classic stereotype is that farm regions educated kids to be farm workers, while urban areas emphasized different skills so kids could work in factories.
In practical terms, communities taxed themselves to fund the amount and quality of education they considered appropriate for their community. Some places placed a high priority on education, while other counties/cities kept taxes low and minimized the costs of public schools. (In the bad ol’ days of separate-but-unequal segregation, communities made very different investments in public schools for the white vs. non-white population.)
Manassas and Manassas Park became independent cities in1975, in part to avoid having to pay property taxes to finance a surge of school building in eastern Prince William County. Instead, those two cities created separate school systems. Since 1975, residents of the two cities stopped subsidizing the expansion of county schools and have directed their property taxes towards educating their own children.
Maybe it’s time to reconsider this arrangement.
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How Hampton Roads plans to redirect transportation funding away from Northern Virginia
It’s a no-brainer: we need to identify the highest-priority transportation projects, and direct funding to those projects. There’s not enough $$$ to build everything, despite the irresponsible promises of our elected officials (and of candidates who want the job).
Don’t believe it when the Washington Post chimes in, claiming there’s a $100 billion backlog of “needed” projects. There’s no need to build many of the projects in the TransAction 2030 wish list.
For example, a $1+ billion bridge across the Potomac River between Dumfries and Chicamuxen, Maryland is not a gotta-build-someday project. A Woodrow Wilson Bridge alternative at Dumfries is just a wish-list subsidy for extending more subsidized-for-developers sprawl into Charles County, Maryland.
In Hampton Roads, local officials are going to change the transportation funding game in Virginia, because that region has been sucking wind. By their calculations, “from 2004 to 2015, Northern Virginia’s share of the state’s interstate funding is 57.6 percent, compared with Hampton Roads’ 16.6 percent.“ What’s the Hampton Roads plan?
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If We Do Nothing Different… Why Should We Expect To Get Better Results?
One bus, one rail car can keep 50 or more cars off the road. If we plan and zone for Regional Activity Centers right where we plan to offer transit services, then new residents are more likely to become transit customers.
Without new transit, traffic congestion will increase as fast as population increases. Prince William will add 120,000 new people in the next 15 years, growing by 30%. If you don’t want traffic congestion to keep getting worse, then it’s time to act.
Regional Activity Centers require that we approve higher-density projects. We need to build “up” with two-story stores such as Wegmans, rather than “out” with Virginia Gateway-type parking lots.
The easiest way for Prince William to incentivize transit-oriented development is…
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Regional Activity Centers
The Region Forward: Greater Washington 2050 draft says
“Over the next 40 years the region is expected to grow, adding nearly two million more people. The majority of this growth will be located in emerging and existing Regional Activity Centers scattered throughout the region. These Activity Centers will be home to desirable, compact neighborhoods with parks and mixed-use development, such as shops, workplaces, and other destinations where people live, work and play. Each Activity Center will be connected by transit…“
The target is “Beginning in 2012, the region will capture 75% of new commercial construction square feet and 50% of new households in Regional Activity Centers every year.“
Oh really? Prince William County might meet that 2012 target in the plan, but only if it starts directing growth and investing in transit services at specific Regional Activity Centers. We need to change what we’ve done for the last 50 years, if we expect something different than “more sprawl.” If we continue business as usual in Prince William, developers will continue to build everywhere, even pushing subdivisions such as Avendale into the county’s defined Rural Area.
As the Region Forward: Greater Washington 2050 draft declares at the end, “business as usual on our part will not be enough to achieve these goals.“
What does the county’s Strategic Plan say about transportation? Think paving Glenkirk Road fits the priorities?
The 2012 Strategic Plan was adopted unanimously in March, 2009 by the eight elected supervisors. The Economic Development and Transportation goal was:
The County will create a community that will attract quality businesses that bring high-paying jobs and investment by maintaining a strong economic development climate and creating necessary multi-modal transportation infrastructure that supports our citizens and our business community. Over the next four years we will focus on in order:
- Completing road bond construction projects that are currently underway
- Attracting targeted businesses
- Multi-modal transportation that supports economic development and alleviates congestion
On Tuesday, the same Board of County Supervisors will commit $1.9 million of VDOT State Secondary Roadway funding for the Glenkirk Road Improvement Project. It’s a $3.2 million project to pave less than a mile of a two-lane gravel road to connect Vint Hill with Linton Hall.
