Spiraling down: Why the Bypass will wreck Albemarle
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The Bypass will bore through money as it bores through hills and streams.hawes spencer
The Taxpayers for Common Sense, in an October report subtitled "Two trillion in common sense cuts to avoid the fiscal cliff," calls the Charlottesville Western Bypass a financial boondoggle:
This bypass is extremely expensive as compared to similar projects and will cost almost $40 million per mile. Furthermore, state transportation officials found that none of the bypass alternatives would have much, if any, impact on the "F level of service" rating on the existing U.S. 29 corridor. More fiscally responsible alternatives such as overpass and design improvements have shown promise of achieving the same goals without the local opposition that has developed against the bypass. Congress should block any federal funding for this wasteful roadway.
Taxpayers for Common Sense is no tree-hugger organization. It's a fiscally conservative non-profit that seeks to curb the governmental impulse to spend money it doesn't have. The group wants America to live within its means, rather than push debt onto our children.
Yet, for the illusion that the Bypass will ease local congestion– and even VDOT doesn't claim that it will– proponents are willing to risk the local water supply as well as the health of young people by sending trucks at highway speeds through a multi-school Albemarle campus, and onto UVA's North Grounds. Not to mention driving another nail into our national $15 trillion debt.
Bypass proponents, from the Chamber of Commerce to the Free Enterprise Forum's Neil Williamson to our three local GOP county supervisors, will claim, of course, that the construction bid came in at much less than $244 million and, therefore, it's a better deal.
However, even with Skanska's $136 million bid, this 6.2-mile highway is still, as former Virginia Business editor James Bacon puts it, "The Road to Wealth Destruction." Bacon, the author of Boomergeddon, a 2010 book warning of the perils of debt, performed a return-on-investment analysis and found only $8 million in benefits from the massive project, and almost all of that accrues downstate in Lynchburg and Danville. So for us locally the Bypass is all pain and no gain.
Read Skanska’s “design-build” proposal, and you'll realize that it plans to dump cars and trucks from four-lane highway speeds down an 11.4 percent grade through a stoplight onto the campus of the Darden business school. Just below this stoplight– and who ever heard of a bypass beginning and ending with stoplights?– is a student cross walk. This plan will have 18-wheelers seeking to beat yellow lights and perhaps eliminating a few future taxpayers.
How steep is an 11.4-percent grade? Well, only one of Colorado's 35 mountain passes has a grade of ten percent, and the steepest stretch of any American interstate is eight percent. The famed “Going to the Sun” road inside Glacier National Park is just six percent.
Read VDOT's Environmental Assessment carefully, and you'll find that the document doesn’t actually evaluate the Skanska design and, secondly, that any cited congestion relief comes not from the Bypass but from Places29, a well-vetted local plan– without a funding source– that supervisors approved unanimously last year. The Bypass eases traffic next to nothing.
Bypass proponents, however, claim most Places29 projects will get built as well; that our present governor's promises will somehow carry over to future state leaders. But consider the fact that the Bypass will suck up 50 percent of all money coming to the entire Culpeper Transportation District, as a local planning commissioner notes, through the year 2050. Even if Uncle Sam weren't bankrupt, there is no realistic chance of federal or state funds for additional local projects.
Compounding the state's inability to find money for other Albemarle County projects, such as extending the Bypass past Airport Road, is the "fast-track" process. The bypass will be largely built off budget in expensive change orders.
Here's why. Bidders never received key information prior to submitting their designs last spring. VDOT's most common answer in its January Q&A for contractors was that the state would address the bidder's questions "in a forthcoming addendum," many of which never materialized. When info was available, VDOT consistently added this caveat: The Department does not represent or warrant that the information contained in the Supplemental Information Package is reliable or accurate or suitable for designing this project.
If design-build contractors wanted a suitable response, the potential bidder was told in no uncertain terms that "another round of questions and responses will not be conducted" although VDOT did note that federal input was "scheduled for late 2012," six months after bids were due.
In other words, the contractors had to bid before they knew much about what they were bidding on. They were not even allowed to take core samples of the ground over which their pavement would pass. The result was an $80 million difference– 60 percent of Skanska's entire bid– between the high and low bids.
Other bidders tried to predict the massive contingencies. Skanska, however, sagely realized the Commonwealth would be trapped by its own fast-track process. Once construction starts, rather than face expensive lawsuits, the state must therefore allow dozens– maybe hundreds– of change orders in response to Skanska's lack of pre-bid knowledge.
One day, as the price soars by tens of millions (or even a hundred million dollars), policy-makers will look back at the $136 million construction bid and express surprise. We, the people, should be listening to Taxpayers for Common Sense. Bypass proponents sure aren’t.
