Active Prince William

Advancing active mobility in greater Prince William, Virginia

Category: Advocacy (Page 2 of 13)

Our Comments at the NoVA Joint Transportation Meeting, December 2, 2024

December 9, 2024 /

 

On December 2, 2024, Active Prince William’s co-chairs, Allen Muchnick and Mark Scheufler, separately delivered public statements at Northern Virginia’s joint annual transportation public meeting, before senior representatives of the six regional and state transportation agencies identified above  

Our statements are posted below.  As indicated in the announcement for this meeting, written comments related to any of the information presented at this meeting may be emailed or mailed through December 31, 2024.

Northern Virginia Joint Transportation Public Meeting

December 2, 2024

Statement of Allen Muchnick, Member

Virginia Bicycling Federation

and Active Prince William Boards of Directors

Good evening.  I’m Allen Muchnick, a City of Manassas resident and a long-time board member of the advocacy groups Active Prince William and the Virginia Bicycling Federation.

For more than seven decades, our region has repeatedly expanded major roadways in a futile quest to fix traffic congestion.  The result is a fiscally and environmentally unsustainable highway network, dysfunctional and ugly suburban sprawl, and inequitable and life-threatening mobility challenges, especially for households without multiple personal vehicles.

It’s time for Virginia’s transportation agencies to embrace the three guiding principles for transportation infrastructure investment articulated by the national advocacy group Transportation for America:

  • Design for safety over speed
  • Fix it first, and
  • Invest in the rest

Designing for safety over speed is essential to reduce Virginia’s unacceptable epidemic of traffic violence.  In 2023, Virginia traffic crashes killed 907 people, including 133 pedestrians, and injured nearly 64,000 people, including nearly 1700 pedestrians.  It’s past time to aggressively retrofit all of Northern Virginia’s multilane commercial arterial roadways to establish more survivable design speeds, as part of a comprehensive Vision Zero strategy.

Fixing our mobility infrastructure requires much better maintenance of Virginia’s pedestrian and bicycle facilities.   VDOT’s 2004 Policy for Integrating Bicycle and Pedestrian Accommodations states, in part:

  • VDOT will maintain bicycle and pedestrian accommodations as necessary to keep the accommodations usable and accessible ….. 
  • For sidewalks, shared use paths, and bicycle paths built within department right-of-way, built to department standards, and accepted for maintenance, VDOT will maintain these bicycle and pedestrian accommodations through replacement and repair.

However, VDOT still performs little maintenance and repair of its shared-use paths and sidewalks, except in response to reported complaints.  After construction, the pavement is left to deteriorate for decades and is fixed only after repeated complaints.  VDOT still has no annual budget or established policies and procedures to adequately and proactively assess and maintain its active mobility assets.

Thank you for this opportunity to comment.  We urge VDOT to better support active mobility in the years ahead.

Statement of Mark Scheufler, Active Prince William Co-Chair

Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.  I’m Mark Scheufler, Prince William County resident and 16-year VRE rider.

With the recent purchase of the Manassas Line and the planned completion of the Long Bridge in 2030, I strongly recommend VRE, region and state partner to support adding 2nd Platforms to the Manassas Park, Burke Centre, Rolling Road and Backlick Road stations to the near term Capital Improvement Plan.  This will allow for the Manassas Line to move to an all-day, all-week clock face schedule, with a few commuter train slots during peak-of-peak time frames.  The schedule along with 4-5 Amtrak trains per day will significantly increase ridership and lower capital costs due to the reduced train equipment needs that a high peak-of-peak commuter schedule requires.

More VRE service is vital for the region to take advantage of the VPRA multi-billion investment in the corridor and make better use of the VRE equipment that already carries high fixed costs regardless of the amount of service provided.  I-95 and I-66 are not getting any more capacity for the next 50 years.  VRE has the greatest ability to add significant mobility capacity in the region.

Boston/MBTA is an example of a rail system reworked their schedule to better serve people traveling in the middle of the day, in the evening and on weekends with the goal of transforming service from commuter rail to regional rail.  Their rail ridership is near pre-pandemic levels while VRE is still near 40%.

Existing plans do not go far enough to handle service disruptions with a higher frequency schedule especially with Amtrak trains and freight trains mixed in.  As a regular rider, service disruptions are a major hindrance when using the system.

I strongly recommend the 2nd platform project  be submitted for future Northern Virginia Transportation Authority regional funding.

