"There was some equivocation, but four of the six candidates for Charlottesville's City Council said at a forum Wednesday that they favor construction of the controversial planned Meadowcreek Parkway in some form.

The road, a continuing source of division in the city's government, had yet to emerge before Wednesday as the defining campaign issue that it was in the months before the 2000 election.... " (Jake Mooney, The Daily Progress, February 7, 2002).

Does Meadowcreek Parkway matter in the 2002 race for Charlottesville City Council?

I don't know how I could demonstrate that MCP matters to people... It has been an issue for 20-30 years? I have a copy of the DAILY PROGRESS from 1980 with a full page pro/con spread that could have been written yesterday. It is important because it's not just about paving a strip of land; it will impact the demographics of the city and county, tax revenues, schools, the environment, quality of life.

As to whether this council will get to approve or reject the MCP there are a couple of reasons why, even though current funding levels are low and likely to remain so for a time, it would be valuable to resolve the question of the MCP, and, as long as we're at it, the WBP.

First, things change. The economy will recover, these questions will return, and so will the money.

Second, the MPO, or Metropolitan Planning Organization is the closest thing we have to a regional planning agency. For the last 20 years or so, it has been bogged down with the never-ending struggle over the Bypass and the MCP. Whether rightly or wrongly, all the manouvering has been about these two major projects. If the questions about building them were resolved, the MPO could turn its attention and its budget to other things. It would be a much more productive outcome to DECIDE not to build these roads and to DECIDE to address congestion by other means, than to merely do nothing, change nothing, and come back to square one in five years or ten.

To undertake to change the way we arrange and interact with our physical environment is the work of this and councils to come. What we don't need is a bunch of councillors who will do nothing about these issues and hide behind budget strictures, instead of helping to create the right conditions for change in public opinion, policy, and planning.

For another thing, until the question of the MCP is resolved, plans for McIntire Park will never come to anything, just as they have not for the past 20 years. If the road were definitely put aside, plans for the park could be undertaken. As it is, planners and budgeters see no reason to do anything to the park as it might all get bulldozed, and if the park is opened up to the public and made more accessible, more people will object to its being given over to pavement. No sense in building a constituency for the park, so it will just languish.

It would be infinitely preferable to make not building the MCP the occasion for a positive, aggressive, sustained effort to make the best use of the infrastructure we have, and to make the changes that can lead to a community that is physically organized for alternative modes of transportation. The nice thing about this is that almost all such initiatives (though not all) are less expensive, destructive, and futile than the road building answer to congestion. Among the items that STAMP has proposed are these:

* RT 250 and 29- Remove traffic signals and construct tight urban interchanges at major interchanges including 250/McIntire, 29/Hydralic, and 29/Rio to allow for unimpeded traffic flow. Provide a service road parallel to Route 29 to improve circulation and reduce congestion on RT 29.

* Park Street and Rio Road -Install traffic signals to slow, reduce, and manage traffic.

* Transportation Alternatives- Greatly improve the transit, pedestrian and bicycle infrastructures and implement incentives to discourage auto-dependency. Implement the plan for a network of bicycle and pedestrian ways.

* Promote transit:

(1) Encourage establishment of fare-free transit zones.

(2) Integrate CTS, UVA, and other regional transit services.

Mary E. MacNeil, STAMP (electronic mail, February 7, 2002)

Editor's Note: See also stamp@earthsystems.org Archives by Thread.

Then please send your thoughts to george@loper.org where the most representative comments will be placed on my web site with full attribution.