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Throughout this essay, Charlottesville-based transportation researcher Randy Salzman resisted the temptation to call this road, which fails to detour past much of the U.S. 29 North developments, "the so-called Bypass."
18 comments
I appreciate this article's coverage of these valid arguments against the bypass and not the ridiculous claims about environmental holocausts and nonsense about children's lungs.
Bu^^*()& article...
Took me reading Dave T's comment to realize how I made it through the article without wincing. This should be an example of reasonable, direct, and non sensational journalism for the hook to follow in the future. Lead by example don't hop on the wagon we are all eating quinoa already around here.
I'm going to go ahead and say this- I don't think that the traffic Charlottesville is that bad. People are just impatient.
I'm one of the crowd who thinks that some alternative to the current string of lights along our only north-south highway is necessary, and for that I view the bypass as being preferable to nothing. I also wonder what the air quality impacts of the bypass would be, compared to the tons of daily emissions that result fropm cars having to idle and accerlate from those lights on 29 -- engines operate more fuel-efficiently, and therefore cleaner, at around a steady state 62 mph. However, I would very much like to see some costs and traffic impact and air quality impact comparisons with other alternatives, such as rreal intechanges or an actual elevated expressway.
@Chicken Wing, I'm in full agreement here - compare to Boston or DC where it takes 2-3 hours to commute the same distance from Pantops to 29N. Truly the real traffic bottleneck is 250 and the Pantops Mountain area. They widened the roads, and subdivisions either sprouted up or expanded. Unless there is an accident, traffic isn't too bad on either route.
What this area doesn't do is plan for businesses and shopping centers well. Thus causing the traffic issues and impatience of so many here.
It also doesn't help that the worst drivers ever are in this area.
As a native, I avoid 29N, know all the alternate routes and the same with 250 (if I can).
I'd like to see the bypass supporters attempt to respond to this. Above, "Hook sucks" makes a valiant effort with "Bu^^*()& article..."
Stopper and Starter, agreed that alternatives should be carefully considered. The Places 29 plan is far less-expensive, better at reducing congestion, and would have fewer local impacts. I honestly have no idea why we are even considering a bypass, other than sheer highway-building tradition and some lobbying from 29 corridor businesses who believe they need stoplights to encourage people to purchase their goods.
Article truly over-wrought, turgid, and full of "everything but the kitchen sink" pseudo logical arguments. If the bypass had been built 30 years ago as it should have been, we wouldn't have this dispute. Easy for local NIMBY types to say traffic isn't so bad, but try running daily delivery routes through 29. We had our chance also 30 years ago to restrict connections to 29 and build grade separated interchanges, but that got stonewalled. If Lynchburg can survive the building of a bypass, so can this self important little S%$& Hole.
Thanks for a thoughtful article. I am all for a bypass, but this particular design isn't a responsible use of taxpayer money. I am a fiscal conservative and a growth proponent and there appear to be better, smarter ways to achieve this goal than a 30 year old plan that was outmoded then and is positively prehistoric today.
This road is embarrasing. Process has been even worse.
@ Angel Eyes: How in the world can you complain about "pseudo logical arguments" and then go on to argue that a road VDOT decided wasn't worth building 30 years ago is now worth building, unchanged in design despite the 30 intervening years of sprawl? Typical pro-bypass "logic." Why bother to refute anything that's in the [entirely correct] article when you can just reflexively call it BS instead? Steve's got it 100% right. It's an embarrassment, and the process that revived it from the dead is even worse.
The plan and the process suck. What about the interchange at 250/McIntire? I'm on McIntire every morning and every afternoon, it's already over-taxed. When you start taking traffic directly off Rio and funneling it downtown on to McIntire/Ridge, it'll be a parking lot. There is no sense to any of these projects, no long term planning. Now there's a debate about altering the bypass plan? Can you imagine how long THAT will be in court? By the time we see any movement on that, the bypass would have to run to Culpeper to be of any use. The system is broken and it waste out time and our financial resources.
Remember, we need this bypass to make the water plan work. It provides the right of way needed to build the new pipeline required to fill the new reservoir.
Without the bypass, it will be almost impossible to acquire the right-of-way to build the pipeline and the new reservoir will be worthless.
Putting the pipeline in the Route 29 bypass was a fundamental part of the water plan and that might be one of the strongest drivers of the bypass project.
If we don't build this, we'll have wasted $300 million on the water plan.
So, let's kill two birds with one stone. We can get our new water plan built-out and maybe get some traffic benefit.
"So, let's kill two birds with one stone."...as well as almost half a billion dollars.
