Grounds swell
Officials give UVA props for the North Grounds Connector Road
The 1.3 miles of eastbound lanes on the Route 29/250 Bypass between the exits for Route 250 and for Barracks Road are as mundane as roads get around here. Two blue rectangular highway signs indicate food (Taco Bell, Ruby Tuesday’s and Arby’s) and fuel (Amoco and Exxon) ahead. A green airplane symbol points the indirect way to the airport. An occasional deer or jogger attempts to cross the highway (speed limit 55) in a southward direction from the back of the athletic fields at St. Anne’s-Belfield School. And, as is standard in a Commonwealth where merging is apparently a bonus question on the driver’s ed test, sporadically a car will come to a dead stop at the end of the bypass’ on-ramp while drivers whiz by in the slow lane.
Thanks to a green light from the State transportation’s governing board, within the next three years that so-what stretch of road will become a crucial link in UVA’s sports, arts and entertainment scheme. On September 17, the Commonwealth Transportation Board gave UVA permission to build its North Grounds Connector Road. The east-only, grade-level access road will create a new bypass exit in the stretch between the off-ramps for 250 and Barracks Road. It should be completed by 2006.
The proposed connector road, which will feed into Massie Road between Darden and the North Grounds Recreation Center, won’t be a top-drawer complement to the Grade A sports arena and performing arts complex to be constructed in that section of campus, however. To get the best possible traffic option—a full interchange that allows traffic to enter and exit in two directions—UVA would have to increase its budget for the arena project by about 8 percent. UVA has to shoulder the whole tab for the road, because the Virginia Department of Transportation has nothing left in its piggy bank. A full interchange costs about $15 million, according to University Landscape Architect. Mary Hughes. The North Grounds Connector Road will be a comparatively affordable $4 million slice of the arena’s $128 million budget, according to UVA.
The road’s purpose, says UVA spokesperson Carol Wood "is to serve the arena and performing arts centers and to keep traffic moving smoothly and efficiently, especially during event times…because it will pull traffic off congested Emmet Street."
Officials agree that UVA’s willingness to fund the road was an attractor, but the ultimate appeal lay in the fact that the connector road probably won’t make traffic any worse. "What I would like to think made the most difference is UVA’s analysis that if you kept [the connector road] to right-in and right-out that the traffic, though still significant, would also still be at an acceptable level of service," says Kevin Lynch, the City Councilor who last month was named chair of the Metropolitan Planning Organization, a local authority that sets transportation priorities.
"You need to facilitate that [event-day traffic] to Ivy Road," says Butch Davies, the region’s representative to the CTB. "You need to disperse the traffic. With the present arena, it clogs Emmet Street. I don’t think it will be any different with the new arena, but UVA estimates that 10 percent of the traffic coming out would use [the connector road] route."
Indeed, by design the connector road will leave a portion of North Grounds-bound travelers looking for getaway routes through adjoining neighborhoods and business districts. Those wanting to head west after a game—or maybe after work, for that matter—will need to find access by way of Barracks Road, Route 250 or other roads.
The cloverleaf interchange at Emmet Street by Bodo’s is especially vulnerable to spillover traffic, says Davies. "I think you’ll see traffic backup as you come around the cloverleaf to 29," he says. "If you have people using right-out [from the connector road] to go north, you might see some traffic problem in the future ultimately because of Best Buy." The electronics retailer will soon open a new store on the west side of that busy interchange; it will have its own traffic light.
"We recognize that this is not the ideal configuration," says Hughes, "because it does limit the movement, but it was the best we could do in this interim condition before there is a decision by our metropolitan region about the fate of the 29 Western Bypass."
Uncertainty about the controversial western bypass proposal has been a major factor in the traffic plans for North Grounds, Hughes continues. "Say we triple our budget for the North Grounds Connector [to build a full interchange]—what would we build it to? If we built it to the 29 Bypass and the Western Bypass gets built, then all that investment will be wiped out.
"If, on the other hand we say, ‘Okay, the Western Bypass is going to happen, then we have to move Ivy Road—a $10 million proposition in itself—and then build the $10-15 million interchange. If, as seems to be the case, the community really does reject the bypass once and for all, then we have spent all that money to build to a condition that doesn’t pan out."
Despite the likelihood that some UVA event traffic will drain off the connector road to already-heavily-taxed interchanges, traffic officials are waxing positive about UVA’s role.
"This [road approval] would not have happened without University cooperation," says Davies. "I think the University understands its responsibility when it has such a dramatic impact on the transportation structure."
Lynch is equally supportive. "All things considered, it was a reasonable compromise from the perspective of moving traffic versus cost," he says.
