Advancing active mobility in greater Prince William, Virginia

Tag: City of Manassas (Page 1 of 2)

Our Comments on the Mathis Avenue Improvement Project

On March 31, 2022, Active Prince William submitted the following comments to the City of Manassas regarding its proposed Mathis Avenue Improvement Project:


Re: Mathis Avenue Improvement Project (T-086) Public Meeting Comments

On behalf of Active Prince William, I’m writing to submit the following comments in response to the March 17, public meeting for the above-referenced project.  Our all-volunteer organization seeks improved active mobility and public transportation throughout greater Prince William, to create more livable, equitable, and sustainable communities.

An Improved Public Process for Transportation Project Development

We sincerely appreciate the improved process used to involve the public at the 30% design stage for this capital transportation project, which included both a February 23 virtual public meeting and an in-person meeting held on March 17.  This public involvement process is far better than the one used by City staff for its recent Sudley Road Third Lane Project, which excluded all public input before preliminary engineering was at least 90% complete (including when that project had been re-scoped substantially twice, in December 2017 and in February 2021).  We hope this public comment opportunity reflects a permanent policy change to proactively involve the public in all City transportation projects going forward, ideally starting at the project scoping stage.

The Proposed Design is a Reasonable Interim Aesthetic Improvement but Lacks Essential Pedestrian Amenities for a Vibrant, Mixed-Use Street

As a final condition for a revitalized Mathis Avenue as a mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented street–ideally with robust bus transit service–the proposed design would be a major disappointment.  However, as an interim improvement intended to transform the appearance of this somewhat desolate commercial street and to promote future mixed-use redevelopment at minimal cost, this project does appear to have merit.

In particular, the proposed design provides sidewalks that are too narrow for comfortable two-way walking, are too close to the roadway, and lack street trees and pedestrian-serving street furniture in what should be much wider curbside planting strips and furniture zones.   In addition, the sidewalks are interrupted with frequent curb cuts, where motor vehicle cross flows impede safe and comfortable walking.

However, considering the need for Mathis Avenue to continue serving the existing auto-oriented businesses beside it, especially along the east side of this street, until redevelopment occurs some years in the future, the imperative to minimize right of way takings and to preserve the existing curb cuts is understandable.

To effectively promote the specific forms of redevelopment that the City seeks and to ensure that this redevelopment incorporates the necessary mobility infrastructure to equitably support that redevelopment, the City’s Department of Planning and Community Development should undertake a robust community-based planning process to develop a detailed form-based zoning code for the Mathis Avenue corridor.  Form-base zoning codes are a proven tool to effectively promote the specific forms of redevelopment desired by localities.

Bicycling Accommodations and Roadway Design Speed

The lack of bike lanes (or any alternative bicycle facilities) in this project is disappointing but is also understandable since the existing curbs are not being moved to keep the existing storm sewer infrastructure in place, to minimize costs and commercial property impacts.  However, without bike lanes, the construction of raised medians will degrade bicycling conditions substantially, and those degraded conditions are unlikely to be remedied by a future roadway widening when the corridor is eventually redeveloped.

Presently, motorists can readily safely overtake people riding bicycles on Mathis Avenue by passing in the two-way central left-turn lane.  The raised medians, however, will prevent motorists from overtaking bicycle riders, who typically travel at 10-16 MPH.  Thus, people riding bicycles on Mathis Avenue will serve as slow-moving traffic-calming devices.  This roadway change will make bicycling unpleasant for nearly all riders and will subject people riding bicycles to increased harassment from frustrated motorists who are unable to pass.  Moreover, since Mathis Avenue would probably not be rebuilt with added bike lanes when redevelopment occurs in the future, this degradation of bicycling conditions on Mathis Avenue is likely permanent.

The fact that nearby Portner Avenue is designated as a bicycle route is no reason to degrade bicycling conditions on Mathis Avenue.  While many through bicyclists already prefer to travel on Portner Avenue, only Mathis Avenue serves the businesses and jobs located along Mathis Avenue, and people will someday live on this segment of Mathis Avenue too.

