Critique of Route 5 plans gets some press

Why not just make it one-way in the morning and one-way the other way in the evening and have stricter parking rules in the church hill area. For people who need to go the other direction, it seems easy enough to find a route around all of that. Washington DC has roads that “go both ways” all over the place.

Also, Good lord – 95 is there for people who are going past 895. Make them use it.

1) the greater richmond area should take infrastructure into consideration when approving apartments and subdivisions
2) they should maintain existing roads
3) they should enforce no parking laws instead of letting Main Street bottleneck because some drunk abandoned his care the night before. Or some selfish a hole routinely leaves his car parked blocking 1 of the 2 lanes of inbound traffic in the morning and outbound in the evening.

Would be amusing/scary/interesting if someone were to submit a FoIA request to the city to see the total amount they’ve spent on studies over the past few years. I bet if you added up all the ones that resulted in nothing, we could have built a new ballpark and a mass transit system to go with it from the funds.

What do we pay the city officials for if not to plan these things? To line their own pockets with donations from developers and consulting firms who will do their jobs for them?

Adam, you are on to something there – no way the city will invest money to make improvements unless they can find a way to funnel the benefits from those investments to a preferred developer. Somebody somewhere is working out how to play the angles and reap the benefits of our tax dollars at work.

+1 to what Max said.

Dallas, there is no way that one-way traffic will work in this scenario. We’re not talking about the Rock Creek Parkway.
You know why there’s so much traffic? Because if someone wants to get from anywhere in the East End (Montrose/Fulton/Varina etc) to City Center, or City Center to the East End they basically have to go through the Route 5/Williamsburg Road Junction, which lies between Poe’s and Fulton Gas Works, and overlaps CSX tracks.

Anyone who thinks they have an easy fix to this solution doesn’t understand that all that CSX-owned property majorly affects egress in the Williamsburg Road/Route 5/E. Main Street area, especially the trestle under which one passes just before coming out onto Main St. If you used your brain, you would see that there is no “easy other way around.”

In proposing creating one-way traffic at different times of the day, are you saying that it’s suitable for the opposite traffic to meander over to Government Road and go through Church Hill (one lane in each direction with lots of four-way stops) before dumping back out onto Main St. or wherever? What if there are emergency vehicles?
This is not an easy fix, people.

Another easy fix – the folks in Henrico could take the Pocahontas parkway to the highway. Is there a way to make this option more attractive?

Fulton and Montrose are not the middle of nowhere. They are a stone’s throw from Church Hill, and much of the neighborhoods lie within the city limits.

And I do take the bus, thank you very much.

My point is that there is no easy fix to this problem.

An do you know how far away the Pocahontas Parkway is from Fulton and Montrose? Christ, do any of you leave your Church Hill ivory tower? Jeez…

one way would start at Williamsburg rd and main street and continue into varina until the intersection of old Osborne tpk. I suppose I should admit I don’t know the answer. But there has to be a better one that uses already existing infrastructural – as opposed to just smashing up everything so people can drive to their high rise cubicles with no traffic. In any other real city, traffic is just a part of life.

Here is a system-wide map, you can see how under-serviced the East End beyond Church Hill is overall, in terms of access to public transportation. http://www.ridegrtc.com/images/SystemMapSep2011.pdf

In addition, if you want to try and walk from the East End to a more bus-friendly corridor, or maybe you want to try to walk to The Market on 25th and E. Main, you have dangerously limited sidewalk availability (next time you drive by notice how the sidewalk stop abruptly on the north side of Williamsburg Road, requiring one to cross the street and then cross back again–and most dangerous of all, there is no pedestrian crossing light at the Route 5/Williamsburg Road/E. Main Street junction–it’s very sketchy because people are driving at 40 miles an hour there). Needs to be fixed on so many levels.

What if varina simply stayed the same

Glad to see others concerned about the cost of this study. Building new infrastructure instead of repairing existing problems is a major issue, but how it is undertaken needs to involve transparency and reflect public input as well as delicately providing for the potential for increased traffic-flow.

What the recent Style coverage ignored is the fact there are not two concepts but three, each impacting different communities. (Concept 1 has two options, over or under the trestle at Main Street.)

Nowhere in the Richmond press has the fact that not just one, but three communities have raised grave concerns about the plans.

Church Hill, Fulton, and Marion Hill are each in the path of the concept roads, and have all formally submitted concerns over both proposed concepts in writing. Jan Hatcher of the Partnership for Smarter Growth has weighed in against both concepts, as has Stewart Schwartz of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, with other groups now in the same process.

