While the scenarios that were identified specifically focus on transportation, they also are relevant to public services, non-transportation infrastructure, and natural resource protection. The region’s leaders have made a decision to explore different regional growth scenarios and their outcomes by working through potential future growth scenarios for each jurisdiction and the region as a whole.
The region is rapidly approach a significant crossroad in its transition from a largely rural area to one that is increasingly becoming developed and suburban. From a transportation perspective, currently forecasted revenues for transportation will not be able to fully fund identified future needs. Even with additional revenues that are, or are likely to become available, it is doubtful that the region can resolve its anticipated transportation needs by building more and larger transportation facilities. Given the current state of transportation funding and the forces that create travel demand, many badly needed regionally and locally significant transportation projects will go unfunded, placing additional stress on the facilities that do exist.
From a community development and services perspective, continuing to grow in a largely low density sprawl type development pattern is likely to worsen regional fiscal and service delivery issues. Additionally, important natural and community resources will be adversely impacted by a continuation of past growth policies and patterns.
The regional scenario planning process is intended to create a dialog on growth among the region’s leaders and citizens. The dialog will not only be focused on whether or not growth will occur, but where and how that growth will manifest itself in the region and what effects it will have. The scenario planning process will involve staff, the public, institutions, and elected and appointed officials from the five jurisdictions in addition to staff from GWRC and FAMPO.
Scenario planning provides a forum, process, set of tools, and measurable outcomes for communities of all sizes to contemplate future possibilities. It helps communities wrestle with the age-old growth problem of what to build, where by quantifying and qualifying policy decisions in easily understood and measured information. Modern scenario planning processes use quantitative (numeric) and qualitative (non-numeric) measures to help decisions-makers understand the effects of their growth choices on a wide range of community assets including transportation, schools, utilities, and natural open spaces. The design of the planning process is intended to create an open, honest and understandable regional dialog on growth in the George Washington Region and explore alternate futures for the region.
The scenario planning process that is to be undertaken for the George Washington Region will involve FAMPO and GWRC in partnership with the region’s five localities—Spotsylvania, King George, Caroline, and Stafford County and the City of Fredericksburg. The process also will reach out to the region’s citizens to receive input at key milestones and decision points. The intent of the process is to create an open, honest, and understandable regional dialog on growth in the George Washington Region and explore alternate futures for the region.
Throughout the scenario planning process, measurable outcomes will allow participants to better understand the effects of policy and other decisions on items including transportation, schools, utilities, and natural and open spaces. The process will provide the information necessary to separate growth myths from facts. As participants are able to clearly understand the effects of their decisions, the hope is that more sustainable regional growth scenarios will be discussed and that some degree of consensus will be reached as to the ways in which the region can make good decisions on growth and continue to provide a high quality of life for its residents.
The efforts undertaken during the planning process will connect with the next round of the region’s long-range transportation plan. The land use/growth pattern information created during the scenario planning process will be linked with the regional travel demand model and land use model. The base of information created during the scenario planning process will be applied to create alternative land use configurations as one input to inform the update of the regional travel demand model’s socioeconomic data, which is one of the two primary elements that affects regional travel demand and travel patterns. A land use model that is based on rigorous economic models (CUBE Land/CUSIM-M ) will then be run to enhance or confirm land use allocation results at the local level, and/or be used to link local-level outputs at regional scale prior to integration with regional travel demand models.
At the conclusion of the planning process, each locality will be given a local scenario planning model and a regional scenario planning report. The model will be a tool that the locality can use to weigh future growth decisions and the report will summarize the planning process, key inputs and decisions, outcomes, and recommendations. |
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