Category: Transportation
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McAuliffe Provides More Relief for Hampton Roads Tolls
by James A. Bacon The Commonwealth Transportation Board voted Wednesday to make good on Governor Terry McAuliffe’s campaign promise to lower the tolls on two Elizabeth River tunnels. Tolls still will go up but less rapidly than provided for in the $2.1 billion public-private partnership agreement for the Downtown Tunnel/Midtown Tunnel project. Relief for the…
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Journalism’s Death Is Greatly Exaggerated
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in Business and Economy, 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 “Investigative reporting, R.I.P. In-depth reporting is dead. If not dead, it’s comatose. Reeling from declining revenue and eroding profit margins, print media enterprises continue to lay off staff and shrink column inches.” Err, maybe not. James A. Bacon Jr., meet Rachel Maddow. The quote comes from advertised “sponsorships” in which an outside…
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The Statewide Importance of the 495 Express Lanes
by James A. Bacon Traffic and revenues on Northern Virginia’s 495 Express Lanes increased steadily in 2013, generating a record 47,000 trips and toll revenue of $124,000 on December 19, according to data the company released yesterday. Whether that’s enough to meet expectations of parent company Transurban Holdings Ltd., headquartered in Australia, or to encourage…
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LaRock Targets MWAA, Dulles Rail, Mass Transit
by James A. Bacon Del. David A. LaRock, R-Hamilton, the man who beat legislative veteran Joe May in the Republican primary last year, comes to the General Assembly promising to represent conservative values and principles. Judging by the bills he has submitted so far, he will be true to his word. Aside from one bill…
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Hugo Proposes to Restructure the CTB
A bill submitted by Del. Tim Hugo, R-Centreville, would expand the Commonwealth Transportation Board from 18 members to 24 by adding three members of the Virginia Senate and three members of the House of Delegates. I have not talked to Hugo about his reasoning, but I can conjecture. The bill represents an effort to make the…
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What Do You Get When You Cross a Segway with a Skateboard?
Here comes another example of creativity and innovation from the private sector that politicians, planners and pundits (even clear-eyed, forward-looking pundits such as myself!) could not possibly have foreseen — the Onewheel. Onewheel, whose inventors are trying to raise $100,000 through Kickstarter, is a one-wheeled, self-balancing skateboard-like transportation device. It can reach speeds up to…
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Are the Millennials Really Different?
by James A. Bacon One of the key questions in forecasting future trends in urban development is a demographic one: How different are the Millennials from previous generations? Sure, young people are flocking to urban centers, they’re driving less and they’re riding their bicycles more than Boomers and Generation Xers did at the same age.…
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A Stupid Tax Break Gets Even Stupider
A portion of the federal commuter tax benefit will expire January 1, which upsets a number of people on the grounds that the change hoses transit riders and benefits drivers. As someone who qualifies for no benefit at all because I work at home, my reaction to the partial wind-down of this special-interest benefit is,…
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The McDonnell Track Record: Incremental Improvement
by James A. Bacon Governor Bob McDonnell’s four-year term in office is drawing to a close. Sadly, it appears that the governor will be remembered mainly for his atrocious judgment in accepting more than $150,000 in gifts and loans from a Richmond businessman. While the Giftgate scandal deservedly dominated the headlines in his last year…
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Fiscal Analytics and the Next Municipal Revolution
by James A. Bacon It is the best of times for local government, it is the worst of times. It is the worst in the sense that local governments across America are experiencing unrelieved fiscal stress from pension obligations, mounting infrastructure backlogs and lagging revenues. Yet it is the best in the sense that rarely…
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The Laughable Fiction of Travel-Demand Forecasts
by James A. Bacon The Virginia Department of Transportation and regional transportation planning organizations periodically make traffic forecasts for planning purposes. The idea makes sense in the abstract — estimating future volumes of traffic is needed to determine how much, and where, we should invest in new transportation infrastructure. Unfortunately, the process is flawed. Estimates…
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McDonnell Budget: Touches all the Bases
by James A. Bacon In his last hurrah as governor, Bob McDonnell has submitted his proposed biennial budget for 2014-2016. The document has won bipartisan praise, including from Sen., Janet D. Howell, D-Fairfax, a member of the Senate Finance Committee. While quibbling with a few details, she told the Times-Dispatch, “Overall, for a budget, this…
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Smart Growth Comes to the Military
by James A. Bacon My dad was a naval officer and, as consequence, I spent a good part of my youth in Norfolk. Although we lived off base, we regularly drove to the naval station to frequent the commissary, the doctor, the movie theater and the barber shop (25 cents bought you any kind of…
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The High Cost of Free Parking
by James A. Bacon As parking guru Donald Shoup has long argued, there is a very high cost to “free” parking. Typically, those costs are hidden, so people are unaware that they exist. While Shoup’s theory is gaining traction among urban planners, particularly the smart growth set, it hasn’t caught on with the general public,…
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The Metro Premium
How much is a location near a Metro station worth? In a fall 2013 study examining the economic impact of the Silver line on Tysons, researchers Cushman & Wakefield took a look at rents paid for commercial real estate and multifamily residences in Arlington County’s Rosslyn-Ballston corridor. The answer: Office tenants pay as much as…