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visitors since 8 September 2006
Last updated: 8 September 2006
Dear Lieutenant Governor Kaine:
The Industrial Revolution brought rapid changes in transportation. People were still getting used to the railroad when along came bicycles, automobiles, and airplanes. Then technology slowed. The average American has not enjoyed a major innovation in transportation in half a century.
Roanoke was built by and for railroads. Rail is supposed to be the most efficient means of motorized transportation. Yet a passenger cannot board a train within 50 miles. To travel around the holidays, one had better book early, while there are tickets left. Distance and sporadic availability make the rail mode of passenger transportation virtually useless. Shipping parcels on the railroad can be a hassle; Norfolk Southern doesn't want to deal with them.
So how do you get out of Roanoke? The bus? It takes two buses to get from Salem to Roanoke. It takes three buses to get from Salem to Vinton. Changing buses often is an inconvenience, especially to shoppers.
How about roads? The bureaucratic funding structure encourages municipalities to fight each other and to compromise the function of their own roads. This structure should be reworked to give communities incentives to address and solve their own problems.
Let me address some of the problems that have been exacerbated by one or another agency of government.
Code of Virginia Section 15.2-2241 mandates interconnection of subdivision streets, forming a network. Franklin County has ignored that law for at least 15 years, allowing proliferation of dead-end streets. The resulting branching systems force increasing volumes of local traffic out onto main roads to travel short distances. It also creates more intersections on through roads than might otherwise be necessary. In Union Hall, 566-657 homes exit through a single road. In Scruggs, 1,605-1,698 homes exit through a single road. There is no way to detour traffic around a blockage on a sole access road. Yet Franklin County knows better; in 1961, the Board of Supervisors adopted a subdivision ordinance that limited the territory reliant on a single point of access (Code Section 5-24) and required developers to connect streets at boundaries, providing a network (Code Section 5-19). That ordinance has since been repealed.
A few years ago, VDOT widened Pell Avenue (VA 40) between Rocky Mount and Hodgesville. Franklin County and the Town of Rocky Mount have allowed Wal-Mart and Lowe's to develop deep lots with no lateral access, so that shoppers going from one store to the next must enter and leave the highway at closely-spaced signalized intersections.
A few months ago, a small bridge that brings Alean Road (Route 687) over Maggodee Creek had to be closed because of structural deterioration. Although Franklin County gets an annual state allocation for capital improvements, putting so much money toward one project in one year would curtail numerous others. The fact that the state offers money for road projects discourages Franklin County from footing the bill itself. So residents have to travel miles out of the way. Considering that a bridge will last decades, is it possible for Franklin County to spend money now in anticipation of reimbursement from the state out of several years' allocations?
Violating its own comprehensive plan, Franklin County is rezoning hundreds of acres of land near the Hales Ford Bridge. The new development increases traffic on the bridge. The commercial driveways reduce its capacity. I've had to brake on the bridge because the car ahead was making a left turn at the end of the bridge. Franklin County is ruining the bridge, hoping VDOT will build a new one in 110 feet of water. Where are the millions for that project supposed to come from, if half a million for the Alean Road bridge cannot be found?
Beginning with the 1996 model year, Ford has made its trucks and large cars capable of operating on a fuel mixture of up to 85% ethanol. The rise in petroleum prices has made ethanol a valuable fuel. Yet when a distillery is discovered in Franklin County, the ethanol is usually discarded. Why not process it for fuel?
Roanoke County has the disadvantage (only partly its own fault) of being shaped like a donut, surrounding the cities of Roanoke and Salem. Some of the sectors of the donut have no roads to connect them directly to other parts of the county. So Roanoke County police cars and school buses must pass through Roanoke city on a daily basis, wasting miles and time accomplishing nothing. Recently, the fire departments began cooperating. How long before the other inefficiencies are addressed?
Long years ago, VA 419 in Cave Spring was rerouted from narrow Penn Forest Road to wide Electric Road. Busy crossroads required signalized intersections, an unavoidable consequence of buiding the new road. Two arterial crossroads, Brambleton Avenue (US 221) and Colonial Avenue are only 3,000 feet apart. Their proximity makes sequential timing difficult. Not content with this passable operation of the road, Roanoke County made the situation worse, granting approval to a shopping center between the two crossroads on the north side of Electric Road, with a new signalized T-intersection whose timing is not coordinated with the others. If you get through one traffic light, you have to stop at the next. This wastes time and fuel for thousands of drivers. Eventually, the congestion may necessitate widening of the road, an expense Roanoke County will impose on the state.