How does paving a gravel road in the Rural Area fit with the three priorities of the Strategic Plan? There’s no multi-modal component to this project; it’s a standard road project. A short distance away is the parallel Rollins Ford Road, which is to be funded by already-approved local bonds (when those are finally sold). Think paving Glenkirk Road will attract businesses to Prince William?
We continuing business as usual, spending our tax dollars to encourage more scattered development – and even facilitating commuters from Fauquier to drive through Prince William.
Region Forward: Greater Washington 2050
“It’s 2009 and you are trying to figure out if you should support a local project.” That’s an excellent starting point for Region Forward, the vision of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) for the National Capital Region and the Greater Washington 2050 Coalition.
Public comments are due by November 30. Wondering what to say? Check out the comments already provided by the Northern Virginia Conservation Trust.
Long term planning has value when you can use it to guide decisions we make today, so step by step we grow towards our goals. One thing is certain – this region will grow significantly between now and 2050.
The DC area has 5 million people now. Demographers predict 2 million more will arrive over the next 40 years. Growth can add new economic and cultural energy… but growth can increase traffic congestion, crowd our schools and parks beyond capacity, and fill creeks with sediment.
How we grow is up to us. Our elected officials have choices and the capacity to grow “good” or grow “bad.”
It’s budget season, in conversations behind those doors…
Did you live through Watergate? Have you dealt with government officials who said one thing and did another? If so, then you know that you can see what’s really important, and really going to happen… not by listening to the speeches, but by following the money.
Policy and planning pontifications by politicians have potential (try saying that fast three times in a row…), but the budget determines what gets done in the real world. At the moment, key decisions are being made by Prince William County officials for the next budget that will cover July 1, 2010-June 30, 2011.
The public process comes later.
Buckland Bypass is dead… for now
The October 28 headline in the Gainesville Times was optimistic: VDOT kills controversial Buckland Bypass proposal. However, reports of its death at the hands of the Virgina Department of Transportation (VDOT) are premature.
A certain percentage of people continue to think that the solution to traffic congestion is simple: ignore the costs, ignore the alternatives, just build more roads. More asphalt is the answer – now what’s the question?
The road builders will be cheerleading for a new bypass around the historic Buckland community in about 20 more years. In the meantime, Prince William will complete Rollins Ford Road, and Fauquier may straighten out the path from Route 29 to Rollins Ford Road to create an eastern bypass around Buckland.
Still, there will be new congestion on those new roads as well as on Route 29, because jobs are centered in Fairfax/DC and new residents in Fauquier/Culpeper will commute to those jobs. That’s the fundamental problem. Fortunately, VDOT has the right answer to that problem now.
Tunnel Vision (and Avendale too)
You may have noticed the headlines – the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) is running out of money. On November 16, The Virginian-Pilot reported on the latest road projects to be cut from the state’s Six Year Plan.
In the story, a Virginia Beach official is quoted as saying Ten years from now we’re going to look back on this period and say ‘What were we thinking? Why didn’t we have a long-range funding plan?’
Maybe that official has been staring too long at proposals for new underwater crossings at Hampton Roads, but he’s sure got tunnel vision. You don’t need to wait 10 more years. There is a long-range funding plan.
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County starts on journey to designate Urban Development Area(s)
On Tuesday, the Board of County Supervisors will approve a request for funding from the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT). The grant will help Prince William update its Comprehensive Plan, to designate at least one Urban Development Area (UDA). UDA’s are defined as “areas of reasonably compact development that can accommodate 10 to 20 years of projected growth and incorporate the principles of new urbanism and traditional neighborhood design.”
The 2007 General Assembly recognized that sprawling development in high-growth counties creates lots of extra roads, and that VDOT gets stuck with ever-increasing maintenance costs for those roads. The legislature mandated in 2007 that high-growth counties must identify at least one place for high density development. (Have you heard? VDOT is running out of money…) The state’s logic: encourage more people to live in one place, so we build fewer roads and save money.
If Prince William receives the grant, our eight elected supervisors will have to determine what “center(s)” should be designated as Urban Development Area(s) by no later than 2012. The Planning Department has suggested 5 specific locations.
