Monthly Archives: July 2012

Record Heat Wave? Not in Virginia.


The U.S. State Climate Extremes Committee established by the National Climatic Data Center has updated and refined its national database of climate extremes. Now anyone can conduct a Web search to find the dates of extreme climate records in their home state. The chart above shows the numbers for Virginia.

Notice how the hot-weather extremes occurred in 1900 and 1954, the cold-weather extreme occurred only 27 years ago, while the extreme rain and snow events occurred in the 1990s. Whatever may be happening to the world as a whole, Virginia does not seem to be suffering any undue extremes of heat and drought.

No meaningful lessons can be drawn from this data regarding climate change globally — Virginia constitutes too small a percentage of the earth’s surface. What the data should do, however, is inoculate people against drawing conclusions (as a certain other blogger who shall go unnamed, but whose initials are PAG has done) based upon this summer’s heat wave. Yeah, it’s hot. But it’s been hotter before.

— JAB

Update: I have changed the headline because the original lent itself to the misleading impression (as seen in the comments) that I was denying that temperatures were rising in Virginia. I don’t know if average temperatures are rising or not. I am saying that our recent heat wave is not unprecedented.

The Desperate Need for Financial Regulation

By Peter Galuszka

Regulation is the perpetual bug-a-boo among Baconauts, Boomergeddons and Blowhards of many ilk. Drop back to 2008 when our economy nearly crashed and the banking system all but collapsed. These folk will blame Fannie Mae and Freddie
Mac for giving out home mortgages to unqualified “under class” types.

They conveniently forget that a lot of it also had to do with the shameless lack of regulation and oversight into the hedge fund market  and its mysterious Credit Default Swaps and Collateralized Debt Obligations and  loaded banks up with billions in debt and no one knew why. The rocket  scientists who created all of this couldn’t explain it.

So, we end up with Dodd-Frank which really doesn’t do much  other than wrist-slap to the powerful financial industry that hands out tons of  dough to political candidates.

Now, four years later, there’s still plenty of evidence why  the money bags people need watching by people with big sticks. Consider:

  • Feel ripped off when you use your credit card, although the technology freaks (who dot this Blog like summer mosquitos) insist that it is the only way to go? Visa, Mastercard and major banks have agreed to pay $6 billion to settle a long-running lawsuit that accused them of colluding to set fees. That’s an anti-trust matter. It means that retailers who allow customers to swipe cards have no choice and no “free market” when they pay  fees. They tend to be stuck at about 3.75 percent, costing them about one  dollar on every $100 worth of sales. Excuse me, did I say free market? That’s where you get to choose among competing vendors, unless, of course, they  conspire to keep their fees at an artificially high level. Then it is not free  market, it is robbery.
  • While we’re muttering about those dark-skinned people not paying on their mortgages they did not deserve, consider some of the  recent bank settlements. Wells Fargo, which took over the venerable but then  troubled Wachovia, has announced it will pay $175 million, following SunTrust  ($21 million) and Countrywide ($335 million) to make amends with  African-Americans and Latinos who were ripped off when they got mortgages. In  all three cases, the mortgage companies charged minority borrowers more in  interest rates costing them thousands more for their mortgages. This wasn’t exactly Fannie Mae. The borrowers were all well qualified. It was out-and-out racism, something the Baconauts don’t like hearing and won’t be able to  deflect.
  • There’s been funny business in London over how the LIBOR (London Inter Offered Bank Rate) has been set. It’s not just a U.K., LIBOR is a very important stick of data. My second mortgage is pegged to it.
  • And while we’re at it, let’s not forget that a  year ago, Bank of America, which bought Countrywide and Merrill Lynch, agreed to pay $8.5 billion in investors who got screwed when they got dishonest  information about the bad real estate loans they were stuck with.

Can anyone spell “F R E E  M A R K E T?” How about you, Jim?

Clogging Corridors

Graphic credit: Piedmont Environmental Council

Is the McDonnell administration serious about protecting state highways from encroaching development? A dispute over a rural stoplight on U.S. 29 may tell the story.

by James A. Bacon

If you want to know how serious Virginia is about preserving the integrity of its major highways from development pressures, pay close attention to an obscure residential real estate project in Greene County.

In February the Greene County Board of Supervisors approved a rezoning for Creekside, a 400-acre residential development, with the condition that the developer build a $1.6 million connector road to U.S. 29 and a stoplight at the intersection. That stoplight would be located only a half mile from an existing light, reducing the speed limit from 55 miles per hour to 45 on that stretch of road and adding another slowdown on a highway officially designated a “corridor of statewide significance.”

