Circ Highway still road to nowhere

Even though they have little hope of succeeding anytime soon, state transportation officials are continuing to push for completion of the Chittenden County Circumferential Highway.

Only four miles of the envisioned 15.7-mile road have been completed after more than two decades of planning. No one knows when--or even if--the rest of the highway will be built.

The project is stalled for the simple reason that most of the needed funding has not been found. At least $60 million will be required to complete the entire route, but only about $15 million is currently available.

The federal government, which generally covers 80 percent of the cost of highway construction, seems unlikely to fill the Circ Highway's funding gap within the foreseeable future. Financing for the project is "even more problematic" today than a couple of years ago, said Michael Oman, transportation director for the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission.

Congress seems in no mood to increase appropriations for highway construction, Oman noted. In fact, the federal outlay for transportation projects in Vermont will fall well short of anticipated levels for the current fiscal year. The state had expected to receive nearly $70 million toward capital expenditures; it is now slated to get $10 million less than that.

But the situation is not hopeless, insisted Frank Evans, Circ Highway project director for the state Transportation Agency. He suggests that it may be possible to arrange an "innovative financing" package.

Under this approach, the state would issue bonds to cover about half of the project's remaining costs. The balance would be met by the federal and state governments in accordance with a matching formula.

Highway officials in Washington have already assured Vermont that this form of federal funding would be available, Evans said. Authorization for issuing the state bonds might be sought from the Vermont Legislature in 1995, Evans adds.

While it is too soon to know how lawmakers will react to such a proposal, at least some of them will probably be unenthusiastic about increasing the state's debt burden. Those lobbying on behalf of the Circ Highway are neither numerous nor particularly vocal.

The Burlington-area business community has also not mounted a full-scale campaign in support of the road's completion. Whatever economic benefits the full-length highway might produce will probably be felt more in specific locales than in the county as a whole, suggests Oman.

New companies' decisions about where to locate their operations may well be affected by the Circ Highway, the regional transportation planner explains. Business developers could bypass parts of Williston and Essex, for instance, if the road remains largely unfinished. Traffic congestion is already becoming a serious problem on Route 2A between the Five Corners and I-89, Oman notes, and it will almost certainly worsen unless the Circ Highway is available to reduce the pressure on that stretch of road.

The completed section of the highway, which has been in service for two years, has succeeded in diverting traffic away from the Five Corners, according to statistics compiled by the Agency of Transportation. Counts taken last summer at three spots near that notoriously snarled intersection found the average daily volume of car traffic to be well below what would have been the case had the four-mile stretch of the Circ not been built. Up to 10,000 additional cars a day might now be clogging the Five Corners were the Circ bypass not available, agency officials calculate.

Meanwhile, the incompleted highway is creating problems of its own. For instance, stop lights put up in anticipation of traffic for a completed highway simply annoy drivers who must unnecessarily wait through a cycle of lights. Also, some of the traffic jam has been just shifted away from Five Corners. At the western end of the completed section, vehicles must get off at 2A, then make a jog onto Susie Wilson Road to get back onto Route 15. The flow of traffic on 2A, Susie Wilson Road and coming off the Circ stops as drivers wait through signals. It is partly for reasons of this sort that the Regional Planning Commission will again recommend completion of the highway in its forthcoming long-range transportation plan.

Chittenden County itself, however, probably would not suffer significant economic losses were the Circ to go no further than it does today, Oman suggests. The county currently has at least "the minimum (in transportation infrastructure) that business seems to like," he said.

Certain development parcels in parts of the area may come to be seen as highly attractive even if the Circ Highway remains only a four-mile loop, Oman adds.

"There could be some nice-looking sites in the South End of Burlington," he said, once the long-delayed Southern Connector begins funneling traffic into I-189.

If and when additional funds for the Circumferential Highway are appropriated, the first priority will be to build the section of the road that is to pass through Williston and connect with I-89. That portion takes precedence in part because of the steadily increasing traffic flow through Taft Corners in Williston, at the intersection of Routes 2 and 2A.

Planners would next focus on completing the slice of the highway through Essex and Colchester into I-89.

With all those segments in place, the Circ would be connected to the Interstate at two points about 10 miles apart. And while transportation officials won't say so explicitly, that may be as much of the project as they can hope to complete within their lifetimes.

The final segment of the highway, due to run through Colchester from I-89 to Route 127 (the Northern Connector), seems the least likely to be built. Uncertainty persists regarding the right-of-way for this portion. Nearly all the land needed for the other parts of the highway has already been obtained.

The Town of Colchester has yet to decide whether to allow the Circ to slice through a couple of acres of Colchester High School property. The issue is a sensitive one, since a local citizens' group has rallied considerable opposition to construction of the Circ between I-89 and Route 127.

The very notion of circumferential highways is misguided and outmoded, argued Lea Terhune, a leader of the opposition. Roads of this type "bring about more sprawl and disperse development away from downtown cores," she said. "That's not what Vermont wants or needs."

Should a change in the projected route through Colchester be required, Terhune said that the project would then have to submit a new environmental impact statement and obtain another Act 250 permit. Such an eventuality would further delay, if not doom, completion of the final leg.

Frank Evans refuses to speculate when the full 15.7-mile Circ Highway might be completed. But he does express confidence that the road will one day stretch between I-89 in Williston and I-89 in Colchester. Construction of that segment will be carried out within the next 10 years, Evans firmly predicted.

Copyright Lake Iroquois Publishing, Inc. d/b/a Vermont Business Magazine Nov 1994
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