And there’s more good news: With the first tip-off at the new arena some 36 months away, there should be plenty of time for bypass drivers to learn the fine art of merging.—Cathryn Harding
Isabel, we knew you well
Charlottsville’s biggest storm, by the numbers
Number of 40-ounce bottles of Hurricane beer distributed by J.W. Sieg and Company in a typical week: 3,600
Number of bottles Hurricane sold on Thursday, September 18, the day Isabel hit Charlottesville: 6,000
Number of calls for service received by Albemarle County Police on Thursday night/Friday morning, September 18: 578
Number of days after the storm had passed before Charlottesville’s City Council confirmed a declaration of local emergency: 12
Number of commercial turkeys killed by the effects of weather in Louisa: 8,000
Number of utility poles snapped in Virginia Dominion Power’s service area, including Charlottesville, much of Virginia and a portion of North Carolina: 2,300
Number of consecutive hours worked by two UVA Facilities employees to provide emergency power during and after the hurricane: 36 each
Estimated age of UVA’s oldest tree, a massive white oak near Brooks Hall, felled by Isabel on September 18: 256 years
Number of noteworthy trees on UVA grounds lost to the storm, according to the Grounds Department: between 12 and 20
Estimated number of hours some Central Virginians went without power after Isabel: 324
Estimated value of insured property lost during Isabel, statewide: $1,000,000,000
Subterranean homesick blues
Post-Isabel, some area residents might have preferred underground utility lines
On Friday, September 19, after Isabel stopped blowing, sections of Jefferson Park Avenue looked like disaster areas: massive trees toppled across cars, utility poles snapped in half, power lines lying across the road like dead snakes. Some residents of JPA were still sitting in the dark five days later on Wednesday, September 24.
In Ivy’s Lewis Hills subdivision, however, Mark Graham was enjoying hot showers and cold beverages by Saturday, just two days after the storm. Graham, Albemarle County’s director of engineering, says underground utility lines may have helped bring juice to his house more easily.
"Underground lines made it a whole lot better for a lot of these subdivisions, in my opinion," Graham says. "When all the lines are above ground, it takes the power company longer to get around to fix them all."
After Isabel knocked out power for nearly 2 million Virginians, places with underground power lines––County subdivisions, for instance, and most of UVA––generally had power restored faster than places with overhead lines, such as Charlottesville and Richmond.
Underground lines may be better at weathering intense storms, but don’t expect to see overhead lines disappear en masse.
About 90 percent of UVA’s utilities run below ground, and power lines to all new buildings on Grounds are buried as a matter of policy, says Cheryl Gomez, UVA’s director of utilities. The University lost electricity during Isabel because the two power lines feeding UVA’s sub-system failed. Once Dominion Virginia Power repaired those lines, all of UVA’s lights came back on.
"Our system experienced no problems with the storm. It was the lines coming into our system that caused the outage," says Gomez.
In Charlottesville, however, Dominion Virginia Power crews had to repair dozens of individual overhead lines before some neighborhoods could turn their lights back on, meaning some people sat in the dark for nearly a week.
Sure, underground power lines are safe from wind, says Dan Genest, a spokesman for Dominion Virginia Power. But buried lines have their own problems. Floods or careless backhoe operators can damage them, and when an underground line isn’t working, it’s much harder to locate and fix the problem, Genest says. Although it may seem counterintuitive, overhead lines have a longer life expectancy––50 years or more—than underground lines, which last only about 30 years.
The biggest problem with underground lines, though, is cost. Virginia Dominion Power can string a mile of overhead lines for about $120,000, while it costs between $300,000 and $500,000 to cover the same distance with underground lines. The underground equipment is more expensive, the design is more complex and installation is longer and more disruptive than overhead lines, Genest says.
While UVA enjoys a State-and-donor funding stream that makes it easy for the school to pay for luxuries like underground utilities, Charlottesville and Albemarle aren’t so lucky. Although the County undergrounds the lines to its own buildings, including schools, Graham says, individual developers carried the cost of undergrounding utilities in most of the County’s subdivisions to make them more aesthetically pleasing to potential buyers (presumably that cost is passed on to the homebuyer).
The City too lets aesthetics and tourism dictate its limited undergrounding projects. Charlottesville plans to bury power lines around Court Square as well as the Downtown Mall and its side streets, to make them look more "historic," says City Engineer Tony Edwards. "It has problems, but on the positive side you remove all those overhead poles and lines, and make the area more aesthetically pleasing," he says.
Other City undergrounding coincides with new development. When the Terraces project was underway, for example, the City undergounded the lines along First Street, and Second Street’s lines were buried as the new City Center for Contemporary Arts went up on Water Street. The next undergrounding will happen around the Paramount Theater, says Edwards.
Edwards estimates it costs the City between $800 and $1,000 per linear foot to bury Downtown’s power lines. "There’s a lot of stuff in the ground already, so a lot of effort goes into planning and design," he says.
On large road-improvement projects, such as the transformations the City wants to make on Fontaine Avenue, the Virginia Department of Transportation will pay half the undergrounding costs, but even then it will likely be too expensive for the City to pick up the rest of the tab to underground the lines on Fontaine.
"West Main is another desirable area for us to underground," says Edwards. "Cost will dictate whether it gets done or not. Right now, it’s not in the plan."––John Borgmeyer