Route 15 update The Catoctin Coalition

25 MAY 2007 1. VA Deputy Secretary of Transportation conducts minibus tour of Route 15 construction 2. County allocates $2 million more for Lucketts Plan sidewalks 3. VDOT starts chipping away at Lucketts plan 4. Journey Through Hallowed Ground legislation reintroduced in Congress

1. At a February 2 meeting in Leesburg, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-10th District) listened to a VDOT presentation on Route 15 safety that he had requested, and sought a way to forward improvements on the road with the limited funds available. This meeting was subsequent to calls for action after the lack of a guardrail just north of Leesburg at the Route 15 bypass split lead to the deaths of teenaged siblings in early December. The site of the accident was not within the area VDOT had slated for any safety improvements. As a result of the outcry by citizens and public officials, and a report by the Loudoun Traffic Safety Commission, VDOT reported at this meeting that a guardrail had been installed at the site of the accident. Eight other locations in the immediate area have subsequently been identified as needing guardrails, VDOT staff reported, and installation plans are underway (est. cost $250K).

After a brief presentation by Catoctin District Supervisor Sally Kurtz on Federal Highway Administration resources for safety improvements, Rep. Wolf proposed that local elected officials, VDOT staff, and representatives of citizens’ groups visit the Federal Highway Administration’s Turner-Fairbank highway research facility in McLean to learn what ongoing research and low-cost strategies can help improve safety on U.S. 15 through Loudoun County. He also suggested that officials and citizens meet at least quarterly to assess road safety and build consensus on improvements.

In its presentation VDOT discussed construction at three intersections north of Leesburg that is now underway, and did assert that (despite all the attention to the problems of Route 15), none of the top 10 worst accident spots in the county are located on it.

Invited by Congressman Wolf to the meeting at the County Government Center in Leesburg were VA Deputy Secretary of Transportation Scott Kasprowicz, BOS Chairman Scott York (who could not make the beginning of the meeting and so was represented by his aide Keith Nussbaum), Catoctin District Supervisor Sally Kurtz, her aide and Planning Commissioner Nancy Doane, Leesburg Supervisor and Ruritan Club member Jim Clem, VDOT Northern District Administrator Dennis Morrison, retiring assistant county administrator Terrie Laycock, Catoctin Coalition members, members of the Lucketts Ruritan Club,

and VDOT staff. Leesburg Councilman Ken Reid also attended. Other citizens and officials were present. 2. Lucketts citizens have been calling since at least 2001 for a permanent reduction of the speed limit to 25 mph within the village. Vehicles routinely ignore all the signage,

Route 15: a beautiful entrance into the Commonwealth of Virginia

and their speeding and illegal passing endanger residents, visitors, children, parents, and staff at Lucketts Elementary and the athletic fields. Rear-ending and broadside accidents in this half-mile stretch of the road have resulted in a number of injury accidents. Subsequent to VDOT’s insistence on a 40-mph design speed for the Lucketts Village safety improvements (for which the design firm Kimley-Horn presented a design last summer), citizens pressed harder for a permanent reduction, circulating petitions. First VDOT said it was not legal to lower the speed limit on a federal highway. The Coalition requested a copy of the text of the law forbidding 25 mph, citing that other towns and villages in Loudoun on U.S. highways (Aldie, Upperville) have a 25-mph posted speed No text was ever produced. The Coalition asked VDOT to conduct a study to warrant reduction. VDOT said its study showed the driving speeds through the village were too high to make a speed limit reduction safe. In a letter to VDOT protesting the denial, The Catoctin Coalition stated:

“[The Lucketts village speed limit reduction study] is, for us,

a good illustration of the need for change in how Virginia thinks about road design. Today’s pop psychology has provided us with the term “enabling behavior,” and it is a term that begs to be applied to this study [which stated in essence that]: “A. Route 15’s design through Lucketts village facilitates

speeding. B. Drivers speed. C. We must continue to allow drivers to speed through the

village. “What we need to do instead—in Lucketts, on Route 15, and throughout Virginia—is design roads that invite compliance to traffic laws. We can no longer ignore the savings in lives, injuries, property damage, and enforcement costs that such design provides. “Our roads need to serve our communities, not vice versa.”

