Just out: Amazon has narrowed its list of candidate locations for its $5 billion second headquarters, and Northern Virginia made the list. So did Washington, D.C., which gives the Washington metropolitan area a one-in-ten chance of winning the big prize.
USA Today lists the finalists.
(Hat tip: Rick Gechter)
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Montgomery County, Maryland is also listed, which would give the D.C. metro area a 15% chance of winning.
Let’s be more welcoming to the transplants.
This makes good sense, because the only way to solve the standoff between Maryland and Virginia over bridge and other transportation issues of monumental proportions is for Amazon to bring the states together for all of their mutual advantage. This greatly increases the chances of finding solutions to perhaps otherwise insoluble gridlock problems .
Well .. clearly hellhole traffic was not a criteria, eh and no I’m not buying that Va and Md promise to build a bridge to lock the deal!!!
But does Bezos have his thumb on the scale?
Here’s how to win.
Promise to build a solar facility build enough to totally power the HQ and electric buses to move the employees on the HOT lanes and a guaranteed connection to METRO.
Do all the things that Liberals like..
😉
no irony that nova, dc, and montgomery county md all applied separately. its actually a great insight to why wmata/metro is crap – they can’t work together.
it’s all nova to me: everything from fredericksburg north — to about 10 miles south of baltimore…its nova.
jalbertbowden NAILED IT! it says reams that these guys can’t agree on how to fund METRO.. and then some of them.. blame Richmond!
Pretty Clear .. Amazon is not looking for the 2nd tier “gems” like Richmond, eh?
Trains move. Buildings don’t. Roll that around in your mind for a while and see if you can detect the difference in the two things.
trains move, and so do people to wherever those buildings sit.
Imagine Atlanta having a subway that they would not reliably fund
and it staggered year to year trying to figure out how to operate without secure funding… That’s METRO Va/DC/Md…
add to that the hellish traffic and I might put money on Atlanta also except it too has hellish traffic ..and significant exurban commuting because Atlanta, like NoVa does not have reasonable affordable housing for entry level folks and most of them end up commuting 40-50 miles to afford a house.
Of course.. maybe all those Amazon workers will be as rich as the Govt workers who apparently DO make enough money to live in NoVa and not have to commute to exurbia!
Ahhh … D.C., Northern Virginia and Maryland are separate legal entities. Part of the NoVa and D.C. bids were specific locations for the HQ. I guess the three entities could have hired the Chinese to build another version of the Sprately Islands in the middle of the Potomac River and declared the site a co-prosperity zone owned in common tenancy. Or … they could all separately bid and all make the finals. The Hampton Roads hallucination about being where one trans oceanic cable made landfall was apparently unpersuasive. Similarly, Richmond’s promise of convenient access to meat pies, micro breweries, Confederate statues and the Redskins summer camp apparently also fell on deaf ears. Go figure.
My money is on Atlanta.
If we can have a Greater Austin or Greater Atlanta which are , in fact, regional aggregations of counties and towns – that work together to provide and operate services and infrastructure that cross boundaries , why can’t the “greater” Wash/Md/Dc area do the same? They DO HAVE an MPO but here is the agreement on how to adequately and sustainably fund METRO?
If I were Amazon, I would see this refusal to work together as a region on transportation , especially METRO, give the hellish nature of their road network as a bad omen… not that other places don’t have challenges also.
Riddle me this. In a situation where WMATA must go to the local jurisdictions annually for some of its funding and regularly thumbs its nose to those same elected officials and their constituents in terms of controlling labor costs, pension costs, providing reliable service, proper maintenance and recognized safety measures, how much more unresponsive would WMATA be if it didn’t need to approach the jurisdictions annually?
Unless and until proper reforms are instituted and maintained over time, WMATA should not be given a dedicated source of funding. It’s no different than a parent cutting off its wayward, drug-addicted child who refuses to get help. Based on observing WMATA since 1984, I don’t trust the Agency to make and maintain necessary changes. Someone tell me why the public should trust WMATA.
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