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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Example of route sign for Virginia's Secondary Roads

The Byrd Road Act was an Act of Assembly passed in February 1932 by the Virginia General Assembly. Named for former Governor Harry F. Byrd, the legislation was originally presented as measure to relieve the financial pressures of the Great Depression upon the counties, as the state offered to take over responsibility and control of most county roads, creating the Virginia Secondary Roads System.

Under state auspices, much was accomplished in improving the state's roads, most of which were not hard-surfaced when the system was created. However, lack of local control and accountability over roads became much more of an issue late in the 20th century, especially in fast-growing counties. Following a study commissioned by the Virginia Department of Transportation in 1998, which found the arrangement to be "unusual among the 50 states", the state legislature in the early 21st century was considering major changes to afford more local control in the counties over such issues as drainage, speed limits, and planning and coordination of roads with development.

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  • Tea, Taxes, and The American Revolution: Crash Course World History #28
  • 1925 MacMillan/Byrd Expedition, Reel 2
  • 4 Byrd on Rome

Transcription

Hi, I’m John Green, This is Crash Course World History and today you AREN’T going to get a blow by blow chronology of the American Revolution, and you AREN’T going to get cool biographical details about Thomas Jefferson or George Washington. But you are going to get me not wearing any pants. Mr. Green, Mr. Green! Did you know that George Washington might have had slave teeth implanted into his jaw? Yeah, I did Me from the Past, and while it’s fun to focus on metaphorically resonant details, what we’re concerned with here is why the American Revolution happened and the extent to which it was actually revolutionary. Plus, for the first time in Crash Course history, I have a legitimate chance of getting through an entire episode without butchering a single pronunciation. [Wouldn't bet your Sword of Destiny on that] Unfortunately, next week we will be in France and je parle francais comme une idiot. [Intro music] [intro music] [intro music] [intro music] [intro music] [intro music] [intro music] So, intellectual historians might put the roots of the American revolution earlier, but I’m going to start with the end of the 7 Years War in 1763, which as you will recall from last week was 1. Expensive, and 2. A victory for the British, including British subjects living in America, who now had more land and therefore more money. Right, so, in 1765 the British government was like, “Hey, since we went into this debt to get you all this new land, we trust that you won’t mind if we pass the Stamp Act, in which we place a fancy stamp on your documents, newspapers, playing cards, etc., and in return, you give us money.” Well, it turns out the colonists weren’t so keen on this, not so much because the tax was high because they had no direct representation in the parliament that had levied the tax. [Some things never change, eh, D.C?] And plus, they were cranky about the Crown keeping large numbers of British troops in the colonies even after the end of the 7 Years War. And then the British government was like, “You are inadequately grateful,” and the colonists were like, “Shut up we hate you,” [That old chestnut] and the British government was like, “As long as you live under our roof, [This old chestnut] you live by our rules,” and so on, but eventually the British backed down and repealed the Stamp Act. The repeal inspired a line of commemorative teapots, thereby beginning America’s storied tradition of worthless collectible ceramics. [atleast Beanie Babies double as cornhole bags] But, in the end, this only emboldened the colonists when the British tried to put new taxes on the Americans in the form of the Townshend acts. These led to further protests and boycotts and most importantly, more organization among the colonists. The protests escalated: 1770 saw the Boston Massacre, which with its sum total of five dead was perhaps the least massacrey massacre of all time, and in 1773, a bunch of colonists dumped about a million dollars worth of tea into Boston Harbor, in protest of British government decisions that actually would have made British tea cheaper. Oh it’s time for the open letter? [oh no! he's coming in hot!] Ah…..oh, that did not go well. [admittedly not your best work, John.] An Open Letter to Tea. But first, let’s see what’s in the secret compartment today. Oh, it’s a gigantic teabag. [not touching that] Hm. Let’s see what flavor it is... Bitter tyranny variety! [SleepyTime sure ain't gonna keep the fires of rage a'burning] Dear Tea, Like all Americans who love justice and freedom, I hate you. [You're harshing my Mint Magic mellow, Bro] But I understand you’re quite popular in the UK where the East India Company would periodically go to war for you. But, what fascinates me about you, tea, I mean, aside from the fact that people choose to drink you when there are great American refreshments available, like Mountain Dew, [Hey, like on Mad Men!] is that even though you’re stereotypically English, you’re not English. It’s Chinese, or Burmese, or Indian. No one really knows, but it’s definitely not