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This
four-part column explores the impact of
Geographic Illiteracy and the need for
reality-based Regionalism.
Part
One – Geographic Illiteracy in Mainstream
Media demonstrates how Geographic
Illiteracy prevents governance practitioners and
citizens from understanding the regional context
of economic, social and physical dysfunction
and of cataclysmic disasters. Geographic
Illiteracy is a debilitating affliction for
individuals.
Part
Two – Deadly Dysfunction briefly
examines the recent evidence that the spacial
distribution of human activities is causing
human settlements to be ever more deadly.
Part
Three – What Regional Authority?
explores the idea of a regional transportation
agency. Part
Four – Progressive Regionalism
examines the current wasteland of
“politics-as-usual,” suggesting the need for
a new perspective. Perhaps it is: “Progressive
Regionalism.” PART
ONE: GEOGRAPHIC
ILLITERACY IN MAINSTREAM MEDIA Economic,
social and physical conditions will continue to
deteriorate and catastrophic disasters will
continue to occur unless there is Fundamental
Change in human settlement patterns and in
governance structure. Geographic
Illiteracy is a terminal disease for
contemporary civilization if mainstream media
outlets continue to spread this contagious
mental illness. (For an exploration of “Geographic
Illiteracy” see the backgrounder of that
title.) In
Part One, four “news” stories are examined to
document the pervasiveness of Geographic
Illiteracy in one mainstream media outlet over a
four-day period. Without an understanding of
regional reality, citizens and their governance
practitioners are lost. Mainstream media is
leading the way over the cliff. We
start with a topic that everyone by now should
understand is a regional issue: Traffic
Congestion. The obliviousness of mainstream
media to the regional reality of traffic
congestion is demonstrated by an Oct. 6, 2005,
Page One story in the Washington Post:
“A Slowdown in the Fast Lanes: Local (sic)
Traffic Clogs Md., Va. Interstates Far From D.C.
/ Interstates Backing Up Far From Washington.”
It is amazing that a nationally respected
mainstream media outlet ran that headline. What
is worse, WaPo published a story that
fits the headline. Traffic
congestion is a regional issue.
Frederick, Md., and Fredericksburg, Va., have
been within the Washington- Baltimore New Urban
Region for nearly 50 years by any rational
definition of “region.” The commuting shed
to the core of the National Capital Subregion
now reaches over 50 miles beyond Frederick, Md.,
to the north and west and almost as far to the
south and east of Fredericksburg, Va. "Local”
traffic? It is a dysfunctional distribution of
origins and destinations of trips region-wide
that cause these backups. Some origins and some
destinations of travelers caught in the backup
are in the adjacent urbanized areas but they are
not the “cause” of the problem. The
comments on the “Road To Ruin” Blog (“A
New Role of Interstates”) regarding the WaPo
story convey useful insights but more
importantly they demonstrate that when the base
story misses the fundamental point that traffic
congestion is regional, comments and responses
miss the most important points too. (For a
review of Interstate highways' impact on human
settlement patterns see “Interstate
Crime,” Feb. 28, 2005. Also see End
Note One.) The
second example of Geographic Illiteracy at WaPo
is the failure to develop a clear map of the
geography of politics and then to misinterpret
the map. (For an earlier example of a similar
disconnect see “Where
the Jobs Are,” May 24, 2004.) In an Oct. 9,
2005, Page One story, the headline reads: “N.