Before the stoplight can be installed, however, the developer, the Fried Companies, must pay for a “warrant study” to determine if the signalized intersection is justified. After the study is published, the final decision to approve the signal will rest with the Virginia Department of Transportation’s Culpeper district administrator.

The ruling is bound to be controversial, no matter what the outcome. The issue of access management is highly sensitive along U.S. 29 north of Charlottesville. Individual decisions like the Greene County stop light may seem small but over the years they have added up, rendering U.S. 29 increasingly unfit as an interstate transportation corridor.

The commonwealth of Virginia is sinking roughly $240 million into a controversial Charlottesville bypass, which will circumvent some 14 stoplights in Charlottesville and Albemarle County. The McDonnell administration approved financing for the project but admonished local governments to get serious about controlling access to the highway. Virginians should not continue the practices that made that investment necessary, Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton told Bacon’s Rebellion. “The definition of insanity [is] doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

The proposed stoplight would violate Greene County’s comprehensive plan as well as VDOT’s own access-management guidelines for U.S. 29, observes Brian Higgins, Greene Field Officer for the Piedmont Environmental Council. “It’s an opportunity for VDOT to apply their access management guidelines and show they are serious about it.”

But Ken Lawson, director of special projects for the Fried Companies, says the project has been in the works for years. Failure to approve the stoplight would redirect traffic emanating from Creekside’s 600 single-family homes and 580 town homes to the so-called Sheetz intersection to the north. That intersection, he says, is “failing.” VDOT is scheduled to make a $1.6 million improvement there but the intersection would be overwhelmed by Creekside traffic without a second stop light.

VDOT’s district administrator is in the hot seat. If he approves the stoplight, he adds more plaque to the clogged artery of U.S. 29 and undermines its value as a major commercial corridor. If he rejects the stoplight, he contributes to localized congestion in Greene County. Pressure from local politicians and citizens can be hard to ignore.

A Long Brewing Problem

While the Creekside matter has come into focus only recently, the larger issue of preserving U.S. 29 as a major transportation corridor has been percolating for years. For decades, cities and counties along the highway treated access as a free good, allowing businesses and developers to build along it with little interference. Entrances, cut-throughs and stop-lighted intersections have proliferated without let-up. As long as transportation funds were abundant, the solution to the resulting congestion was building bypasses. Danville, Lynchburg, Charlottesville and Culpeper all have bypasses on U.S. 29. Warrenton has two. Charlottesville is about to build a second, and local politicians foresee the need for a third. Meanwhile, leapfrog development in rural counties like Greene, Madison, Culpeper and Fauquier threatens to gum up the highway in between metropolitan areas.

“Strip development, the proliferation of driveways and traffic signals, and the overloading of traffic on a single roadway are all symptoms of a past approach that has emphasized exploitation rather than management of Central Virginia’s most important north-south transportation corridor,” summed up the Rt. 29 Corridor Study, published in 2009. “This trend cannot be allowed to continue. It’s time to move forward. … Land use and transportation planning should tie together to support the roadway’s functionality.” Read more.

Richmond’s Buses To Nowhere

By Peter Galuszka

Inner city issues seem to be a trend this week on the blog so here are a few more points about the so-called “under-class” as some define lower income, under privileged people. The locus is Richmond, the state capital that despite its pretensions is actually a working class town with plenty of inner city issues.

One topic is the concept of “food deserts” where adequately fresh and nutritious vegetables, fruit, meat and seafood are not available for whatever reason.

In Richmond, the areas where this tends to happens are in primarily African-America sections to the downtown’s northeast and immediate south plus some pockets here are there. Mind you that the outer suburbs of Henrico and Chesterfield Counties are among the state’s wealthiest and whitest.

That’s where the nice stores are but they are out of reach for many of the urban poor, especially the elderly and disabled who do not have cars. It is a problem for them to even get to some of the bigger inner city grocery stores, such as a Kroger on North Lombardy Street near the city’s famed Jackson Ward neighborhood that had been a highlight of the early 20th century’s African-American cultural renaissance but was destroyed by white highway planners who put Interstate 95 smack through the area in the 1950s.

A cursory Web search shows that’s about the only large food store in that general area. One reason it survives is that it also serves thousands of students at Virginia Commonwealth University, the state’s largest public college, a few blocks away.

If one takes a GRTC Transit System bus on nearby Broad Street, one sees poor people traveling with grocery bags to the Kroger since it’s the only stores of any size for most of Richmond’s public housing projects. But that’s about as far as many can go.

Why? Richmond ranks 95th among 100 metro areas for public transit, According to a new Brookings Institution report, Richmond’s bus coverage (there is not light rail) pretty much ends at the city limits.

