Government by gridlock?

Government by gridlock?         

Surely, we can do better.

Progress on the Meadowcreek Parkway has stalled again, this time over design of the interchange at McIntire Road and the U.S. 250 Bypass. Charlottesville City Council rejected a proposed design — but lacks consensus over what should replace it.

It wasn’t all that many years ago that, after much soul-searching, Council accepted the need for a link from Rio Road to downtown. The road also would improve connection between northern Albemarle County and Interstate 64, via eastbound U.S. 250.

Since then, like a commuter caught in rush hour, the project has gradually advanced in stop-and-go fashion. Each gain has been laboriously negotiated.

The membership of Council has greatly altered since the vote that approved the Meadowcreek Parkway in concept, with a list of conditions to be met before the city would give its full endorsement.

Subsequent slowdowns have occurred as councilors with perhaps different sensibilities have attempted to define and enforce those conditions.

The current situation is unsettling because Council appears only to know what it does not want. It cannot says what it does want.

Individual councilors want an interchange with traffic signals or one that works on a roundabout design. Others don’t want the interchange built at all.

Meanwhile, citizen members of a group that worked for two years — two years! — on a proposed design are both astounded and discouraged to find that their effort was for nothing. Their proposal was a roundabout design.

State highway officials add that delay will only increase the costs of building the roadway.

Council’s rejection of the citizens’ proposal, coupled with the danger of inertia, creates a recipe for gridlock. Competing or incompatible interests may mean that Council makes a costly, time-consuming change of direction — or that it finds itself unable to choose a direction at all.

But, not to decide is to decide.

The Charlottesville-Albemarle community has come too far on this journey to risk a breakdown now. Any failure by Council to aggressively seek solutions for construction of the roadway would be a failure for the community — costing time, money and the precious commodity of good will.