Regarding U.S. 29, little but excuses

From staff reports

Published: November 5, 2008

How could mass transit improvements help the flow of traffic on U.S. 29 through Charlottesville?

If that sounds like a convoluted question, it is. Yet, it’s the response that Charlottesville officials are giving to the most recent charges they are dragging their feet on a U.S. 29 bypass around their fair city.

Mass transit improvements are a worthy goal in overall transportation planning, but how will they help the business traveler driving from Danville to Northern Virginia? How will they help the truck driver trying to get his goods from Greensboro, N.C., to Gainesville?

They won’t. Which is precisely the point — a point showing that Charlottesville transportation officials are completely out of touch with and could care less about the needs of those who travel U.S. 29 on a regular basis.

This debate has gone on for about two decades and it came up again last week when the Lynchburg Regional Chamber of Commerce fired off the latest salvo, saying that transportation planners in Charlottesville should be replaced.

Rex Hammond, president of the Lynchburg chamber, described the Charlottesville Metropolitan Organization as “a rogue” and a “renegade” group that for 18 years has sat on $50 million in federal highway money intended for planning and right-of-way purchases.

During that time, the Charlottesville MPO has found reason after reason to resist moving forward with a bypass that would take through traffic off a main thoroughfare jammed with traffic lights and shopping centers. New development north of the city only further clogs traffic on the heavily traveled roadway.

During that same time, transportation officials in Danville, Lynchburg and Amherst, Culpeper and Warrenton managed to find a way to build bypasses on U.S. 29 that would move traffic around their communities in an orderly and efficient fashion.

Both Lynchburg and Danville chambers of commerce are frustrated that the state has not exerted more pressure on Charlottesville to begin construction on a bypass for that city. They believe that Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and the Federal Highway Administration should be putting more pressure on Charlottesville to begin moving ahead with a bypass.

How much more pressure? A letter from Hammond to Kaine written in early October did not disguise the chamber’s frustrations. “We believe more than ever that the solution is to remove the MPO and for you to appoint an independent body that will immediately begin work on plans for the U.S. 29 bypass of Charlottesville,” the letter said in part.

The response from Charlottesville? A spokeswoman for the MPO said the group is “ahead of the curve” in transportation planning and cited Kaine’s support for U.S. transportation efforts involving more mass transit and fuel-efficient vehicles.

Ann Whitham, who coordinates the Charlottesville MPO’s work as part of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, said the “Charlottesville area is not lacking for progress in transportation planning.” The city’s approach, she added, calls for mass transit and other modes of transportation, “not just another road.”

There’s the problem. The bypass around Charlottesville is not “just another road” built to serve the needs of real estate and shopping center developers. It is a road that would eliminate the bottleneck in Charlottesville that has existed on U.S. 29 for more than 20 years. And mass transit has nothing to do with it.

Rex Hammond and the Lynchburg chamber are right. A new set of Charlottesville transportation planners may see the need for a bypass around Charlottesville more clearly. The current planners are obviously too busy finding new ways to avoid the subject. Mass transit is their latest excuse.