But most importantly transportation agencies need to work with the localities/state to integrate projects such as the 2nd platform project/all day service with land use changes to increase mixed-use/residential density adjacent to stations to draw more ridership.  (This is especially needed in Fairfax County).  This only works if all-day all-week service is planned.  We have a major housing shortage in the region.  Planning housing/services adjacent to high capacity transit service is a solution.

With the completion of the I-66 and I-95 Express Lane projects, competitive bus schedules during peak periods will limit future VRE growth in some segments of the catchment area.  We need to start planning land use density improvements next to stations and 2nd platforms now to support high frequency service on the Manassas Line to begin when the Long Bridge opens.

Thank you for considering this testimony .

 

 

 

Promote Public Input on New Transportation Funding Requests BEFORE the Local Governing Body’s Endorsement

February 19, 2024 /

Active Prince William believes that early and proactive community involvement in the development of significant transportation improvement and planning projects would better integrate the community’s needs and preferences into the selection and scope of those projects.

Presently, however, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors (and the local governing bodies for greater Prince William’s cities and towns) routinely endorse staff recommendations for non-local transportation funding requests with minimal public notice or opportunities for citizen comment.

Typically, the public first learns of such funding requests for new transportation projects by discovering them on a Consent Agenda for an upcoming governing body meeting, held before any public comment period.  This lack of transparent decision-making, limited public notice, and precluded public comment effectively deprives the public of any opportunity to meaningfully influence the nature and scope of the transportation projects that are advanced for funding.

In the Fall of 2023, we included the following question in our survey for all Prince William Board of County Supervisor candidates:

Question 1: Do you support requiring the PWC [Prince William County] Department of Transportation to hold advertised public hearings before the Board of County Supervisors [BOCS] is scheduled to endorse any future applications for regional (e.g., NVTA, NVTC Commuter Choice), state, or federal transportation improvement funds?

Four of the current BOCS members (Andrea Bailey, Deshundra Jefferson, Bob Weir, and Margaret Franklin) responded “Yes”, three others (Victor Angry, Tom Gordy, and Kenny Boddye) selected “Need more information”, and nobody selected “No”.

To not burden the already-crowded BOCS meeting agendas, this public comment on the County’s proposed new transportation funding requests could be solicited at standalone public meetings or at a scheduled meeting of an appropriate advisory body, such as the Prince William County Planning Commission.  Ideally, however, 1) public input would also be solicited online, 2) any staff presentation and advertised public hearing would include a virtual meeting component, and 3) the PWC Department of Transportation would be required to provide both a written summary of the public comments received and a written response to those public comments.

Since non-local transportation funding programs typically have an annual or biennial schedule for new project submissions that is announced many months in advance, the Prince William County Department of Transportation should be able to present all their proposals for new transportation projects being considered in the coming months at one or two consolidated advertised public hearings each year.

We call on the Prince William Board of County Supervisors to issue a directive to the Prince William County Executive with the following components:

  1.  Require the Prince William County Department of Transportation (PWC DOT) to present–for public comment at an advertised public hearing–any proposed first-time request for regional, state, or federal funding for a new transportation or trail capital project or planning activity, in advance of bringing that funding request to the Board of County Supervisors for its endorsement.
  2. Cite all applicable non-local funding programs, including the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority’s (NVTA) 70% and 30% funds; federal RSTP or CMAQ allocations which are endorsed by the NVTA; the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission’s (NVTC) I-66 and I-95/I-395 Commuter Choice programs; National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (TPB) technical assistance grants (e.g., Transportation-Land Use Connections, Transit within Reach, Regional Roadway Safety Program); Transportation Alternatives Set-Aside requests submitted to either the TPB or VDOT; VDOT’s SMART SCALE, Revenue Sharing, and HSIP programs; the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation’s Recreational Trails Program; USDOT discretionary grant programs (e.g., RAISE, SS4A); Congressional earmark requests; and the Federal Transit Administration’s Enhanced Mobility Program.
  3. Allow the PWC DOT to conduct these public hearings at any appropriate venue that includes online viewing and public comment submission components, including at scheduled Planning Commission meetings.
  4. Specify that the public hearing must be held at least 30 to 60 days before the endorsement request is scheduled to be placed on the BOCS agenda.
  5. Require the PWC DOT to compile a written summary of–and response to–the public comments received and include that summary with the other BOCS meeting materials when they present their funding request for BOCS approval.

We believe that the process outlined above would provide valuable community input–near the very beginning of the project development process–for both the PWC Department of Transportation and the Board of County Supervisors.