Thus, for both bicycle access and pedestrian safety, this project should strive to reduce the design speed for Mathis Avenue–and ideally the posted speed limit–to 20 MPH or below.   The raised median with street trees—and especially street trees in future curbside planting strips and future taller buildings closer to the roadway—should encourage motorists to drive more slowly on Mathis Avenue, but other design changes are needed too.

Shorter curb-return radii at corners and narrower sidewalk curb cuts would help reduce motor vehicle speeds, and electronic speed-feedback signs paired with posted speed limit signs (dynamic speed displays) would warn speeding motorists to slow down.  In addition, shared-lane markings (aka “sharrows”) centered in each travel lane would inform both motorists and bicycle riders that this is a shared roadway.

More Visible and Shorter Crosswalks

One notable design feature that should be changed is the proposed use of brick-colored stamped asphalt crosswalks.  While intended to impart historic charm, brown-colored crosswalks are far less conspicuous to motorists than modern high-visibility and reflective thermoplastic crosswalk markings.  The primary purpose of marked crosswalks is to alert motorists to the likely presence of crossing pedestrians, encouraging drivers to slow down, look for, prepare to yield to, and stop for pedestrians who may be crossing the roadway.  A faux-brick aesthetic is far less important than the safety of people who are walking across the street.

In addition, the final design of each intersection should pay particular attention to shortening the length of all crosswalks to the extent feasible and to install two separate curb ramps for the crosswalk landings at each corner.  The present design includes a single combined curb ramp at the southeast corner of Mathis Avenue and Sudley Road and at all four corners of Mathis Avenue and Liberia Avenue, the two on the north side not being rebuilt.

Designing shorter curb-return radii at all intersection corners, as suggested above to reduce the roadway design speed, would also reduce the crosswalk lengths at those intersections.

Consider Short Left-Turn Lanes at Reb Yank Drive and Carriage Lane

The advertised design does not include any space in the center of the roadway (beyond the intersection itself) to store vehicles waiting to turn left at Reb Yank Drive (from both directions) or southbound at Carriage Lane.  While shortening the raised medians to add short left-turn pockets at those three locations could increase travel speeds along Mathis Avenue and could also remove the proposed median refuges for crossing pedestrians at those unsignalized intersections, it may be prudent to add those left-turn pockets to smooth traffic flow, reduce traffic congestion, and lower the incidence of rear-end collisions at those locations.  However, if traffic studies have already documented that those left-turn pockets are unnecessary, then please retain them.

Thank you for considering our comments as you finalize the design of this project.

APW Urges Its TPB Members to Ensure New Transportation Plans Meet Climate and Equity Goals

 

On June 15, 2021–in advance of the June 16 meeting of the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (TPB) at which the project submissions for updating Visualize 2045, the region’s long-range transportation plan, were scheduled for adoption –Active Prince William sent the following message to Prince William County’s two representatives on that regional transportation planning body–Prince William Board of County Supervisors Chairman Ann Wheeler and Neabsco District Supervisor Victor Angry.   We also sent similar messages to the TPB members who represent the Cities of Manassas and Manassas Park–Manassas Vice Mayor Pamela Sebesky and Manassas Park Mayor Jeanette Rishell.

Here’s a summary of the contentious June 16, 2021 TPB meeting, at which a proposal to craft a climate-friendly regional transportation plan for adoption  by 2024 was agreed to


The National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (TPB) will be taking up a resolution at their June 16th meeting regarding a Visualize 2045 Alternative Build Scenario that would aim to achieve TPB climate and equity goals through the use of transportation demand management, transit, and land use strategies consistent with regional policy goals, a modified regional project list that reduces the number and scale of road capacity expansion projects in accordance with anticipated reduced travel demand, and with particular focus on public transportation and pedestrian/bicycle improvements needed to serve mobility disadvantaged populations.  This is being brought forward because the recently submitted project updates to Visualize 2045 will not meet the TPB climate and equity goals.

Due to the time and resource constraints at this point in the Visualize 2045 update process, Active Prince William recommends Prince William County support the following action plan to support meeting TPB climate and equity goals:

1)    Commit to completing the TPB Climate Change Mitigation Study and review it thoroughly at the regional and jurisdictional levels through the first quarter of 2022.

