Anyone sit in 66 traffic in the morning? Yep, I”ll bet there are alot of yes’s resonating in unison right now. So, why, why would the state invest millions in a north south beltway from Western Prince William to Loudon County as opposed to addressing our REAL traffic congestion, East/West? Click on this secret link for the answer!
What would happen if the western end of Prince William County were home to a new “outer beltway” ? Well, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out does it. If you guessed an inordinate amount of develpment, you are correct.
All that will happen with an outer beltway is the destruction of any semblence of the rural legacy of Prince William County. The question we should be asking ourselves is this, “what is the long term vision for our county?”
Are we doomed to be just another urban shell of the unique place that once existed, or will we withstand the selfish urges of the big developers, you know, the ones who feed the coffers of almost all our politicians.
Here is a great ad by John Gray (I), candidate for County Chairman, on this very important issue that could effect every single citizen in this county.
from InsideNova :
MANASSAS, Va. —
Some environmental groups are opposing an effort by the administration of Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell to resurrect plans for a highway that would connect Northern Virginia’s outer suburbs in Loudoun and Prince William counties.
For years, some planners have advocated what’s been called an “Outer Beltway” or a western bypass. It would be a mostly north-south highway that would serve the region’s fast-growing outer suburbs.
On Wednesday in Richmond, Virginia’s Commonwealth Transportation Board will consider a proposal from state Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton to declare such a highway a “corridor of statewide significance.” The designation might make it easier to obtain funding.
Environmental groups say a highway would open up rural land to development and disturb tranquil areas around Manassas National Battlefield.
I am not so sure that it is a stupid proposal – it will provide congestion relief to some degree on 66, as some people will choose to drive longer to save the traffic snarl. Providing a route from dulles to fredericksburg will relieve some congestion on 495/95 also. Many cities around the world have the notion of Ring Roads that go around the city, and provide for better transportation needs. I do get the encroachment on the Battlefields – but isn’t that similar to worrying about a road because of a frog?
I agree with Pat here. In principle this would alleviate some congestion on our current main travel/commute routes. If planning also includes a “Sharelanes” or dedicated shared path, and a mass transit component, I could see this as being a very good infrastructure investment. But, if it
I agree with Pat here. In principle this would alleviate some congestion on our current main travel/commute routes. If planning also includes a “Sharelanes” or dedicated shared path, and a mass transit component, I could see this as being a very good infrastructure investment. But, if it
only involves laying down asphalt for more cars, then this will just add to the problem, instead of being part of the solution.
The original plan was a Rt.28 bypass around Manassas and MP,
starting with the limited access Godwin Drive that now ends at
Business Rt. 234. It would have have helped local traffic,
but not big developers – so it has gathered dust for over a decade.
Mentioning Godwin Drive perks my ears up. I am at the learning stage on all this and pretty much without an opinion.
What would the route be from Godwin Drive with the original plan?
I am not sure it is all that stupid either. Learning still.
Our major congestion in this area is east/west. Do we want the west end of the county to eventually look like the east end? When you put the infrastructure in for a major highway, you invite massive high density development. Where do comprehensive plans plan their development areas? Around mass transit and that is what this outer beltway represents. It will not bring any relief for any congestion, it will bring mass development. Why is it that Til Hazel and all other big developers support new big roads? Because they know full well what it will bring.
My husband use to travel 66 to get to work, now his office has moved to Ashburn and he spend HALF his time on the road. You want to relieve congestion, figure out a way to improve your county business environment to bring business closer to you. Fairfax has lots of roads, what the hell good has it done them! All over that county is gridlock, don’t let a road fool you into believing it is the magic bullet to relieve congestion. Mass transit gets cars off the road.
http://novaroads.mjhale.com/history/godwindr/index.html
The unfinished 1969 plan was the one Manassas Town/City always
supported.
http://pwconserve.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/the-latest-spin-on-the-tri-county-parkway-manassas-pay-attention/
FYI – an interesting observation, even if I don’t agree 100%.
I remember my parents being soooo excited when 66 first opened, how it was going to relieve so much gridlock they faced everday. We have natural resources that we must protect. Our county will continue to grow, we have to ask ourselves, what are we willing to sacrafice? Clean water, clean air, what kind of world is that?
Thanks for the links big dog.
Elena, if you are sitting over in Woodbridge trying to get home to Stafford or Spottsylvania, it becomes a north/south issue. I know lots of people who live there and work in PWC.
At what point is ‘protecting resources’ a wash because you are preserving one thing while polluting the air with LA type traffic?
I don’t have an opinion on an outer beltway for this area. It sure helps circumnavigate the Boston area. How much would commuter traffic be lessened if that Beltway were clear of north south NON commuter traffic?
As for interstate type roads, we have the same roads we had 40 years ago. I have to listen and learn on this one. Why do we necessarily have to give up clean air and clean water?
Is there a visual of this somewhere?