Less than half of all jobs in the area are within the GRTC coverage area. Richmond ranks only 82nd for its labor access rate, according to the report. So let’s say that some poor inner city denizen reads Ayn Rand one morning and wants to get a job and become a well-paid objectivist. That job is likely to be out of reach of the bus service – somewhere out in the strip malls of the suburbs. The only solution: buy a car.

Overall, prideful Richmond ranks slightly below Birmingham, Ala. and above Augusta, Ga., rather impressive company. The places with the best public transit are so socialistic and free-spending hotbeds as Honolulu, Los Angeles and San Mateo. New York ranks highly, too.

The problem is that many Virginians tend to be conservative and anti-spending. Some are also smart growthers who in principle agree that expanding public transit is a good idea as opposed to automobiles.

The little-spoken problem is that many actually want to keep two separate societies, just like the Jim Crow days. The poor blacks and Latinos can stay in the inner city. We’re not going to fund public transit so they can shop next to us or get to jobs near us. If some of them are middle-class and well-educated, fine, we’ll accept them.

Just don’t muck up our lily white suburbs with the poor and unwashed and dark-skinned.

Are Virginia Schools Too Easy on Students?

Darker states have higher percentages of students who say their math work is often, always, or almost always too easy. Graphic credit: Center for American Progress. (Click for larger image.)

The popular media portrays the nation’s teenagers as buckled under by homework. Are middle and high school students being asked to work too hard? One way to find out is to ask the students themselves. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NEAP) does that every two years, and the Center for American Progress (note to Peter: CAP is not a right-wing think tank) has taken a look at the data. Here are two key findings:

Many schools are not challenging students and large percentages of students report that their school work is “too easy.” If students are going to succeed in the competitive global economy, they need to be exposed to a rigorous curriculum. But many students believe their class work is too easy. Twenty-nine percent of eighth-grade math students nationwide, for instance, report that their math work is often or always too easy. In some states like Virginia, nearly a third of middle-school students reported their work was often or always too easy.

Many students are not engaged in rigorous learning activities. Almost a third of eighth-grade students report reading fewer than five pages a day either in school or for homework. That’s below what many experts recommend for students in middle school. Eighth-grade students across the country also report that they rarely write lengthy answers to reading questions on tests: approximately one-third of students write long answers on reading tests twice per year or less.

Fourth grade Virginia students were far more likely than the national average to report that math work was often or always “too easy,” although 8th grade students were close to the national average.

Question of the day: Do Virginia schools demand enough of their students? If not, does the problem step from schools and teachers — or parents? Or has our whole culture gone soft?

— JAB

A Charlottesville Bypass Alternative: the New 29

Foes of the Charlottesville Bypass have produced a video detailing six spot improvements that would not only speed travel for drivers passing through town but for the thousands of drivers who use the road for local trips.

“The bypass only offers minimal time savings to drivers passing through the area, and it offers even fewer benefits for local drivers, who make up the vast majority of traffic on 29,” said Butler Morgan Butler, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), in a prepared statement.  “The bypass won’t provide the new connections to work, schools, and stores along the 29 corridor we so desperately need.  We should be pursuing solutions that make the corridor work for those passing through the area and local drivers alike.”

The improvements, which bear strong similarities to proposals included in the Places29 study, include:

  • Improving the interchange with the 250 Bypass near Best Buy;
  • Building overpasses at Hydraulic Road and Rio Road intersections to allow through-traffic on 29 to flow without stopping;
  • Extending parallel roads on Hillsdale Drive and Berkmar Drive to give local drivers alternatives to U.S. 29.
  • Widening U.S. 29 north of the Rivanna River to eliminate the bottleneck there.

The video, produced by the SELC and the Piedmont Environmental Council, does not say how much the six improvements would cost. But one estimate dating back several years put the cost around $197 million — somewhat less expensive than the Bypass.

VDOT has not conducted a traffic study of the Bypass in its current configuration but the Charlottesville-Albemarle Transportation Coalition (CATCO) has estimated that it would have served between 6,470 to 10,600 vehicles per day had it been opened in 2010 and that traffic would increase to 8,800 and 14,400 per day by 2022. By contrast, the six improvements highlighted in the video would benefit everyone using U.S. 29, exceeding 40,000 drivers in certain spots, as well as thousands more who use Hydraulic and Rio roads.

The Bypass has an exceedingly high cost per mile — nearly $40 million — because it must acquire substantial right of way and build over rough terrain. Bacon’s Rebellion estimates that the highway would shave two minutes, 40 seconds, on average off a trip during rush hour. SELC/PEC provided no estimate of how much time per trip its proposed improvements would save, but they would eliminate the major bottlenecks that exist today.

