The battle over Rt. 15: harbinger of things to come

By The Board of Directors of Save Rural Loudoun

Angry interventions at the County Board of Supervisors meeting on Feb. 1 demonstrate why the County must act soon to reduce projected residential growth in Loudoun’s rural areas.

In that meeting, a dozen or so residents of the recently built rural subdivisions surrounding Lucketts bitterly protested the traffic congestion and dangerous driving conditions on Rt. 15 north of Leesburg and demanded that the County move forward immediately with the proposed $400 million expansion project on that road. Any further delays, they said, would make County supervisors responsible for future traffic injuries or deaths. They condemned “special interests” who continue to raise concerns about the potential impacts of the project on the environment, local historic sites, and Lucketts’ small businesses.

This is just the first of many such conflicts that are set to emerge in rural Loudoun in the coming years. The source of the trouble is clear: County zoning regulations allow too many new residences to be built in areas with narrow, low-capacity rural roads and other limited public infrastructure and services. The County estimates that each new rural residence generates an average of ten more vehicle trips per day on the local road system.

Between 2000 and 2015, the area around Lucketts experienced the most rapid residential growth of all Loudoun’s rural areas, more than doubling its population. Rt. 15 and connecting rural roads did not have the capacity to provide the same level of service to so many new residents, especially when the high volume of traffic from Maryland was also increasing.

This problem is rapidly expanding. In the past decade, residential growth has shifted to other parts of rural Loudoun. Between 2010 and 2015, northwest Loudoun accounted for 35 percent of all residential growth in rural Loudoun. Between 2015 and 2020, that share rose to 70 percent. As a result, similar conflicts have begun to emerge around Waterford, Hillsboro, Lincoln, Bluemont, Philomont and other small towns and historic villages.

The narrow rural roads around and through these communities are already heavily congested. Continued rapid residential growth, combined with large volumes of interstate traffic with Maryland and West Virginia, will make them even worse.

Based on current zoning densities, County staff project that “by right” residential development could add another 10,000 houses and generate 100,000 additional vehicle trips per day from Loudoun’s rural areas alone. This does not include the anticipated growth within the incorporated towns of Hamilton, Purcellville, Round Hill, Lovettsville, and Middleburg.

Everywhere in western Loudoun, the rural road system does not have enough capacity to maintain expected levels of service for the projected increases in new residences and traffic volumes.

The County government has two options. One option, the current status quo, is to do nothing more to slow residential growth in rural areas. If it stays on this path, the County will be forced to continually scramble to catch up with the inevitable demand for bigger roads and other public services, as it is currently doing in the Lucketts area.

The fiscal cost to County taxpayers of sticking with this option would dwarf the Rt. 15 project, amounting to billions of dollars. It would also spell the end of local farming, rural tourism, sources of clean water, carbon-absorbing woodlands, wildlife habitat, historic sites and scenery, and all the other benefits of Loudoun’s remaining rural areas.

But it is not too late to take a different path. Loudoun’s 2019 Comprehensive Plan states that the County’s policy is to “limit residential development” in rural areas in order, among other things, “to minimize traffic impacts and reduce the demand for additional public facilities and services.” The County government is currently in the process of reviewing and revising its entire Zoning Ordinance with the aim of bringing it into alignment with the County’s policy vision.

This “zoning re-write” provides the Board of Supervisors with a last chance opportunity to fix the problem of over-development of rural areas and avoid future conflicts like the current battle over Rt. 15. As part of this process, the County can and should reduce the maximum residential densities permitted in new rural subdivisions to ensure that the rural population does not out-grow the available public infrastructure.

Of course, pro-growth interests will lobby intensely against this second option, arguing that it would deny large landowners’ “right” to high-density rural development. They will continue to insist, in other words, on their right to impose huge new administrative and fiscal burdens on the County government and its taxpayers so that they can reap more profits from the destruction of Loudoun’s remaining rural areas. 

Under this powerful political pressure, County supervisors would undoubtedly face a major challenge if they chose to decisively implement the rural policy adopted in the Comprehensive Plan. It would certainly be easier to avoid short-term controversy and pass along the inevitable costs to future supervisors and citizens.

For the sake of the County’s taxpayers, of every citizen who values our farms, natural environment, history, scenery, and other rural assets, and of future generations, we hope they will stand up to the task of fixing the problem while it is still fixable.

This was submitted by John Ellis on behalf of the Board of Directors of Save Rural Loudoun. Save Rural Loudoun is a non-partisan, non-profit, grassroots organization that advocates for preservation of Loudoun County’s rural heritage.