THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, April 8, 1996 TAG: 9604080083
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
For Tom Fanning, Richmond's roads are beginning to look a lot like those in the Washington suburbs: bumper to bumper to bumper.
He is director of operations for Metro Traffic Control Inc., which broadcasts daily reports to 21 radio stations and two television stations in the metropolitan Richmond area.
Fanning moved to Richmond last year from Northern Virginia. At midday one Saturday, he sat in a seemingly endless line of cars and trucks, the fumes rising in small, dark clouds.
Fanning turned to his wife: ``I said, `This looks like Rockville Pike,' '' the traffic-clogged artery running from the Maryland suburbs into Washington.
But it wasn't Rockville Pike. It was a stretch of West Broad Street in suburban Henrico County, where the shopping centers, warehouse stores, office complexes, restaurants and automobile dealerships are shoulder-to-shoulder.
Traffic experts such as Fanning say what was happening on West Broad Street mirrors what is happening nationwide in a growing number of metro areas: rush hour is being replaced by traffic throughout the day, and some of the biggest traffic peaks are occurring not during the workweek but on weekends.
In traffic terms, Richmond is running ahead of the nation - in the wrong direction.
Compared with the rest of the country, from 1980 to 1990, the Richmond area experienced a dramatic jump in both vehicle registrations and number of vehicle miles traveled.
The area has 130 miles of roadway that are classified by traffic analysts as congested.
And even if every major highway project in this area is fully funded over the next 20 years, local congestion will double by 2015, said Howard M. Jennings Jr. He is the executive director of Ridefinders, which bills itself as ``Metro Richmond's Commuter Travel Service.''
Lynwood Butner, Virginia's state traffic engineer, says that while Richmond's problems aren't as bad as Tidewater's, and Tidewater's aren't as bad as Northern Virginia's, conditions around the capital are bad enough and getting worse.
Butner says a rising number of shift workers, students and homemakers are out running errands during the day.
``One thing we found in Chesterfield and Henrico is that the number of trips from subdivisions have gone up dramatically. Some . . . people are making eight, 10 and 12 trips a day.''
Many Richmond-area workers have moved farther from the city's core. The outlying counties have developed industries and office parks, and that, too, has significantly changed commuting patterns. Cross-county commuting from home to job has become common.
``There are people going to work in every possible direction,'' Butner said. ``That leads to congestion in every possible direction.''
Butner said environmental factors, construction costs and increasing difficulty in acquiring rights of way preclude construction on the scale that created the interstate system.
``We're going to have to make what we have work better,'' Butner said.
Carpooling, telecommuting, park-and-ride lots, mass transit such as the Virginia Railway Express that carries workers from suburban Virginia into Washington, and flexible work schedules are other avenues for relieving highway congestion.
Butner believes change will come slowly. Many motorists in Northern Virginia, he said, have come to accept being delayed for hours in traffic during their daily commute as a way of life. by CNB