When Williamsburg Planning Director Reed Nester goes to ride his bicycle — something the avid cyclist often does — he does not have to ride far to see the effect of the Historic Triangle’s Regional Bicycle Facility Plan.
“The Williamsburg area is a great place to ride a bike,” Nester said. “There’s a big variety of places to ride, where you can just hop on your bike and go.”
Nester said it all goes back to the Regional Bicycle Facilities Plan, a guiding document created by all three localities in 1993. The James City County Board of Supervisors recently voted to approve an update to their section of the plan, while York County passed an update to its section of the plan during the update of the county’s comprehensive plan, which was passed in early September. Williamsburg updated its portion of the plan with the passage of its comprehensive plan update.
The review of the bikeways plan by the three localities has revealed a limited availability of funding for bicycle-related improvements. Williamsburg has money identified in its Capital Improvements Plan for bicycle infrastructure improvements, as does York County.
The bikeways plan identifies and develops a viable bikeway within the three localities by creating a map that can be used during road construction as a guide for where to place bike lanes and shared-use paths, as building them as a companion project to road construction is far cheaper than sending crews to a site with the sole purpose of adding them, Nester said. That method has been used to create bike lanes and shared-use paths throughout the area, including during the extension of Monticello Avenue into James City County.
Among the items on the map is the “share the road” designation. Those are the yellow signs along the side of the road with a painting of a bicycle with the message to share written beneath. They can be found throughout the Historic Triangle, including on roads like Back Creek Road in Seaford, Neck O Land, Chickahominy and Jolly Pond roads in James City County and E. Francis Street in Williamsburg.
Shared-use paths and bike lanes do already exist in some areas in the Historic Triangle. For example, Strawberry Plains Road and Ironbound Road already have them, as does a section of Mooretown Road in Upper York County. A bike lane runs the entire length of Centerville Road, where it intersects with a shared-use path on John Tyler Highway at its southern terminus.
Cook Road in York County, where 65-year-old Donald F. Brookshire was struck and killed by a vehicle in August, does not have a shared-use path, bike lane or “share the road” designation.
The James City County Board of Supervisors recently approved an updated version of the bike plan, removing that designation from Bush Neck Road, Menzels Road, Lakeview Drive and Racefield Drive as they are not recommended for cycling due to limited width and surface quality.
The bikeways plan outlines numerous proposed shared-use and/or bike lanes in the area along such arterial roads as Longhill Road, Old Towne Road, Merrimac Trail, Pocahontas Trail, Penniman Road, Rochambeau Drive, Richmond Road, Yorktown Road, Big Bethel Road, Victory Boulevard and numerous others. These projects struggle to find a green light in an age of dwindling funding for non-essential government services.
In a memorandum to the James City County Board of Supervisors from James City County Planner Luke Vinciguerra, he identifies the Longhill Road multi-use trail, shoulder bike lanes on Airport and Mooretown roads and bicycle facilities on Ironbound Road from Mid County Park to Jamestown Road as active projects canceled due to funding challenges. The lone project currently underway — and on the books in the future — is a multi-use trail on Croaker Road between Richmond Road and the James City County branch of the Williamsburg Regional Library.
A proposed shared-use path along Victory Boulevard in York County came with a $574,000 price tag. Though approval had been granted, it was eventually scrapped as the York supervisors worked through the budget process earlier this year.
Still, a corridor study remains underway on Longhill Road to determine the need for both bicycle and pedestrian facilities. Vinciguerra says in his memorandum that York County officials have expressed interest in bicycle facilities on Mooretown Road. He says updates to the Zoning Ordinance, such as requiring multi-use paths along major subdivisions and among commercial development, could help speed up the construction of the pathways.
Hope could exist in the form of grants from outside agencies. Nester said a grant in 1992 netted $920,000 for bicycle improvements, marking the first funding in the area earmarked for that specific purpose. Additional money from grants has helped further other projects in the area.
Prior to the recent update of the comprehensive plan, York County had last updated its bike plan in 1997. Since then, shoulder lanes have been built along Amory Lane, East Rochambeau Drive, Goodwin Neck Road, Mooretown Road and Old York-Hampton Highway. Additionally, a multi-use trail was built through Williamsburg’s Waller Mill Park from Mooretown Road to East Rochambeau Drive. Shoulder lanes on Capitol Landing Road from East Rochambeau Drive to the Queens Creek Bridge have also been completed.
Much of the current version of York’s Capital Improvements Plan, a guiding document outlining infrastructure spending in the county over 10-year periods, consists of scheduled equipment replacement and basic maintenance costs. Of the new infrastructure, much of the spending is concentrated in stormwater projects meant to alleviate water problems throughout the county. Some funding does exist, such as for a multi-use trail along Cook Road from Ballard Street to Surrender Road — preliminary engineering and design work is currently underway for that project.
In total, York County has $200,000 in funding set aside for bicycle projects, with another $200,000 coming to the county from the Virginia Department of Transportation’s Revenue Sharing Program.
The City of Williamsburg has outlined $25,000 in capital improvement spending for shared-use paths, bike lanes and share the road signs, though that funding isn’t slated to be available to the city until the middle of 2015 at the earliest.
The draft plan of the bicycle facility plan, which is a resource for both cyclists and motorists to familiarize themselves with areas already built out for safer cycling, is available here.
