Category: Transportation
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U.S. 29… The Saga Continues
The battle over the Charlottesville Bypass may be over, but the battle over what to do instead is heating up. After pulling the plug on the super-controversial, $240 million bypass early last year, the McAuliffe administration dusted off a plan to upgrade the U.S. 29 commercial corridor north of Charlottesville by investing in a series…
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Smooth Ride Ahead for Uber, Lyft
It looks like Uber and Lyft will be a permanent part of the Virginia transportation landscape. Legislation essentially legalizing the two ride-for-hire companies has passed both houses of the General Assembly, and Governor Terry McAuliffe has indicated his willingness to sign the bill. The legislation proposes entirely reasonable regulations that will allow the transportation-network companies (TNCs)…
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Transparency, CTB Autonomy Guide New Vision for Transportation Governance
by James A. Bacon The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) has a system for dispensing its approximately $2 billion a year in construction funding that is so blindingly complex that only a few people understand it. If I started explaining it to you in detail, I’d probably have to shoot you halfway through to put…
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More Tidbits on the U.S. 460 Story…
Aubrey Layne was acutely aware of the wetlands permitting issues afflicting the U.S. 460 highway project before assuming his position as Secretary of Transportation in January 2014. As chairman of the funding corporation that sold bonds to investors, he had had to disclose in September 2013 that the Virginia Department of Transportation had not yet acquired…
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Anticipating the Demise of the Parking Meter
As the City of Charlottesville ponders an upgrade to its downtown parking technology (see “Paying for Onstreet Parking in Cville“), parking guru Bern Grush is looking two steps ahead and thinking about how municipalities should handle the inevitable demise of the parking meter. At some point in the foreseeable future, parking will be managed in…
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Inching Closer to Accountability on the U.S. 460 Fiasco
by James A. Bacon In the year that he’s served as Secretary of Transportation, Aubrey J. Layne Jr. has been reluctant to blame any individual or group of individuals for the U.S. 460 toll road fiasco. But he abandoned that reticence yesterday during a hearing of the House Appropriations Committee. “All of the information was funneled through…
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Interview: McAuliffe’s Economic Goals
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in Business and Economy, Demographics, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, Transportation, Uncategorized, Water-waste waterBy Peter Galuszka For a glimpse of where the administration of Gov. Terry McAuliffe is heading, here’s an interview I did with Maurice Jones, the secretary of commerce and trade that was published in Richmond’s Style Weekly. Jones, a graduate of Hampden-Sydney College and University of Virginia law, is a former Rhodes Scholar who had…
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A Radical Notion: Paying for Onstreet Parking in Cville
Irony time: Virginia soon may get a test in market-based parking in… the People’s Republic of Charlottesville. The city would start charging for 800 on-street parking spaces downtown, now free, and install a system of smart traffic meters under a proposal advanced by Mark Brown, new owner of the Charlottesville Parking Center (CPC). The city reverted to a…
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Potomac Yard Metro: a Financing Model for Mass Transit
by James A. Bacon The state will help finance a new Metro station in Alexandria through a $50 million loan from the Virginia Transportation Infrastructure Bank approved by the Commonwealth Transportation Board earlier this week. The loan is a key piece of financing for the station, which is expected to cost between $209 million and $268…
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Henrico Still Building Schlock
by James A. Bacon The developer of the West Broad Marketplace, which will bring a Wegmans grocery store and outdoor gear retailer Cabela’s to western Henrico County, promises Richmonders a shopping treat that “I don’t think you’ve experienced before.” That may be true. Unfortunately, Jack Waghorn, president of Vienna-based NVRetail, will replicate the experience of driving…
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Governance Reform for Transportation Spending
by James A. Bacon Among key initiatives in the transportation package that Governor Terry McAuliffe announced yesterday are important proposals to reform the governance of the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) and the Public-Private Partnerships (P3s) process. CTB autonomy. The bipartisan legislative package, worked out with senior Republicans in the General Assembly, would improve oversight of transportation spending by creating…
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Highway Robbery
by James A. Bacon I’ve always considered Transurban, operator of the express lanes on the Interstate 495 and Interstate 95, to be a pretty savvy outfit. The company may have over-estimated traffic demand for its express lanes when deciding back in the mid-2000s to build the Northern Virginia toll operations, but corporate executives seemed highly professional in the…
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Thank You, Congress
by James A. Bacon With apologies to Jimmy Fallon: Thank you, Congress…. for your inability to pass the Marketplace Fairness Act. Your legislative ineptitude not only spared Virginians from paying an estimated $250 million a year in online sales taxes, but it triggered a provision in Virginia law replacing the anticipated set-aside of $168 million of…
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Virginia’s Top Stories in 2014
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in Business and Economy, Children and Families, Consumer Protection, 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, Gun rights, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, 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, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, Transportation, Water-waste waterBy Peter Galuszka The Year 2014 was quite eventful if unsettling. It represented some major turning points for the Old Dominion. Here are my picks for the top stories: Robert F. McDonnell becomes the highest-ranking former or serving state official to be convicted of corruption. The six-week-long trial from July to September of the Republican…
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Is VDOT Flooding Mathews County?
by James A. Bacon The Virginia Department of Transportation’s road maintenance program in Mathews County, you could say, has driven into a ditch. Over the years, VDOT has failed to properly maintain roadside ditches in the county, with the consequence that many now fail in their function of draining water into the tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay,…