2)    Formally commit to assisting the TPB to develop a set of transportation policies and projects, by the end of 2022, which would be implementable at the jurisdictional and regional levels, consistent with the recommendations of the Climate Change Mitigation Study, that, when fully implemented will assure the region will meet its climate change mitigation goals

3)    Commit to take actions to officially adopt the projects and policies developed to attain the region’s climate goals within the transportation sector, and advance these projects into the region’s LRTP for a mid-term update to be completed in 2024

As voting members of the TPB, this is an opportunity for Prince William County to be a transportation planning leader as it relates to climate and equity in the region.   Supporting this initiative aligns with PWC BOCS Resolution 20-773: Regional Climate Mitigation and Resiliency Goals and the Prince William County Equity and Inclusion Policy.

The updated mobility chapter of the comprehensive plan should be aligned with this action plan.  Prince William County should also advocate these measures be included as the starting point for the next NVTA Transaction Plan.  To support this the Prince William County should advocate that the General Assembly act to modify the NVTA statute to align with your climate and equity goals.

The climate is not waiting. The time to act is now.

Manassas’ Motorist-First Sudley Road Third Lane Project and Its Awful Public Process

The City of Manassas’ upcoming northbound-only Sudley Road Third Lane Project illustrates how the Manassas City Council has, over many years, allowed pro-motoring locality Engineering  and Public Works staff to avoid meaningful public involvement in transportation project development to advance a dismal, anti-pedestrian, largely unnecessary, and counterproductive arterial-road-widening project through a healthcare-focused regionally significant activity center planned for mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly redevelopment (as described on pp. 56-58 in the City’s Comprehensive Plan).

View the City’s project design presentation, which was finally linked from the project webpage on May 28, 2021, one workday before the June 1 project public comment deadline.  View the project area on Google Maps.

The design of this relatively modest $8.4 million project—despite providing some much-needed and long-delayed pedestrian facilities—fails to make Manassas more livable, equitable, or sustainable, because it prioritizes excessively fast travel in motor vehicles over safe, pleasant, and effective non-auto mobility.

Moreover, the chronic lack of timely and impactful public involvement throughout the multi-year development of this City-led transportation project has squandered a valuable opportunity to help transform the City’s Sudley Medical character area into an attractive, mixed-use, walkable, healthcare-focused activity center, by ignoring or undermining the objectives, focus priorities, and design principles outlined on pages 56-58 in the Land Use chapter of the Manassas 2040 Comprehensive Plan.

An Abysmal Public Process

Although this project has been listed with a nutshell description in the City’s Capital Improvement Program (as project #T-015) since 2000, staff work apparently did not begin in earnest until the fall of 2015, when the project was submitted for the Commonwealth Transportation Board’s first round of SMART Scale (HB 2) funding (for FY 2017).  On November 23, 2015, the Manassas City Council adopted a pair of resolutions to support the City’s transportation funding applications, but there was no prior public speaking opportunity.

Ideally, City staff should have begun engaging the community to discuss the scope of this long-planned transportation project at least six to 12 months before applying for any outside funding.  However, the City had no transportation planner at that time, and the City departments responsible for Community Development and Planning and for Public Works and Engineering were siloed at separate locations.

In short, no community meeting or public hearing was ever held to discuss the scope, nature, or particulars of this project until City staff finally held a virtual public information meeting on Tuesday, May 18, 2021, when preliminary engineering was more than 90% complete.  Had the City held such community conversations early and throughout project development, the scope and proposed design of this project would likely have been substantially better.

Originally, the southern terminus of this project was Dorsey Circle, the roadway widening was limited to the short segment between Rolling Road and Godwin Drive, and the scope included undergrounding the NOVEC electric wires on the east side of Sudley Road.  However, in mid-2017, staff determined that the electrical undergrounding would cost more than extending the road widening farther south, to add a third northbound lane to Sudley Road between Grant Avenue and Stonewall Road.

The northbound roadway between Stonewall Road and Rolling Road has long had an essentially continuous right-turn-only lane, as well as two straight-through-only travel lanes, and was never proposed for any additional widening (or sidewalk improvements).

