McAuliffe’s Shakedown in Charlottesville: Highway Robbery

“Road to Rio” was a popular 1947 installment of the “Road” series of comedies starring Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Dorothy Lamour.  But in 2015, it is “Rio Road” that is not sitting well with audiences in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The $84 million project would create a grade-separated intersection (GSI) proposed at the junction of Rio Road and U.S. Highway 29 (US 29).  New through lanes would be created more than 20 feet below the existing road level, while exit and entrance ramps would be shored up with retaining walls.

After a January 29, 2015 town hall meeting attended by folks who were initially supportive, opposed, or neutral on the project, all but one of the 402 signatories to an exit survey were opposed.  At the February 4, 2015 meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, with only five proponents speaking in favor of the GSI, 21 citizens signed up in advance to speak in opposition followed by another 20 protesting the project.  A survey of 760 registered voters conducted by Conquest Communications (February 1 – 3, 2015) found that 58.9 percent of respondents opposed the project and 19.6 percent supported the project, while 17.2 were undecided and 4 percent refused to answer.

The project is included in a $231 million package of other Charlottesville road improvements in an all-or-nothing proposition.  In other words, in order to fix some agreed-upon traffic problems, the community must agree to a major headache in what could be considered as a shakedown.

The project is part of a tortuous tale that makes winding roads look like straightaways.

The $231 million correlates to the amount originally allocated to the since-cancelled Western Bypass, which would have routed regional through-traffic around the developed corridor north of Charlottesville.  Originally proposed in 1979, the bypass would have started from a point just north of the Rivanna River on US 29 and avoided a series of traffic lights before it merged back into US 29 near the north grounds of the University of Virginia campus.  The bypass was approved by the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) in 1991.

Efforts to kill the Western Bypass include a 1998 lawsuit against the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) by the Southern Environmental Law Center, which alleged that the state’s environmental impact review of the project violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).  In 2001, a federal court sided with VDOT but required the agency to complete a supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) assessing the route’s impact on the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir and to include efforts mitigating such impact.  The completed supplemental EIS was accepted by the Federal Highway Administration (FHwA) in 2003.

An earlier protest was lodged in 1996, when the Charlottesville-Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) included language in its Transportation Improvement Program objecting to the allocation of additional funds for the construction of the bypass.  But that provision was removed by the MPO Policy Board in July 2011, after the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors voted 4-2 to scrap the bypass-blocking language.

With the local MPO obstacle removed, VDOT issued a request for proposals on September 27, 2011, and in June 2012, the CTB awarded a $135 million contract for the construction of the bypass.

Not so fast.  During Virginia’s 2013 elections, two bypass opponents won election to the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, reversing the majority that had previously stripped out the anti-bypass language at the MPO.  In turn, the MPO withdrew support from the bypass.  The problem was compounded in February 2014, when FHwA announced that another supplemental EIS would be recommended.

On the heels of the FHwA impediment, Governor McAuliffe prompted his Secretary of Transportation, Aubrey Layne, to convene a panel to suggest alternatives for the $135 million allocated to the Western Bypass by the CTB.  On June 18, 2014, the CTB removed all further funding from the project.

The diversion of funds to the expensive (and unnecessary) Rio Road interchange has also been caused in part by objections from well-heeled and politically connected landowners in the area impacted by the originally proposed bypass.

Common sense might suggest that the Western Bypass project is dead.  But because VDOT has not sold the remaining 54 parcels of right-of-way initially acquired for the bypass, opponents remain concerned that the original plan or something closely related might rise from the grave.

Or maybe it really was buried, when the same amount of money set aside for the Western Bypass was redirected to other local projects.  However, assuming that all of the $231 million must be consumed, it did not necessarily have to be kept in the same jurisdiction where it was originally supposed to be spent.  It could have been redirected to other parts of the Commonwealth, where there might be a more urgent need for transportation dollars, or not spent at all.  It is unfortunate that bureaucracies cannot (or will not) adjust more nimbly when circumstances, and local desires, change; especially when fiscal restraint is required in the state budget.  With logic that is often absent from government officials, a local business owner suggested that the other projects related to US 29 be completed first in order to determine if the Rio Road interchange is truly essential.

Opponents to the Western Bypass have long argued that it would do little to alleviate traffic on US 29.  If that is the case, then there is even less rationale for essentially turning what would have been a bypass into a freeway for non-local traffic.

Essentially, the Rio Road project, besides being an over-reactive attempt to deprive any more funding for the bypass, is a camel’s nose under the tent.  It represents the first of presumably several GSIs along the route since Rio Road would eliminate only three traffic lights along the nascent freeway.  Extrapolated over the remaining 16 traffic lights, taxpayers would likely be on the hook for approximately $500 million more to complete GSIs along the entire road.  

Moreover, local businesses will be adversely impacted by the interchange, which could compromise the local tax base:  threatening their survival will only widen the fiscal sinkhole that this project portends.  The local politics of the defunct bypass notwithstanding, this diversionary effort, carried to its logical conclusion and using federal dollars at a time when the Highway Trust Fund is going broke, sounds like a case, literally, of highway robbery.