One Lee County bike crash changes many lives forever

Elena Quinonez felt a knot in her stomach. 

 It had been there since her husband left on his bike ride earlier that morning. Maybe it was stress? She didn’t usually work on Saturdays, but the beachside restaurant in Naples where she was a waitress was slow. She had just one table: two people for a late breakfast in the company of sunshine and the Gulf of Mexico. She ducked from view to check her phone.

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Be A PAL

As more people go on Arlington's Car-Free Diet, there are more cyclists and walkers sharing the street with drivers.  Whether you're on two feet, two wheels or four wheels, everyone needs to be a PAL to safely share the streets.

Being a PAL means being:

• Predictable - travel in a predictable way; don't make sudden unexpected moves
• Alert - pay attention to your surroundings and to others
• Lawful - obey traffic laws, whether in a car, on a bike, or on foot...

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10-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Safer—and Still Move Plenty of Cars

At first glance, it makes sense that wider traffic lanes could be safer traffic lanes. Drivers are prone to bad decisions and sleepiness and text messagesand fits of rage. Providing some buffer room seems a reasonable way to keep them from veering into anything else sharing the road.

But as Jeff Speck persuasively argued during our Future of Transportation series, the conventional engineering wisdom that favors 12-foot traffic lanes to 10-foot lanes is deadly wrong—especially for city streets. The problem largely comes down to speed: when drivers have more room, cars go faster; when cars go faster, collisions do more harm. The evidence cited by Speck on the safety hazards of wider lanes is powerful, though to date it remains pretty scarce.

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I Like the Bus: There’s something to be said for taking the long way home.

As a traveler, my competitive advantage is laziness. I truly do not mind sitting still in one spot for hours on end with nothing to do but read or listen to music. In fact those are three of my favorite things—music, reading, sitting. And I cherish when circumstances give me an excuse to spend my time that way, rather than worrying that I could be being more active, or productive. Because I am doing something productive—I’m going somewhere.

This sort of me-time can be achieved on many forms of transportation—planes, trains, and automobiles (ones I’m not driving anyway) but the one I most enjoy is the bus. Earlier this week, at The Billfold, Ester Bloom wrote that she enjoys the bus (Megabus, to be exact) the least of all methods of transportation, ranking it below “being dragged by the hair.” That’s okay. Life, and travel preferences, are a beautiful potpourri of differences.

But I like the bus. I like the city bus—especially as opposed to the subway, how it takes you through the streets instead of below them—and I like the long-distance bus. The Megabus and its ilk. The bus to me is a meditative space, a safe place, a bubble out of time and away from life that moves me gently from one place to another.

Maybe it’s because I used to live much closer to my childhood home, so the bus was the most logical and economical option. Most of my trips during college and a couple years after were shuttling between my old home and my new on that blue and yellow bus, stopping at the Love’s rest stop in Marshall, Michigan, with its odd assortment of snacks, clothing, and holographic religious posters for sale. I have to fly to visit my family now. The bus is better.

It’s cheaper. You can bring liquids. There’s no security. You just get on, and get off. The cost is more one of time (though depending where you’re going, if you factor in the time you spend getting to the airport and going through security, you may end up breaking even). And it’s time, I think, worth spending.

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$6.3 Million Contract Awarded To Improve Accomack County Road

RICHMOND, Va. – At its monthly meeting today, the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) awarded a contract worth approximately $6.3 million to improve a road in Accomack County.

The CTB awarded the contract to E.V. Williams Inc. of Virginia Beach, Va., to widen Route 709 (Horntown Road) between U.S. 13 (Lankford Highway) and Route 679 (Fleming Road) in the village of Horntown. 

The 3.99-mile project is in the Hampton Roads District of the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT).

The improvements on this major rural collector road include two 11-foot lanes with six-foot graded shoulders to accommodate bicycles as well as upgrades for drainage, signs and pavement markings.

The project is scheduled for completion in June 2017.

More information about the project is available athttp://www.virginiadot.org/projects/hamptonroads/route_709_reconstruction.asp.

The following chart tracks the dollar amount of major contracts the CTB has awarded in calendar year 2015:

In advance of each CTB meeting, VDOT Commissioner Charlie Kilpatrick also approves contracts up to $5 million in value. From the June bid lettings, the commissioner approved 19 contracts worth an approximate total of $17 million for construction and maintenance projects on Virginia’s interstates and primary and secondary roads.

