Month: February 2014
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Dominion to Upgrade Security of Electric Grid
by James A. Bacon Without electricity, contemporary American civilization collapses. We depend upon electricity to operate the pumps that supply our water, to run the refrigerators that preserve our food and to power the economy by which we earn a living. That’s why, I believe, Dominion Virginia Power will have no trouble winning regulatory approval…
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The House Proposes Overhaul in Allocation of Transportation Dollars
by James A. Bacon In September House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, gave a major policy speech to the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce declaring that money alone cannot solve Virginia’s transportation problems. He called for a “new way” to think about those problems that relies heavily upon new technology and prioritization of projects by…
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Yet Another Coal-Related Mess
By Peter Galuszka More and more, “The War on Coal.” seems like “The War On Us.” Just a few weeks after 300,000 people in the Charleston, W.Va. area were without drinking water because of a coal preparation chemical leaked into the Kanawha River system, another spill involving coal could threaten the drinking water of Danville…
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Richmond Needs an Innovation District, not a Baseball Stadium
Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones has doubled down on his proposal to build a minor league baseball stadium in Shockoe Bottom, suggesting that people opposing his plan are “anti-growth and anti-economic development,” according to the Times-Dispatch. I can’t speak for other skeptics of the plan, but I’m certainly not anti-growth or anti-economic development. To the…
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More Good Questions about Self-Driving Cars
by James A. Bacon Nat Bottingheimer, a former executive with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), has been asking the same kinds of questions that I have about the impact of self-driving cars (SDCs) on transportation policy and human settlement patterns. Writing in Greater Greater Washington, he urges transportation planners to begin thinking about…
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Why Virginia’s Gay Marriage Ban Is Toast
By Peter Galuszka It’s happening faster than anyone could have imagined. Virginia’s constitutional ban on gay marriage by defining marriage as only between “a man and a woman” seems heading very rapidly down the hole. That was the upshot from U.S. District Court Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen in Norfolk yesterday. After a two-hour hearing…
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Matatus for America
by James A. Bacon What would happen if government didn’t subsidize publicly owned mass transit systems in the United States? How would millions of car-less Americans ever get around? It may be instructive to look at the example of Nairobi, Kenya, a city of three million that hasn’t gotten around to establishing a municipal transit…
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Feds to Mandate Smart Car Technology
by James A. Bacon The Obama administration has signaled its intention to require automobile manufacturers to install technology in cars that would allow them to communicate position, direction and speed to one another. The sensors would alert drivers to impending collisions and, in some systems, would automatically brake to avoid an accident. I’m not a…
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Squeezing More Capacity from Existing Roads and Highways
by James A. Bacon Thanks to tax increases enacted in 2102, Virginia has roughly $800 million more to spend each year on transportation projects. But that money won’t stretch very far if we use it all to build more lane-miles of roads and highways. An alternative approach is to invest in making our existing assets…
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Why Is Anatabloc Still Being Sold?
By Peter Galuszka One real question involving indicted former governor Robert F. McDonnell may well not be the issues about the ethics of public officials he raises. Indeed, according to Forbes and Slate, the real problem is that unregulated dietary supplements that McDonnell was promoting for his former friend and benefactor Jonnie R. Williams Sr. of…
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Strike a Blow against Income Inequality — Marry a Floozy
by James A. Bacon President Obama has made it plain that addressing income inequality will be the great theme of the rest of his presidency. Now is the time for all good liberals and progressives to follow his call — not just by seeking to tax the rich but by aligning their personal behavior with…