Transportation is basically about moving people and goods from one place to another or one activity to another. This movement is referred to as mobility. It depends on the capacity of the system. One component of the concept of being able to move from place to place is having choices of how to get this accomplished, otherwise known as accessibility, or having many options for travel. For a system to be considered a good system, there also needs to be seamless transfers between those choices - connectivity.
Thus mobility is composed of all three elements. The Commonwealth has developed performance measures to attempt to capture how well the Virginia transportation system moves people and goods from place to place, provides access to alternative modes, and is a seamless network.
Goal 3: Mobility, Accessibility, and Connectivity
Facilitate the efficient movement of people and goods, expand travel choices, and improve interconnectivity of all transportation modes.
VTrans2025 Objectives
◊ Reduce congestion for all modes.
◊ Ensure seamless connections between modes by providing networks of facilities that facilitate the journey from origin to destination and all connections between.
◊ Increase capacity for the movement of people and goods.
◊ Improve access to major activity areas.
◊ Meet basic transportation needs for special populations (e.g., the elderly, lower socioeconomic groups, and the disabled).
◊ Expand modal choices.
Performance Measures
Mobility, Accessibility, and ConnectivityMeasure / Responsible Agency
VDOT / DMV / DOAV / VPA / DRPT
Mobility Measures
Travel Indicator: transit ridership, VMT, AADT, vehicle mix, percent lane miles with V/C >1, miles and usage of HOV facilities, air service volumes
Capacity: lane miles, passenger and freight capacity, port capacity, transit vehicle revenue miles, miles of fixed guideways, miles of road designated U.S. Bicycle Routes, miles of HOV facilities, truck turn times. / √ / √ / √ / √
Accessibility Measures
Population with special transportation needs, population within 30 minutes to GA airport or 45 minutes to commercial airport, port channel depths / √ / √ / √ / √
Connectivity Measures
Number/usage of park and ride lot spaces, truck volumes at Inland Port / √ / √ / √ / √
Mobility
Lane Miles
In Virginia, there are over 5,000 interstate lane miles and over 21,000 primary lane miles, the 3rd largest state-maintained system in the country. The figure below breaks these lane miles out by VDOT construction district for a clearer picture of how they are distributed across the state.
Figure 1. System Lane Mileage (2006)
Construction District / Interstate / Percent of Total* / Primary / Percent of Total* / TOTAL / Percent ofTotal*
Bristol / 541 / 10% / 2,876 / 13% / 3,417 / 13%
Culpeper / 292 / 5% / 1,888 / 9% / 2,180 / 8%
Fredericksburg / 280 / 5% / 2,154 / 10% / 2,434 / 9%
Hampton Roads / 860 / 16% / 2,133 / 10% / 2,993 / 11%
Lynchburg / 5 / .09% / 2,759 / 13% / 2,764 / 11%
Northern Virginia / 645 / 12% / 1,357 / 6% / 2,002 / 8%
Richmond / 1,297 / 24% / 3,344 / 16% / 3,858 / 15%
Salem / 507 / 9% / 2,591 / 12% / 3,098 / 12%
Staunton / 934 / 17% / 2,476 / 11% / 3,410 / 13%
Total / 5,361 / 21,578 / 26,156
*Percentage may not add up to 100 due to rounding.
Passenger Rail Capacity
There are currently two passenger rail services, Virginia Railway Express (VRE) and Amtrak, operating in Virginia on the approximately 616 miles of track owned by either CSX or Norfolk Southern. Collectively, these two services carried over 4.5 million passengers during 2005. Without these services, there would be approximately 4 million additional vehicles on the highways each day, requiring the provision of extra lanes to accommodate the additional traffic.
The VRE is oriented toward commuter travel connecting the Washington, DC central business district with the outlying areas of Fredericksburg and Manassas. Ridership on both routes has continued to rise, from 6,500 daily trips in 1993 to over 14,000 in 2003, resulting in the 68 passenger coaches regularly being filled to standing room only capacity during peak commuting hours. It is predicted that VRE will be highly congested by 2007 and that the congestion will be unmanageable by 2008 if additional cars are not purchased.
