Transportation Solutions

As high gas prices, traffic congestion, strain on the state budget and concerns about pollution prompt widespread calls for change, PEC supports a new transportation vision for Virginia. 

Virginia’s Six-Year Plan for Transportation

Posted on by PEC

If you've ever wondered what roads will be built or what new transit options are going to exist in the near term –The Commonwealth Transportation Board has released its working draft of Virginia's Six-Year Improvement Program for comments, due by Friday, May 18, 2012.

The recently released draft plan covers 2013-2018 and it includes all of the proposed highway, road and bridge projects as well as rail, transit, bicycle, pedestrian and other transportation improvements across the state — with a total associated cost of $10.6 billion.

Highway Through Keswick?

Posted on by PEC

Can the local community come up with a better plan for Routes 22 and 231 than VDOT’s plan to make it a highway?

The main road through Keswick in Albemarle County—Rtes. 22 and 231—runs through a landscape that Thomas Jefferson described as “the Eden of the United States”.  Today, a traveler on this road can experience a landscape much like the one Jefferson and others of his generation saw—open farmland rising up to woodlands on the gentle slopes of the Southwest Mountains.  What will it be like to travel on this road in 20 years or 50 years or 100 years?  It’s an open question.

Taxpayer’s Dollars, Developers’ Dream Road

Posted on by PEC

This May – without any technical justification, without public input and without a recommendation from VDOT — an unelected body, the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB), approved a potential north-south highway between Leesburg and I-95 as a Corridor of Statewide Significance. This action brings back a long-cherished dream road for developers – a vast Outer Beltway around Northern Virgina that has been shot down time and time again, when subject to community input and expert review.

A Wasteful Bypass and a Better Plan

Posted on by Rose Jenkins

VDOT gave plans for the Charlottesville Western Bypass an F. So why spend half a billion dollars on it?

That's the question that PEC posed to Charlottesville and Albemarle residents though ads in local papers and a mailing that we sent to 15,000 homes — part of our full-on campaign to stop this wasteful bypass from moving forward ahead of better alternatives.

Insiders Renew Push for Another Beltway Around DC

Insiders Renew Push for Another Beltway Around DC

Posted on by Chris Miller

In 2011, PEC alerted its members to a renewed effort to get an Outer Beltway project built. A highlight from the email text:

"In a meeting of the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) last week, the Governor's Secretary of Transportation and two CTB members announced a renewed effort to prioritize a highway connecting I-95 in Prince William to Rt. 50 in Loudoun."