Your piece of the planet (Barf Alert)

Prince William is at a crossroads. Coles District Supervisor Marty Nohe's statement at the Aug. 12 Potomac Watershed Forum was apt: Prince William County is making decisions now that Fairfax County was making years ago. We can use this knowledge to repeat our neighbors' success and avoid their failures, creating a comprehensive vision for Prince William.

Transportation choices are at the core of any plan for the future; they will decide what this county will look like many years from now. For hundreds of years communities and cities have been planned, whether intentionally or not, in concert with the realities of transportation.

We see in the history of the United States the influence of transportation on development. Those cities that grew prosperous and attracted the most people were located near oceans or other major bodies of water: New York, Boston and Chicago were able to take advantage of shipping to distribute their goods around the world.

Later, towns and cities lived or died based on the route of railroads. The profound effect that railroads have had on the development of our country is taught to every schoolchild and is apparent merely by looking at a map.

Transportation continues to be critically important to a locality's ability to grow and prosper. Prince William County is no longer so concerned with the transport of tobacco or other crops; today's road network is shaped by commutes to work, soccer games and trips to the grocery store.

While automobiles have served us well as virtually the only transportation method for most residents, rising gasoline prices, congestion, taxes needed to maintain existing roads and lost open space are all proving to be too high a cost. Responding to these issues demands innovative thinking and a plan that begins to incorporate mass transit as well as walking and biking.

Most citizens agree -- 62 percent of respondents to the Prince William County Citizen Satisfaction survey were dissatisfied with the ease of getting around the county and 76 percent are unhappy about travel within Northern Virginia outside of the county.

Nearly 65 percent are dissatisfied with how development is coordinated with transportation, showing that citizens understand the important links between transportation and land use.

The 2005 citizen survey shows seriously low levels of citizen satisfaction with transportation, land use and open space preservation in Prince William. Unfortunately, many elected representatives are responding with more rhetoric instead of a coordinated solution.

Despite citizen priorities, the county's Progress Prince William proposal -- which is in fact a road bond initiative -- plans to ask voters to approve $1.6 billion for roadway construction from 2006-2020. This is only $0.2 billion less than the projected cost of the entire Dulles Metrorail expansion project!

We've already seen that building more roads doesn't help reduce congestion. It only spurs on new development, often in all the wrong places. We need to try something different.

A survey released this week by the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority found that 85 percent of respondents would be willing to pay more for bus and rail projects.

Additionally, the survey showed that citizens overwhelmingly support spending money on mass transit over roads.

Here we can take a hint from our neighbors. Both Fairfax County and Arlington have realized that a change in development patterns is needed. The result is redevelopment that aims to cluster both business and residences near Metro, bus and rail hubs.

The redevelopment of the Vienna metro station and the expansion of Metrorail to Dulles are notable examples. The high premium that housing near mass transit fetches shows that market demand exists.

These innovations will do more than just decrease our commuting time, they will give us more room to protect natural areas and other open space. In the citizen satisfaction survey, 65 percent of residents don't think the county is doing enough to preserve open space. Community uses, including functional bicycle and walking trips (like to the grocery store) are affordable and improve quality of life tremendously.

Dissatisfaction with the status quo shows that Prince William is ready for a bold new plan.

Citizens are beginning to see that we can protect our quality of life, and save money down the road, by doing the right thing now. All we need are leaders who are ready to step up to the plate.

Jake Hosen has been a resident of Prince William County for 16 years and prefers reading on the bus to driving in traffic.

We've already seen that building more roads doesn't help reduce congestion. It only spurs on new development, often in all the wrong places.

When did we see that? It looks to me that places like Haymarket and Gainesville got built up despite not having new roads to "spur" development. And then you get messes like we have now, where a concert during the week at Nissan backs traffic up to Bethesda. And it's basically all because the PWC planning commission keeps approving developments without the goddamn roads to support them - it's the sort of "planning" you get when you arm a gang of chimps with a dartboard and a map. These are not "new" roads, these are roads that should have been built fifteen years ago. Sheesh.

Four possible solutions,

1) Stop approving all these new big commercial/residential developments (like the megaproject they are proposing over on Cockpit Point Road in Dumfries).

2) Declare vast areas argricultural or watershed conservation zones (dramatically raising the lot sizes like over in Catharpin).