English. You didn’t even have tea until, like, the 1660s. Posers. Best wishes, John Green So, The Boston Tea Party led to further British crackdowns and then mobilization of colonial militias and then Paul Revere and then actual war, but you can hear all about that stuff on, like, TV miniseries. I want to focus on one of the ways that colonists protested unfair taxation. Let’s go to the Thought Bubble. [Because Canadians are so unruly & disagreeable?] As previously noted, the English Crown benefited tremendously from the import of consumer goods to the American colonies, and one of the most effective ways American colonists could protest taxation without representation was by boycotting British products. In order to enforce these boycotts, the protesters created Committees of Correspondence, which spread information about who was and was not observing the boycotts. And these committees also could coerce non-compliers into compliance—which is to say that they were creating and enforcing policy, kind of like a government does. The Maryland Committee of Correspondence, in fact, was instrumental in setting up the first Continental Congress, which convened to coordinate a response to the fighting that started in 1775. This was back when congresses did things, by the way. It was awesome. Anyway, the Continental Congress is most famous for drafting and approving the Declaration of Independence. No, Thought Bubble. That’s the Will Smith vehicle Independence Day. I mean the Declaration of Independence. Right, that one. It’s not your fault, you guys are Canadian. [+ magnificently talented, ruly, agreeable] You’ve never declared independence. Worth noting, by the way, that the congress edited out more than a quarter of Jefferson’s original declaration, and he forever after insisted they’d “mangled” it. Anyway, I would argue the heavy lifting of the American Revolution was already done by the Declaration. In truth, by the time the shooting started, most of the colonists were already self-governing and had developed a sense of themselves as something separate and different from Great Britain— as evidenced by these "Committees of Correspondence," which functioned as shadow governments— eventually reaching out to foreign governments, establishing an espionage network, tarring and feathering loyalists and royal officials which, by the way is incredibly painful and dangerous to the victim, and even recruiting physicians to tell American men that drinking British tea would make them weak and effeminate. [If only they had Dr. Pepper 10] Thanks, Thought Bubble. Now, despite all this, about 20% of colonists remained loyal to Great Britain throughout the war, especially in the major cities that Britain occupied. Also lots slaves continued to support the British, especially after Britain promised that any slaves who fought with them would be freed. And it’s worth noting that while we generally celebrate the Revolution and see it as a step toward justice and equality, the people who most needed the protection of a government might have been better off and more free, if Britain had won. [whoops] Especially since Britain ended slavery well before America did, and, you know, without a civil war. Also, even though most Americans had come to see themselves as separate from Britain before 1776, the British certainly didn’t see it that way. They continued to fight either until 1781 or 1783, depending on whether you calculate by when they actually gave up or when the peace treaty was signed. So you can’t really say the American Revolution was won before the fighting even started. But the truth is, the American Revolution and the war for independence weren’t like this. They were like this. So, here’s what was pretty revolutionary about the American Revolution: The colonists threw off the rule of an imperial monarchy and replaced it with a government that didn’t have a king, a radical idea in a world that didn’t feature many non-monarchical forms of government. And, if you look at the explanations for the revolution, especially those contained in, like, the Declaration of Independence and in pamphlets, like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, there’s definitely a revolutionary zeal that’s informed by the Enlightenment. And that’s especially true if you focus on the idea of liberty, as many of the pamphleteers did. That said, if you look at the actual outcome of the revolution, aside from the whole no king thing, it wasn’t that revolutionary. Let’s look, for instance, at two ideas central to the revolution: property rights and equality. So the Articles of Confederation gave the government no power to tax, which had the effect of making sure that people who had property were able to keep it because they never had to pay the government anything in exchange for the right to own and use it. And that’s very different from taxation systems dating all the way back to, like, Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. And it’s probably not a coincidence that most of the writers and signers of the Declaration of Independence were men of property, and they wanted to keep it that way. So, basically, the white guys who controlled the land and its production before the American Revolution were the same white guys who controlled it after the American Revolution. And this leads us to the second, and more important way that as a revolution, the American one falls a bit short. So, if you’ve ever studied American history, you’re