Hoadly Road Needs Proper Bike Lanes

February 18, 2024 /

We recently learned that the Prince William County Department of Transportation will soon conduct a Hoadly Road Planning Study to identify priorities for funding and then building segments of a continuous shared-use path (i.e., a 10-foot wide asphalt sidepath) along Hoadly Road, between the Prince William Parkway (Route 294) and Dumfries Road (Route 234).  Hoadly Road currently lacks any sidepath, except along the 0.4-mile segment between Dale Boulevard and Spriggs Road.

Active Prince William strongly supports establishing a continuous sidepath along at least one side of Hoadly Road, especially since such shared-use pedestrian facilities would link Prince William County’s two major sidepaths–along Routes 234 and 294.

However, the Mobility Chapter of the current Prince William County Comprehensive Plan (Pathways to 2040), which the Board of County Supervisors adopted in December 2022, is deficient in not also calling for on-road bicycle lanes along Hoadly Road (see page 73 here).

There is no inherent reason why highway corridors should include only one type of bicycle facility–e.g., only a sidepath–especially since conventional bike lanes can be retrofitted on multi-lane roadways much more quickly and inexpensively and since having both on-road and off-road bicycle facilities could best serve our highly diverse population of bicycle riders.   In addition, bike lanes are more readily and promptly cleared of snow and ice after winter storms.

Furthermore, bike-lane retrofits have the added benefits of reducing motorist speeding (by reducing travel lane widths) and of increasing the safety and comfort of people traveling on the sidewalks or sidepaths (by increasing the noise and wind buffer from vehicular traffic).

Hoadly Road currently has an excessively high design speed, a posted speed limit of 50 MPH, and poor pedestrian infrastructure.  Consequently, according to Virginia’s publicly searchable traffic crash database, over the past decade (2014-2023 calendar years), Hoadly Road was the site of 403 traffic crashes, 310 crash-associated injuries, and 4 traffic fatalities.  Retrofitted bike lanes on Hoadly Road would help alleviate those unsafe conditions for all modes of travel.

When widened some decades ago, Hoadly Road gained continuous wide paved shoulders that were well suited for bicycling, and at least some of those shoulder segments were subsequently marked as bike lanes.

US Bicycle Route 1 (USBR 1) is a Maine-to-Florida bicycling route–primarily intended for experienced bicycle travelers–that has existed for decades.  USBR1 in Virginia, upon VDOT’s written application, was designated by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) back in 1982, more than 40 years ago.  Although USBR1 through Prince William County was originally aligned with Minnieville Road, between Old Bridge Road and Dumfries Road, VDOT and Prince William County largely failed to include appropriate bicycle facilities along much of Minnieville Road during the ensuing decades. as segments of Minnieville Road were sequentially widened to accommodate increased development and traffic.

More than a decade ago, VDOT commissioned a study by a transportation consulting firm to re-evaluate the routing of US Bicycle Route 1 through Northern Virginia, including Prince William County.  As a result of that study, USBR1 was officially realigned to follow a segment of the Prince William Parkway and all of Hoadly Road, to avoid the segment of Minnieville Road north of Cardinal Drive that still lacks bicycle facilities.

As noted on page 11 of that USBR1 realignment study report (emphasis added below):

Although less direct than the other alternatives, the recommended alternative (via Minnieville Road, Prince William Parkway, and Hoadly Road) offers a higher average BLOS [Bicycle Level of Service] (B), primarily the result of lower ADT [average daily traffic] and wider shoulders. The route segment along Minnieville Road and Prince William Parkway has high ADT (up to 45,000 vehicles per day), but also provides shared use paths or wide shoulders for much of the duration. Meanwhile, Hoadly Road has approximately 13,000 to 23,000 vehicles per day and provides 8‐foot shoulders along many segments.

Google Street View reveals that various segments of Hoadly Road currently do have marked bike lanes, but these are discontinuous and often inappropriately situated on the right side of long right-turn-only lanes, such as here, here, here, and here.   Glaring deficiencies in Hoadly Road’s “bike lanes” were noted by a resident back in 2010 [mislabeled a “bike path” in that blog post].

Since the entirely of Hoadly Road has been the designated alignment of US Bicycle Route 1 for nearly the past decade, Active Prince William asks that VDOT and Prince William County proactively collaborate to retrofit continuous and well-designed bike lanes–and, ideally, buffered or separated bike lanes–along all of Hoadly Road at the earliest possible opportunity.

We also recommend adding the planned Hoadly Road sidepath as a designated segment of the National Capital Trail Network (NCTN) when the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board again updates its NCTN map in the coming year.

