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environment is the best environment that they’re going to have for a long time ... Then you have a situation where the transportation problems are significantly bad enough in the public’s eye that any solution is likely to be viewed as progress.”
Mr. Lockwood admits that “publicly it looks like everything’s been on the back burner,” but he insists that the need for a bypass has weighed on VDOT officials for some time.
“We’ve privately been concerned about it all along,” he said. “VDOT has never lost sight of the fact that we needed to look at both an eastern and western bypass.”
VDOT initiated a review more than a year ago, according to Mr. Lockwood, and hired a consultant in January to begin poring over previous data.
Still, to Mr. Miller it all smacks of behind the scenes maneuvering he considers typical of state transportation officials. The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act — known as ISTEA, or “Ice-Tea” — explicitly requires among other things that the public be involved in the transportation planning process.
Mr. Miller charges that Gov. Allen, Secretary of Transportation Robert Martinez and other officials in the Department of Transportation disdain the public involvement provi-# sions required by ISTEA and are “spearheading a national effort to repeal” the law.
“VDOT has consciously withheld information and has directed its consultants to truncate public involvement,” he said, in explaining the slow response to the reappearance of the bypass proposal. “Nobody knows about it.”
VDOT plans public information meetings around the area next week, beginning Monday, June 19 at P.B. Smith Elementary School on Route 605, from 4 to 8 p.m.
“That’s when we’re restarting up the public participation process,” Mr. Lockwood said.
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