Category: Transportation
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A Modest Proposal for Bailing out Metro Rail: Raise the Friggin’ Fares!
by James A. Bacon The Washington Metro system continues to crumble, as hundreds of riders found to their consternation Wednesday when a fire near the Anacostia Metro station stranded several Green Line trains underground for several hours. A rider named Scott posted an incredible first-person story on Unsuck DC Metro, describing getting stuck in a…
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Documenting the Federal Distortion of Real Estate Markets
by James A. Bacon Between zoning codes, parking regulations, development fees, tax abatements, transportation and infrastructure spending, caps on building permits and other local government intrusions into real estate markets, the surprisingly widespread notion that dysfunctional human settlement patterns can be blamed on unchecked capitalism has always been a ludicrous one. Now Smart Growth America…
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Latest Talking Points on the Transportation Tax Debate
by James A. Bacon The debate over Governor Bob McDonnell’s transportation tax plan is heating up. The Governor has been stumping the state, giving speeches and enlisting the support of new businesses, labor unions and trade associations every day. The latest announcement from the governor’s office touts the endorsements of Richmond-based Universal Corp., the Virginia…
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Here’s a Novel Idea: Base Billion-Dollar Investment Decisions on Latest Data, Not Decade-Old Data
by James A. Bacon In the 2000s, Loudoun County grew at a prodigious rate, averaging 6,000 housing starts yearly before the Great Recession. Construction took a dive during the recession and continues at only half the pace of a decade ago, contends Rob Whitfield with the Dulles Corridor Users Group and a long-time foe of…
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Why Virginia ♥ Panama
by James A. Bacon West Coast ports import 70% of the Asian trade, and half of that cargo moves to the Midwest and East Coast by means of trains. In effect, that means 35% of the Asian trade will be up for grabs by Hampton Roads and competing ports, when the Panama Canal opens up…
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Swapping Smarts for Asphalt
Smart traffic lights are no cure-all for Virginia’s congested road network but VDOT increasingly regards them as part of the solution.
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$240 Million to Save One Minute Travel Time?
by James A. Bacon Spending roughly $240 million to build the Charlottesville Bypass will save motorists less than one minute of travel time compared to driving on U.S. 29, according to a new analysis by the Charlottesville-Albemarle Transportation Coalition (CATCO). The installation of synchronized stoplights in 2007 has cut travel time on the congested stretch…
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One Trophy Virginia Doesn’t Need: King of the Incentive Packages
Kudos to the McDonnell administration: Virginia was not one of the big spenders on economic incentives in December 2012. A report on economic incentives published by the Site Selection Group covered 224 global projects exceeding a total of $2.4 billion. A list of the 83 largest in the United States included only one — $1.3…
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McDonnell Unveils Transportation Goodie List
To make the benefits of his transportation tax package more politically palatable, Governor Bob McDonnell has announced a list of 15 major road and rail projects that would receive funding — from the Rail-to-Dulles Metrorail project to a bridge replacement for Interstate 81 over the New River. The funding proposal, which would scrap the gasoline…
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Who You Gonna Believe?
Is the population of Arlington County growing or shrinking? The latest 30-year projection by the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service in Charlottesville forecasts that the county will decline by nearly 10,000 to under the 200,000 mark by 2040. But Arlington planners, looking out their windows at the 1,380 new housing units under construction, project…
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One More Time… The Beauty of the VMT Tax
by James A. Bacon As the General Assembly weighs the merits of Governor Bob McDonnell’s tax plan, which would force non-drivers to subsidize drivers through the sales tax, it is useful to remind ourselves what the diametrically opposite tax regime, a Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) tax, might look like. Two years ago, transportation economist George…
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New Rules of the Road: Following Too Closely
Here’s another bill I like: HB 1950. Introduced by Alfonso Lopez, D-Arlington, this bill brings bikes under the protection of the no-tailgating law by deleting one word from existing legislation: “The driver of a motor vehicle shall not follow another motor vehicle, trailer, or semitrailer more closely than is reasonable and prudent…” In this case,…
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The Case For Transportation User Fees
by James A. Bacon Say this about Governor Bob McDonnell’s plan to scrap the gasoline tax and substitute a sales tax to fund transportation: Virginia has plenty of company around the country when it come to abandoning the user-pays principle. Americans apparently consider free roads, bridges and highways as an inalienable birth right — right…
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The $300 Million Pork Product Stuffed into the Governor’s Tax Bill
There’s been a lot of talk about the tax aspects of Governor Bob McDonnell’s restructuring of transportation revenue sources, with the latest wrinkle coming from the center-left Commonwealth Institute, which observes that the governor’s proposal to shift from the motor fuels tax to the sales tax would disproportionately hurt the poor. According to CI’s new…
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Our Way or the Highway
by James A. Bacon James E. Rich has resigned from his position at the Commonwealth Transportation Board under pressure from the McDonnell administration. The Culpeper transportation district representative had opposed funding of the controversial Charlottesville Bypass and then had tried repeatedly, without success, to get the decision overturned. One of the board’s more outspoken members,…