Category: Transportation
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Terry McAuliffe: Working Hard to Make His Own Mistakes
Governor Terry McAuliffe is working hard to clean up the transportation boondoggles of the McDonnell administration — but how many new boondoggles will he create of his own making? Yesterday, the governor announced $13.1 billion in transportation capital expenditures after making final adjustments to the state’s Six-Year Improvement Plan. In the announcement, McAuliffe made much of…
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Subsidize It, and They Will Come
by James A. Bacon There is a particular intersection near where I live in Henrico County — Patterson Avenue and Parham Road — that gets really jammed up during rush hour and sets my teeth to grinding. I hate it. I curse it. I give its traffic signals the finger. (Yes, I do have incipient road…
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Must Read of the Day: Complex Cities
As former Bacon’s Rebellion contributor EM Risse likes to say, urban planning isn’t rocket science — it’s a lot more complex. Ed’s quip came to mind when reading the latest post by Charles Marohn on the Strong Towns blog. The thrust of Chuck’s post is that local government leaders act as if towns, cities and counties…
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McAuliffe Team Continues Transportation House Cleaning
by James A. Bacon I’ve been out of town attending a conference so I wasn’t able to cover the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) meeting this month. But based on press coverage and press releases, it sounds like Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s transportation team is getting a good handle on things, correcting some of the more grievous policy decisions…
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The Rise of Walkable Urbanism and “the End of Sprawl”
by James A. Bacon The Washington metropolitan region is the national model for “walkable urbanism” in the United States — more so even than metropolitan New York, according to the findings of “Foot Traffic Ahead: Ranking Walkable Urbanism in America’s Largest Metros,” a report released this morning by LOCUS, an organization of smart-growth real estate developers, and Smart…
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Will Virginia Embrace the Coming Transportation Revolution or Thwart It?
by James A. Bacon Has Virginia has given up any pretext of being a market- or innovation-friendly state? The Department of Motor Vehicles has issued cease-and-desist orders to the Uber and Lyft ride-sharing service and slapped the companies with a total of $35,000 in fines. Their offense? Operating order-a-ride-with-a-smart-phone services and giving traditional taxicab companies a…
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Safer Streets Require Less Traffic Engineering, Not More
by James A. Bacon A week or two ago, I lamented the disparity between the high cost of traffic accidents in Virginia and the paltry resources devoted to reducing their number. But to say that insufficient attention is being paid to the issue is not to say that no attention is being paid. According to Virginia’s 2012-2015 Strategic…
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The Smart Transit Revolution
by James A. Bacon Bridj, a Boston start-up, bills itself as “the world’s first smart transit system which uses big data and luxury shuttles to adjust to your individual commuting needs.” The company charges $6 per ride, or three times that of a city bus, but it provides Wi-Fi connectivity and luxury seats, and it saves…
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Brat and Cantor: Two Unsavory Choices
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in Business and Economy, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, 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, TransportationBy Peter Galuszka The hottest political race coming up is the Republican primary this Tuesday involving the 7th Congressional District now represented by Eric Cantor, a powerful conservative who is House Majority Leader and could possibly one day be Speaker of the House. His opponent, college professor David Brat, has gotten much national attention because…
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The Cost of Automobile Crashes
by James A. Bacon Virginia transportation policy is driven overwhelmingly by a desire to mitigate transportation congestion and, to a lesser degree, to promote economic development. Rarely does traffic safety enter into the discussion of which transportation improvements we finance. As evidence that congestion is one of the state’s foremost pressing concerns, elected officials can point to…
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Why Executive Fiats Are Needed
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in Business and Economy, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, TransportationBy Peter Galuszka Two initiatives — one on the state and the other on the federal level– show just how untenable the politics of confrontation has become. It is forcing the executive side to take charge at the expense of the legislative. Democrats Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Atty. Gen. Mark Herring are exploring ways to…
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Urbanizing the Burbs: Fairfax Circle Plaza
by James A. Bacon Route 50 through the City of Fairfax is a classic stroad, a street-road hybrid, that originated as a state highway and degenerated into a local access road for commercial development, with the result that it serves neither function — moving cars or providing local access — especially well. In a lengthy…
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Quote of the Day: Doug Koelemay
As it appears increasingly likely that Congress will throttle the flow of federal transportation dollars to the states, state officials are looking at alternative financing mechanisms such as Public Private Partnerships (P3s). As it happens, Virginia is one of only four states with extensive experience with P3s — the others are California, Texas and Florida…
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Will Google Cars Boost City Productivity?
The spread of Self-Driving Cars (SDCs) will lead to tremendous increases in the productivity of cites, argues Brian Wang in The Next Big Future blog. Wang builds his argument on claims by Google that the ability of SDCs to drive faster and closer with greater safety than human-driven cars will effectively double the capacity of roadways.…
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Re-Thinking the Sidewalk
by James A. Bacon The vast majority of sidewalks in my home town, Richmond, Va., are made of concrete slabs. Concrete materials are inexpensive and the sidewalks are easy to install. But in a burg like Richmond, where people dearly love their trees, concrete pavement presents a problem. Tree roots lift or crack the slabs, creating…