The video is effective, so effective that I have but one question. Why didn’t they think of this long ago? It’s late in the game to be pushing a Bypass alternative, but perhaps not too late. The Federal Highway Administration still must complete its Environmental Impact Statement review before construction can begin. Perhaps the existence of plausible alternatives will affect FHWA’s conclusions.

— JAB

Infographic of the Day: Working Class Communities

Click more more legible image.

In the mid-20th century, the “working class” — workers engaged in manufacturing, construction, transportation and maintenance — comprised half the nation’s workforce. Today, the number is down to one fifth. Of the country’s Metropolitan Statistical Areas, Elkhard-Goshen, Indiana, has the highest percentage working-class population, 46.0%. The highest in Virginia is Harrisonburg, ranked 17th in the country, with 32.5%.

Source: Richard Florida, Atlantic Cities blog.

Food Deserts, a Problem of Supply or Demand?

Richmond area food deserts. (Click on map for more legible image.)

by James A. Bacon

Why do people get obese? One widely circulated explanation is that many Virginians, poor people especially, live in “food deserts” — places where they do not have access to grocery stores that provide fresh, healthy food. Deprived of choice, these unfortunates get their food wherever they can, such as fast food chains, convenience stores and corner markets where fresh fruits and vegetables are unavailable. In this view, many obese people are victims. The problem isn’t people’s lack of discipline or will power, in this view, it’s the unwillingness of grocery stores to locate in their neighborhoods.

Is that accurate? Is obesity really the fault of uncaring corporate grocery store chains that discriminate against poor neighborhoods? Put in terms that an economist could appreciate, are food deserts caused by supply-side restrictions on nutritious food.. or by insufficient demand for it?

The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines a food desert as a low-income census tract where a substantial number of residents have low access (more than one mile from a grocery store in urban areas, 10 miles in rural areas) and has identified 6,529 such tracts (out of 172,772) in the continental U.S. USDA also has published a food desert locator tool so you can find the food deserts near you.

Fortunately for Bacon’s Rebellion readers, Susan Clapp has done all the hard work for us, making the Virginia data accessible through the Weldon Cooper Center’s Demographics & Workforce blog. She loaded the Virginia data on this map, color coding urban deserts in red and rural deserts in tan.  The graphic at the top of this post was captured from that map.

According to Clapp, USDA has identified 325,000 Virginians, or roughly 5% of the population, as having low access to grocery stores. But 26.4% of the Old Dominion’s population is obese, according to Virginia Performs data. Clearly, food deserts can account for only a small part of the problem, if any at all. If four out of five obese Virginians live in proximity to grocery stores, ready access to fruit and vegetables is not the problem.

The problem can’t be blamed upon insufficient education. Kids learn about good nutrition in school, and they get bombarded with media messages and public service announcements throughout their lives. Everybody knows how to keep the weight off. They just don’t exercise the discipline and will power to do it. People choose to spend their money on processed and packaged foods that are tasty and easy to prepare.

If poor people really wanted fresh food, entrepreneurs would meet the demand. Indeed, most food deserts are served by corner stores and convenience stores that stock foodstuffs that people purchase in small quantities. When I lived in Church Hill many moons ago, I patronized such a store, a Korean-owned corner shop with a small vegetable section in the back. The store did sell fruit and vegetables, although I must say they did not look terribly appetizing.

I suppose you could argue that no one wants buy wilting vegetables, so we shouldn’t blame the poor people of Church Hill for their lousy nutrition. Here’s my response to that: If poor people living in food deserts are truly under-served by the marketplace, an opportunity exists for enterprising do-gooders to meet the latent demand for fresh food. Go for it. Open your own corner store. Stock it with fresh fruits and vegetables and charge a fair price. Let’s see how long you stay in business.

More Pavement or Smarter Traffic Lights. You choose.

Virginia has experimented with traffic light synchronization for many years with some success. Sequencing has had a dramatic impact upon congestion, for instance, in the heavily traveled U.S. 29 corridor north of Charlottesville. But the state is far from tapping the full potential of the technology. Traffic light sequencing is not deployed in all the situations in which it could help, and when it is deployed, it often relies upon outdated technology.

Installing cameras, sensors, wireless and Artificial Intelligence would enable traffic signals to adapt continually as a system to changing traffic conditions without the need for intensive human input.

The video above [since deleted — editor], created by Rhythm Engineering, describes a case study in which its technology has reduced average travel time along a congested, 12-stoplight corridor in Lake Summit, Mo. by half. The technology costs a tiny fraction of what it would have cost to widen roads, build bypasses or otherwise pursue an asphalt-centered solution to the congestion. Assert Rhythm’s website:

Just ten years ago, most U.S. cities and states resisted adaptive traffic control systems that changed traffic lights based on actual demand because they were expensive, time-consuming to set up, and did little to alleviate congestion. The rise and rapid spread of InSync proved that the right approach to adaptive traffic control can dramatically improve traffic flow and safety. Motorists driving on InSync corridors typically see their stops reduced 60-90 percent, travel times reduced up to 50 percent, and fuel consumption and emissions reduced 20-30 percent. Most importantly, police reports from multiple states prove that InSync reduces vehicle accidents up to 30 percent.