Amtrak’s Northern Corridor regional service runs from Boston to Richmond and Newport News. Within Virginia, the service comprises 184 miles and includes stops at Alexandria, Franconia/Springfield, Woodbridge, Quantico, Fredericksburg, Ashland, Richmond, Williamsburg, and Newport News. Amtrak also provides services outside the Northeast Corridor, making connections to Chicago, Raleigh, and New Orleans, among others. Unlike the success of the VRE, Amtrak ridership in Virginia has been declining over the last decade. Annual boardings in 1997 totaled 906,949, peaked to 954,259 in 2000, and dropped to the lowest annual boardings of 803,695 in 2004. It is likely that this decrease in ridership could be due to issues of reliability, service speed and service reliability. However, nationwide, Amtrak ridership is increasing. In 2004, there were 25.1 million riders, up from 21.2 million in 1994.
Figure 2. VRE Annual Ridership Figure 3. Amtrak Annual Ridership (in Virginia)
Transit Vehicle Revenue Miles
Revenue miles, also known as vehicle service miles, represents the miles that a transit vehicle operates while available for service to passengers. Since it takes into account the number of buses traveling over a route over the course of a day, it is a measure of quality of transit service as well. Statewide, in 2004, the average revenue miles per capita was 9.5, as indicated in the figure below. Transit vehicle revenue miles for fiscal year 2004 exceeded 70 million miles. The three major urban areas, Hampton Roads, Northern Virginia and Richmond account for 88.4% of the revenue miles for the state.
Figure 4. Vehicle Revenue Miles Per Capita
Fixed Guideways
At present, there are two fixed-guideway regional rail services in Virginia, both in the Northern Virginia area: the Northern Virginia portion of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) Metrorail system and the two commuter rail lines of Virginia Railway Express (VRE). The Metrorail system includes 206.8 miles of track and 78 stations. The commuter rail service, VRE, operates over an 80-mile system, owned by CSX (to Manassas) and Norfolk Southern (to Fredericksburg) and includes 18 stations.
Transit Ridership
The existing public transportation services in Virginia are an integral part of the Commonwealth’s multimodal transportation system, serving more than 600,000 Virginians per day and growing. Between 1999 and 2004, passenger trips for the 45 transit operators increased from 144 million to 168 million annual trips for an 8.6% increase over the five year period, as is indicated in the chart below. While much of this growth took place in the larger, more populated urban areas, increased transit usage has also taken place in the small urban and rural areas where service is provided. However, there is a growing need for new transit services in cities and counties that currently lack any services. In total, 48 of the Commonwealth’s 136 counties and cities (35%) do not have any local transit services. Conversely, 83% of the Commonwealth’s population lives in a jurisdiction that does provide some form of local transit service.
Figure 5. Transit Passenger Trips (1999-2004)
For many Virginia citizens, access to private vehicles is limited. In 2004, there were almost 200,000 households (6.5%) in Virginia without an automobile, down from 7.5% in 2000 (2003 US 9%). This lack of access to a vehicle occurs equally across the state but is particularly critical in the 35% of cities and counties where public transit service does not exist.
Port Capacity
Freight is expected to more than double at the Port of Virginia. In order to ensure the Port is able to handle this increase, Norfolk International Terminal, the largest terminal in Virginia, is being expanded. A private marine terminal will be constructed by 2007 in Portsmouth to bridge the capacity gap that will be present until the Port of Virginia’s 4th marine terminal at Craney Island can be built in 2017.
Under current conditions, existing Port capacity is limited to three million TEUs per year. The new APM/Maersk terminal will add capacity for an additional 2.1 million TEUs and the new Craney Island Marine Terminal will add capacity for another 2.5 million TEUs, at which time Virginia’s Hampton Roads ports will be able to accommodate 7.6 million TEUs per year.
