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Richmond
is Great, but the Driving Gets Old
Congratulations
on a very well thought out piece regarding our
transportation system/land use practices ("Driving
Around in Circles," December 12, 2004.) In
small city Corning, N/Y., we lived no more than one
mile away from school, work, main street shopping
& eating, church, library, etc. We probably did
not walk as much as we could have or should have,
but everything was quick and easy access.
Contrast
that to my lifestyle in Richmond's far West End,
where everything is at least a three mile-plus
drive. A round trip to downtown is 36 miles. I’m
putting way more miles on the car and am beginning
to learn how to avoid certain traffic patterns at
congested times of day. Overall, I am enjoying
Richmond, but I am certainly not enjoying all the
time I spend in the car. And we have it good
compared to our neighbors in NOVA and Hampton Roads.
Thomas
C. Wood
The
YorkGroup LLC
Richmond
woodtc@comcast.net
Smart
Growth Not So Smart
Once
upon a time I bought the arguments made by smart
growth advocates, but no longer. They are now
claiming that their policies will solve everything
from traffic congestion to pollution to obesity.
Once I became suspicious, I started looking for
examples where the effects of their policies could
be seen, or had been studied academically, and I
found none, or none that were conclusive. Now I
found myself suspecting a scam run by liars.
For
example, you state that road development only
benefits a handful of big developers, that scattered
low density development causes people to drive
longer distances, and we should manage demand by
various methods. The methods you suggest do not in
fact reduce demand. There are no less
congested routes. Rush hour already extends from
4:30 a.m. until 10 a.m. Flex cars amounts to
changing vehicles, not reducing demand. Sharing
rides does work, but the most efficient form of ride
sharing, jitneys, are illegal because they compete
with taxis.
It
is not a handful of developers that are clogging our
highways, it is us. Even the smart-growth people
admit that half of our sprawl is caused by increased
land use per person, and half is caused by
population growth. This implies that, at best, smart
growth can reduce sprawl by a little more than half
its current rate, however you measure sprawl. The
Brookings Institution just released a report that
says only half of all the buildings that will exist
in 2030 have been built yet.
No
one wants to be told there are no good answers, but
I believe we are pulling a giant sock over our eyes.
We are going to need a lot more roads, and no other
answer will suffice.
Some
recent studies have concluded that sprawl reduces
pollution because cars in congested conditions
pollute more than cars operating at their designed
speed. The same studies suggest that because sprawl
introduces new destinations, new stores, new jobs
etc., that these new trips divert traffic that
otherwise would have gone to the center and
therefore reduce congestion. Spreading traffic
out in time by extending rush hour has exactly the
same effect as spreading out traffic in space. If
the population was uniformly distributed across our
vast open spaces we would have plenty of roads
and no congestion, in other words we need more
sprawl.
Of
course, we can reduce pollution and double our road
space by making smaller cars that are designed to
travel 25 mph and don't need 300 HP, but the public
won't buy it. (I drive a hybrid). One reason lots
are bigger is that families now have multiple
vehicles to park (I have six, all for different
purposes, four for the farm). This is a reflection
of massively increased affluence since the 1950's.
Larger yards are also a requirement imposed by smart
growth advocates in a misguided attempt to force
people to buy what they don't want.
Ray
Hyde
Ashby
Glen Farm
Delaplane
Ray.Hyde.ctr@osd.mil
Don't
Believe the Propaganda about Suburban Sprawl
In
your recent column about Virginia's transportation
funding crisis, you wrote: "Until we achieve
Fundamental Change in our scattered, haphazard,
pedestrian-toxic patterns of development, no amount
of funding, no number of highway projects and no
amount of mass transit, will relieve traffic
congestion for an appreciable length of time.
Indeed, there is an ample body of theory and
evidence to suggest that roads create their own
demand by lowering the cost for households and
businesses to scatter their locations over ever
greater land masses.
You add: "Without Fundamental Change, spending
more money on transportation projects does little to
improve mobility and access. It only postpones the
inevitable reckoning--at considerable cost to
taxpayers."