Illegal right-hand passing on Route 15 at the Lucketts/Stumptown roads traffic signal Subsequently, Delegate Joe May introduced a bill in the Virginia General Assembly that would have legislated a lower speed limit for the village. Unfortunately, this was among the many, many introduced bills that fail to make it through the Virginia House. We are considering next steps.

3. The Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center visit organized by Rep. Frank Wolf took place last Friday. This center, located next to the CIA in McLean, conducts research on all aspects of highway travel, including materials, safety, operations, etc.* In addition to VDOT staff, two aides from Congressman Wolf’s office, Catoctin District Planning Commissioner Nancy Doane, Loudoun Office of Transportation Services assistant director Andy Beacher, and I attended. Sally Kurtz could not attend due to family illness in North Carolina. Other invites not attending were Tom Howder of the Lucketts Ruritan Club, Leesburg Supervisor

and Ruritan member Jim Clem, his aide, and Leesburg Councilman Ken Reid. Our hosts were an engineer and a psychologist, who work together on safety research. They also conduct safety audits on existing roads, to recommend improvements that will work. They emphasized the importance of driver behavior and perceptions in road design. (For example, Dr. Thomas Granda described how narrowing lanes, or using striping to make lanes appear narrower, has been shown to reduce driver speeds by 4-5 mph in areas of chronic speeding). To conduct a safety audit, the center’s researchers “map” the road digitally using a specially equipped van that records terrain, structures, road markings, and even trees and other features—all of which may affect driver behavior. Then, back in the lab, they convert the data to a computer-generated visual “drive” of the road, and can add and subtract markings and other road design features to the program. The next step is to have “drivers” climb into a specially programmed Saturn sedan in the laboratory, and navigate through the computer-generated road program projected on screens in front of the car. The action on the screen responds to the accelerator, steering, and brake, and researchers thus can test the efficacy of changing traffic patterns, road markings, and other design features in a physical context that replicates a driver’s true experience on a particular road. Researchers then can objectively assess what design changes will result in improved ability of drivers to negotiate the particular section of road safely. Michael F. Trentacoste, director of the Office of Safety Research & Development, said such audits have been performed for highways in Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Maine. It was requested by Mrs. Doane and seconded by J.T. Griffin, Rep. Wolf’s aide, that such an audit be under-taken for Route 15 north of Leesburg. VDOT officials at the meeting will coordinate with TFHRC staff for the audit. * Take a look at the website (http://www.tfhrc.gov/) for an idea of the breadth of TFHRC research. 4. The Journey Through Hallowed Ground (JTHG) Heritage Area Act (H.R. 319 ) was introduced on January 5th by Congressman Frank Wolf in the House of Representatives. He was joined in sponsorship by 16 other representatives, including seven from Virginia, reports the January JTHG newsletter. “America's history can literally be traced along this corridor,” Congressman Wolf said. “The Monroe Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and the Camp David Accords were penned right there in our back yard.” One week later, on January 12, Senator John Warner introduced S.289 in the Senate, and was joined in principal co-sponsorship by Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD), and in sponsorship by Senators Jim Webb(D-VA), Barbara Mikulski

(D-MD), Robert P. Casey, Jr. (D-PA), and John D. Rockefeller, IV (D-WV). In introducing the bill, Senator Warner said, “In Virginia, we are lucky to have a region that is worthy of the recognition and celebration that a National Heritage Area designation affords. No area in America could possibly be more deserving of this status than the area affectionately known as the Journey Through Hallowed Ground. I intend to work with my colleagues in the Senate to give it the historic recognition that it deserves.” Supervisors Jim Clem, Mick Staton, Steve Snow, and

The Lucketts Community Center, on the National Register of Historic Places, fronts on Route 15 Eugene Delgaudio voted against supporting the JTHG initiative in Loudoun last year—the only jurisdiction in the three-state corridor to do so. (Chairman York and Supervisors Kurtz, Jim Burton, and Lori Waters voted in favor.) This failure to support the initiative meant the loss of pro bono road design work for improvement of Route 15 and adjacent secondary roads by a private road design firm working with JTHG staff. Scenic and historic designations bring tourism-based economic development, with one study showing communities can expect an average boost of $34,000 per lane-mile in tourism dollars a year as a result of scenic byway designation. 5. At the request of Virginia Deputy Secretary of Transportation Scott Kasprowicz, local officials and residents will tour by minibus the underway construction on Route 15 north of Leesburg. The tour is scheduled for March 1. These $7 million “spot safety improvements” at three intersections north of Leesburg, consist of • a southbound left-hand turn lane onto Limestone School Road, • a northbound left-hand turn lane and a southbound right-hand turn lane onto Montresor Road, • a northbound left-hand turn lane onto New Valley Church Road, and

• a southbound truck inspection area just north of Spinks Ferry Road.

