Year: 2012
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More Pavement or Smarter Traffic Lights. You choose.
Virginia has experimented with traffic light synchronization for many years with some success. Sequencing has had a dramatic impact upon congestion, for instance, in the heavily traveled U.S. 29 corridor north of Charlottesville. But the state is far from tapping the full potential of the technology. Traffic light sequencing is not deployed in all the…
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Virginia’s Cost of Living Problem
by James A. Bacon In 2011 the Washington region was the second most prosperous Metropolitan Statistical Area in the country when ranked by the average annual wage. But adjust wages for the cost of living, and the region fell to 18th place among the nation’s largest 51 largest MSAs, according to an exercise conducted by…
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Virginia’s Slipping “Best To Do Business” Rating
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in Business and Economy, Demographics, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Property rights, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, TransportationBy Peter Galuszka Old Dominion politicians and economic boosters love to tout the state’s typically high ranking in various surveys of the “best states to do business.” But the latest such ranking, by CNBC, shows Virginia dropping from first place to third. One reason is roads. “Infrastructure – specifically the state’s perpetually clogged highways –…
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Live Longer, Ride a Bike.
Riding bicycles is safer than most people think, and a whole lot healthier, argues bicycle commuter and activist Tom Bowden. With modest investment, biking could become even safer.
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Think Big: Let’s Make Virginia the Healthiest State in the Country
by James A. Bacon Virginia is a great state in which to live but it could be greater. We Virginians need to set bold goals for ourselves. One such goal, I would humbly submit, would be to make Virginia the healthiest state in the United States. That would be not only audacious, but it would…
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Recovery? What Recovery?
If it feels like we’re still in a recession, this chart, published on the blog of Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw, explains why. Cutting through the terminological differences of “unemployed,” “underemployed,” “discouraged workers” and the rest, the graph expresses the number of employed people in the economy as a percentage of of the total workforce.…
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Making High-Brow Art Accessible to the Masses
by James A. Bacon When you think of symphony, modern dance and other high art forms, Nelson County, Va., is not the first locale that normally leaps to mind. Bluegrass, maybe. Not Beethoven. But Nelson County is home to the Wintergreen Resort, and Wintergreen Performing Arts puts on one of the most marvelous music festivals…
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In Praise of Tar Heels
By Peter Galuszka Virginia is my state of choice although I am hardly a Virginian and have long had a hate-love affair with the Old Dominion. It is a beautiful state and well located, but there can be a certain problem with some of the people, especially in the capital area, who may think a…
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Can Technology Save Us from Dysfunctional Educational Institutions?
by James A. Bacon Tech journalist Michael S. Malone makes the case in today’s Wall Street Journal that technologies nearing commercialization will revitalize the American economy. Just as fracking technology transformed the energy sector, nanotechnology, big data, three-dimensional printing and online education will create a new wave of abundance, he argues in “The Sources of…
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Cheaper Yes. But How Effective?
Skanska/Branch’s new design for the Charlottesville Bypass shaves tens of millions of dollars off construction costs. But will it move traffic as efficiently as the original design?
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Quieter Roads Coming to a Neighborhood Near You
If you live near a noisy road or highway, help is on the way: The Virginia Department of Transportation is studying quiet pavement technologies. And according to an interim report to the General Assembly, new pavement surfaces deployed in demonstration projects near Williamsburg and in Leesburg “were “noticeably quieter” on average. If the noise reductions…
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4th of July Ruminations upon the Income Gap
by James A. Bacon America, we are being reminded on this 4th of July, was a lot more equal in the time of John Adams and Benjamin Franklin than it is today. Historical research suggests that the Top 1% accounted for 8.5% of the proto-nation’s income in 1776 versus 20% today — a difference that…
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No Stopping Rail-to-Dulles Now
by James A. Bacon The final obstacle to construction of Phase 2 of the Rail-to-Dulles project fell yesterday when the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors voted to fund its estimated $270 million share of the project. Now all four funding partners — Loudoun, Fairfax County, the commonwealth of Virginia and the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority…
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Hotter Than. . .
By Peter Galuszka …The Fourth of July. Sorry that I have to spell it out, but there are a number of climate change deniers at this blog, including the Big Blogger himself, so it may be necessary to make things simple. In case, you haven’t noticed, this Independence Day marks a period of some extreme…
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Freedom’s New Frontier: Basement Apartments
by James A. Bacon Let’s see… On the one hand, the economy is still in the tank, wages are stagnating and the cost of housing in desirable locations (near jobs) remains out of reach for many Americans. On the other, millions of homeowners, many of them childless, would love to monetize the spare square footage…