Even if Rhythm is engaging in puffery, dynamic sequencing of traffic lights would offer a higher Return on Investment in many instances than widening roads and adding lanes. I’m certainly not endorsing Rhythm’s InSync technology over that of its competitors. And I’m not saying the technology should be applied at every intersection. But I am suggesting that the Virginia Department of Transportation should take a closer look at applying state-of-the-art sequencing technology at every intersection where it’s considering more pavement as a fix.

Advanced synchronization technology costs around $30,000 to $40,000 per stoplight to install. Entire traffic corridors can be upgraded for a few million dollars. The ROI is potentially so superior that it’s almost criminal to spend tens of millions on conventional remedies. If the McDonnell administration doesn’t initiate a re-evaluation of Virginia’s Six Year Improvement Program, government, business and civic leaders should insist upon it.

— JAB

Virginia’s Cost of Living Problem


by James A. Bacon

In 2011 the Washington region was the second most prosperous Metropolitan Statistical Area in the country when ranked by the average annual wage. But adjust wages for the cost of living, and the region fell to 18th place among the nation’s largest 51 largest MSAs, according to an exercise conducted by economic geographer Joel Kotkin.

Richmond lost ground, too, falling one notch to the 22nd place, while Hampton Roads fell four notches to 42nd place. Virginia, it appears, has a cost of living problem. We celebrate our relatively high incomes but tend not to ask what quality of life those wages bring us.

These findings touch upon a point that I have made off and on at Bacon’s Rebellion for many years. There is more to building prosperous societies than maximizing incomes. A balanced strategy for building more prosperous, livable and sustainable communities entails increasing incomes and restraining the cost of living.

While I agree with him on that fundamental point, it’s important to root around in the weeds to gain a more acute understanding of metropolitan dynamics. Kotkin is a big defender of the suburban status quo. He advocates less restrictive land use policies that reduce the cost of developing land and building houses — presumably policies like those practiced in no-zoning Houston, Texas, where lower living costs vaulted the region to the top of his list. And I would agree. As I argued in “Smart Growth for Conservatives,” we do need fewer land use restrictions here in Virginia.

But there’s more to the story. Kotkin draws no distinction between transportation-efficient and transportation-inefficient development. He seems just fine with the sprawling, land-intensive pattern of growth that has characterized most of American suburbia for the past half-century. But he omits something very important from his analysis: It is meaningless to analyze the cost of housing separate from the cost of transportation.

Housing on the metropolitan periphery sells for less on a cost-per-square-foot basis than housing in the core, where the underlying land is more valuable. But the cost of transportation — longer commutes, more miles between stores and other amenities — is higher. Kotkin uses Bureau of Economic Analysis “purchasing power parity” data to adjust for regional cost-of-living differences, which, if I understand the BEA methodology correctly, applies the same weight for spending categories across all urban regions. In reality, the weight for transportation spending varies from region to region.

As a Richmonder, I love the idea that metro Washington wages are only a sliver higher than Richmond wages when adjusted for the cost of living. But I’m not buying it. Yes, housing is significantly cheaper here. The same may be true of transportation when it comes to the cost of purchasing a gallon of gasoline or repairing a flat tire. But Richmonders have created human settlement patterns that require more driving. Our sprawl is worse, and we have fewer mass transit options. Consequently, we devote a higher percentage of our incomes to transportation.

As Trip Pollard pointed out in “Healthy Community Choices for the Greater Richmond Region,” Richmonders developed more land between 1992 and 1997 than the far more populous Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads regions. As a consequence, Richmonders drive more than their counterparts in NoVa and Hampton Roads. Writes Pollard: “The people in the urbanized area [drove] an average of 28.2 miles per person per day in 2008, while people in Northern Virginia drove an average of 23.7 miles per day, and in Hampton Roads 24 miles.”

How much would a daily 4.5-mile-per-person differential between Richmond and Northern Virginia amount to, assuming the cost of transportation were the same in both regions ($0.55, according to the IRS mileage allowance)? Over the course of a year, Richmonders would spend $900 per person more on transportation than Northern Virginians! If the price of gasoline, repairs and insurance is cheaper in Richmond (which I’m guessing it is), the actual differential may be somewhat smaller. Yet the higher number of vehicle miles driven might well swamp those lower prices.