I am going to be very honest now. I am sceptical of environmental groups having the best answers. I saw what happened when we shot down Disney thanks to pressure from environmental groups. I defy anyone to tell me THAT was the best solution. We exchanged a major history theme park with corportation built roads for literally thousands of tract houses. I want to hear all sides. Everyone gets an opinion, no one group gets to rule.
Some people I think very highly of went up against Disney. However, I didn’t agree with them then. I keep thinking of individuals every time I drive through western PWC. Thanks alot, guys.
@Big Dog
What I find odd is that the plan goes back to 1969. that wouldn’t be so hot for all the new housing that was going in there at the time. That would sure wipe out some neighborhoods.
Now it would probably be impossible to put in.
@Big Dog
Can you repost this link? It doesn’t work.
I can agree with Elena’s points about development and sprawl. I can also see where the environmental/anti-development folks can become “the bad guys” if they allow this to become a NIMBY argument. I think this road will be built, as “the needs of the many will turmp the needs of the few. “McNeighborhoods” we’ve got enough of. I don’t want to see anymore built either. the tract-home suburban growth model is a dead-end. If the environmental/anti-development folks would be willing to compromise on the building of the road, with say a 20-30 year moritorium on building new residential neighborhoods within certain easments along the right-of-way, and insist that the route also include share lanes for bus, bicycles, this could be a good thing. I do think digging in your heals and saying “no way, no how” or “save the bees, save the trees, save the whales, save the snails” is a losing argument.
M-H-
Try the postings again – they both worked when I checked them.
Much of the right-of-way for the 1969 plan is still in place – a big hitch
was/is Fairfax County not wanting it to go through a small part of
one of their parks.
The link to John Gray’s ad has been fixed.
Ok, folks out there who want to convince us….some suggestions.
1. Most of us need visuals.
2. Most of us respond well to features/advantages/benefits mentality, as well as the opposites.
I can’t wrap my head around where these proposed road ways even supposed to be. Some of them sound like they might be going through my front yard. Naturally I would oppose that and I would gather up any information possible to make my point of view.
However, I am going to sell someone out in the rural crescent a lot faster than I am my own neighbors and myself. That is just human nature. If it boils down to a road going through where Big Dog’s first map suggests or one going through the Rural Crescent, I am going to do what I can to protect my own neighborhood.
Ultimately, roads will go through where there is the least amount of disruption. Since the state has to buy people out to bulldoze houses and build, where does that leave us?
No matter which route is chosen, it will more than likely dump out on the Rt. 234 Bypass or Dumfries Road. The area through Independent Hill/Lake Jackson is semi-rural residential with most lots being about 2 acres. At rush hour the damn road is a nightmare to enter from most of the subdivisions which line it in that vicinity now. It could use a couple more traffic lights already. If a major road running from Loudoun County with connections at Rt. 66 is going to run to I95, it’ll be a damn mess for this residential area. All the development that jumped Rt. 234 with the advent of sewer and was slowed down by the burst housing bubble will commence anew.
I’d like to see VRE stops and hours expanded and more public transit available. I have a hard time believing that the majority of the traffic on rt. 28 is bound for Dulles. I think more is bound for Reston, Herndon, and other locations nearby which have many IT jobs.
It has been a nightmare through there for decades. @censored
@Censored bybvbl
You summed that up nicely!!
@Laf
I still want to see maps of projected roads.
You can’t name a place in/and around our area that’s not a nightmare. Mr. Laf commutes to and from the City of FX daily. He’s says the worst part of his commute is down Old Centreville Rd, Yorkshire Ln, Amherst, and Lomond Dr.. That part takes longer than City of FX to Compton Rd. He likes the idea of the Godwin Dr plan. Well, that’s fine and well if FX is on board and prepared to make improvements due to the new traffic they will get, and PW would NOT cut it through and open up Sudley Manor near Ben Lomond Park. Sudley and WG residents would fight the opening of SM from the new bypass. Our neighborhoods are gridlocked and standing still in the afternoons.
And if we must build a new bypass, let’s keep them straight and the road named the same damn thing every inch of it. The PW Pkwy has a handful of street names.
Moon,
This beltway has nothing to do with woodbridge or stafford road congestion. It will simply feed to the Dulles Corridor. It is a Gainesville road that won’t relieve congestion anywhere, well, for a brief time, and then the western end of the county will look like the eastern end. there is a map on the pwconserve.org blog. Like I said, my husband has driven both routes, and it was a DREAM to head do north south as opposed to east west. By investing billions on this road for developers, we take a away, once again, redevelopment for the east end and a comprehensive plan to deal with a vision for the future of PWC. We have amazing opportunities for the eastern end, but if we go through with this plan, it is just a waste of precious resources.
http://www.virginiadot.org/projects/resources/NorthernVirginia/ctbLocationStudyMapsTCP.pdf
West Two: C, D
what parts do you disagree with big dog?
http://www.virginiadot.org/projects/northernvirginia/tri-county_parkway_location_study.asp
@…
Please choose a real moniker.
@Elena
But this isn’t a ‘beltway’ and why is it being called one? This proposed road is more like what most of us know as a by-pass.
