Apparently, some Loudoun residents are taking transportation planning into their own hands, after seeing the mess that Richmond has made of things, and the plan that the County is currently revising.
Steve Hines of Citizens for a Countywide Transportation Plan says the initial plan has been using the wrong traffic patterns, overestimated traffic volume and ignored options to ease congestion.
“Instead of simply fixing intersections or chokepoints, they expand the roads between each chokepoint,” Hines says.
Hines also says the plan doesn’t take into account the effect Metro’s Silver Line will have on county traffic.
“The feeder bus network to support (the Silver Line), the Park N’ Ride lot, that’s very underestimated,” Hines says. – WTOP.com
I applaud my neighbors’ initiative to come forward with an actual plan for a presenting problem rather than just complaining about things. However, I remain skeptical that all of our traffic woes can be solved with roundabouts and buses. We’re going to need more and wider roads in some places that may make people unhappy. It sucks, but so does traffic backed up 20 miles on our throughways and the attendant pollution and frustration. A quick search on this effort reveals that the mind behind this alternative plan, Steve Hines, has made his opinions about roads and development known in a letter to the Middleburg Eccentric.
The CTP, as drafted is over reaching, at a projected $2, 000,000,000, it appears to be too costly to implement, would end the concept of walk-able neighborhoods as envisioned by the Board, would attempt to use new roads to promote residential development in the Transition Area, attempts to create the allusion of residential housing as economic development, ignores the needs of existing communities and calls for a vast north-south road network when what we need are east-west improvements
…
If the Loudoun Board approves the draft CTP, they will be writing a check that our children and grandchildren will be forced to pay. The bill for the hundreds of miles of new roads proposed in the CTP will fall to the citizens of the county as they will be expected to cover the cost of the residential rezonings which will result as county officials trade massive residential development for unneeded ‘developer’ roads.
Overdevelopment in Loudoun is frustrating. The agreements entered into by previous Boards (which were legal if odious) have left the County with a surfeit of already-approved residential development still being built-out. The lack of state funding for our roads means that the County has only two choices for new, necessary roads: proffers or taxes. To criticize the proffer system is not a free critique, it implies that the preference would be for an alternative form of funding necessary improvements to our transportation infrastructure, be they roads, roundabouts or buses. If not proffers, then taxes.
The false choice is not to build any more roads at all. Traffic is growing, and regardless of what Loudoun does, West Virginia is building out their panhandle like mad. Those people are going to commute through Loudoun on our roads, whether we want them to or not. Avoiding that reality, or denying it, is a path to even larger problems in the future than those Mr. Hines worries about in his letter.
I fear that the plan offered by Mr. Hines and his colleagues is based on flawed assumptions about the leveling off of traffic in Loudoun. The advantage that the County’s plan has is the months of public input and hours of work that have gone into it. The County’s plan is truly reflective of a democratically inclusive process.
As Mr. Hines knows, the hearing process used by the Board of Supervisors is one of the many elements of the constant solicitation of public input on important public issues.
- Step one is publicly referring the issue to a Board or Commission, and the public is welcome to comment at the Supervisor meeting at which the issue is initially brought up.
- Step two is for the Board or Commission to study the issue and make a recommendation. All meetings of Boards and commissions are public, and people are welcome to come and make their views known.
- Step three is for a recommendation to be referred back to the Board of Supervisors, once again the public can come and comment.
- Step four is for the Board to act (or not) on that recommendation.
- Of course, throughout this process, citizens are welcome to call and write their Supervisors. As we have geographically and population delineated Districts, our Supervisors are generally quite responsive to inquiries and comments from their constituents.
By my count, that’s at least five different opportunities for the public to let their opinions be known.
Part of the issue, however, is that just because you are heard, that doesn’t mean you get your way.
The alternative plan offered by Mr. Hines does not have the benefit of massive public input and official deliberation. It is an important part of the public discussion, but given the preponderance of public scrutiny the County’s plan is being subjected to, I believe. Citizens for a Countywide Transportation Plan carries the burden of proof that their plan is both more viable and more widely accepted than that of the County. As yet, that proof is lacking.
But that’s just how I see it.
(Once again, a tip-o-the-hat to Loudoun County Traffic for the story.)
I hear you on the need to change how we get from place to place, but there’s a difference between working towards that ends and making that an assumption of a five year transportation plan.
I do not think it is realistic to assume there will be fewer cars on our roads in five years. For that matter, I think it is questionable to assume there will be a slower growth of cars on our roads, let alone fewer, regardless of what is done about this issue here, locally, in Loudoun.
This is a regional issue.
But that’s just how I see it.
In my view, “fewer cars” has to be the assumption. To not make that assumption is the same as assuming that we will not have to make fundamental changes to our energy consumption and settlement patterns. Getting from here to there with the least dislocation is the problem to solve, but if we don’t deal with it with intentionality, it will still happen.
I just believe that the out-of-state (i.e., FredCo, MD & JeffCo, WV) commuters are putting the majority of the wear & tear on Routes 9, 15, & 287 every day, and WE are the ones left to come up with the money to fix those roads, much less improve them.
Tolling is not a horrible idea, especially if we had leaders who had the nads to only use those toll funds for road improvement & maintenance (which we know wouldn’t happen, especially in budget shortages).
I don’t want all our roads to become Toll Roads, especially with the propensity to suddenly privatize that revenue (see The Greenway) and tolls’ inherent regressiveness as an income model. I was just trying to point out that the issue is bigger than something that can be solved with a plan that starts from an assumption of flatter traffic pattern0s in the future.
Yes, we would like fewer cars. Yes, we need to do things towards that ends. But making “fewer cars” an assumption of any plan is disingenuous.
…at least at one point on I-95.
We’d also have to “toll up” Route 287 coming out of Brunswick towards Lovettsville, too.
Especially since NJ has one at all their borders.
I agree it will be great to “get people out of their cars” but this is a regional, not Loudoun-only problem.
Metro coming to Loudoun is not guaranteed, and I’ll lay a bet that 5 week old son will graduate from college before I get on the Metro west of Dulles airport. If Metro just goes to Dulles that solves none of our traffic problems, it just changes their endpoint to the airport.
The fact is that Loudoun’s traffic at peak (which is what we’re really talking about most of the time) is significantly impacted by drivers from W. Va and parts of Maryland, and no amount of getting Loudoun’s drivers into buses is going to fix that. In fact, putting Loudoun’s drivers into buses is simply allowing people from W. Va to free ride on our roads.
Now, getting Richmond to allow Loudoun to put a county toll booth on Rt 9 and Rt 15 coming into the commonwealth, that’s a different discussion… 🙂
But it’s certainly time to start thinking about how to get people out of our cars. Development that was already approved is coming and the Metro is coming (eventually). Ever wider roads is definitely not the answer either.
Esp. since Rte 50 in Ffx is built to the edge of the right of way and businesses are right up next to the road. That’s a bottleneck that can’t be changed.