Taking the long view on local transportation

Whether it’s roads, buses, bikes or rail, the Charlottesville area has countless individuals advocating for their preferred mode of transportation. But Steve Williams describes himself as a pusher of not one form, but all.“All pieces bring value to the transportation system,” said Williams, the new executive director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission. “But none of them can do it on their own.”
Now having spent nearly two months on the job as the agency’s head, Williams has the task of effectively planning the entire region’s transportation network and developing projects even as traffic worsens and state funding dwindles.

U.S. 29 in Charlottesville and the urban ring of Albemarle County is a well-known challenge, Williams said, but its problems are drifting elsewhere. U.S. 29 to Greene County and U.S. 250 from Crozet into the city are becoming increasingly clogged, and transit needs to be implemented more to solve congestion issues.
“Some of these challenges really do need visionary thinking,” Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris said.
Local leaders are confident that Williams, a Crozet resident, is the right man for the job, though they have varying expectations for what he may accomplish with such limited funding.

“We really need clear, professional leadership,” said Peter Kleeman, a Charlottes-ville resident and advocate for alternative transportation.
In a news release, Albemarle County Board of Supervisors member Sally H. Thomas said, “We think that Mr. Williams brings an extensive background in many areas in which the planning district provides services to localities in the region.”
Thomas chaired the selection committee that picked Williams as Harrison Rue’s successor.
“Since there’s no money, it’s a little hard to know what we can expect particularly of one person,” she said in an interview. “But we can certainly get our projects as far along in their planning as possible and be ready to go when there is money.”
Williams comes to the Charlottesville area with experience from five regional planning organizations in locations ranging from Monterey, Calif., to Nashua, N.H. But Dubuque, Iowa — a city similar in size to Charlottesville — is where Williams said he started to develop his capabilities in transportation planning. Williams worked for their Metropolitan Planning Organization, whose region expanded into Wisconsin and Illinois, and also dealt with many issues surrounding the Mississippi River.
As head of the TJPDC, he also oversees the Charlottesville-Albemarle MPO, made up of local officials who shape the area’s long-term transportation plans.
“I learned a lot about transportation planning in that situation,” Williams said of his experience in Dubuque.
Dubuque had its own U.S. 29-like concern — congestion from local traffic coupled with big box shopping centers surrounding its main throughway. Every metropolitan area has a U.S. 29 corridor, he said, and many times transportation planners are stuck retrofitting a bad situation. But in Dubuque, Williams said, he got the chance to tackle those problems by developing rail, trail, transit and bike projects.
“We were dealing with a lot of those issues,” he said.
From there Williams headed to Nashua, his most recent stomping ground before moving to Central Virginia. As head of the Nashua Regional Planning Commission, his experiences there largely focused on a select few endeavors, especially those concerning the often-discussed locomotive. With Williams leading the way, the New Hampshire Commuter Rail project became the second highest priority in the state.
“People used to look at us kind of funny … saying, look at those rail heads,” Williams said.

‘Going to be very useful’

Transit has also begun to take off in New Hampshire, but Williams said it’s “nowhere as big as it is here.” Nonetheless, Thomas said she thinks Williams has experience in setting up modes of transportation that the area has not dabbled in much.
“He has experience ahead of where we are at the moment. That’s going to be very useful,” she said.
Given his multifaceted approach in trying to solve regional transportation problems, rail was only one part of the complex picture in Nashua. Another project spearheaded by the newly instated TJPDC chief instead revolved around roads. The venture concerned a roadway that would run from a turnpike, cross the Nashua River and connect to the city’s downtown so residents would have better access to that area.

In its purpose, the Broad Street Parkway mirrors the Charlottesville area’s controversial Meadowcreek Parkway. The 2-mile road beginning at East Rio Road in Albemarle County and ending at the U.S. 250 Bypass in Charlottesville is supposed to alleviate traffic between those roads and provide a connector into the city’s downtown. Another similarity is that the connector in Nashua had been in discussion since the 1960s. A $37.6 million bond was approved for the project last year.
“Every transportation project is controversial,” Williams said. “There are always winners and losers.”
What really drives transportation is land use, Williams said, something many people don’t recognize. Land use will drive the demand and will dictate what kinds of systems the area uses in the future.
“Those issues are two sides of the same coin,” he said.

Money issues continue

Williams supports the idea of creating a regional transit authority and is not discouraged that state lawmakers rejected a request to allow local officials to raise taxes by voter referendum to pay for transit expenses.
“It was a bad year,” he said. “Given the environment, I’m not surprised it went down.”
Funding challenges will persist, Williams said. The Virginia Department of Transportation’s Six-Year Improvement Plan, which outlines transportation projects in the state, includes no funding for road projects in Albemarle for this fiscal year and Charlottesville has only a select few that will receive state dollars.

Norris said that forces leaders to make better decisions about transportation planning, and he hopes that Williams will help them enact initiatives to move the area in the right direction.
“I think what Mr. Williams can do is help us to make better decisions and understand how each locality’s actions affect the region as a whole, which we sometimes forget,” Norris said.