Fund a Strategic Countywide Active Mobility Plan Plus $10 Million in Pedestrian, Bicycle, & Trail Improvements in the FY 2025 County Budget

January 20, 2024 /

On January 9, 2024, Active Prince William sent the following message to the Prince William Board of County Supervisors (PW BOCS) to request funding for two items in the FY 2025 County Budget: $3 million to develop a strategic active mobility plan for Prince William County and $10 million to implement active mobility and trail improvements.

Please consider funding the following items in the Prince William County FY 2025 Budget to support elements approved in the Community Energy and Sustainability Master Plan (CESMP).  Strong support was received from BOCS members for two of our recent BOCS candidates’ survey questions about 1) funding an Active Mobility Plan and 2) completing PWC’s planned National Capital Trail Network (NCTN) segments by 2030.

1. Active Mobility Plan  | $3 Million, one-time FY2025 funding line item

Justification: The Active Mobility Plan must be developed to provide a strategic/prioritized effort to enable bike/pedestrian projects identified in the 2040 Mobility Chapter to become projects in the Capital Improvement Program (CIP) budget.

The Active Mobility Plan–for transportation and recreation–must assess the existing pedestrian and bicycle networks within Prince William County and identify gaps to fill that will produce the greatest improvements in overall connectivity. This should include elements such as Complete Streets; Safe Route to Schools, Parks, and other community destinations; and Vision Zero policies and programs; regionally significant trails (NCTN, PHNST, ECG, US Bike Route 1, and the I-66 Parallel Trail); crossings of I-95, I-66, the Bull Run and Occoquan Rivers, and other barriers (highways and railroads); an active roadway reconfiguration program; plus various types of purely recreational trail projects and park sites and identifying the staff capacity to plan, construct, promote, operate, maintain, and rehabilitate all the elements not managed by VDOT.  The plan must also ensure that the County’s future active transportation networks mesh with neighboring networks planned for the City of Manassas, City of Manassas Park, Stafford County, and Fairfax County, in order to create the highest overall level of connectivity region-wide.

We recommend that the county hire an experienced outside consultant team to coordinate the development of this plan and to incorporate a robust public involvement component (e.g., a set of at least two public input opportunities, the involvement of agency staff and citizen work groups [including the existing Trails and Blueways Council], and targeted outreach to low-income, ethnic minority, and immigrant communities.  This would be analogous to how the County developed the CESMP and is planning to implement the SS4A Action Plan grant.

2. Mobility and Recreation Trails (General Fund) | $10 Million (Recommended to be an ongoing budget line item) 

Justification: Sustained General Fund money for trail infrastructure is needed to advance projects through the planning, engineering, right of way, and construction stages.  With over 200 miles of identified missing sidewalks and planned shared-use paths, this sustained funding level is needed to implement the Active Mobility Plan and leverage non-general fund dollars (e.g., TRIP and other developer contributions, VDOT revenue sharing, TAP, HSIP, CMAQ/RSTP, NVTA, USDOT grants, and concurrent highway construction, etc.)

Thank you for considering these requests.

Mark Scheufler & Allen Muchnick, Co-Chairs
Active Prince William
Advancing active mobility for a more livable, equitable, & sustainable greater Prince William, Virginia
Twitter: @Active_PW https://twitter.com/Active_PW

Our Comments for the National Capital Trail Network Update in Greater Prince William

October 31, 2023 /

October 2023 draft update of the National Capital Trail Network in greater Prince William.  The green lines are supposed to depict existing trail segments, whereas the purple lines are supposed to depict “planned” trail segments.

The National Capital Trail Network (NCTN) is a 1,400-mile, continuous network of long-distance, off-street trails, serving the entire [metropolitan Washington] region and consisting of both existing and planned segments.  The network was approved by the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (TPB) in July 2020 and endorsed by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments Board of Directors in August 2020.

As described by TPB staff:  The National Capital Trail Network is intended to be a network of long-distance, off-street facilities. It will be accessible for people of all ages and abilities, designed for non-motorized use, and suitable for both transportation and recreation.  Off-street path width minimums are 10 feet for new construction, 8 feet for existing paths. Paths must be paved or firm surface. On-street facilities must be protected from moving traffic (i.e. parked cars, curbs, or flexposts). All facilities must be directly connected to the network. Short on-street connections on low-volume, low speed streets are permitted to maintain network continuity. Facilities can be existing or planned, but they must be in an approved agency plan.

In June 2022, the TPB adopted a resolution (R18-2022) that called for completing the TPB’s National Capital Trail Network by 2030, as one of seven priority strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from surface transportation in the Washington region.