Virginia’s Split Identities Will Test
Candidates: Even as Bond Evolves in Region
(sic), Powerful Divides Reverberate in
Governor’s Race / N. Va’s Split Identities
Make for the Thorny Campaigning.” A
lot of “reporting” went into this coverage,
and the map, table and story contain useful
information. The presentation, however, is
confusing because the authors and editors are
confused. First, the northern part of Virginia
is a Subregion, not a “Region.” Even
in the territory identified the text and map are
disconnected. The text makes a big point of
inside/ outside the Beltway political
differences, but when one looks at the map they
see something different. What about all the
“inside the Beltway characteristics"
shown in northwestern Fairfax (Greater Reston)
that is far outside the Beltway? It
turns out that it would be easy to identify the
logical location of the Clear Edge from the size
of the precincts shown on the map and then to
use this organic line as a basis for comparison,
not “the Beltway” or the municipal
jurisdiction borders. An even bigger problem is
that the margin of victory percentages are shown
with the same symbol in large area/small
population (aka, lower density) precincts in
Fauquier County as for small area/large
population (aka, higher density) precincts in
Alexandria, Arlington and Fairfax. This
gives the impression that acres cast votes, not
people. Percentage-change data continually
confounds an understanding of the regional
distribution of people and activities. This
seemingly simple geographic misconception about
acres vs. people is a root cause of fundamental
transport policy distortions. Transport policy
needs to provide access and mobility for people
as well as the goods and services people use,
not for acres of land. As noted in the
Backgrounder “Five
Critical Realities," there is far more
land already urbanized in dysfunctionally
scattered patterns of settlement than will be
needed in the foreseeable future. The
map and table provide factual information but
the total presentation provides a distorted view
of even the WaPo proprietary Virginia
Subregion. The
boundaries of the WaPo Subregion are
driven by advertising demographics, not regional
reality. (See “Where
is Northern Virginia,” Aug. 11, 2003.) The
problem of regional obliviousness and geographic
illiteracy is even worse when WaPo leaves
the Washington-Baltimore New Urban Region. Also
on Oct. 9, WaPo provides a summary of
Katrina generated flooding in and round the
municipality of New Orleans. “The Slow
Drowning of New Orleans: As Priorities Shifted
Over the Decades, a Watery Disaster Always
Loomed.” This
is a thoughtful and balanced review of state and
municipal politics and the Corps of Engineers
role in the flooding of the City of New Orleans
and immediately adjacent areas. Anyone
interested in the impact of Katrina will find
good information here. But there is no regional
context. Like
transportation, flood protection is a regional
issue, not a municipal or a multi-municipal
issue. As noted in “Down
Memory Lane with Katrina,” Sept. 5, 2005,
the scale of the flooding problems on the Gulf
Coast of Louisiana makes it imperative to
understand the multi-regional context of the
issue. The problems and the solutions cannot be
understood without that context. This is what
the Scientific American, National
Geographic and other pre-event coverage of
the Katrina / Rita Gulf Coast disaster proves. (See
End Note Two.) In
nearly two months of Katrina and Rita coverage
in WaPo there is almost no mention of
regional settlement patterns. There are only
regional solutions to regional problems like
transportation congestion and flood control.
There cannot be a democratic, much less
intelligent, evaluation of alternative
strategies if citizens, and the governance
practitioners upon whom they rely, do not
understand the regional context. OK,
OK so WaPo could do a better job with
regionalism but what is the big deal? The
big deal is this: “The Slow Drowning of New
Orleans” story starts on Page One and jumps to
a double truck spread on pages 14 and 15. On the
back of page 14 (page 13) there is a story about
the potential of a avian flu pandemic. The story
carries a headline of “Flu Plan Leaves Many
Decisions at Local Level: U.S. Preparedness
Draft Also Calls for Unprecedented Cooperation,
Expert Says.” Excuse me, is
that not just what we have just been through
with Katrina and Rita? The downside of flooding
the Gulf Coast was killing people in the
thousands. The downside of a avian flu pandemic
is predicted by the current federal “plan”
to kill 1.9 million in the U.S. alone with half
the nation-state’s 300 million citizens sick. There