If the bypass gets built, the state might as well pony up more money, grow some balls, and build a functional interchange on the southern end. If folks haven't figured this out already, the bypass is more about upgrading the entire US 29 corridor, so plans for continuance of such a road up to Culpeper will likely pop up in 8-10 years. Saying that Cville doesn't benefit is about as accurate as Biden telling people that Romney is going to give the rich a 500 trillion dollar tax cut (yeah- he's that dumb). The number of road projects that will get completed in conjunction with the bypass will put the area in good shape compared to where it is today, unless you are one of those wackos who thinks that building roads makes cars suddenly become more plentiful. If opponents would have really thought it through, they would have figured out how to get 20 years worth of maintenance dollars for said projects.
Personally, I don't think any of it will come to fruition, and SELC will petition Albemarle County to rename US 29 "Places29."
If the bypass gets built, the state might as well pony up more money, grow some balls, and build a functional interchange on the southern end. If folks haven't figured this out already, the bypass is more about upgrading the entire US 29 corridor, so plans for continuance of such a road up to Culpeper will likely pop up in 8-10 years. Saying that Cville doesn't benefit is about as accurate as Biden telling people that Romney is going to give the rich a 500 trillion dollar tax cut (yeah- he's that dumb). The number of road projects that will get completed in conjunction with the bypass will put the area in good shape compared to where it is today, unless you are one of those wackos who thinks that building roads makes cars suddenly become more plentiful. If opponents would have really thought it through, they would have figured out how to get 20 years worth of maintenance dollars for said projects.
Personally, I don't think any of it will come to fruition, and SELC will petition Albemarle County to rename US 29 "Places29."
I've been out of the country so girlygirl, agreed, omgitspaul, Common Sense, new reality and Dave T -- and all the other fiscal conservatives out there -- please talk about the massive cost of this project, and all the other reasons it's "The Road to Wealth Destruction," to your compatriots.
We're now leaving our children $16 trillion in debt and, as this roadway seems to indicate, we will not stop destroying their possibility for a reasonable future. In every other democracy in the Western World, cities and communities are working out ways to help people move away from steering wheels because they realize that driving for any and every transportation need/desire is detrimental to society. We Americans, on the other hand, are still borrowing money to build highways and trying to make driving easier in spite of fighting four wars in oil fields over the last 20 years.
As horrifying as it sounds, today -- after the Deepwater Horizon and Kalamazoo River oil spills -- we're still spending 80 percent of American transportation dollars on driving and highways, and that's before we borrow more money and throw it into stimulus highway construction.
In 2009, the Texas Transportation Institute reported that to hold the line on congestion costs through highway construction, the U.S. would have to build 16,200 lane miles annually -- a financial and physical impossibility -- yet in 2012 in a community which, as Chicken Wing and Cville Native point out, doesn't really have bad congestion, some still think it's possible to build our way out. It's not. The data is very clear (please don't trust me, tomr, look up "induced traffic" yourself): when you build additional lane-miles, you actually increase traffic by enticing people to drive more places more times with less thought. Making it appear easier to drive creates more driving which creates more need for more road space which creates more driving and...
The Commission on the Future of Transportation in Virginia calls it a "futile exercise" to try and build your way out of this "merry-go-round" because you keep making it worse.
Unfortunately, much -- if not most -- of the traffic induced by the "bypass" will be 18-wheelers from two places. VDOT's stated reason for the highway is not C-ville congestion but the hope that a "faster" drive into D.C. will create manufacturing opportunities downstate. If that happens, of course that means 18-wheelers dropping off the "bypass" into Hollymead and Forest Lakes. But, in addition, the job of the long-haul, 18-wheel driver is to find the fastest route from point A to point B and all alternatives. When this "bypass" is built we will entice 18-wheelers on the NAFTA route from Mexico to NYC, Boston, Philly and D.C. to cut the corner off their long, long trip. Some -- and no one can project how many until the highway is done -- will head east off I-81 at U.S. 460 in Roanoke where I-81 stalls daily because it carries over three times the traffic it was designed for. Others will head east on U.S. 64 because at least five major construction projects planned for I-81 north of Staunton.
All these trucks will arrive in Hollymead and Forest Lakes after destroying, at best, the peace and quiet which our students in six schools need. And, at worst, destroying those students' health. The data is also strong that spending six hours daily within a half mile of a major highway injures children's lung capacity, yet we're considering putting a new highway within a quarter mile of elementary and secondary schools? The EPA today suggests that all schools within a half mile of a major highway should be tested to see what's happening to students.
Like several of you commenting, I yearn to hear someone say WHY this is a good project for THIS community? I would love to know what benefits it provides citizens of Albemarle County and Charlottesville but proponents simply do not tell us "why." Jim Bacon, a Republican former editor of Virginia Business, could find only $8 million in total benefits in his return-on-investment analysis of this "bypass" and notes that no businesses would spend $240+ million to get $8 million in benefits. Only government does something that stupid.
Where are the true fiscal conservatives?
Mr. socks votes with salz on this one!!!