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The
Readers Respond
Letters? Yes, we still get them. Well, technically,
we don't get letters -- we get e-mail. Regardless, we’ve
been negligent about pulling them together. Today,
we catch up with correspondence over the past
several weeks.
Sprawl
a Statewide Problem
A-MEN to your article on "Tunnel
Vision"! Our elected leadership should be
ashamed of themselves for proposing a sales tax
increase which treats one symptom of our
malady while pointedly ignoring the bigger problem,
which is an approach to growth management which only
an ostrich could love.
First of all, explosive population growth is not
just a problem in Northern
Virginia
and Hampton Roads. Richmond,
Charlottesville,
and Lynchburg
round out the top five metro areas which had
double-digit growth in the last decade. This is a
statewide problem which demands the attention of the
governor and our legislators. Instead, we have yet
another toothless Commission on Growth and Economic
Development, which will not even have a report ready
until the 2004 session of the General Assembly!
Second, it is urban sprawl that is the cause
of traffic gridlock, loss of open countryside,
increasingly serious water shortages, and a host of
other problems. This is a crisis in search of a
unified, multidimensional solution. Instead, we are
offered a referendum on a Band-Aid.
Finally, we have a situation in which
Richmond
tells us that sprawl is a local problem, yet hides
behind the Dillon Rule in refusing to give
localities access to the tools required to control
growth. I cannot possibly imagine a more
dysfunctional relationship between a state and its
local jurisdictions than we have right now.
Bless you,
Jim.
You have hit on a topic that should be of stark
concern to every Virginian.
Terry Nyhous
Warrenton
Terrysteam900@aol.com
CyberHouse
Rules
Several
weeks ago, Bacon’s Rebellion profiled the Potters
School,
a “virtual” school that delivered distance
learning to home schooled students.
Jim
Quiggle
of
Washington,
D.C.
commented:
It’s not clear that the virtual school will revolutionize
education, but it seems it will create a healthy and
thriving niche that satisfies charter school types,
and creates a laboratory that traditional high
schools will observe and cannibalize when
convenient. Good story.
Broadband
Everywhere
In
this piece, Bacon’s Rebellion explored the
difficulties of extending broadband
telecommunications service throughout the state and
the obstacles to even mapping telecommunications
infrastructure. As a starting point, I suggested
that the governor’s office assemble the top
telecom executives in the state to work out the
issues.
One
reader, who asked not to be identified, noted that
North
Carolina,
is a step ahead of Virginia.
While the Old Dominion studies the issues, the
Tarheels set up a Rural
Internet Access Authority in 2000. Among other
things, the authority has hired KPMG to create an
inventory of North Carolina’s
telecommunictions infrastructure, including:
-
Telephone
company wire centers, their service areas and
the full range of services they provide
-
Cable
television companies, their distribution
locations, the service areas and services they
offer
-
Cellular
companies operating in the state, their coverage
areas and the methods of access they offer
-
Fixed
wireless services and transmission frequencies
-
Companies
that provide satellite services, the nature of
those services and coverage are
-
The
ability of radio and television stations to
transmit digital data signals
-
Federal,
state or local government networks and
applications that can be used or made available
to the public
In
a follow-up piece, Pipe
is Cheap, I elaborated upon an idea floated by
Gov. Mark Warner during his election campaign to
install fiber-optic cable wherever the state built
new roads. As long as the road right-of-way was
being dug up, the cost of laying the conduit was a
marginal additional cost. I proposed extending the
idea to anyone who dug up roads or utility lines for
any reason. The existence of the conduit, I
suggested, would significantly reduce the cost for
anyone who wanted to run a fiber-optic line through
it.
Just
a couple of problems, retorted another reader, who
also preferred not to be identified. The cost of
running conduit is higher than I had reckoned
because hand holes must be installed at periodic
intervals in order to come back later and string the
fiber-optic cable. Additionally, the task of pulling
cable through the conduit is more labor-intensive
than I’d realized.
Specifically, if they place ten
miles of a large fiber in conduit, the average cost
is approximately $13.50 per foot. If they direct
bury the same size cable over the same distance the
average cost is $6.50 per foot. Thus the cost of the
conduit incrementally is $7.00 per foot. If the
conduit were provided, the cost of $6.50 per foot
would be approximately the same because of the labor
involved to get into the conduit, pull the cable,
etc.
OK,
bad idea. Cross that one off the list.
Car(pool)
Crash
In
this column, I described the steady decline of
carpooling in Virginia,
citing U.S. Census data from 1990 and 2000. I
reproduced Census Tables indicating how Virginians
got to work, whether by driving solo, taking mass
transit, walking, carpooling, etc. Be careful with
that data, warned Steve Toler:
I read your article with much interest,
especially since I commuted from
Virginia
Beach
to downtown
Norfolk
daily for over six years. You realize that the data
you're quoting is compiled from the census long form
and is, therefore, a representative sample that is
projected. …
Since the long form is supplied
on a limited basis, the respondent could well
misrepresent the data ("I'll get this out of
the way as fast as I can") and underestimate
the time. I, for one, traveled 17 miles one way and
it typically took 40 minutes. A more acceptable form
of modeling would be from a random sample base using
diaries - much like the way radio station
listenership is determined.
At any rate, still and all, "good stuff."
Stephen E. Toler
Managing Principal
Mosbygrey LLC
www.mosbygrey.com
Th…Th…Th…That’s
all, folks!
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