Google Streetview of Northbound Sudley Road across fron Novant/UVA Hospital.  Except to allow through traffic in the rightmost lane, the Third Lane Project will not alter this road segment. The narrow, 4-foot sidewalk is only 2 feet from the roadway and without shade, street lights, or street furniture (except at this single, mid-block bus stop).  The current continuous right-turn-only lane helps buffer the sidewalk from high-speed traffic and also provides bicycle access for traffic-tolerant bicyclists.  The proposed Sudley Road Third Lane Project would essentially extend this pedestrian-hostile street design with three northbound travel lanes the full distance from Grant Avenue to Godwin Drive.

On December 11, 2017, City staff placed a change-of-scope request for this project on the consent agenda for the Manassas City Council.  The project was re-scoped to create a continuous third northbound lane from Grant Avenue to Godwin Dr and to abandon all electric wire undergrounding.  Again, there was no public comment opportunity, community meeting, or public hearing to discuss the re-scoped project, and the Council’s resolution approving the re-scoping falsely stated in part: “WHEREAS, the public involvement process is complete and all resulting comments have been addressed, as needed;”

In February 2021, the project was quietly re-scoped again to add two extra turn lanes on Sudley Road at Godwin Drive for Prince William County’s proposed four-lane Route 28 Bypass in the Flat Branch floodplain.  To accommodate the proposed Bypass, Prince William County has transferred $1.03 million in surplus federal highway (RSTP) funds from a recently completed highway project to the City’s Sudley Road project (see pp. 39-43 here).  This time, not only was there no public comment opportunity, community meeting, or public hearing to discuss these project changes; the changes were not even mentioned on a City Council agenda.  Instead, the fund transfer was discussed and approved at the February 11, 2021 meeting of the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, with no public comment opportunity.

The Manassas City Council, as the policy-setting body for the City, has both the authority and a public duty to ensure early, continuous, robust, and impactful public involvement in the development of all City-led transportation projects going forward.

A Wasteful, Motorist-First, Pedestrian-Hostile,-and Bicyclist-Unfriendly Street Design

1) Sudley Road already has more than ample capacity for motor vehicles and lacks a traffic congestion problem that warrants a third northbound travel lane. 

This two-way Sudley Road segment carries only 28,000 vehicles/day, a volume well accommodated with only four travel lanes, especially with dedicated left and right turn lanes at every intersection.  By contrast,  nearby Sudley Road in Prince William County carries 38,000 vehicles/day north of Godwin Drive and 50,000 vehicles/day north of Sudley Manor Drive.  For comparison, Grant Avenue by Georgetown South, which the City seeks to squeeze into only two travel lanes, carries 16,000 vehicles/day, and southbound Sudley Road has only two travel lanes and no dedicated right-turn lanes south of Digges Road.

This project’s 2015 SMART Scale application scored very low for congestion-reduction benefits (see page 8 of the referenced application); over 90% of the project’s SMART Scale score (1.7 out of 1.9) was for “transportation-efficient land use” due to its location within a healthcare-focused mixed-use activity center that could be made more walkable and accessible via non-auto travel modes.  In other words, SMART Scale funding was awarded because this project is located where enhanced walkabiity and non-vehicle access is important, not to address any traffic-congestion “deficiency”.

During the development of the City’s Transportation Master Plan (TMP) in 2019, existing arterial roadways and intersections throughout the City were analyzed by a traffic engineering consultant for traffic congestion, both at present and in the year 2040.   As documented on pp. 11-13 of the TMP, Sudley Road has no existing traffic congestion problem between Grant Avenue and Godwin Drive, especially in the northbound direction.  Furthermore, a similar analysis of roadway and intersection performance in 2040–in the absence of any currently non-programed transportation improvements–failed to identify any future traffic congestion problems along this segment of Sudley Road (see pp. 22-23 of the TMP).

Simply put, the repeatedly claims by City staff that this is project is “needed” to relieve traffic congestion and would “improve the capacity of northbound Sudley Road to accommodate vehicular traffic needs” is shear nonsense.