3) If large scale development is still wanted, make the developers pay for all the road improvements. The taxpayers shouldn't have to foot the infrastructure bill for people who are making a profit from developing otherwise vacant land.

4) Do like many other areas are doing. Have the county or municipality start an "open space" fund, get a nice flow of money into it and start buying up land or buying conservation easements in areas that people want to see preserved. Alot of folks bash the National Park system, often with good reason, but think what Manassas, Sudley and Gainesville would be like today if the NPS had not purchased and preserved all that land at Manassas National Battlefield. That whole area would be offices, houses, condos and shopping centers by now. Just look at what happened to poor little Centerville, it's a overbuilt, traffic congested hellhole now, far different from the sleepy little town I remembered as a kid.

allright, let's go through here and parse out the nonsense, shall we?

So you say in the first comment that the problem with public opinion polls is that they aren't correct when they overwhelmingly disagree with your point of view. In reality all you have to do is look at the demand, you free market advocates don't ignore demand do you? First we have the DC metrorail and bus system, both of which are nearly at capacity and seeing record demand right now or how about the VRE system, which is at capacity on both the Manassas and Fredericksburg lines. The demand is there because people don't feel like sitting in abysmal rush hour for half their waking lives.

Actually, it's the county board that approves all the rezonings. And you are absolutely right, Prince William County is selling itself out like a cheap prostitute, letting builders do what they will without holding out and demanding for more. Of course the demand for houses isn't going to go anywhere, so we really could be making developers give us plans that fit our vision for the community, but the Board of County Supervisors passes everything without looking at how it is impact our communities. As for the comment that building roads doesn't expand development which then clogs the roads all over again, have you ever seen a situation where they added a road in this county that didn't just become more clogged than the road it was trying to alleviate trips from. All you have to do is look at the Route 234 bypass, Prince William Parkway, expansion of Minneville, the list goes on. These are developer roads that are paid for, not by proffers from builders, but out of our tax dollars. Just look at 'progress prince william' they want to ask us, as Prince William Citizens, for $1.6 billion dollars above and beyond what we already pay in state taxes to VDOT, for roads that benefit developers. A real conservative would be throwing a fit about that kind of tax burden.

which brings me to general_re, I like what you have to say, actually. Prince William is in demand, we should be dictating the rules to developers, not the other way around. We can make them put the growth where we want it so that it fits existing infrastructure and can allow more people to take public transit, or drive their car if they want.

Okay, so it may be the county's fault for approving the projects, but who do you think is putting the big money in their campaign funds? Let's look at Connaughton, who recieved 113,000 dollars out of total contributions of $400k from developers the last time he ran for chairman, more than a quarter of contributions. Hilda Barg was even higher with $31k out of $96k. And at the end of the day who is proposing these garbage developments that are wrecking our communities? Could it be the developers? The people who are actually developing the land?

And finally, as for the car. As a matter of fact I don't drive to work. When I worked in DC I took VRE, Bus and/or Metrorail. Now I work at home so I don't have to commute at all. If I could bike to anywhere besides the grocery store without getting run over I'd do that too, it's good for my heart, my wallet and I get some fresh air. Some people act like it's strange to to want to get out of the car once and a while. We all know that no one's going to give up their car completely tomorrow, but all we have to do is give people the opportunity to cut down on a couple of trips a day and things will start getting a lot better.

"So you say in the first comment that the problem with public opinion polls is that they aren't correct when they overwhelmingly disagree with your point of view."

?? Actually, I always say they have the problem I stated -whether I "like" what I hear or not.

I don't know anything about your area in particular, but I've seen this ploy play out in many others - including here in the Cleveland OH area. About a decade ago they blew a ton of $ building a short light rail line from the waterfront to one particular area of town. It was chock full - for the first week or so. Since then ridership has been almost nil. Literally. You can go down there in the evenings and if there's a single person on the train it will be some bum sleeping on it.

Sounded like a good idea at the time though, huh?

If and where demand exists, the private sector will attempt to fill it. In the case of rail, that may finally require gvt intervention. But absent the private initiative (i.e. somebody actually willing to risk his own $ on it), I claim both that the project is doomed, and more importantly that it is definitely not a conservative, free market approach.

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