Category: Transportation
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Is Virginia Ready for Car Tax Reform?
by Bill Tracy I was encouraged last week when Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax, joined the “car tax blues” chorus.* According to the Washington Post, Petersen filed bills proposing to eliminate the car tax through a constitutional amendment and then giving localities the option of levying a local gasoline tax to make up for the lost revenue.…
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Who Needs a Chauffeur When Your Favorite Driver Is a Click Away?
by James A. Bacon The Uber revolution continues apace, spawning a host of competitors, imitators and add-ons. An interesting example comes out of Richmond, where four former Uber drivers are developing an app for passengers who want to reserve specific drivers at specific times. Uzurv (pronounced YOO-zerv) is beta testing an app that lets customers reserve…
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Mobility-As-a-Service Is Coming Soon
by James A. Bacon In the world of surface transportation, self-driving cars are generating a tremendous amount of excitement. While such vehicles undoubtedly will transform the driving experience, I question whether they will alter the underlying economics of transportation. Yes, they will be safer, and they even may allow a passenger to stream Netflix or answer emails instead of keeping his…
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Another Reminder of the Impending WMATA Disaster
by James A. Bacon The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) is a slow-motion train wreck unfolding before our very eyes. An article in the December 2015 issue of Washingtonian Magazine, “The Infuriating History of How Metro Got So Bad,” provides a timely reminder of just how dysfunctional the commuter rail system has become. One glaring example:…
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What Virginia Millennials Are Looking For
by James A. Bacon Three out of four Virginia Millennials (belonging to the 18- to 36-year-old age cohort) are largely satisfied with the quality of life in their communities. But local quality-of-life indicators often fall short of what Millennials are looking for, and many are open to moving to other parts of Virginia or even to other states.…
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Richmond Boldly Plotting a Post-19th Century Mass Transit System
by James A. Bacon The City of Richmond has procured funding for a study to see if GRTC Transit System bus routes can be organized more efficiently, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The study will bring in the Jarrett Walker + Associates consulting firm that showed how rearranging the route structure could triple the frequency of bus service in Houston without requiring additional funding. “The…
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Tracking Virginia’s Quality of Life
by James A. Bacon Virginia’s economy, dependent upon federal spending, has under-performed the national economy since 2010, and will continue to do so in 2016, according to the Virginia Chamber of Commerce’s 2015 State of the Commonwealth Report. But lead author James V. Koch, president emeritus of Old Dominion University, does find a silver lining: Once…
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Increased Density, Increased Costs
By Carol J. Bova Jim Bacon’s post on November 12th, “Too Little Density, Too Much Road Surface,” concludes that if local zoning policies encouraged higher density population areas, there’d be fewer roads, resulting in lower road maintenance costs. This is urban-centered thinking that assumes only nearby residents use the roads and that none are privately…
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Too Little Density, Too Much Road Surface
by James A. Bacon It goes without saying that New Jersey is dissimilar from Virginia in many ways, so it’s hazardous extrapolating conclusions from one state to the other. But a new study about New Jersey roads co-authored by Smart Growth America and New Jersey Future implies that the Old Dominion could have saved hundreds of millions…
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P3 Mirage
by Randy Salzman With recent reporting about Norfolk’s ERC (Elizabeth River Crossings) public private partnership (P3) on top of extensive coverage of the 460 Toll Road debacle, Virginians should begin questioning “privatization” of public infrastructure. The data is clear. The privatization of highways has not been “capitalists’ gifts to taxpayers,” as press releases have implied.…
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Virginia’s Commitment to Smart Cars and Smart Roads
by James A. Bacon Tom Dingus has done as much as anyone to advance vehicle automation and the advent of self-driving cars. Many of the automated features found in automobiles today — automated braking, active cruise control, rear-view cameras — were tested at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, where he serves as director. But Dingus is…
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McAuliffe Adminstration Gives P3s a Second Chance
by James A. Bacon The McAuliffe administration has spent much of its first two years unwinding the legacy of botched and controversial public private partnerships inked by the McDonnell administration: radically truncating the plan to to build a U.S. connector between Petersburg and Suffolk, and revising significantly the tolling for Norfolk’s Midtown-Downtown tunnel project. Now, after the enactment of…
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Woolly Headed Thinking about Transportation
by James A. Bacon Virginia Beach’s ongoing debate over light rail is emblematic of everything that is wrong with Virginia’s system for determining which transportation projects get built. While the Virginia Department of Transportation is implementing a mechanism for ranking road and highway projects, there is no mechanism for ascertaining the proper balance between roads/highways and…
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Building an “Unmanned” Industry Cluster
by James A. Bacon Two decades ago the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) had two sponsors, fifteen employees and a dream of becoming a major player in testing new automotive technologies. Sixteen years ago, it opened a literal road to nowhere — a 2.2-mile “smart road” cutting through the hills of Montgomery County that ended in…
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Breaking the Cycle of Debt and Suspended Licenses
by James A. Bacon Joe Herbin has always been a hard worker. When he was 15 years old, he’d accumulated the $1,200 it took to buy an old Cadillac. The fact that he didn’t have a driver’s license — or was too young even to get one — wasn’t a deterrent. He installed a bad-ass sound…