You seem to be buying too much of the propaganda
from Ed Risse and his chief employer, the Piedmont
Environmental Council, which stands on its high
horse in Horse Country seeking to rein in the
suburban lifestyle of millions, while their wealthy
financiers live the "scattered, dysfunctional
settlement patterns" they decry.
The reality is that growth is going to happen and
the kind of growth that is outpacing density-packed
growth is suburban growth--complete with two car
garages and large lots. This means we need more
highways to meet demand, as well as mass transit,
and the best form of mass transit for these far
flung areas is bus rapid transit and carpooling--not
rail.
This means we need more funding. Gov. Mark Warner's
transportation proposal is a start, but not a total
solution. It
would help if we stopped debaying whether it's roads
or rail and debating issues of growth and stop the
delusion that road building is the cause of the
suburban "sprawl problem."
Roads do not create suburbia, they facilitate
suburbia much like any infrastructure improvement
(i.e. schools and power lines). Roads, schools,
sewers, power lines, even broadband are outgrowths
of growth.
Look at Montgomery County, Md., as an example of a
suburban county much like Fairfax or Prince William.
Since the 1960s, Montgomery has either removed or
failed to build about 117 miles of master-planned
freeways, and since the 1970s has imposed adequate
public facilities ordinances, impact fees and heavy
land use densification around Metro stations and
creation of a 90,000-acre "Agricultural
Reserve" by down- zoning farmers and allowing
them to sell their development rights in order to
densify other parts of the county. Montgomery County
has not built a new road on its own since 1987 and
now spends 50 percent of its transportation funds on
transit.
Still, only 13 percent of Montgomery commuters use
transit, which is not much different than it was in
1990 and just a touch above the 11 percent in
Fairfax County, which only now is trying to densify
its train stations. In addition, despite all these
government efforts, Montgomery County grew from
about 400,000 residents in the late 1960s to nearly
1 million today.
A casual observer who has no knowledge of all these
land use terms would think Montgomery and Fairfax
are equal. Both have bad traffic problems and
portable units at schools and both have people
complaining about too much growth, but growth still
occurs.
Another reason we have scattered development is that
farming is becoming less and less economical in
places such as Spotsylvania, Stafford and Loudoun
counties. As jobs move out to Northern Virginia,
farmers and other landowners can cash in big by
selling to developers who are trying to meet
unprecedented demand for suburban homes. Plus, many
of these farmers need to sell to a developer to
avoid the death tax.
Developer interests in Virginia have also
successfully killed efforts to create impact fees or
transferable development rights. Instead of seeking
legislation to replace proffers with impact
fees--including for by-right development--and
seeking TDRs, the PEC and its political allies seek
legislation year after year to tie impact fees to
adequate facilities ordinances, the latter of which
have not staved growth at all in Maryland or
other locations.
I'm sure skeptics will refute what I am saying by
citing Arlington as an example of how density
packing at Metro stations is a success. I am finding
that too many people in Virginia are looking at
Arlington as example of how "everywhere"
should be. Arlington's "success" ignores
the reality that 55 percent of its residents drive
to work alone, according to the 2000 census, and the
reason rail transit works so well there is because
Arlington has more jobs than residents and Arlington
is in the urban core of D.C. It was once actually
part of the District of Columbia.
Arlington, indeed, is building high rises and
townhouses, but mostly for Yuppies and double-income
no kids types. Plus, density packing drives up the
prices of single family homes, of which few are even
built in Arlington.
So, it is smart growth that in essence drives the
two-income couple with kids out to the exurbs.
Hence, Arlington has no demand for new schools and
ball fields.
We
must look not to Arlington but Maryland to see that
suburbanization, traffic, and overcrowded schools
are the products of a hot economy, despite Maryland
giving extraordinary powers to its counties to
determine where and how places will grow.
Maryland's highest transportation priority now is a
six lane freeway--Intercounty Connector--and Gov.
Bob Ehrlich has shown tremendous leadership in
getting other roads widened. On the other hand,
Northern Virginia's top transportation priority
appears to be the $4 billion Dulles Rail line, which
will not alleviate congestion or improve air
quality, nor obviate the demand for single-family
homes in the 'burbs. Plus, it will cost taxpayers
billions through higher tolls and subsidies, whereas
express toll lanes charge the driver for building
the new capacity (roads). But as long as we keep
arguing about growth we will forget that we do have
a shortage of new roads and money to build them.
