Good Afternoon, Mr. Secretary, Mr. Chairman. My name is Martha Hendley. As President of Citizens Against Roads for Developers, CARD, I represent about 1500 citizens most of whom are in the vicinity of the proposed Western Transportation Corridor. I´d like to think I´m not wasting my time or yours being here today as the headlines earlier this week would imply. I just don´t think such a group of thoughtful, successful gentlemen such as you are rubber stamps for the governor.

Will the Western Transportation Corridor relieve congestion for commuters? No. Will it relieve traffic on the Beltway or Rt. 95? The answer is no. And anyone who says otherwise is contradicting the study.

Does Northern Virginia need transportation solutions? Yes. It needs a Wilson Bridge, work on the Beltway, and rail to Dulles, but it doesn´t need a Western Transportation Corridor.

The public hearings held in each county last fall and debate at the recent General Assembly have flushed out those who really expect to gain from a Western Transportation Corridor. They came from McLean, Fairfax, and Arlington and were recognized as investors and bankers, speculators and developers, land use attorneys and real estate people. It´s quite apparent now from the high impact marketing, the high-handed lobbying, and the money being spent to promote this road that those special interests have a lot at stake.

There is no great clamor amongst the public for this road. Maryland says no bridge and for good reason. They have spent millions buying up development rights in western Montgomery County. This is the road to nowhere. It comes to a dead end at a stop light on Rt. 7. The EPA says no; the Army Corps of Engineers says no; the National Park Service and Department of the Interior have said no. And most of all, your citizens are saying no. And after Quantico has said "no," it's unlikely that Stafford and Fauquier Counties will still be supporting this. What part of "NO" doesn´t Virginia understand?

There are roads that we need in Northern Virginia, but this isn´t one of them. I was told by VDOT that this road would get workers from the outlying areas of counties like Stafford to the employment center at Dulles. Well, right now that´s all three of them. But the reason the developers and investors are pushing this road is that they could create such a need by opening up those outlying areas of large tracts of raw land to more sprawl. If this is allowed to happen you really will see congestion on the roads we already have. We need to do things smarter that we have in the past. Each mile of road such as this begets another 1.2 miles and that 1.2 miles begets another 1.44 miles which begets another 1.73 miles and so on mathematically until we can´t pave enough.

This road isn´t needed for commuters. 91% of the traffic in the study area is east west. This is a north-south road. And, by the way, the model has been set up with zone boundaries in such a way that the north-south traffic figures are exaggerated. The 9% north-south figure has been manipulated by the choice of boundaries to get it even that high.

It´s also been said that this road is needed for Dulles Airport. Well, just look at their own exhibit. This map shows the change in travel time to the airport in the year 2010. Travel times change significantly to the north and east. But to the south and west, there is little change; so little in Stafford and Fauquier in fact, that those counties aren't even on their map. You can see from Prince William, the travel time changes very little. Furthermore, Dulles has exaggerated their cargo tonnage 365 times over. There is not a demand to truck cargo from the Tidewater ports to Dulles. That´s ridiculous. If they wanted to ship it by air, it wouldn´t have come by boat in the first place. Furthermore, the study shows no special need. The Dulles scenario is just a smokescreen.

Then who does want this road? We've seen them, the special interest groups at the hearings and in Richmond. The Northern Virginia Round Table has an agenda. This road is on it. They not only want this highway, but they want to raise our taxes to pay for it. At the same time they want to raise the gasoline tax five cents on all of us and raise our sales tax by half a percent, they want to eliminate the business and professional operating license tax, the BPOL tax, on themselves. Is it any coincidence that the same five Round Table members who worked with legislators on a Platform committee are the same five Round Table members who are on the Board of the Washington Airports Task Force? That´s the same Task Force which is using taxpayers´ dollars to lobby in favor of this highway.

It´s no wonder that the supporters for this road get so emotional about it. The traffic figures in the study aren´t supporting what they want. They´ve circled their wagons under such organizations at the Northern Virginia Round Table, the Greater Washington Board of Trade, the Washington Airports Task Force, and its BARC committee, the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance, the Northern Virginia Building Industry Association, and GAIN. What do all these groups have in common? Two names, Hazel and Dewberry, two names in Northern Virginia synonymous with big development. And who has real estate interests in the vicinity of the route of the Western Corridor? Hazel does, at the northern end, the southern end, and in the middle.

And let´s look at where some of the research and studies have come from. There´s the Dulles Airport Regional Study Commission Working Group report dated November 10, 1995. It states that its conclusions were based in part upon research and/or reports from the George Mason University Institute for Public Policy. Now that particular institute has been supported by Mr. Hazel to the tune of $50,000 a year. Then there is the transportation study which the Greater Washington Board of Trade says it will unveil this spring. That study is partially funded by Mr. Hazel and also relies on input from his Institute for Public Policy. Are we to believe these are objective studies?

This project is the pipe dream of a bunch of developers. The idea that it could be a parkway like the Mt. Vernon Parkway within a 450´ wide right-of-way is ludicrous. The Mt. Vernon Parkway has a river for a buffer on one side and has no trucks. With only 450´ there is no room for the "park" in the parkway.

Limited access? The last limited access road in Prince William County was the Rt. 234 bypass. It started with 4 exits and wound up with something like 10.

It´s unrealistic that anyone would even think of another toll road after the Dulles Greenway fiasco, especially with such a low traffic flow as a Western Corridor would have.

The big gap in reality comes in the recently announced reduction in cost estimates. This was a $1.5 billion dollar project. VDOT would have us believe that they just found out it would cost $400 million less, mostly from reduction in acquisition of right-of-way costs! Now that´s an adjustment of 27 to 33 per cent. That´s just not credible and it sounds like trying to make the foot fit the shoe. We all know that these projects have a way of always costing more, not less. We don't hear of cost under-runs. We always hear of cost over-runs.

And lastly, on Governor Allen´s announcement of support for this project in such an untimely manner before the study is finished. It has all the marks of a last minute decision of a lame-duck governor fulfilling campaign promises and setting himself up with support for his next campaign for whatever office in the year 2000.

The big question is
Who is Virginia going to listen to? The special interests who fill campaign coffers at election time or the citizens who vote?

We don't need a Western Transportation Corridor. It only diverts attention and funds from things we do need. The Rt. 28 bypass from Rt. 234 to Rt. 66 is a project which should have been built long ago. The county already owns the right-of-way. Also, Rt. 28 to Dulles should be completed in its second phase of grade separation at the intersections. And the George Marshall home is certainly a worthwhile restoration.

I ask that you look at the Western Corridor very carefully when it is presented to you. The purpose of an MIS is to evaluate a proposal to see if it is really worth going forward.

Thank you for this opportunity.

March 21, 1997
CTB Regional Meeting on 6-Year Plan

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