At one time there was talk of a real outer beltway that would begin somewhere below quanitico and drop off on 95 somewhere in Maryland. I guess that plan got scrapped.
The maps suck. There are 3 roads shown. One of them looks like it has the potential to take out my front yard. I am so confused. But then that is probably the point. Everyone gets so confused they don’t give a crap until it is in their front yard.
I have missed the point about your husband’s drive to work. Mine had all sorts of short cuts and cut offs. I never listened.
My point is that the real traffic congestion are the people heading east. Rush hour traffic heading east on 66 was double what it was for my husband to head north on 15 to get to ashburn.
Thanks, Elena, for taking the lead on this discussion. I’ll try to add something new, but you’ve done a great job of laying out the facts on the “Tri-County Parkway,” “Dulles Access Road” or whatever they’re calling it this week.
First, it will not relieve congestion for PWC residents. It will connect with the Route 234 Bypass where it ends currently at I-66. This will dump massive amounts of new traffic on the existing stretch of Rt. 234 between I-66 and I-95. Moreover, once the new road through Northern PWC and Loudoun is complete, and the new residential development gets going, a vast amount of new traffic will be added. If you think driving the Rt. 234 Bypass in PWC is crowded now, nightmare would not be an exaggeration to describe that trip with this new road in place.
Second, we don’t need it to facilitate access to Dulles Airport. As Elena wrote, the real problem is East-West traffic. Widening I-66 further between Centreville and Gainesville, and improving I-66 to Haymarket would do much more to improve the quality of life for PWC residents than would this new road. Improving Rt. 28 between Manassas and Centreville would be great also. The problem with these ideas, however, is that they improve life for current residents and don’t open up new areas for development as Lord Connaughton and his friends want.
Third, extending the road from the Rt. 234/I-66 intersection will open up vast new swaths of rural area to residential development. Environmentalist arguments aside, this development will hit taxpayers’ hard. Residential development is virtually never revenue positive, and is especially expensive in rural areas where there is no existing sewer, schools, or other types of public infrastructure. Get ready to pay higher taxes to subsidize the developers’ bottom lines.
The east west traffic is not just east west – I travel 66 to 495 to get to Tysons and Reston – If I had a better road, I might want to travel north then east (toll road), instead of east and then north. Taking these two lane roads is not a good experience while commuting – one hiccup on 15 or Gum Springs Road, and everyone is stopped.
@Pat, I was looking at that map last night. Do they just try to confuse us?
I got this horrific notion that the state is going to try to take Dumfries Road as the first leg of a real outer beltway. What would all those people do who live along there? The hook up would be that red line that extended the Parkway to Arcola.
Great comment NTK!@Need to Know
anyone remember this event? Not religiously driven, but this group believed in some impending visit from UFO’s.
http://www.cnn.com/US/9703/27/suicide/index.html
How about those HOT lanes–that wonderfully endless Beltway construction project effing up everyone’s commute these days? How wonderful that foreign-owned Fluor-Transurban gets to collect all the tolls. Of course those tolls won’t really “pay” for the road. The contract between VDOT and Flour includes extra payments from the state–if more than 24% of vehicles are the carpoolers or buses not paying a toll, Virginia has to pay a penalty. So we will pay and pay and pay for roads so that a foreign corporation can make endless profits on “Lexus Lanes” that will benefit the wealthy and those whose workplace will pay the tolls for them. The rest of you lesser folks can just shaddup and sit in traffic.
So after all this blah, blah, blah, remember that this is going to happen in the future. Prince William County cannot continue to be some Bubba Land–it will fall to development because that is the nature of the development beast. So what you should be worried about is how to minimize the impact of this. The “Rural Crescent” will eventually get gobbled up, subdivided into, at best, Rural Residental Suburban–no lot less than one acre, and an average of 1 residence per 2.5 acres. You 10 acre owners may even be allowed to subdivide because the pressure of development will demand it. My recommendation–get the knot out of your panties and work to make this as painless as possible.
Sadly, George is probably right. Perhaps we ought to look at what the Brits did in the 1970’s in the London Metro area: set aside large green spaces (called “walks”) in concentric circles radiating out from central London and forbid any future development in those “walks.” They are pleasant escapes from the developed areas, and you don’t have to go very far to get to them.
We keep talking about roads and more roads. Too bad we have never imitated the Europeans with regard to large and comprehensive urban and suburban rail systems. In places like London, Paris, and Zurich, I never used a car except for taxis. You didn’t really need one unless you were going out of town. Unlike our D.C. Metro, which is a series of rail lines leading to the central hub, the European systems often have circular and cross routes — sort of like being able to get on the “subway” and going from home in Haymarket or Manassas to work in Reston or Tysons or vice versa. You could combine that with actual railways — what we used to call “interurbans” back in the days when we had rail systems — and connecting buses, and you would be able to start leaving the car in the garage. Come to think of it, I never drove a car in London Metro at all except from Gatwick Airport to a suburban hotel, although I did drive over most of the rest of the country.