Category: Transportation
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How to Inconvenience Drivers and Punish Businesses for No Discernible Reason
One of these days, when Richmond’s Pulse service is running buses up and down the Broad Street corridor, and investors are redeveloping properties around the transit stops, Richmonders will be really glad they have a bus rapid transit system. But until then, residents of the entire metropolitan area can be forgiven for roundly cursing the…
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Business As Usual in the Old Dominion: Gridlock, Greed and Confusion
After LaHood report, more squabbling over Metro’s future. In the wake of recommendations by former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., are edging toward compromises that would reform the ailing mass transit system’s governance system and shore up its financing. LaHood’s proposal to shrink the Metro board from six seats to five is…
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Bacon Bits: Campaign Contributions, Bronze Parachutes, and Bus Subsidies
Herewith some follow-ups on stories we’ve been tracking on Bacon’s Rebellion: Election fallout for electric utilities: Tuesday’s election wasn’t just a rout for Republicans. The General Assembly will be a more hostile place for Virginia’s electric utilities as well. As Robert Zullo with the Richmond Times-Dispatch points out: “Thirteen candidates who signed a pledge refusing to…
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Disaster + Fiscal Insolvency = Puerto Rico
I can watch only so much CNN and MSNBC before I get nauseated, but I have seen enough the past day or two to be appalled at how the media are spinning the post-hurricane disaster of Puerto Rico: It’s another Katrina. The Trump administration hasn’t responded fast enough or aggressively enough to help the battered…
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Bacon Bits: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
U.S. still globally competitive. The United States has climbed past Singapore to become the world’s second most competitive economy — second only to Switzerland, according to the 2017-18 Global Competitiveness Report published by the World Economic Forum. U.S. strengths are its technological progress, capacity for innovation, and sophistication of its business enterprises — all private…
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Wakes Be Damned! The Potomac Needs a High-Speed Ferry!
Many years ago my mother wearied of living in Washington, D.C., so she traveled to New Zealand to check out a nation that was blessed by natural beauty, governed by English common law, and poised to benefit from China’s economic boom. She happened upon Waiheke Island not far from Auckland, which had been inhabited mainly…
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Uh, Oh, Metro Needs Another $9.5 Billion
Washington Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld has been pushing for $15.5 billion in additional contributions from participating states and localities over the next 10 years, including $500 million in dedicated funding, to make the ailing commuter rail system safe and reliable. That request has set off serious jockeying between Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia…
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Bacon Bits: Bristol, Big Ships, and Blue on Blue
Petersburg, Meet Bristol. The City of Bristol has been identified as “City A” in the recent report by the state Auditor of Public Accounts that scored even lower than Petersburg in a rating of fiscal stress, reports the Bristol Herald-Courier. Bristol hasn’t experienced the dramatic budget deficits of its fiscally challenged counterpart on the Appomattox…
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Washington Metro as Wealth-Redistribution Tool
Paging Karl Marx. Karl Marx, please. Three left-leaning think tanks think businesses should be taxed to subsidize lower Washington Metro fares. The progressive outfits — the Virginia-based Commonwealth Institute, the DC Fiscal Policy Institute and the Maryland Center on Economic Policy — have declared their opposition to a region-wide one-cent sales tax to fund the Washington…
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Richmond’s New Growth Corridor
In 1950, the population high water mark for many American cities, about 230,000 people lived in the city of Richmond. A few years later, when the city annexed a large swath of Chesterfield County, population peaked around 250,000. Then, as suburbanization took hold and average household size shrank, the population declined steadily over the following…
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Yippee! Traffic Accident Stats Now Viewable Online
The Department of Motor Vehicles has posted on its website an awesome tool that allows website visitors to explore the geographic location of traffic accidents by individual city and county. You can drop back for a macro overview, as seen in the map of western Henrico shown above, or zoom in to examine precise specific…
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Another Useless, Irrelevant Debate
Ed Gillespie, Republican candidate for governor, has gotten himself in a political pickle. According to press reports, he has been blasting his Democratic rival Ralph Northam for backing the 2013 transportation tax package as “the largest tax increase in Virginia history.” But as Democrats have been pointing out, Gillespie was gubernatorial campaign chairman for Bob…
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Officials Celebrate Completion of U.S. 29 Projects
More than three years after the Federal Highway Administration halted construction of the Charlottesville Bypass on U.S. 29, state and local officials celebrated yesterday the opening of a package of alternative projects known as the Route 29 Solutions projects, the Daily Progress reports today. The Bypass was one of the most contentious highway projects of…
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Metro Sales Tax: Bad for Virginia, Worse for Loudoun
by Dave LaRock The Washington, D.C., Metro system serves three jurisdictions: Maryland, Washington DC and Virginia. The Virginia jurisdiction includes Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax City, Falls Church, and, starting in 2020, Loudoun County. For several years, D.C.-based interest groups have been pushing for a 1% sales tax increase across the region served by Metro to fill…
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Business Leaders Demand WMATA Governance Reform
An alliance of Washington-region business groups is calling for a fix for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) that would create dedicated funding streams for the Metro rail system and a restructuring of the authority’s board. Twenty-one chambers of commerce and employers groups outlined the proposal in a letter to the region’s political leaders,…