This
is exactly what the PEC wants. They want us to be
fixated on a fantasy vision of how people should
live and work. Maryland, too, fell into this trap,
but now both Republican, Democrat, liberal and
conservative have caught up with reality--Maryland
has a bad traffic problem that can mostly be fixed
with new highways.
Meanwhile, in Northern Virginia, it appears the
political establishment is all too willing to drink
the snob growth Kool-Aid that the PEC'ers and their
political allies are serving.
Ken
Reid
American
Dream Coalition and Landowners Opposing
Wasteful Expenditures on Rail (LOWER)
Leesburg
kreid@fdainfo.com
Warrenton
Taxes Low but Not the Lowest
I
read with interest Mr. Rodokanakis' article entitled
"The Warrenton Miracle," (November 29,
2004) but his statement that Warrenton was "the
lowest taxed community in Virginia" is not
correct.
According
to authoritative data published by the Virginia
Department of Taxation for Tax Year 2002 (the most
recent available), 13 towns did not levy either real
estate or tangible personal property taxes.
In
the area of real estate taxes, 17 towns had real
estate tax rates equal to or less than Warrenton's,
while 145 towns established tangible personal
property tax rates equal to or less than that
imposed in Warrenton.
Ted
McCormack
Richmond
tedmac@erols.com
Rodokanakis
Responds
Phil
Rodokanakis responded as follows:
In my research for the
"Warrenton Miracle" column, I consulted
information made available by the Department of
Taxation in a survey entitled "Rates
of County and District Levies for County and
District Purposes For Tax Year 2002", which
lists the levies imposed by all the townships. I
believe that's the same reference that you referred
to in your message.
Town taxes are levied in
addition to any county and district rates imposed by
county authorities. So, a resident of a township
with a low rate might end up paying more in property
taxes than a resident of a township with a higher
rate, depending on the rates imposed by the county.
Be
that as it may, the table lists all the levies
charged by the towns, so I restricted my comparison
strictly to town levies. ... I have imported the
data into a spreadsheet and sorted it by tax levy.
You are correct that two other townships, namely,
Ridgeway in Henry and Eastville in Northampton,
impose real property levies slightly lower than that
at Warrenton. ... In retrospect, I should have
stated that "today Warrenton stands as one of
the lowest taxed communities in Virginia"
(instead of the lowest taxed community).
Philip
Rodokanakis
Oak
Hill
phil@philr.us
High
Marks for Marks
The
following letters were written in response to a
Barnie Day column about deceased Del. Hardaway Marks
in, "Gawwwn
but Not Forgotten," Nov. 29, 2004.
Thank
you for your kind remarks about Del. Hardaway Marks.
While I live in Spotsylvania now, I was born and
raised in Hopewell and Hardaway was my hometown
delegate for 1,000 years.
In
fact, when I was a freshman at William & Mary in
the fall of 1989, my very first vote cast in my very
first election (absentee, of course) was for
Hardaway in what would end up being his final term
in the House of Delegates.
Several
months after he left the House, I was having dinner
with my mom and dad in a Hopewell restaurant where
Hardaway was dining. He immediately recognized my
mom and approached our table to ask how her
mom (my grandmother) was doing. Unfortunately, my
grandmother had passed away some months earlier. He
commented that he had eaten many a meal in my
grandmother's house in less bountiful times. To this
day, I consider that very simple statement to be the
most accurate and grandest tribute to the gentleness
and magnanimity of my grandmother.
I
believe Del. Marks' simple, yet elegant, eloquence
and his fierce devotion to his constituents and the
Commonwealth should be the standard to which all
politicians in Virginia are measured.
Jay
Hughes
Chairman
Young
Republican Federation of Virginia
The
Last of His Kind
I
grew up in Hopewell so I had some familiarity with
Mr. Marks through my parents. ... I’m young
enough to say he always looked old as dirt but acted
very young. Your column was a fitting tribute to
this legislative giant. I think the
days of folks like Mr. Marks have now passed on and
I’m not so sure we are better off for it.
Scott
D. Martin
Director
Commerce
& Leisure Services
Rocky
Mount
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