Goodbye Bypass? Not just yet
The Western Bypass may be dead, for now, but the unbuilt road still casts a long shadow over local transportation politics.
Last spring, the nearly insolvent Virginia Depart-ment of Transportation cut the $180 million Route 29 Bypass from its six-year plan. Politicians from southern communities like Lynchburg and Danville continue to lobby for the road, however, saying Charlottesville is a traffic bottleneck that makes their cities less attractive to industry.
Early this month, Virginia Senator Stephen Newman, a Republican from the 23rd District, wrote to Governor Mark Warner "expressing great concern over reports that the Charlottesville Bypass might be in danger of being delayed or – even worse – eliminated altogether from current transportation plans."
Newman is miffed because the Charlottesville-Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization is trying to cut the Bypass from its transportation plan. "In our opinion," Newman wrote, "the MPO’s apparent position against the Bypass is not in the best interests of broader transportation planning. …It is for this reason that we ask you to direct the Secretary of Transportation and the Commonwealth Transportation Board to look very closely at every single item in the Charlottesville MPO’s Transportation Improvement Plan, conducting an in-depth review of each item. We realize that by asking you to undertake this review, it could greatly delay many of the MPO’s other projects, including the funding for all those other projects."
In fact, the local MPO – whose membership includes elected officials from the City and County, as well as VDOT planners – is itself divided over the Bypass. Albemarle’s representatives, Supervisors Sally Thomas and Dennis Rooker, want it cut from the plans. The City’s position – represented on the MPO by Councilors Kevin Lynch and Meredith Richards – is more ambiguous.
Richards, who is running for Virginia’s 5th District Congressional seat, would very much like to attach her name to the final defeat of the widely unpopular Bypass; but her fellow Councilors want it to remain in the MPO’s plan.
On Monday, October 7, Council asked the MPO to delay its vote on whether to axe the Bypass. Richards, fuming, complained that Council was giving in to the implied threats in Newman’s letter. "Let’s be honest here…" she began.
Mayor Maurice Cox drew applause from the assembly when he cut Richards off. "We’ve got a long agenda, and people are here for the water ordinance," said Cox, who scheduled the water debate for the end of the meeting.
"I was simply trying to address that Council should not allow itself to be coerced into not upholding our obligations to the community," Richards said later.
Councilors say they don’t feel "threatened" by Newman – in the samebreath, though, they say Charlottesville ought not alienate other cities by appearing to be inflexible or unilateral in its transportation policies. "We’re responsible locally, but we’re part of a larger game," says Councilor Blake Caravati.
The unbuilt Bypass seems to have the most realpolitik leverage, however, as Charlottesville and Albemarle try to solve shared transportation problems. The City wants to begin work on a Southern Connector and an East-North Connector, roads which Councilors say are crucial to solving City traffic congestion. Since those two roads would be County projects, it seems Council won’t vote to kill the Bypass until Albemarle commits to building alternative roads.
"It seems foolhardy to remove one road from a regional plan without knowing what you’re going to replace it with," says Cox.