Roanoke County also allowed two traffic signals to be added to Electric Road (VA 419) in front of Tanglewood Mall, reducing progress to a crawl during rush hour. One access road in that direction might have sufficed, there being two other driveways on Ogden Road (867). Because the exits can only be reached by driving along the building line, there are traffic jams inside the shopping center as well as outside.
A car buyer likes to take a test drive before making a decision. Shoppers in unfamiliar cars need a safe place to enter the road. So where has Roanoke County put its new car dealers in Clearbrook? On a four percent grade with an oblique intersection at the bottom and and with a vertical curve at the top that reduces sight distance. (I'm aware of at least one fatality on that stretch, about a year ago, while the car lots were under construction.) Roanoke County's zoning decision invites calamity.
US 460 (which goes by various names) is a handy high-speed road from Hampton Roads through Petersburg and Lynchburg to the Roanoke Valley. It crosses some distance into Roanoke before collapsing into a traffic jam. It could use grade separation of major intersections and timing of traffic signals at others. For decades, the city of Roanoke has sandbagged projects to relieve congestion, for fear that industry would follow the road out of town.
Because there was no market for homes at the edge of the Roanoke airport, the city allowed most of the land to be developed for retail shopping centers (Crossroads, Valley View, and Town Square). By bringing so much activity to the end of a runway, Roanoke has increased the number of people in the path of a crash.
When Wal-Mart moved to Valley View, it offered to finance an interchange with I-581. The City of Roanoke refused the offer, using its own money for the project. Unfortunately, no connection was provided between the parking lots of Wal-Mart and its neighboring building (including Target and Best Buy). So the traffic to and from the new interchange encounters a traffic jam on the stretch of Valley View Boulevard that shoppers must use to get between adjacent stores.
Wal-Mart's older store on Franklin Road (US 220) near the Blue Ridge Parkway introduced the first stoplight on a previously non-stop trip across Virginia from the North Carolina line in Henry County to the West Virginia line in Frederick County. An overpass could have been built there, yet was not.
I-581 (which VDOT claims is nameless) skirts downtown Roanoke, moving traffic between the north and south sides of the city. Some delays are alleviated, although Exit 6 congests both the expressway and several blocks of Elm Avenue. New federal regulations make it nearly impossible to provide another exit to another cross street. Any reconstruction is likely to make the highway more of a barrier to local traffic and less of an asset to the city. Service roads might help. Another possibility is to replace the ramps at Elm Avenue with others that feed to less sensitive streets.
I-73 was originally proposed to connect Michigan with the port of Charleston. Those plans have changed numerous times. Although increasing numbers of trucks were using US 220, a few falling on their sides at the tightest curves, it was thought that they would switch to I-73 if it was ever built. So the needed spot improvements on US 220 were delayed. While Virginia wrestled with the question, North Carolina used I-73 money to eliminate at-grade intersections on US 220. Virginia could do the same. That might require abandoning the grandiose plans to displace the centuries-old German Baptist agricultural community east of Wirtz. They are quiet people who have taken good care of their land. So of course the wheels of progress want to run them over.
Virginia has tightened requirements for licensing. Unfortunately, the stated aim is not to keep bad drivers off the road, but to keep terrorists off airplanes. Why connect the two? Up to now, cars full of undocumented aliens that I encountered on the road were usually driven by the best driver, a careful one who was licensed. Henceforth, those cars will be driven by the most daring person in the car. Apparently, there was some concern about people using Virginia licenses for identification. That problem can be curtailed by printing "undocumented" on any license issued to a person with driving skills whose presence in the state is questionable. (Most of these people, including virtually all of the many from Latin America and the majority of the smaller number of Arabs, are only filling a gap in the labor market.)
A recent news report indicated that the Department of Motor Vehicles would only hand license plates to licensed drivers. That means that a legally blind courier for a car dealership will leave DMV empty-handed. Why limit the disabled who can find employment?
Although my driver's license fits in my wallet, my car registration is too large. Why is that?
Franklin County charges me $2.79 annual tax on $30 Sevylor Z97028 boat that is 14 years old. Doesn't that seem exorbitant? How much is money is left after processing the bill?
Is it true that while inland residents receive tax relief for the cars they use to get around, Tangier Islanders pay full tax on the boats they use to get around? It's not as if they can use cars.
Improper operation of all-terrain vehicles has caused the deaths of several children in Virginia. Although Code of Virginia § 46.2-915.1.,A.2 allows a child to operate an ATV with an engine displacement between 70 and 90 cubic centimeters, it keeps children off a 50cc ATV. What sense does that make? [Note: This statutory fluke has since been corrected.]
Yours truly,
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Last updated: 8 September 2006