probably familiar with the greatest line in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Sorry, ladies. [some things never brickabracking change!] And, you also may know that at the time those words were written, a large segment of the American population, perhaps as much as 30%, were slaves of African descent who were held as property and were definitely, 100% not treated as equal to whites. In fact, the guy who wrote those words held slaves, and was fighting against a government who promised to free any slaves who supported it. Furthermore, women couldn’t vote, and neither could white men who didn’t own enough property— meaning that the government of, for, and by the people was, in fact of, for, and by about 10-15% of the people. But here’s the real question: Was the American Revolution what the historian Jonathan Israel called “a revolution of mind?” [Like in the Matrix?] Did it change the way we think about what people are and how we should organize ourselves? Addressing those questions will involve a brief foray into the history of ideas. Let’s study the Enlightenment! The Enlightenment was primarily a celebration of humans’ ability to understand and improve the natural world through reason. The Enlightenment had a number of antecedents, including the European Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, but what made it special was that some of its more radical proponents— like, Immanuel Kant, for instance— went so far as to argue that human reason rendered a belief in God unnecessary and, by extension, proclaimed that any belief in divine intervention or a divine plan for humanity was just superstition. Given that this was coming out of an overwhelmingly Christian Europe, this was a pretty controversial suggestion, and not all Enlightenment thinkers would go that far. And more moderate Enlightenment thinkers were also more willing to countenance hierarchical social and political structures. Like John Locke, a major Enlightenment thinker, formulated his version of inalienable rights as life, liberty, and property. And that’s much more traditional than arguing, for instance, that property should be held communally. And it’s no coincidence that the more moderate Enlightenment thinkers, like Locke and Adam Smith, happened to be British, and the real radicals were French. And the founders of the United States, were far more closely linked to those British Enlightenment thinkers than to the French, who influenced the French Revolution, which as we will see next week, goes swimmingly. But even if the government that America’s revolutionaries came up with didn’t overturn privilege or tear apart the social order as the French Revolution tried to do, it did make significant changes. America made sure that there would never be a formal nobility, except for the Count of Chocula. [and Gene "Duke of Earl" Chandler in the 60's] And, it recognized the equal rights of daughters and widows, when it came to inheriting and possessing property. [Downton Abbey wishes] Also, it created a world in which future countesses could rehabilitate their reputations in New York. But, the real seismic change was that after the Revolution, Americans came to view themselves as equal to each other. And, in the context of the 18th century, that was pretty radical. “Ordinary Americans came to believe that no one in a basic down-to-earth and day-in-and-day-out manner was really better than anyone else. That was equality as no other nation had ever quite had it.” And in the end, the ideas of the American revolution— ideas about property and equality and representation— are still hugely important in shaping political discourse around the world, and particularly in America. [particularly in an election year] And by America, I mean the United States. I’m sorry Canadians and Mexicans and Central Americans and South Americans. We’re provincial, okay? I mean, here in the United States, our Presidential candidates must know both how to wear a suit and how to bowl. But the American Revolution also reminds us— as the French one will next week— that revolutionary ideas and values are not always easy to live up to. Nothing challenges one’s belief in equality quite like becoming rich and powerful. Indeed, rare is the revolutionary who doesn’t become, on some level, like Orwell’s pigs, insisting that while all animals were created equal, some were created more equal than others. [at the very least tastier than others?] In short, if you’re going to base your new society on philosophy, you should try to found it on ideals that are as inclusive and humanistic as possible— because the people executing those ideas will never be ideal. Thanks for watching. I’ll see you next week. Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller, our script supervisor is Danica Johnson, the show is written by my high school history teacher Raoul Meyer and myself, our graphics team is Thought Bubble, [we love you, ThoughtBubbles!] and we are ably interned by Meredith Danko. [dba: The Interness or MTVCS] Last week’s phrase of the week was "Historian Feuds." If you want to suggest future phrases of the week, or guess at this one you can do so in comments, where you can also ask questions about today’s video that will be answered by our team of historians. Thanks for watching Crash Course, and as we say in my hometown, don’t forget That's how you get ants! [Do you want ants, John?] [slides away into the white-walled abyss] [music outro] [music outro]