To those who claim that concern is based in NIMBYism, one CHPN commenter responded, that it’s more like “NWMMYD (Not With My Money You Don’t.)” It’s an on obvious case of poor planning and governmental strong-arming that does not represent the local citizenry. FoIAs are indeed in order.

Lee Yolton stated in the Style article that “We’re responding to the legitimate critiques as we move forward.” Here are a list of legitimate concerns which have yet to gain response:

1. The study retained as their consultants, two companies that work for the developers of Tree Hill and Rocketts. One ran the study website and the other handled all public feedback.

Recent additions to the study website’s Links and Downloads page include Chapters 9 and 10, the consultant’s recommendation: Concept 2, and (a summary) of public involvement.

Why do you think the consultants would suggest Concept 2? Rocketts would not respond to questions for a Times-Dispatch article on October 21. 2011, but Lee Yolton who heads the study was quoted as stating that the “developers of Rocketts Landing, a mixed-use housing development that straddles the Henrico-Richmond line, oppose the first option — a wider Route 5 — because their development is designed as a village and is not compatible with a four-lane road.”

Both firms retained for consultation have worked for Rocketts Landing and Rocketts does not want the road widened there. It is a conflict of interest to have retained those two firms to work on this study.

2. The information given for consideration by the study upon which public input was to be based, contained a separate estimated cost for each of the three concepts, but did not include the estimated ten million dollars in proffers from the developers of Rocketts Landing and Tree Hill.

The study website still gives these figures as:

Concept 1 (with height restriction) $51 Million, Concept 1 (without height restriction) $70 Million, Concept 2 $65 Million

Again, those are the cost estimates (among other factors) upon which public input was given. The updated figures shown at the February 13th meeting in Henrico County were:

Concept 1 (with height restriction) $51 Million, Concept 1 (without height restriction) $70 Million, Concept 2 $71.5 Million

The study website pdf ‘Public Workshop 3 Presentation’ includes the cost estimates and remains unchanged, still reflecting the original figures without developer’s proffers included.

Public input was given with the incorrect figures in place. Having changed the estimated costs after the public input deadline had passed is unacceptable.

3. The study website main page states: “Public input will be a major factor,” but no study team member has ever answered the question, “to what extent?”

The summary of public input (10Final Route 5 Corridor Study – Chapter 10 – Public Involvement) states 69% favor Concept 1: widening 5 in its current path, yet the study consultants have backed Concept 2.

With this many concerns at hand, how can the Study team make a recommendation without undertaking further work to address these serious issues?

4. Study Chapter 10, Public Involvement, Figure 10-15 shows that 83.8% of those who responded to the final survey believe that the “Importance of Maintaining Community Character When Considering Roadway Improvements for Congestion Relief” is “very important,” with 10.3% believing it is “important” and 5.1% answering “somewhat important.”

Only 2 of the 309 respondents said this was “not important,” while the study seems to reflect this sentiment instead of tailoring the design of the gateway through these historic areas with community character in mind at all.

Agriculture and tourism are the two top industries in Virginia, respectively bringing in 55 and 19 billion dollars a year. This needs to be evidenced in transportation planning, so that we may continue to grow while preserving these irreplaceable assets. The study does not do this and needs to be revised.

5. The largest problem remains, the study does not resolve traffic problems. All current concepts still choke at the intersection of Main Street and Williamsburg Avenue, encouraging large trucks without height restriction to travel through these areas and the potential to allow vehicles to drive through small roadways in existing neighborhoods.
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Public comment at recent meetings and in response to press coverage shows people are still stuck on offering alternative routes, while the concerns above go unmentioned.

Arguing over where the road should go accomplishes nothing but further division.

According to Style’s article: “the commission continues to seek resident feedback — albeit informally.”

The issues above still warrant formal feedback to the study team, as well as to the Mayor and your Council-person or Supervisor.

Unified critique is necessary now. This has not been a transparent process. The data is canted and incomplete and does not represent public input. The Route 5 Corridor Study is seriously flawed, and needs to go back to the drawing board.

When exactly is “rush hour” along this route? I wasn’t aware of any traffic issues prior to signing my son up for daycare in Varina and I have yet to experience any delays in commuting from Church Hill to Varina, then back to downtown.

“Love where you live “- #27.
What a well reasoned and informative piece, many thanks.