Appointed by the governor, the 17-member CTB establishes the administrative policies for Virginia's transportation system. The CTB allocates highway funding to specific projects, locates routes and provides funding for airports, seaports and public transportation. The board normally meets on the third Wednesday of the month in months when action meetings are scheduled,

For more information:

• Final bid results and projects: http://www.virginiadot.org/business/const/bidresults-list.asp
• CTB meeting, times and locations: http://www.ctb.virginia.gov/meetingschedule.asp

Safety Projects Help Reduce Roadway Deaths And Injuries

RICHMOND  – Virginia’s Highway Safety Improvement Program is showing life-saving results. In the last decade, crashes with fatalities have dropped by 92 percent and injury crashes by 55 percent where 113 highway safety projects have been deployed. These projects, managed by the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), include improved traffic signals, better warning signs, rumble strips and other practical and lower cost safety improvements.

“While the total number of crashes in Virginia has remained steady at about 120,000 annually over the past eight to 10 years, the number of severe crashes has dropped significantly in that time,” said Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne. “This shows the coordinated efforts by VDOT, the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, the Virginia State Police and local and non-profit organizations are making an impact on safety. Virginia’s ultimate goal is to reach zero deaths on the state’s roadways.”

The Virginia Strategic Highway Safety Plan addresses some of the most common types of crashes, including those related to alcohol, speeding and failure to use a seat belt. The plan sets a goal to reduce deaths and severe injuries by half by 2030.

VDOT Commissioner Charlie Kilpatrick added, “VDOT continues to focus public dollars on projects that help prevent motorists from driving off the road, as well as those that reduce intersection crashes and improve bicycle and pedestrian safety. Practical engineering solutions combined with education and enforcement save lives. Safety is also a personal responsibility, in which all of us must drive without distractions and focus on the road, particularly in construction work zones.”

Through the Six-Year Improvement Program, VDOT has funds dedicated to improve the safety of roadway curves andinstall rumble strips to prevent motorists from veering off the road.  Funds will also be used for flashing yellow lights, enhanced traffic signals and better signal timing to help reduce the severity of crashes at intersections as well as separating bike lanes from traffic by restriping to enhance safety for cyclists, and reduce vehicle speeds and crashes.

For more information:

• Copy of presentation on VDOT’s Highway Safety Program is athttp://www.ctb.virginia.gov/resources/2015/july/pre/pres/CTBHwySafetyUpdate07152015.pdf.
• More information about the federal Highway Safety Improvement Program is at http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/hsip/.
• The 2012-2016 Virginia Strategic Highway Safety Plan is at http://www.virginiadot.org/info/hwysafetyplan.asp.

Virginia Outlines Process For Outside The Beltway Procurement

RICHMOND, Va. – Today, Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) Commissioner Charlie Kilpatrick briefed the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) on the process to determine a preferred procurement option for the Transform66: Outside the Beltway project. At this point, the Commissioner outlined that procuring the project as a design-build public finance or as a public-private partnership both remain viable options. 

“The McAuliffe Administration believes that all options for delivering large scale transportation projects must be explored,” said Secretary of Transportation Aubrey Layne. “We must deliver the right project with the right financing. The only predetermined outcome in this process is to ensure that taxpayers are protected.”

As a part of project development the Commonwealth developed a public finance option and draft term sheet for this project which outlines the benefits and risks of publicly financing the project. This due diligence will serve as a comparison to potential private sector proposals for delivering the project.

Recently VDOT in coordination with the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation and the Virginia Office of Public-Private Partnerships met with interested private parties to discuss the draft term sheet. In these meetings several of the private parties indicated that they could deliver the project with benefits to the Commonwealth that are materially similar to those outlined in the draft term sheet.

Based on these meetings Commissioner Kilpatrick has made a conditional recommendation that delivering this project as a public-private partnership may be in the Commonwealth’s best interest. The Commissioner’s recommendation will be reviewed and considered by the Transportation Public-Private Partnership Advisory Committee. Secretary Layne has called a meeting of the Committee for August 17, in Richmond, VA.

“At this point we need to see the next card,” said Commissioner Kilpatrick. “We are not ‘all-in’ on a public-private partnership at this point but we are interested in seeing if we can make something work.”

If the Committee affirms the Commissioner’s recommendation, then VDOT will issue a Request for Qualifications with the purpose of holding confidential meetings with qualified private parties this fall to confirm that they can deliver the project in a manner that provides benefits that are materially similar to the draft term sheet for the public finance option.

A decision on a preferred procurement will be made by December 15. Regardless of the decision, a public finance option will continue to be developed to ensure competition and provide the Commonwealth with an option to deliver this project.