Category: Transportation
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Horse Gone, Search Ensues to Find Out Who Should Have Closed the Door
by James A. Bacon A new question has arisen about the proposed $1.4 billion upgrade to U.S. 460 between Petersburg and Suffolk. Once the McDonnell administration ascertained that none of the three public-private partnership proposals on the table were viable and that the state would operate the road instead, why didn’t the Virginia Department of…
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Re-imagining Sunnyvale
by James A. Bacon Silicon Valley appears to be moving in fits and starts toward more rational land use, creating denser, more mixed-use, better-connected communities appropriate to a region with extraordinarily high land values. As a casual visitor to the region, I don’t pretend to speak with any authority on the trend but I can…
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The Demon in the Machine
By James A. Bacon On Oct. 25, 2013, Chris Urmson, a leader of Google’s autonomous car project, proclaimed that legal and regulatory problems posed no major barrier to the commercialization of Self-Driving Cars (SDCs). When accidents did occur, he told attendees of the RoboBusiness conference in Santa Clara, Calif., data collected by the cars would…
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Over Budget, Seven Months Late… and Counting
Phase 1 of the Rail-to-Dulles project was supposed to be the good phase. For quite a while, it appeared to be running on budget and on time, providing reason to be optimistic that the highly controversial Phase 2 of the project might do so as well. But it hasn’t worked out that way. The story…
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Why San Franciscans Are Thinner than Other Americans
No, it’s not the bean sprouts and tofu. It’s not even the great year-round climate that encourages people to do stuff outdoors. It’s the hills. The Bacon family has hiked and biked a lot of hills over the past three days and we’ve eaten a lot of food, but the hills won. I swear I…
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Bicycling in Paradise
One of California’s greatest assets is its climate, and San Francisco, though foggier than nearby locales, is no exception. Climatically speaking, the city is as close to paradise as any location on the planet, which makes it a great place to spend outdoors and a great place to bicycle. As one would expect, San Francisco…
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Can Virginia Reverse the Stroadification of Rt. 1?
by James A. Bacon People living along the U.S. Route 1 corridor in Northern Virginia seemingly desire contradictory things. They want better pedestrian and bicycle safety, they want mass transit. … and they want automobile traffic to flow faster. Alas, designing the corridor to move automobiles faster makes roads less safe, and it discourages the…
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Tech Insurrection
Smart cities, says Anthony Townsend, will be forged by geeks, activists and civic hackers through bottom-up technological innovation.
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Columbia Pike Streetcars: Delving Deeper into the Value-Capture Scenario
by James A. Bacon Last week, I made the case that the best way to finance construction of the proposed Columbia Pike street car line in Arlington was to set up an improvement district along the route and impose a real estate tax surcharge on property owners to pay off the bonds. (See “A Second…
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How North Carolina Halted a Bridge Boondoggle
by James A. Bacon Many Virginians know the agony of driving to vacation in the Outer Banks at the peak of the summer season. Heading south between Chesapeake and Kitty Hawk, you follow four-lane roads jammed with as many as 50,000 cars on Saturdays. Then, if you’re staying in Duck, Whalehead or Corolla, you have…
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Sprawl’s Hidden Subsidies
The answer to sprawl isn’t more regulation, says Pamela Blais, it’s fixing the endemic biases embedded in taxes, utility fees, municipal services and mortgages.
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A Second Opinion on the Columbia Pike Streetcar
by James A. Bacon This is exactly what we need in the debate over Arlington’s proposed $284 million streetcar system for Columbia Pike: close scrutiny from local citizens. Arlingtonians for Sensible Transit (AST) has issued a paper listing 15 reasons why the streetcar would be a waste of taxpayers’ money. “The consultant has collected its $100,000…
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How to Create Healthier Communities without Breaking a Sweat
by James A. Bacon American society is buckling under the strain of health care costs. The debate, as I have often opined, is stuck on the question of who pays those costs rather than how we can bring costs down. Improving Americans’ health is not a job we can should relegate to Congress and the General…
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Study Boosts Case for Columbia Pike Streetcar
by James A. Bacon Investing $284 million in a streetcar system along Columbia Pike would generate between $3.2 billion and $4.4 billion in net tax revenue for Arlington and Fairfax Counties, over and above capital and operating costs, over 30 years, according to a new analysis by HR&A Advisors prepared for Arlington County. The street car system…
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Sarles Makes Pitch for Metro Subsidies
by James A. Bacon Last Wednesday Richard Sarles, chief executive officer of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), appeared in Richmond to brief the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) on the transit authority’s plans to meet the transportation needs of the fast-growing Washington region, including Northern Virginia, through 2025. Sarles did not provide a specific…