Roberto Fonseca, Kenneth Myers

Thank you for your reply to my inquiry. I have continuing concerns about both the ability of the City of Charlottesville to manage preparation of a NEPA document for the Interchange project associated with the Meadow Creek Parkway and the appropriateness of treating only the interchange as a Federal-aid project independent of the Parkway. I only address the latter concern in this correspondence and will be checking into other material before contacting you on the NEPA documentation issue at a later date.

I do follow the apparent logic of your arguments in your "Response to Kleeman Inquiry" below. I would tend to agree with this logic if in fact the current State funded Meadow Creek Parkway was a beneficial project and could be built without an interchange. The City of Charlottesville presented to VDOT Commissioner Shucet at a meeting in Albemarle County model results indicating that the current Parkway design with at-grade intersection would result in Level of Service 'F' for all of the movements at the approved intersection with U.S. Route 250 Bypass - one of the National Highway System (NHS) routes in the Charlottesville-Albemarle area. Commissioner Shucet indicated that he thought it unreasonable to recommend that such a poorly performing so-called transportation improvement could be justified on its own. Clearly one should question if this facility has independent utility given the well documented major deleterious impacts it will have on traffic flow on an NHS facility.

In your response item 1 through 4 below, you make a case that such a project - simply because it is a State funded project and State funding is included in the VDOT Six-Year Improvement Program that "it is appropriate to consider the Meadowcreek Parkway as an approved element of the transportation system in the evaluation of future improvements."

I am surprised that FHWA is willing to allow construction of the at-grade intersection on an NHS facility that will clearly have a major negative impact on traffic flow on that facility. Secondly, allowing such an ineffective project to assumed to be a basis for future interchange consideration without considering the entire parkway and interchange designs as one project looks to be a new strategy by which State DOTs can bypass project segmentation prohibitions on Federal-aid projects.

As I see it, The project with at-grade intersection should be reviewed by FHWA in light of its clearly documented negative impacts on the NHS facility. If this project is unacceptable in its current form, FHWA should reevaluate if such a facility can be considered to be part of the transportation system when considering inclusion of the interchange.

I believe Commissioner Shucet's concluding comments at the April 18 2005 meeting were correct when he indicated that it is (1) undesirable to construct the project with an at-grade intersection that will have major negative impact on the NHS facility (U.S. Route 250 Bypass), (2) desirable to combine the parkway project and the interchange into one project so as to ensure use of appropriate logical termini, and independent utility of the project, and (3) appropriate to evaluate the impacts of the unified parkway and interchange project for compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and parkland protection requirements under Section 4(f) review.

I applaud Commissioner Shucet for taking a direct approach to promoting projects that will be responsible and beneficial uses of scarce Federal and State dollars. This project has in my opinion been more about politics than solving transportation challenges, and it is refreshing to hear that the Commissioner wishes to refocus the project as a possible solution to a transportation need in the Charlottesville-Albemarle community. Combination of the parkway and interchange into one project appears to be the correct course of action given that the parkway without interchange is documented to be a poor transportation solution to the stated project purpose and need, and a poor utilization of State dollars.

I will be following this project with great interest and request that you provide me with all future FHWA considerations and actions relating to the Meadow Creek Parkway and the U.S. 250 Bypass - McIntire Road Interchange project. I would also appreciate notification of any open meetings that FHWA will be hosting on this matter with State, City, County, or other interested stakeholders. My contact information is given below.

Sincerely,
Peter Kleeman