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expansion of 20 percent or more over the last decade, was crur neighbor, Warren County.
Th£ past decade is projected to nearly repeat itself and “the greatest increase is again , projected to be in Northern Virginia.” The trend has been for homes and businesses to spread further out. Are we safely out of commuting distance?
Laiid use trends
Not* only has Virginia been losing its farmland and forests Ito subdivisions, highways and parking lots, “the rate of land loss has accelerated sharply.” And although growth-is driving this development, the report finds that the “rate of land consumption is increasing much faster than population.”
Rappahannock may not be consisted part of Northern Virginja, but we are part of the Piedmont. “Reflecting the threat * such rapid development poses to farming, the American Farmland Trust rankefch; an area of the Northern Piedmont that includes a number of Virginia countied as the second most threatened farming region in the entire country.”
Driving and
_ congestion
Most people in Rappahannock probably don’t spend as much time in their cars in traffic trying to get to work or to get home as the folks do in most of the rest qf Virginia. But the traffic and congestion and stories of road rage to the east and south of this county are as familiar as the daily newspaper and the nightly news. But this report may point to trends which might effect Rappahannock more directly.
There has been a tremendous increase in driving and congestion. Two prime causes according to the report, Where are we growing’ are sprawl and Virginia Dej>drtment of Transportation (VDOT’s) single-minded focus on road building to the exclusion of anything else, including the maintenance of existing
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