FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Today's Date -- February 10, 1999
Last Public Meeting of Chairman Hanley’s Task Force was held at the
Churchill Elementary School on Churchill Road
in McLean, on February 9, 7:30 -9 p.m.
Fairfax, VA – The last of four successive weekly "public hearings" of Fairfax County Board Chairman Kate Hanley’s Citizen Task Force was played to another packed house last evening in McLean. McLean citizens turned out en mass tonight to register their objections to VDOT’s plans for widening the Beltway. At this meeting and three previous public meetings, over 1,300 citizens from throughout the county have spoken against the Beltway widening idea as shortsighted and anti-neighborhood.
Citizens challenged Chairman Hanley’s and VDOT’s assumption that High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes on a 12-lane Beltway will solve the traffic congestion on I-495 in Virginia. "Even if HOV lanes were as successful on I-95 as the highway planners claim, wouldn’t it make more sense for VDOT to use the $375 million slated for building additional HOV lanes to increase transit through the Springfield Interchange? If transit doesn’t work on this congested corridor, where does VDOT think it will ever work?" said Paul S. Hughes, Co-Coordinator of the Fairfax Coalition for Smarter Growth. The Coalition, along with thousands of citizens and civic groups living near the Beltway Corridor, wondered why VDOT is reluctant to study bus and rail alternatives as viable options to the same degree they are studying the feasibility of a 12-lane Beltway.
Information about this project has been so scarce in the past that most citizens are hearing about this proposed $2.0 billion project primarily due to the efforts of the Coalition and a few interested civic groups. Once they learn about it, most citizens’ reactions are, "If widening highways is the solution, why hasn’t Los Angeles solved its traffic congestion problem?" Citizens also are indignant to learn that the VDOT project director feels that spending that sum of money to widen a 13-mile stretch of the Beltway will probably not constitute a "significant environmental impact" on their communities. Uniformly, citizens are for a full Environmental Impact Study (EIS) to include all options for the Beltway, not just HOV or highway widening.
Many citizens are wondering why the Board of Supervisors is continuing to back VDOT’s premature ideas and whether the Beltway Widening Project may turn out to be "Kate’s Folly" in a critical election year. Roger Diedrich, the other Coalition Co-Coordinator observed that "while citizens have been very consistent in their objections to the VDOT plans, we hope that Fairfax Supervisors will now realize an obligation to provide the leadership to change those plans."
Like others who have voiced their concerns and frustrations to the Chairman and Task Force over the past three weeks, McLean residents were not only concerned with the fate of their own neighborhoods but believed "building our way out of traffic congestion" does not work, nor do we have the funds to try. Quality of life and neighborhood preservation issues are also primary concerns voiced by the citizens. A similar 12-lane widening was done on I-270 in Maryland a few years ago and it almost immediately became clogged again. New Jersey has ended an HOV project because it led to more congestion, rather than less. In fact, VDOT’s own analysis shows that even a 12-lane Beltway will reach saturation levels again within 5-8 years after its construction. If we follow the Maryland I -270 example, we will be bumper-to-bumper in less than two years. One coalition member mentioned the I-270 issue to a VDOT engineer who acted as if the I-270 congestion was not true.
The Fairfax Coalition for Smarter Growth supports the types of development in Northern Virginia that build better communities with less traffic by encouraging pedestrian-friendly and transit-oriented development along with integration of land use and transportation planning. The Coalition seeks to replace the cycle of traffic congestion that leads to more highways leading to increased automobile dependency and even greater congestion that leads to still more highways, higher taxes, and reduced quality of life for current and future generations. The Fairfax Coalition for Smarter Growth is a not-for-profit community organization. It is part of a broader network of citizens and civic associations within the Washington metropolitan area and in Virginia with similar objectives.
It advocates that the majority of transportation expenditures from public sources be channeled to public transit – Metrorail, light-rail, and an enhanced bus system – to eliminate delays on our highways, for a program that concentrates development near existing public infrastructure, reduces taxes for new highways and new schools, and builds more traditional communities, and for greater direct citizen involvement in transportation and land use decisions affecting their neighborhoods and communities.
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