History

The Byrd Road Act created the state's "Secondary System" of roads in the counties. Virginia's incorporated towns were provided a local option to participate, and all the counties in Virginia were given the option of turning this responsibility over to the state. However, Virginia's independent cities were excluded, typical of the Byrd Organization and its leader's rural priorities and political power base.

Only four counties of more than 90 initially opted not to join the system. Of these, Nottoway County opted to join the state system in 1933, and in the 1950s, Warwick County became an independent city and was then consolidated with another, forming the modern City of Newport News. (By the end of the 20th century, only Arlington and Henrico Counties continued to maintain their own roads.)

Generally, when an area became part of an independent city, through annexation, merger, consolidation, or conversions, the secondary roads passed from the state system to local responsibility. An exception was made by the General Assembly in the former Nansemond County, which like Warwick County, became an independent city (in 1972) and then 18 months later, consolidated with neighboring Suffolk in 1974. Under that special arrangement, VDOT maintained secondary routes in Suffolk until July 1, 2006. This arrangement eventually led to new conflicts over ownership and responsibility for the circa 1928 Kings Highway Bridge across the Nansemond River on State Route 125, which was closed in 2005 by VDOT for safety reasons. [1][2]

Accomplishments and problems

Variations in the quality of secondary state highways. All photos in this montage were taken on State Route 715 in Franklin County; some spots are unsuitable for small cars (left), while others are good-quality highways (right)

In the years after 1932, the state worked diligently on secondary roads. In 1932, there were only 2,000 miles (3,200 km) of hard-surfaced secondary roads, out of almost 36,000 miles (58,000 km). By 1972, there were only 400 miles (640 km) of unpaved secondary roads in Virginia's system.

The state's secondary roads system had also grown by 30% from its original size, despite the large geographical areas (and miles of roadway) lost over the years to expanding and additional independent cities and incorporated towns. In the years from 1952 to 1976, virtually all of the counties in the extreme southeastern portion of the state in the Hampton Roads region became consolidated into independent cities; Princess Anne County, Norfolk County, Nansemond County, Elizabeth City County, and Warwick County all became extinct, although as previously noted, Warwick County was never in the state secondary road system, and the areas of Suffolk that had been Nansemond County received a special exception to stay in the system for an additional 30 years, which ended in 2006. In most other areas of the state, additional towns became incorporated and/or converted to independent city status, and both groups grew in territory, primarily through annexations, such as large portions of Chesterfield County that were annexed by the City of Richmond in 1944 and 1970.

However, despite VDOT's (and its predecessor agencies') accomplishments, the relationship between the counties and the state highway officials since 1932 has always been somewhat strained. The 1932 Act took not only financial responsibility from the counties and transferred it to the state, but power and authority as well. Under the Code of Virginia, as amended, "The Boards of Supervisors or other governing bodies...shall have no control, supervision, management, and jurisdiction over...the secondary system of state highways" (§33.1-69).

Considering changes in structure, local control

Late in the 20th century, the problems inherent in this arrangement became especially apparent with regards to the secondary roads system in many fast-growing suburban counties outside incorporated towns and cities. A state-sponsored study in 1998 focusing on 14 of the fastest-growing counties identified such issues as drainage, speed limits, and planning and coordination of roads with development as those local leaders felt should be within their ability to control, while the authority to do so was in fact, held by a state agency instead. Citizens seeking accountability, accused both the various county and VDOT officials of finger-pointing. According to the report, "Such an arrangement is unusual among the 50 states."[3]

In the early 21st century, the Virginia General Assembly was considering legislation to allow some counties to choose to resume control and care for the secondary highways within their boundaries. James City County, with a population that grew by 56% between 1980 and 1990 according to the 1998 VDOT study, was reported by the local news media to be under consideration for a pilot project of this type. Similarly, in 2009 Fairfax County Chairman Sharon Bulova and County Executive Anthony H. Griffin proposed changing Fairfax County into an Independent City in order to regain local control of the county's secondary roads.[4]

See also

References

  1. ^ Aaron Applegate, VDOT, city of Suffolk battle over closed Kings Highway Bridge Archived 2006-09-28 at the Wayback Machine, The Virginian-Pilot, May 1, 2006
  2. ^ "Flooding blamed on clogged ditches". The Virginian-Pilot. 11 July 2006. Retrieved 30 December 2018.
  3. ^ O’Leary, Amy A. (April 1998). "Final Report - Beyond the Byrd Road Aac: VDOT's Relationship With Virginia's Urban Counties" (PDF). Charlottesville, Virginia: Virginia Transportation Research Council. Retrieved November 6, 2011.
  4. ^ Somashekhar, Sandhya (July 1, 2009). "Fairfax County Executive Suggests Converting to a City". The Washington Post. Retrieved November 6, 2011.
This page was last edited on 11 August 2022, at 05:23
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