Summarizing what officials told him without a direct quote, Tim Craig said the following yesterday in a Metro Section story titled “Va. Transportation Bill On Verge of Approval:”
“Traffic congestion will continue, they say, but might not be as bad as it would have been without the new revenue.”
That is a “the glass is way, way half full” statement. It is far more optimistic than any rational person (Craig was paraphrasing “officials”) would describe the situation.
Jim Bacon’s last two posts are right on! Official actions on land use patterns and densities and the transport systems intended to provide access and mobility are taking citizens in the wrong direction at an increasing speed.
There will be no improvement in access and mobility, regardless of how much money is spent on which facilities unless there is a Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns and that will require a Fundamental Change in governance structure.
You have heard that before but here is a new twist: In the same paragraph as the above quote, Craig also said the northern part of Virginia population “… is expected to grow by more than 500,000 residents over 20 years…”
In today’s WaPo N. C. Aizenman cites new data from the US Census Bureau suggesting that the “Metro Area Growth Has Scaled Back Considerably” with an annual growth rate of 0.7 percent.
So, not to worry the population is not growing very fast.
But wait! A multiplier of 1.007 results in a population growth of 792,041 over 20 years. If this is true, then population has slowed but is still growing faster than the 500,000 projection suggests.
Then again, the census numbers are for “The Washington area” also called the “the Washington Metropolitan region.” Just what it this? The “new” Washington Primary MSA or something else? See our column “Where is Northern Virginia?” from 11 August 2003.
We have not had a chance to run down the numbers but we would suspect that if one used the Washington-Baltimore New Urban Region for the July 2005 to July 2006 estimates, the growth rate for the real region was a lot higher than 0.7 percent per year.
If you can make sense out of this apply to WaPo for an editors job. Otherwise, stay tuned into Bacons Rebellion.
EMR