Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

I Wish I’d Been There

—

by

James A. Bacon
in

Virginia needs more conversations like the one sponsored by the Prince William Council of 100 yesterday. The Council invited four speakers representing distinct perspectives to participate in a roundtable discussion about transportation.

The speakers included Virginia Secretary of Transportation Pierce Homer; Speaker of the House William Howell, R-Stafford; Coalition for Smarter Growth Director Stewart Schwartz; and development attorney Patrick McSweeney. What a great line-up!

The speakers didn’t reach a consensus, the Gaineville Times observes, but at least they “exhibited none of the anger that has been characteristic of the transportation debate in Richmond.” Hey, it’s a start.

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2 responses to “I Wish I’d Been There”

  1. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    I don’t often agree with McSweeney and almost never with Schwartz, but I’ll credit them both with good solid statements from this article

    Schwartz:

    “You don’t have to do the density of Arlington, but you do have to do the mixed use and use your transit effectively,”

    This is the crux of my ongoing argument with EMR: there is no need for maxidensity plans.

    “McSweeney agreed that mixed-use developments are part of the solution, but he took a different approach. The bigger problem, he said, is that transportation should be driven by the market, not the government.

    “There is no way politicians or any planners can determine the appropriate allocation of resources better than the market,” he said.”

    In other words, cars aren’t going away any time soon. You may as well plan your development construction and cities to deal with them.

    They can be smaller, cleaner, more efficient, and they can pay more of their own full costs, but visionary plans to do away with them or drastically reduce their use are doomed to fail. Marginal success? Maybe, but don’t make any plans that depend on it.

  2. corndog Avatar
    corndog

    I agree with Ray Hyde’s post.

    It is ironic that the same people who clamor for higher CAFE targets on cars, also demand greater government investment in the black hole that is public transportation. The automobile is public transport’s principal competitor, and each time we attempt to conserve by making the commodity cheaper to use (thru higher mpg vehicles), we create another reason to not use public transport.

    Government intervention thru CAFE EXACERBATED our oil dependency problem. In which alternate universe can you INCREASE the conservation of a commodity by making it cheaper to use?

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