are important international and national
strategies and roles in the face of a potential
flu pandemic. The primary focus will be,
however, regional. There will be a role for
state and municipal action but citizens live in
regions, hospitals serve regions, resources need
to be stored, allocated and coordinated by
regions. The same is true for all disasters. The
day after the avian flu pandemic story appeared
on page 13, WaPo questioned “Pandemic
Preparedness” in an editorial and with good
reason. However, 40 years of feeding the public
Geographic Illiteracy-contaminated stories make
it difficult for citizens and their governance
practitioners to grasp the scope and complexity
of a regional response to a pandemic much less a
Cat 4 or 5 hurricane. The
federal response to Katrina prompted the elected
heads of Montgomery, Prince Georges and Fairfax
Counties to call on the Washington Council of
Governments (Wash COG) to rethink its plans and
its reliance on federal assistance and
leadership. Wash
COG represents the core of the National Capital
Subregion but that is not the region. It leaves
out the part of the Subregion where we live and
where half a million others also live. I
hope I do not have to say “I told you so”
about preparation for an avian flu pandemic as
we did for the Gulf Coast hurricane impact in
“Down Memory Lane with Katrina.” Actually,
given our faith in the current governance
structure, I hope I am not one of the 1.9
million dead and am able to say “I told you
so” come next May. PART
TWO: DEADLY
DYSFUNCTION Before
we look at how Geographic Illiteracy plays out
in the current Virginia election process, let's
step back and look at what can be learned from
the last few months about dysfunctional human
settlement patterns. We start with “natural
disasters.” This is not a new topic for The
Shape of the Future; see “Fire
and Flood,” Nov. 3, 2003. In
the last six months the world has witnessed
230,000 deaths in a South Asia tsunami, more
than 40,000 deaths in a Kashmiri
earthquake, more than 1,000 in Gulf Coast
hurricanes/flooding and about the same number in
Central America hurricane-induced flooding and
mudslides. All of these disasters were caused by
citizens building the wrong kind of shelter in
the wrong locations. Has no one heard of the
three little pigs? Perhaps Disney should have
started their electronic animation with the
Three Little Pigs instead of Chicken Little. On
Oct, 12, 2005, WaPo published a large
color photo on Page A 10 taken by Brennan
Linsley of AP. This photograph puts the issue of
deadly settlement patterns in sharp perspective.
The photo is important because in a single shot
you can see cause and effect. (See End
Note Three.) Shot from a U.S. Army
helicopter, the photo shows a Guatemala mudslide
zone. From the photo it is clear that bad land
management at the top of the plateau caused the
slide and that anyone who lived below the slide
zone was a sitting duck waiting for disaster.
The photo clearly shows that mudslides had
occurred in the area on a number of occasions
before. That should have told anyone that
similar locations would result in similar slides
given a lot of rain. Villages that were located
below mudslide sites have now been declared mass
graves. The Katrina case is just as clear for
those that take a regional perspective but are
not as easy to show in a single photograph. Solving
the shelter crisis includes more than just
affordable and accessible housing, it means
building shelter in the right place and out of
the right materials. See “Solutions
to the Shelter Crisis,” July 25, 2005. It
is becoming crystal clear that it is not just
physical harm that comes from dysfunctional
human settlement patterns. We explore the social
and economic aspects of this reality at length
in The Shape of the Future. There are
several sources on the topic that have appeared
in the five-and-a-half years since The Shape
of the Future was published. Douglas
E. Morris recently published "It’s a
Sprawl World After All: The Human Cost of
Unplanned Growth – and Visions for a Better
Future." The book is getting good
reviews in some circles. It is a shame that Joel
S. Hirschhorn, Ph.D.’s book, "Sprawl
Kills: How Blandburbs Steal Your Time, Health
and Money," used up a good title on a
much less useful book that attempts to make some
of the same points. It is also a shame they both
used the confusing word “Sprawl” which is in
the eye of the beholder. (See End
Note Four.) Morris
focuses attention on a range of issues but the
one that gets the most coverage is the growth of
serial killers in the United States vs. Europe,
as evidence of growing social dysfunction rooted
in settlement patterns that goes far beyond
"Bowling Alone".
