Debate continues after U.S. 29 bypass route removed

An eastern route for a U.S. 29 bypass of Charlottesville has been taken off a consultant’s map, but some of the state’s top decision-makers said this week a bypass still is needed.

“Many of us believe there is a need for a bypass,“ said John J. “Butch” Davies, who represents the Charlottesville and Culpeper area on the Commonwealth Transportation Board. The board sets Virginia’s transportation policy.

But no future bypass will follow the consultant’s line on a map that created “a firestorm of opposition from the localities” in Orange County and the Culpeper area, Davies said.

Davies and Pierce Homer, state secretary of transportation, both said they played key roles in getting a proposed route east of Charlottesville erased from the maps that consultant Parsons Transportation Group showed in five public meetings recently.

Homer said “the consultant prematurely drew a line on a map,“ without consulting with many of the people and local officials it would affect.

The line’s removal sparked concern from Rex Hammond, president of the Lynchburg Regional Chamber of Commerce, who said he envisions a U.S. 29 that is “stoplight-free from North Carolina to Maryland.“

Bypass routes that have been proposed both east and west of Charlottesville should stay on the table, Hammond said.

The Lynchburg chamber will urge “our legislators to ask the next governor, and ask our current and future transportation secretary, to put these options back in the plan” until a better alternative is found, Hammond said.

Davies said he thought viable possibilities for an eastern bypass still exist. But the Parsons study caught too many people by surprise, Davies said.

“People we had cultivated some time ago on the eastern side” of Charlottesville, “especially looking at the Route 15 corridor, were blindsided by a line that just got dropped onto a map,“ Davies said.

“The consultant never met with people in Gordonsville, never met with government officials in the town of Orange,“ and when the Parsons team met with Orange County officials they learned the county “didn’t like the idea of creating a new route” for U.S. 29, Davies said.

The proposed route cut through the historic community of Rapidan without even showing it on maps, and passed close to Montebello, birthplace of President Zachary Taylor. It also cut very close to Woodberry Forest School, an exclusive preparatory school for boys, whose board members quickly called Davies, he said.

That sector of the proposed bypass “just showed a total lack of any thought,“ Davies said.

Joseph Springer, the project manager for Parsons Transportation Group, said the study was never intended to be detailed. The $1.5 million review looks at a 219-mile corridor from North Carolina to Interstate 66, pulling together approximately five other studies that have been done along parts of U.S. 29.

Parsons’ instructions from Virginia leaders, including Davies, called for “a blueprint, and a pretty high level of blueprinting,“ Springer said.

Detailed searches for historic sites and small communities normally occur later in the highway planning process, when a proposal’s environmental impacts are analyzed in corridors several hundred feet wide, Springer said.

“Those lines were not intended for people to interpret them as going specifically through some parcel or particular features,“ Springer said. Instead, they were intended to provoke discussion, “to see what people would react to,“ he said.

The two Charlottesville bypass routes were not the only ones dropped from the map. In Fauquier County, a corridor known as the Buckland Bypass was removed from the Parsons study because of local outcry.

So far, those quick removals are not occurring south of Lynchburg in Campbell County, where both an eastern and a western bypass of the Wards Road area appeared on Parsons maps that were shown at a public meeting Sept. 23.

Ken White, Lynchburg’s representative on the transportation board, said he liked having both routes in the plan.

Unlike in Orange County, both routes were reviewed with local administrators and elected officials in Campbell County before they were presented to the public, White said.

“Campbell County is to be commended, because they stepped out and asked to be told where future corridors would be,“ White said.

“That’s in sharp contrast with a number of counties along the 29 corridor. Some counties have simply proceeded with their development without concern for through traffic, and treated 29 as the Main Street for their community,“ White said.

Davies indicated he would like to parlay support that officials in Louisa County have demonstrated for improving roads there into an alternate route for U.S. 29 traffic.

U.S. 15 at Zion Crossroads already has problems because of truck traffic associated with a Wal-Mart distribution center, for example, and county officials hope the highway can be four-laned, Davies said.

“I think there is a growing acceptance of the need for a bypass of Charlottesville and Albemarle,“ Davies said.

“I would support an eastern route that involved upgrading existing roads and ultimately create a normal bypass route,“ he said.

The key element for success requires building a consensus among local government leaders and residents who want the roads upgraded, Davies said.