My purpose is not to disparage Kotkin’s larger point, which is that differences in regional cost of living matter. They do! Rather, I’m arguing that we need to be more careful in how we use the data and the conclusions we draw from it.

Virginia’s Slipping “Best To Do Business” Rating

By Peter Galuszka

Old Dominion politicians and economic boosters love to tout the state’s typically high ranking in various surveys of the “best states to do business.” But the latest such ranking, by CNBC, shows Virginia dropping from first place to third.

One reason is roads. “Infrastructure – specifically the state’s perpetually clogged highways – has long been an issue in fast-growing Virginia, and there’s fresh evidence this year that the state is having trouble keeping pace,” CNBC says. Virginia dropped from 10th to 33rd place in this category.

The other big problem is that Virginia, a traditional big government state that enjoyed billions in federal defense spending after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, faces a major cut in such spending.

That’s especially curious since cutting government spending which so benefits Virginia is the political cry of every GOP politician and libertarian, including the Big Blogger himself.  It is terribly amusing how they campaign against the Big Deficit yet tout every friendly survey that paints Virginia as “pro-business,” often without recognizing why it is so.

Personally, I don’t take too these surveys all that seriously. It may be useful to know who generally ranks in the top, the middle and the bottom and why. But having worked as a staffer or freelancer for such major business publications as BusinessWeek, Fortune Small Business and some of Forbes’ outlets I know first-hand how hit-or-miss the data and reporting for such rankings can be.

Nonetheless, there are takeaways. The CNBC survey is not good news for Robert F. McDonnell, our photogenic governor who basks in the GOP Republican spotlight as the convention approaches. While it is true that McDonnell has made more funding available for highways, he also spends too much time on complex and controversial projects that large municipalities don’t want such as expanding U.S. 460.

The effort and money would be better spent ending traffic jams on the Beltway in Northern Virginia, the state’s real economic engine, and unsnarling bridges and tunnels in Hampton Roads. A simple solution is raising the state’s ridiculously low gasoline tax, but that’s anathema for tax-averse Republicans.

Another distraction confronts McDonnell and Lt. Gov. Bill “The Jobs Guy” Bolling, who is being set up by the state’s Republican establishment to run against maverick Atty. Gen. Ken Cuccinelli in the next gubernatorial race. Both could have spent more time preparing the state for all-important federal jobs cuts. Instead, McDonnell has squandered precious time on his offbeat idea to turn Virginia into the “Energy Capital of the East Coast.”

He’s pushed offshore drilling in the wake of Deepwater Horizon, nuclear power after Fukushima and North Anna earthquakes and coal after the deadly Upper Big Branch disaster that has been blamed squarely on Massey Energy, a coal operator formerly headquartered in Richmond. He’s getting nowhere on any of these fronts.

If CNBC’s rating trend keeps up, it will only benefit former Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine who is running for U.S. Senate against George Allen, a perennial GOP favorite. Allen, who had also been a governor and a U.S. Senator before the “macaca” moment has spent some of his recent years as an energy lobbyist. Oh, forgive me, I meant “political consultant.” Sorry, George.

For ordinary Virginians such as me, the problems remain although I was very lucky yesterday. I needed to take someone to Baltimore Washington International Airport yesterday. It was an unusually quick trip. As we turned off the George Washington Memorial Parkway and headed east into Maryland, the Beltway traffic was backed up for five miles going into the Old Dominion. My prayers had been answered.

Live Longer, Ride a Bike.

Riding bicycles is safer than most people think, and a whole lot healthier, argues bicycle commuter and activist Tom Bowden. With modest investment, biking could become even safer.

Cycling enthusiast Tom Bowden. No lycra, no clip-on pedals. Just regular street clothes and an Australian bush hat. (Click for bigger image.)

by James A. Bacon

Tom Bowden has heard all the bicycle-accident horror stories — the unprotected collisions with 4,000 pounds of automotive steel, the vaults over the steering wheel and the head plants on cement curbs — but he still believes that riding on two wheels instead of four will lengthen most peoples’ life expectancy.

The 56-year-old Richmond attorney and cycling enthusiast cites two reasons for that counter-intuitive claim. First, the likelihood of injury or fatality on a bicycle is no more than in an automobile for riders taking basic precautions. Second, riding bicycles offers tremendous benefits for weight control and cardio-vascular fitness that people can’t get driving a car.

Building walkable and bicycle-friendly streets and trails, Bowden argues, is one of the best investments that government, business and civic leaders in a metropolitan region can make. They create recreational amenities that make a region more livable, they reduce traffic congestion and they contribute to the general health. There is a lot of resistance in Virginia to making roads more hospitable to cyclists, he says, but the momentum is shifting. “A lot of forces are coming together … promoting cycling as a bona fide transportation mode.”

