Political Patronage

This state runs on it.

Governor Kaine just proposed his new budget to the General Assembly. Included was $305M for a few new construction projects for VDOT. The list included building a bypass around the small western town of Hillsville. Intrigued, I looked it up. The project is $24M to build a 3 mile long bypass around the town. The population is about 3000.

The traffic they are looking to reroute is on US 58. With the town only being a couple miles of I-77, about 15000 vehicles per day travel on US 58 between the town and the Interstate. Only around 5000 come out of town on the other side on US 58. We can safely guess that, for at least a while, that traffic won't change much.

Is this cost effective? How does it help the town? Will the economy of the town improve when cars no longer pass through it?

I live on a suburban street, and VDOT has measured the traffic on my street at 2900 vehicles per day. I wonder if we could get them to invest $12M to reroute some of this traffic?

I can only assume that this is a sop thrown to the rural areas to get their support. Otherwise such a project just doesn't make sense.