The Road Battle: The roads down our throats

Washingtonpost.com:

A proposed six-mile highway outside Charlottesville is so wasteful and ill-conceived that it’s achieved literary status. It prompted best-selling novelist and area resident John Grisham to write a book implicitly denouncing it.

“The Activist,” published last month and aimed at youths ages 10 to 12, is fictional. But Grisham said it was inspired by the decades-long battle over a $245 million bypass west of the city that’s home to the University of Virginia.

Grisham, famed for such legal thrillers as “The Firm,” said the new book is about “a boneheaded bypass around a lovely little college town and all the issues that go into such a boondoggle.”

The rest of the state, and especially Northern Virginia, should be equally appalled. The road is one of the most egregious examples of a pattern in which Gov. Bob McDonnell’s administration relentlessly pushes a major highway project despite abundant evidence that the money could be spent more wisely elsewhere.

 

Another example, which I described in a January column, is the $1.4 billion “Road for Nobody” outside Hampton Roads. A third questionable project — though more defensible than the first two — is the Bi-County Parkway linking Prince William and Loudoun counties.

“In each of these cases, there are legitimate transportation issues. But there are other answers that are not nearly as costly or destructive,” said Trip Pollard, a land-use specialist in Richmond for the Southern Environmental Law Center.

McDonnell (R) and his hard-charging transportation secretary, Sean Connaughton, are trying to lock in all these highways before their terms expire early next year. Taxpayers ought to demand they first prove the roads are cost-effective.

Voters also ought to insist that gubernatorial candidates Ken Cuccinelli (R) and Terry McAuliffe (D) make clear whether and how they’d change priorities, if elected.

What doesn’t really meet the eye at first or even second glance is why McDonnell and Connaughton are pushing these three roads so hard.   Any time roads are pushed this hard, at least in PWC, one looks around to see what developers are contributing and to whom.  Charlottesville is really no different.  I am trying to think how that new road there would help?  The existing by-pass linking I-64 and route 29 just isn’t that congested.   The congestion is coming in on 29 north of Charlottesville.  The problem was that they were messing with the road for what seemed like 15 years.

Perhaps we can reach out to John Grisham for a Prince William County version of The Activist.   Right now the people of Charlottesville/Albemarle, Prince William County and Hampton Roads had better stand up to the states because we are going to get those roads shoved down our throats whether we want them or not.

Further reading at the Washington Post

The Activist (Kindle version)