Category: Transportation
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Embrace the Uber-Enabled Mass Transit Revolution
by James A. Bacon The Uber/Lyft revolution is beginning to transform public transportation around the country. Other than in Arlington County, where county officials are considering replacing under-utilized bus lines with subsidized Uber service, little of this dynamism seems to be seeping into Virginia, however. Too bad. We’re missing a major opportunity. Reports Spencer Woodman with The Verge: Both…
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Integrating Uber with Mass Transit
by James A. Bacon Arlington County is toying with the idea of replacing under-utilized bus lines in the northern part of the county with ride-sharing services provided by Uber Technologies Inc., and Lyft Inc. The service could offer rides to and from Metro stations at Ballston, East Falls Church and Courthouse Subsidizing the ride-sharing services would be…
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Spending Your Transportation Tax Dollars More Wisely
I had lunch the other day with Nick Donohue, Virginia’s deputy secretary of transportation, and he brought me up to speed on developments in state transportation policy that have occurred since the good ol’ days when I covered Commonwealth Transportation Board meetings. It was just a casual chat, and I wasn’t taking notes, but a couple…
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Metro Positions Itself for the Big Ask
by James A. Bacon Staring into a fiscal black hole, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Chairman Jack Evans is trying to nail down the authority’s 2018 spending plan by November, months earlier than usual. The move, suggests Washington Post writer Martine Powers, “is a signal that the transit agency is preparing to ask the District,…
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Rocky Mountain High Real Estate Values
by James A. Bacon According to a 2011 Wall Street Journal article, Aspen, Colo., could boast of having the most expensive real estate in the country. I don’t know if that’s still true, but I wouldn’t be surprised. As I sit here blogging at Ink! Coffee, looking upon a patio filled with Pellegrino umbrellas and…
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Virginia’s New Road Funding Process — Less Political but Still Opaque
by James A. Bacon In a rare bipartisan achievement, Virginia is doing something that no other state in the union is doing: basing its transportation investments on an objective scoring system. Earlier this month, the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) approved $1.7 billion to be spent on 163 projects selected through the System for the Management and Allocation…
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Uber-ization: a Painless Path to Density
by James A. Bacon Almost every square foot of Fairfax County that can be developed has been developed. If the county is to grow, there’s no place to grow but up. The county board of supervisors bowed to that inevitability yesterday, voting unanimously to change zoning rules that will allow greater density in 22 areas…
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Questions about Bidding War for FBI HQ
There’s a bidding war between Virginia and Maryland to snag a planned, 2.1 million-square-foot Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters campus. Maryland Governor Larry Hogan is in for $317 million in state and local funds, according to the Washington Business Journal. Governor Terry McAuliffe is in for $120 million. In both cases most of the money would…
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A Once-in-a-Century Opportunity to Get Transportation Right
by James A. Bacon Take the Uber revolution of summoning rides with a smart phone. Then add driverless cars, which eliminate the expense of paying someone to drive the car. Then overlay the emerging business model of Transportation As a Service, in which people pay for rides when they need them rather than buy cars that…
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Let’s Prepare for the Next Uber Revolution
by James A. Bacon Uber and Lyft, known mainly for providing taxi-like services, may find sprawling Sun-Belt cities to be the most hospitable markets for their new car-pooling services. That’s one of the conclusions arising from a new Morgan Stanley report on the proliferation of Uber- and Lyft-style services across the United States. The logic: Sun Belt…
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Frustrated by Government? FOIA Is Your Friend
by James A. Bacon The Virginia Department of Transportation’s plan to toll solo drivers on Interstate 66 inside the Capital Beltway seeks to address a complex transportation problem with no easy answers. Among the groups that have taken an interest in the project is the McLean Citizens Association (MCA), which is concerned that the tolls might…
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NoVa Legislators Balk at Bailing out Metro
by James A. Bacon Eleven Virginia legislators from Northern Virginia say they would block any “new dedicated funding stream or tax increases” to fund Metro repairs expected to cost $60 million. “We cannot in good conscience ask Virginia taxpayers to bail out years of mismanagement, negligence and wasteful spending,” stated a letter signed by House Majority Caucus Chairman…
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MidTown Tunnel to Open this Summer
A rare piece of good news on the infrastructure front: The new Midtown Tunnel between Norfolk and Portsmouth will open early this summer, months ahead of its scheduled December completion. Officials with Elizabeth River Crossing said they had made “significant progress” on construction, and expect both lanes of the second tube to be fully open…
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Siding with the Least Greedy Bastard
by James A. Bacon Elon Musk has a gift for spinning fabulous visions involving super-cool technology — everything from solar energy and rocket ships to high-speed rail and electric cars. But he has also mastered the art of scrounging money from government. According to a year-old Los Angeles Times article, his enterprises had racked up some $4.9 billion…
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Virginia in No Rush to Address Impending Metro Meltdown
by James A. Bacon The McAuliffe administration seems to be in no hurry to bail out the ailing Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) commuter rail system crippled by declining ridership and an $18 billion capital spending shorttfall over the next ten years. Bolstering state support for the transit authority, which has been plagued for decades by union featherbedding and short-sighted, politically driven…