Month: February 2014
-
Two Studies Worth Checking Out…
Review of Disaster Preparedness Planning in Virginia Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission Among the key conclusions: “Virginia generally has strong disaster response plans in place, but the State should ensure that agency supporting plans are in place and corrective actions are addressed to facilitate the plan’s successful execution during a disaster.” “State and local…
-
Time for Better Scenario Planning
by James A. Bacon A century ago, developers set up street car lines to provide transportation access for inhabitants of the housing and commercial projects they were building. A new neighborhood wouldn’t sell if people couldn’t reach it. By necessity, transportation and land use planning went hand in hand. But when governments took over transportation responsibilities,…
-
Two Ways Municipalities Can Save Money
by James A. Bacon I’m sick and tired of the false choice between raising taxes and cutting services. There are many ways that enterprising localities can save money and/or generate non-tax revenue without hosing taxpayers or neglecting core responsibilities. Here are just two ideas that popped up recently. Street lights. Every municipality in Virginia operates…
-
Bacon Bits: Schools and Higher Ed
OK, people, you’re out of control. You’re generating way too much quality content that is disappearing into the ether because Virginia’s newspapers and bloggers simply aren’t equipped to cover it all. Once again, I find myself falling back upon the Bacon Bits format, just to ensure that readers know what’s out there. Advanced placement credits.…
-
Map of the Day: Wal-Mart Versus Downtown Waynesboro
Kudos to Luke Juday for his latest graphics in “Mapping the Commonwealth.” As an intellectual exercise, he overlaid Google images of ten downtown areas around Virginia with overhead images of nearby Wal-Marts. There was no particular agenda to the images, he says — “I’m not a big Walmart hater or anything.” He just wanted to…
-
Why Are Virginians Such Weather Whoosies?
By Peter Galuszka The other day I tried to book a lunch date with the Blogger in Chief but was informed that inclement weather was looming on the Old Dominion and he might be hibernating for a few days. Imagine my surprise this morning when I awoke to find a few inches of snow and…
-
Visualizing the Unthinkable
by James A. Bacon Combine the power of a Katrina-scale hurricane with the geographic proximity of a Hurricane Sandy, aim it at Hampton Roads, and what do you get? Old Dominion University professors Joshua G. Behr and Rafael Diaz cranked up their supercomputer to visualize what might happen. A “Sandtrina” catastrophe would extend way beyond…
-
What E-Cigs Mean for Tobacco-Happy Virginia
By Peter Galuszka A couple of weekends ago, RVA Vapes, brightly lit with colorful lights, held its grand opening in Richmond. It’s one of a rising number of new outlets that cater to “vapers” or people who use electronic cigarettes. There are plenty of such stores, many decorated in a 1960s head shop style from…
-
Bacon Bits
So much to blog about, so little time… New type of interchange. Later this month, the Virginia Department of Transportation will open a new “diverging diamond interchange” at the Zions Crossroads exit of Interstate 64. VDOT chose this configuration (see simulation above) in preference to a cloverleaf interchange because it economizes on land. The diverging diamond…
-
Virginia Missing from White House Climate Conversation
by Rachel Cannon On November 1st, 2013, President Obama signed an Executive Order “Preparing the United States for the Impacts of Climate Change” – the newest addition to the Administration’s Climate Action Plan. One part of the Executive Order establishes the Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience: a collection of state, local and tribal leaders…
-
Paving Paradise
by Luke Juday How much space does a car take up exactly? The answer, of course, is that it depends – on the design of the place, the type of driving going on, the density, the tendency of the population to build new lanes and parking lots everywhere, etc. The answer is important because people…
-
Tar Heel Grief Just Down the Road
—
by
in Business and Economy, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Health Care, Housing, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, LGBQT, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Water-waste waterBy Peter Galuszka It’s sad to see two states to which I have personal ties – North Carolina and West Virginia — in such bad ways. The latest raw news comes from the Tar Heel state where we are seeing the handiwork of hard-right- Gov. Pat McCrory who has been on a tear for a…
-
Time to Overhaul Traffic Engineering Guidelines
by James A. Bacon Employees of the Virginia Department of Transportation, like most transportation departments, see themselves as being in the profession of building roads for cars. The challenge is to move the highest volume of cars as rapidly as possible through a given number of lanes. Designing roads for the convenience of pedestrians, bikers…
-
Map of the Day: Dollar Density
Luke Juday has struck again, publishing a fascinating map on his blog, “Mapping the Commonwealth.” This one depicts the amount of household income in each census district. The greater the population and the higher the income, the higher the spike. Green indicates median incomes that are above average, red below average. (Check his blog for…
-
Keep ’em Poor; It’s for the Best
By Peter Galuszka The think tanks are spinning their lines now that Congress is considering raising the federal minimum wage. A Democratic proposal would hike the level from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 by 2016, putting more money in the pockets of 27.8 million people. As The New York Times points out this morning, think…