Bowden has long been active in Virginia’s burgeoning grassroots cycling movement. A co-founder of Richmond’s CyCor professional racing team in 1994, he chairs Bike Virginia, which organizes a five-day biking tour and raises money for bicycle advocacy, and serves on the board of the Virginia Bicycling Federation. He also rides his bike to work on a near-daily basis.

Yes, there is a risk of injury riding a bicycle, says Bowden. In 2006, according to the Networks of Employers for Traffic Safety website, 773 cyclists died in accidents in the U.S. and 44,000 were injured. The fatality rate per trip was twice that for cyclists as it was for automobiles. But even if you accept these numbers — and Bowden says the statistics “are all over the map” — it’s not a justification for keeping cyclists off the road.

A high percentage of accidents can be attributed to bad cycling. A quarter of all cyclists killed in accidents that year were riding while alcohol impaired (blood levels at 0.08 or above). Others were riding at night without lights, while others ran red lights, rode against traffic or rode at excessive speeds. “If you don’t ride recklessly or at high speeds, it’s extremely safe.”

What the accident statistics don’t measure, he adds, is the impact of cycling on health. How do cyclists and non-cyclists stack up, he asks, in measures of weight and cardio-vascular fitness? How many non-cyclists could avoid chronic illnesses like heart disease and diabetes if they were more physically active?

Finally, Bowden argues, the high rate of fatalities results mainly from bikes colliding with cars. Shift more people from cars to bikes, and the dynamic changes. “The chances of cyclists killing others is much much lower. … When more people ride bikes, the overall death toll will plummet because there will be so much less carnage from automobiles killing other drivers, pedestrians and cyclists.”

Injuries and fatalities constitute an argument for better bicycle infrastructure and paying more attention to bicycle safety, not discriminating against cycling. Bowden suggests that local governments can do a lot to encourage safe cycling.

Carve out bicycle lanes through restriping. Localities can spur ridership and promote safety by marking more bicycle lanes. That creates space for cyclists and it signals drivers to be alert. If accomplished through a “road diet,” creating the space by narrowing automobile lanes, the cost is minimal. Drivers might have to drive a little slower in the narrower lanes but their real travel time will be little impaired. Drivers typically drive over the posted speed limit then wind up waiting at red lights. Moreover, getting people out of cars and onto bicycles will reduce congestion.

Build dedicated bicycle lanes. This is more expensive because it may require local governments to acquire right of way and to build/maintain paved surfaces that did not exist before. Critics of bicycle lanes make the observation that people use them mainly for recreation, not “utility” travel such as commuting. That argument may be true in the early phases of building a bicycle network, Bowden argues, when bicycle lanes and trails are disconnected. But as the bicycle network fills out, more people will use it. Experience in European and American cities has shown that bicycle ridership builds over time when bike lanes are built. Continue reading.

Think Big: Let’s Make Virginia the Healthiest State in the Country

Richmond marathon. Photo credit: Richmond Times-Dispatch.

by James A. Bacon

Virginia is a great state in which to live but it could be greater. We Virginians need to set bold goals for ourselves.

One such goal, I would humbly submit, would be to make Virginia the healthiest state in the United States. That would be not only audacious, but it would be achievable, it would be measurable, and it would align with broadly shared values.

I was discussing the idea with family and friends over the weekend, and everyone agreed, yeah, that sounds like a great idea. You don’t have to be a Republican or a Democrat, a liberal or a conservative, to want healthier communities. Everyone can jump on board. But setting the goal of becoming Numero Uno in the United States sounded a tad overwhelming to some. Perhaps we should set a lower bar — to become the healthiest state in the Southeast, or maybe the Mid-Atlantic. That sounded like wise advice at the time. But when I checked national health surveys, I discovered that Virginia and its metropolitan regions score respectably well already.

According to the United Health Foundation 2011 survey, Virginia ranked as the 20th healthiest state in the country. It was already the healthiest state in the Southeast, and even the healthiest state in the Mid-Atlantic. Yes, that means that, when ranked by a composite of such indicators as smoking, violent crime, air pollution, occupational fatalities, infant mortality, obesity,  binge drinking and access to health insurance, the Old Dominion actually out-performs Maryland (No. 22), Delaware (No. 30) and North Carolina (No. 32), states whom my companions thought might out-perform us.

That relatively strong performance cannot be attributed solely to the highly educated and health-conscious population of Northern Virginia either. While the Washington metropolitan area did rank No. 1 among the nation’s largest 50 metropolitan regions in the 2012 American Fitness Index (using a different but not entirely dissimilar methodology), Richmond ranked 11th and Virginia Beach 17th.

