Category: Transportation
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Playing with Other Peoples’ Money
I have started following Charles Marohn’s blog, “Strong Towns,” and am gratified to see that great minds think alike. In his most recent post, Marohn applies the thinking of Nassim Taleb, author of “Antifragility,” to the discipline of building more prosperous, livable and fiscally sustainable communities. (See my post, “Fragility, Antifragility and Virginia.”) One of…
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The Stroad to Hell …
by James A. Bacon Americans, asserts Charles Marohn in his book “Thoughts on Building Strong Towns,” do not understand the difference between streets and roads. That conceptual confusion has resulted in untold billions of dollars in bad investment as traffic engineers have melded the two in what Marohn and others have contemptuously term “stroads.” I…
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Living the High-Line Life
Converting an eyesore into a celebrated park, New York City’s High Line showed how smart urbanism can create wealth.
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McAuliffe Pitches Jobs vs. Ideology
By Peter Galuszka “Fantastic,” says Terry McAuliffe as he listens to officials at the Culpeper, Va., campus of Germanna Community College talk about projects ranging from designing machine controls to a weight-loss competition. The tall, curly-haired McLean businessman — a Democrat who wants to be Virginia’s next governor — walks through a campus building while…
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Doubling Down on a Broken Growth Model
by James A. Bacon I’ve just finished an extraordinary little book. “Thoughts on Building Strong Towns,” that has helped crystallize my thinking on the fiscal trap of the “suburban sprawl” model of growth and development. The author, Charles Marohn, is a Minnesota-based civil engineer, urban planner and executive director of the Strong Towns organization, and,…
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Bend, Buckle and Crack
The case for the proposed Charlottesville Bypass is collapsing like an old bridge. Even a VDOT consultant questions how well Skanska-Branch’s design for the controversial highway can handle projected traffic loads.
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Stirrings of a Parking Revolution
by James A. Bacon Parking may be the most under-appreciated factor driving urban economics. Street parking takes up valuable space that could be used for bicycle lanes and sidewalks. Parking lots and garages create walkability dead zones in the urban fabric. And drivers add to congestion in busy urban centers as they drive around and…
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Lots of Competition for Phase 2 Rail-to-Dulles Contract
The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) has approved five construction consortia to bid on the estimated $2.8 billion Phase 2 of the Rail-to-Dulles project. According to Leesburg Today, the bidders include Bechtel Transit Partners, which is building Phase 1, and four other groups with lead players ranging from Clark Construction Group and Kiewit Infrastructure to…
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Transportation Tax Issue Still Fermenting
Citing his opposition to transportation-funding legislation supported by Governor Bob McDonnell, Richard W. Rahn has resigned from the governor’s Joint Advisory Board of Economists. “I strongly disagree with the new tax/transportation bill that you supported,” wrote Rahn in a letter to McDonnell. “Unfortunately, I was not asked for my advice (which I assume was also…
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Moody’s Gives Thumbs Up to Guv’s Transportation Package
I’m always preaching the need to bolster the creditworthiness of the commonwealth — and with the fiscal calamities I see coming out of Washington, D.C., Virginia’s AAA rating just isn’t strong enough — so I feel obliged to take note of a statement issued by Moody’s Investor Services last week. The bond-rating agency has found…
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Automobility’s AI Revolution
Automobiles have been around for more than years. Styles have changed, safety has improved and the rides are more comfortable, but functionally the vehicles are still the same as they were in Henry Ford’s time — horseless carriages. But automobiles are undergoing a metamorphosis that will make them something quite different — not just a…
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Raising Taxes, Building Roads, Inducing Traffic
by Randy Salzman In fighting the waste of taxpayer dollars on the so-called “Western Bypass” of Charlottesville, I met a woman who favored the bypass because her family owns a beach house in Virginia Beach. As best as I could decipher her logic, she was willing to drive 15 miles out of her way to…
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Bicycles and Economic Development
by James A. Bacon Richmond is gaining traction as a bicycle-friendly region but it is a slow and arduous process. Public and private investment in biking infrastructure remain limited, almost non-existent outside the City of Richmond. It is commonly said among cycling enthusiasts that if you build the biking amenities, the cyclists will come. The…
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Good Amtrak, Bad Amtrak.
Passenger rail in the United States is experiencing a renaissance, maintain the authors of a new Brookings Institution report. Amtrak ridership has increased 55% since 1997, faster than other major travel modes. The secret, the authors contend, is Amtrak’s collaboration with states to upgrade tracks, operate routes and redevelop stations. Hmmm… The report downplays the…
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Your Clown Show at Work
The General Assembly’s transportation-tax compromise may have a problem even bigger than the fact that it raises taxes to build a transportation system for the 20th (not the 21st) century: It may be unconstitutional. Paul Goldman, former chairman of the Democratic Party of Virginia, and Norm Leahy, conservative pundit and editor of BearingDrift.com, have joined…