2) The proposed design is blatantly hostile to pedestrians.  The project is designed to move motor vehicles at or above 45 MPH and would shift much of that fast traffic close to a narrow, poorly buffered sidewalk.

Each travel lane would be 12-feet wide, the standard for Interstate highways.  Only one pedestrian crossing signal and marked crosswalk to cross Sudley Road is provided at each signalized intersection, and no mid-block pedestrian crossings or Sudley Road crossings at non-signalized  intersections are accommodated.   At many intersections, pedestrian-unfriendly free-flowing right turns are provided for vehicles entering Sudley Road from side streets.  Higher vehicle speeds greatly increase the incidence and severity of traffic crashes, especially for pedestrians and other vulnerable road users.

This project will provide only narrow 4- or 5-foot sidewalks that are separated from the roadway with just a two-foot grass strip.  Such narrow sidewalks poorly serve two-way foot traffic.  Northbound Sudley Road lacks tree shade, urban street furniture, or pedestrian-scale street lights and offers only widely and irregularly spaced highway-style street lights.  The design also lacks bus stops and bus shelters, except to preserve one mid-block bus shelter opposite the hospital.  This project will not add or upgrade street trees, street lighting, street furniture, or bus stops.  Those were not considerations.

The added lanes on Sudley Road at Grant Avenue, Rolling Road, and especially Godwin Drive would make crossing Sudley Road longer and more treacherous than if those lanes were not added.

3)  The project design lacks promised and planned bicycle facilities which are both needed and eminently feasible.

Although the 2019 Manassas Transportation Master Plan calls for on-road bike lanes on Sudley Road (see maps on pp. 60-61 of the TMP), and project staff had promised to study the feasibility of adding a shared-use path (see page 62 here), the proposed design lacks bicycle accommodations.  Furthermore, the project would eliminate the existing, continuous right-turn lanes that currently do accommodate traffic-tolerant northbound bicyclists.   According to the Bicycle Network Recommendations Prioritization Matrix, conducted in 2019 as part of the development of the City’s Transportation Master Plan (Appendix E),  installing bike lanes on this segment of Sudley Road (Grant Avenue to Godwin Drive) was tied as the most impactful bicycle network improvement identified for the plan.

Turning Lemons Into Lemonade

Since this project will likely be constructed with minimal design changes, two priority modifications merit immediate consideration.  These two alterations would alter the current design by only  changing some proposed pavement markings and roadway signs:

1) In lieu of the unnecessary and pedestrian-hostile third northbound travel lane, stripe and sign a continuous right-hand lane dedicated to right turns, buses, bicycles, and perhaps motor scooters.  

2) Reduce the widths of the three 12-foot northbound travel lanes to 11 feet (or 10.5 feet if necessary) and reallocate 5 feet of roadway space to install bike lanes between the right-hand lane (described in #1 above) and the two straight-through travel lanes.  To make ordinary striped bike lanes on Sudley Road reasonably safe, all right-turning traffic must be channelized in a right-turn-only lane to the right of the bike lane, and the vehicular design speed should be lowered toward 35 MPH, by narrowing the straight-through travel lanes and not expanding their number.

Of course, only a barrier-separated (“protected”) bike lane or an off-roadway shared-use path would provide a low-stress bikeway on Sudley Road serving the “interested, but concerned” “aged-eight-to-eighty” bicycling public.   In addition, if striping similar bike lanes along southbound Sudley Road is not presently feasible beyond Digges Road, shared-lane markings (aka sharrows) might be a necessary, if less desirable, southbound alternative.  However, neither a shared-use path nor a separated bike lane is politically or practically feasible under the current project, and the perfect should not be the enemy of the good.

How You Can Help

Public comments on the design of the Sudley Road Third Lane Project can be submitted at this link.  The previously announced deadline for submitting  those comments is Tuesday, June 1, 2021, but we have requested a two-week extension of that deadline.

There is no deadline to contact the Manassas Mayor and City Council to express your concerns with the project design and/or the awful public process.  The Mayor and City Council are ultimately responsible for setting policies for the City, and they need to hear from their constituents that pedestrian-hostile street designs and the lack of early, robust, and proactive public involvement during the development and funding of City transportation projects are no longer acceptable.

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