Thus, while it might constitute a stretch for Virginia to become as healthy as Vermont (No. 1) and New Hampshire (No. 2), the gap is bridgeable. It might take a generation to achieve but the rewards would be immense, both in terms of quality of life and economic development. A healthier population is not only a happier population — that goes without saying — but a wealthier population. A healthier population makes employers more competitive and it drains less from the public treasury.

Thanks to a generous sponsorship of Bon Secours Virginia Health System, Bacon’s Rebellion will begin exploring strategies for making Virginia and its constituent regions, especially Richmond, the healthiest state in the union. At this point in time I foresee developing three main themes (although I reserve the right to wander off topic in the pursuit of interesting stories):

  • Building more walkable, bikable regions. The premise is simple: People who walk more and bicycle more are healthier than those who don’t.
  • Eating healthier food. For the most part, this means eating more locally grown fruits and vegetables — as well as locally grown meats, cheeses and other foodstuffs.
  • Working toward cleaner water and cleaner air. Clean water and air are healthier than unclean water and air. The problem is that achieving further gains can be expensive. Which strategies, I’ll be asking, are cost-effective?

Another way to achieve healthier communities is to address deficiencies in the health care system. How do we make health care more affordable and more accessible? How do we improve medical outcomes? These issues are crucial, too. Given limited resources, however, I have chosen to focus on community health rather than the health care system because it dovetails so well with Bacon’s Rebellion‘s existing Piedmont Environmental Council sponsorship to cover transportation and land use in Virginia. (If someone would like us to cover the health care system, we are open to discussion. Check out our sponsorship page.)

Some readers may be aghast at my selection of themes. Bike trails? Green downtowns? Free-range chickens? Has Bacon gone native… or, worse, liberal? Not at all. I plan to focus on areas that should enjoy buy-in from a large cross-section of the population. But, as always, I will apply libertarian-conservative principles that emphasize private-sector solutions and ground-up civic initiatives, not top-down, command-and-control government rules, regulations and subsidies.

Also, I plan to use the Bacon’s Rebellion blog to launch a broader dialogue. I am working on a series of “idea jams” to get the conversation started on several topics tied to the themes described above. These dialogues are purely experimental. If they work, I’ll keep them going. If they don’t, I’ll pull the plug. So, stay tuned. It should be fun…. and good for you, too!

Recovery? What Recovery?


If it feels like we’re still in a recession, this chart, published on the blog of Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw, explains why. Cutting through  the terminological differences of “unemployed,” “underemployed,” “discouraged workers” and the rest, the graph expresses the number of employed people in the economy as a percentage of of the total workforce.

Bottom line: From an employment perspective, there has been no recovery. Employment growth has done no more than track population growth. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions as to why this may be.

Making High-Brow Art Accessible to the Masses

Wintergreen's musical stage

by James A. Bacon

When you think of symphony, modern dance and other high art forms, Nelson County, Va., is not the first locale that normally leaps to mind. Bluegrass, maybe. Not Beethoven. But Nelson County is home to the Wintergreen Resort, and  Wintergreen Performing Arts puts on one of the most marvelous music festivals in Virginia. That festival, which encompasses more than 200 events over five weeks, is one of the state’s great treasures.

My wife and I visited friends in Wintergreen this weekend to escape the sweltering Richmond heat (only 92° on the mountaintop, not 102°), do a little hiking (with a emphasis on “little,” given the temperature) and expand our cultural horizons. Saturday morning we took in a lecture, Film and Postmodernism, learning to appreciate for the first time in our Philistine lives the difference between “modernism” and “post modernism.” That evening, we listened to  Symphony No. 7 of the late-19th century Austrian composer Anton Bruckner. The next morning my wife and friends enjoyed a “coffee concert” of contemporary classical music.

Had we been so inclined, we could have taken cooking lessons or embarked upon tours of Nelson County’s burgeoning organic and artisanal foods community.

Wintergreen pulls in artists from around the country to perform in a wide range of classical genres. The organizers like artistic diversity. This year the festival is entitled “Innovation 2012.” By way of explanation, Artistic and Executive Director Larry Alan Smith cites the insight of Steve Jobs:

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.”

I loved the fact that I could attend the symphony wearing shorts, Topsiders and a short-sleeved shirt while sipping on white wine. Beats getting dressed up. One  take-away lesson is that the high-brow arts should break out of the concert halls and be performed in venues where the plebs and riff-raff can partake. Another is that Virginia needs more events like this.

The Wintergreen festival stretched my mental boundaries, which I need to do more often. As Jobs said, engaging in new experiences fosters creativity. That’s true for individuals, and it’s true for entire communities. The Charlottesville and Richmond metro regions are fortunate to have Wintergreen in their back yard.