HOV Facilities
In the early 1960’s, the Shirley Highway (I-95/I-395) in Northern Virginia was improved to include two exclusive, reversible lanes, allowing vehicles with three or more passengers to bypass the congestion in the conventional lanes during peak travel periods. Today, that HOV facility stretches 28.1 miles and has become one of the most successful HOV facilities in the country. In 2005, there were 23,990 people traveled in 8,325 vehicles in the two HOV lanes during the morning peak period, compared to 21,660 people in 19,890 vehicles in the four conventional lanes.
The Northern Virginia HOV system also includes 27.8 miles on I-66 and 14.9 miles on the Dulles Toll Road, for a total of 70.8 miles of HOV facilities in the region.
In addition, there are 66.8 miles of HOV facilities on I-64, I-564, I-264, and Rte. 337 in the Hampton Roads area, extending both on the Southside and the Peninsula. The majority of the Hampton Roads system is made up of concurrent lanes, those adjacent to the regular flow of traffic without barrier separators, and restricted to HOV-2 vehicles only during peak congestion periods.
Figure 7. Miles of HOV Facilities (2005)
(The chart above does not include the 0.1 mile segment on Rte. 337 and combines the I-64 facilities on Southside and Peninsula into one total.)
Bicycle Facilities
Virginia has more miles of US Numbered Bicycle Route (USBR) than any other state in the nation, and is the only place in the country where two such routes intersect (in Hanover County). USBR 1 runs 274 miles north-south across the state, from Arlington to the North Carolina border in Mecklenburg County. USBR 76 extends 564 miles east-west across Virginia, from the Kentucky state line in Dickenson County to Yorktown in Virginia's Historic Triangle.
The Commonwealth is home to a number of other significant bicycle facilities, ranging from an extensive network of routes in Northern Virginia serving commuters, tourists, and recreational riders, to the Heart of Appalachia Bike Route in rural Southwest Virginia. The Virginia Creeper Trail and New River Trail State Park are world class off-road rails-to-trails conversions. The Virginia Capital Trail, now under construction between Williamsburg and Richmond, will provide a 54 mile separated shared-use path between Virginia's colonial and modern capitals. The first sections will be completed in time for the 2007 Jamestown celebrations.
To promote the many cycling opportunities in the Commonwealth, Virginia is involved in a cooperative effort to develop a state bicycle map, the first of its kind in Virginia. The map is intended to provide information about designated long distance routes, including rails-to-trails facilities; state parks offering cycling opportunities; local parks and greenways that may be suitable for young or beginning riders; and facilities "under development," including the Virginia Capital Trail, the Tobacco Heritage Trail, and High Bridge State Park. The map will also indicate areas suitable for off-road riding, and will direct users to websites offering a wealth of additional information, such as contact information for the state's organized cycling clubs.
Airport Service Volumes
Annual Service Volume (ASV) is a measure that provides a reasonable estimate of the yearly capacity of an airport. It reflects the differences in runway use, aircraft mix, weather conditions, etc., that would reasonably be encountered over
a year’s time. Industry practice suggests that at 60% of capacity, an airport should begin planning for capacity improvements. It is further recommended that at 80% of capacity, the improvements should be in completed and operational. As of 2005, there is substantial surplus capacity at most Virginia airports. However, notable exceptions include Newport News-Williamsburg International, Norfolk International and Richmond International airports.
In 2004, there were 22,782,714 enplanements (persons) at the 9 commercial airports in Virginia. Dulles International Airport, the Virginia airport with the largest number of enplanements, had 1.55 % of the total US enplanements and is the 16th busiest airport in the nation.
Average Traffic on Highways
The Average Annual Daily Traffic (AADT) is the total number of vehicles on a highway segment in a year, divided by the number of days in the year. Statewide, in 2005, the total AADT is 45,834 for interstates and 13,122 for primary roadways. Of course, actual AADT varies widely across the state. For instance, the AADT on Northern Virginia interstates is 108,013, while the AADT on interstates in the Culpeper District is 23,171. The chart below graphically depicts the AADT by construction district by system for those systems operated by the state.
Figure 8. Average Annual Daily Traffic by VDOT Construction District by System (2005)