(A planned southbound right-hand turn lane onto New Valley Church Road was removed from the plans earlier, after citizens conducted a turn count showing that only seven cars made the turn at the 7.5 hours of peak travel times, and that cars turning west would do so several miles north, at Stumptown Road in Lucketts village. Construction of the lane would also have endangered the private residence at the corner of this historic crossroads area.) Citizens and The Catoctin Coalition have raised questions since 2002 about whether the planned “improvements” would truly improve safety on the road, and whether they would reduce the endemic speeding, illegal passing, and reckless driving on the road—the causes of many accidents. In addition, citizens asserted that the turn lanes increased traffic flow for commuters at the expense of safe access for Lucketts area residents. (Turn lanes stack traffic without facilitating access, and are used as illegal passing lanes). Citizens also called for use of Federal Highway Administration “context-sensitive” designs, especially given the road’s Virginia Byway status, bisecting the Catoctin Rural Historic District, and part of the JTHG corridor. These concerns resulted in a 90-day pause in the construction schedule last spring, while a “validation study” was conducted at the request of Secretary Kasprowicz, as part of the land use-transportation coordination the Governor has advocated for better planning in the state, as well as his push for better accountability from VDOT. As part of the study, VDOT was required to do turn counts at the intersections (which had not been done previously, when the turn lanes were designed), verify car vs. truck percentages (92% car, 8% truck), measure average speeds (between 50 and 60 mph on a 45-mph road), and characterize accident experience. The subsequent modifications to the design include rumble strips at the travelway edge to alert wandering drivers, with 2 feet of paved shoulder beyond. Beyond the paved shoulder will be 8 feet of stabilized turf (a deep bed of gravel topped with two inches of soil, which will be seeded.) The stabilized shoulder will support tractor trailers, and can be used as a breakdown area and to ease past accidents in the roadway, but its appearance discourages use as an illegal passing lane.

Other modifications include curb and gutter instead of shoulders at several intersections to discourage use of shoulders as illegal passing lanes.

Lack of facilitated access for area residents and remaining design elements that facilitate illegal passing and speeding are continuing concerns with the present design.

If you would like more details about this upcoming tour, please contact me.

Other Catoctin Coalition documents • “Route 15 North Needs a Forward-Looking, Modern Redesign,” January 2007.

• “VDOT’s U.S. 15/Limestone School and Montresor Road Plan: Destructive Solution for Few Turns,” October 23, 2005. • “Rear Ending, Recklessness Dominate Accident Statistics on Virginia Byway,” May 25, 2005. • “VDOT’s U.S. 15/New Valley Church Road Plan: More Road, Less Access and Safety,” February 29, 2005. • “Safety and Access on Route 15 north of Leesburg,” September 22, 2004. • “Notes from Route 15 North Safety Projects Status Meeting,” April 19, 2004. • “New Safety Data Discredit VDOT’s Factual Basis for Reconstruction of U.S. Route 15 North in Loudoun County, Virginia,” James Lucier, July 18, 2003.

Further resources • When Main Street is a State Highway, Maryland Highway Administration, http://www.sha.state.md.us/businessWith SHA/projects/ohd/Mainstreet/mainstreet.asp • Virginia Byways. http://www.virginiadot.org/programs/ prog-byways.asp • “Route 15 Safety Assessment,” VDOT, February 2007 (ppt). • “Route 15 Corridor Safety Study: Summary of Crash History and Traffic Data,” VDOT, April 2006. • “Route 15 Safety Study, North Segment,” VDOT, 1998.

Compiled by Martha Polkey, Coordinator The Catoctin Coalition

mp@budiansky.com