One road, 219 miles and many choices

Studying the entire length of U.S. 29 at once was a smart step for Virginia to take.

U.S. 29 is an economic lifeline for communities like this one, as well as an alternative to the state’s gridlocked north-south interstate highways, making it a critical link in the state’s transportation system.

Virginia doesn’t have a lot of money to build new road projects these days, but the next best thing to having money is having a smart plan in place so when the money becomes available, it will be spent wisely.

Consider the hundreds of millions of dollars Virginia has already spent to build bypasses around Danville and Lynchburg, as well as small towns like Gretna and Chatham. What’s the point of spending that money if traffic from the bypasses is pushed into a thicket of poorly planned commercial development?

“The worst kind of land-use planning for a corridor like 29 is those strip commercial (areas) that chip away at efficiency,” Parsons Transportation Group Project Manager Joseph Springer said.

But that’s not the only problem along U.S. 29 that’s chipping away at efficiency. Consider the decades-long fight to have a limited-access bypass built around Charlottesville.

“We can no longer ignore that nearly $50 million has been spent and more than 15 years wasted as we have allowed a handful of politicians and planners to undermine and prevent a U.S. 29 bypass of Charlottesville,” wrote Rex Hammond, the president and CEO of the Lynchburg Regional Chamber of Commerce. “The desires of special interests MUST give way to the need for safety of the people who travel this corridor and the primary purpose of this national highway to efficiently move people and products.”

To back up his claim, Hammond presented VDOT crash statistics from 2005-07 that show that 49.8 percent of the crashes at intersections — and 41 percent of the injuries and deaths — were in Albemarle County.

It’s obvious that the traffic congestion caused by the lack of a bypass is creating more dangerous road conditions in the Charlottesville area — and hampering the road’s value to the other communities along U.S. 29.

Simply managing access along U.S. 29 will help keep traffic moving in places like Pittsylvania County. But until the congestion north of Interstate 64 in Albemarle County is bypassed, all the work done on the rest of 29 will be of limited value.

Virginia should take a more direct role in the development of U.S. 29. State money has brought the road this far, but only state influence will save it from bad local decisions made in the Charlottesville area.