For at least several months, the TPB staff have sought to engage the region’s localities to submit updates and corrections to the NCTN map.  The main purpose of this update is to measure progress, in miles built, toward the completion of the National Capital Trail Network since its adoption in 2020. Other purposes include adjusting routes where the existing route has proven infeasible or undesirable, addition of new routes where a new plan or new development justifies it, and correction of errors or omissions in the network [emphasis added].

To facilitate this update, Active Prince William submitted the comments below on October 30, 2023.

Comments on the Draft Update to the National Capital Trail Network Map for Prince William County and the City of Manassas
by Allen Muchnick, Co-Chair Active Prince William

1) Nonexistent/”Planned” Trail Segments Erroneously Labeled As “Existing”:  The following segments on the NCTN map should be relabeled as “planned” because they do not currently exist.

  • Nokesville Rd/Rte 28 between the Fauquier County Line and Fitzwater Dr in Nokesville. The segment of Rte 28 west of Fitzwater Dr in Nokesville has not been widened.  It’s still a two-lane road without any bicycle or pedestrian facilities.
  • Minnieville Rd, between Old Bridge Rd and Dumfries Rd, is depicted as having an existing shared use path along it except for the segment (TIP_ID BP11611) between Fowke Ln and Cardinal Drive. However, the NCTN update map erroneously shows this planned segment with a southwest terminus at Smoketown Rd, rather than at Cardinal Dr.  The segment of Minnieville Rd that currently lacks any bicycle facilities is much longer than shown on the NCTN update map.

2) NCTN Segments Currently Labeled As Planned That Have Recently Been Completed:  The following NCTN segments should now be relabeled as “existing”.

  • Nokesville Rd/Rte 28 Shared-Use Path, between Godwin Dr and the PWC Line, in the City of Manassas (TIP_ID 11606).
  • Godwin Dr Shared-Use Path (south), between Wellington Rd and the Winters Branch Trail, in the City of Manassas (TIP_ID BP11604). Note: TIP_ID BP7624 appears to be a duplicate path, possibly on the PWC side of Godwin Dr, which is probably not actually planned and, if so, should be deleted from the map.
  • US-1 Shared-Use Path in North Woodbridge (southern segment of TIP_ID BP7634): The segment between Annapolis Way and Gordon Blvd is complete.
  • Blackburn Rd Shared-Use Path near Neabsco Creek (the bulk of TIP_ID BP7641): The segment between Rippon Blvd and Good Shepherd Lutheran Church is complete.
  • Wellington Rd Shared-Use Path (the western end of TIP_ID 7632): The segment between Linton Hall Rd and University Blvd near Gainesville/Virginia Gateway is complete.
  • VA 234/Dumfries Rd Shared-Use Path (TIP_ID BP7639): This former gap segment between Country Club Dr and Exeter Dr near Montclair is complete.

3) Planned NCTN Segments Depicted On An Erroneous Alignment:

4) Planned NCTN Segments That Should Be Updated: 

  • Manassas Dr east of Signal View Dr in Manassas Park (TIP-ID BP7643): The new Manassas Park Active Transportation Plan identifies an even larger segment of eastern Manassas Dr (between Railroad Dr and Blooms Park) as a candidate for bicycle lanes implemented with a road diet (Project B-10). The NCTN map currently labels the segment of Manassas Dr east of Signal View Dr as planned for a shared-use path.

5) Nationally Significant Long-Distance Trails That Should Be Added to the NCTN Map As “Planned NCTN Segments”:

  • US Bicycle Route 1: At present, a considerable portion of US Bicycle Route 1 through Prince William County is quite hostile to bicycling, even by experienced cyclists.  However, the segments of this route along Fleetwood Dr (Fauquier County Line to Aden Rd), Aden Rd (Fleetwood Dr to Bristow Rd), Bristow Rd (Aden Rd to Independent Hill Dr), Independent Hill Rd (Bristow Rd to Route 234), all of Hoadly Rd, Minnieville Rd (the segment missing a shared-use path from Prince William Pkwy to Fowke Ln), and Old Bridge Rd (Minnieville Rd to Tanyard Hill Rd) are all identified for future shared-use paths in Prince William County’s December 2022 Comprehensive Plan and therefore should be depicted as Planned NCTN segments on the updated NCTN map.
  • East Coast Greenway and Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail: Except to depict existing or planned sidepaths along Route 1, the current NCTN map does not depict most of the planned ultimate route(s) for the East Coast Greenway and the paved, shared-use segments of the Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail through Prince William County.  The updated NCTN map should depict those planned routes.

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