In columns that have begun to appear in
Community newspapers around Virginia, Morris
makes sound points about alienation and lack of
safety from scattered, dysfunctional settlement
patterns. The
University of Virginia's Bill Lucy adds another
dimension in his work on “Death at the
Hands of Strangers” as noted in “Dying
Young in Traffic,” Nov. 1, 2004. There is
also the issue of “Roadway Person Slaughter”
explored in Chapter 13, Box 5, of The Shape
of the Future. Now,
in addition to the crime data and traffic data,
there is a current study from Virginia’s chief
medical officer that finds that the largest
category of violent deaths in Virginia are
suicides and that most of the victims are older
white men. If the avian flu does not get you,
depression and suicide over bad relationships
caused by dysfunctional human settlement
patterns will. As
that perennial optimist Kirt Vonnegut says:
“Human beings are awful animals. Let’s pack
it in. Let’s stop reproducing. We’re
wrecking the place.” He is of course right.
Humans are not only wrecking the Bay and the
Countryside but building an unsustainable
Urbanside as well. PART
THREE: WHAT
REGIONAL AUTHORITY? With
these perspectives on Geographic Illiteracy and
dysfunctional human settlement patterns, let's
return to the current election cycle in Virginia
to see how the candidates for Governor are
dealing with critical regional issues like
transportation (aka, mobility and access) and
disaster preparedness. We have not heard much
about regional solutions to disaster planning
from the candidates so let's look at the
transportation issue. In
the vast landfill of words and images that have
been piled up in the current multi-million
dollar campaigns for Governor of Virginia, there
are two small nuggets related to one of voters'
biggest concerns – traffic congestion – that
are not just part of the pathetic “the
solution is more money to build more roads”
excuse that we examine in “Transport
and the November Election,” July 11, 2005,
and the columns cited therein. One
of these nuggets is Tim Kaine’s recognition
that there is a link between land use and
transportation. This is addressed briefly in
PART FOUR – PROGRESSIVE REGIONALISM. The other
is Jerry Kilgore’s proposal for “regional
authorities.” Since transportation is a
regional problem, “regional authorities” has
the potential to be a good idea. But Kilgore's
concept, as currently formulated, has problems. For
starters neither Kilgore, nor any governor of
Virginia, could establish a “regional
authority” for the two largest regions where
the majority of the Commonwealth’s citizens
live. That is because while both of these
regions fall partly in the state of Virginia,
the Hampton Roads New Urban Region includes part
of North Carolina and the northern part of
Virginia is in a region that includes the
Federal District, much of Maryland and parts of
Pennsylvania and West Virginia. If
one could put aside that huge problem, there are
others. In the Road to Ruin blog (see End
Note Five), Jim Bacon nails the most
significant functional problem with Kilgore’s
“regional authorities” idea: Kilgore’s
“authorities” would only deal with
transportation and not with land use.
Without balanced and appropriate authority over
transport and land use at the regional scale, a
“regional authority” is an exercise in
futility.
We use the phrase “balanced and
appropriate” because even though there is an
important roll for a region-scale authority,
there is also a role for
transportation/land use responsibility at the
Alpha (Balanced) Community scale and at the
village and neighborhood scales. There is
almost no useful role at the scale of the
current municipal agencies and the state’s
focus should be on interregional issues.
Interregional issues are sometimes interstate,
but frequently they are not.) It
is worth amplifying Mr. Bacon’s core point
about the need for transportation and land use
aspects of any regional authority. It turns out
there is good evidence on this issue from the
real world. If anyone wants a demonstration of
how worthless the idea of a “regional
transportation agency” is without a land use
pattern and density mandate look no farther than
the authority that already exists in the
northern part of Virginia. Citizens
have heard little from the Northern Virginia
Transportation Authority created in 2002 since
the agency attempted to convince voters to back
the sales tax increase that was supposed to
improve mobility and access in the Fall of 2002.
Northern Virginia Transportation Authority (NVTA)
should not be confused with Northern Virginia
Transportation Alliance (NVTA) from whom one
hears often and which appears to have
overlapping members/supporters/frequent quests. Recent
reviews of the Authority’s
website provide an unsettling view of what
regional transportation agencies without land
use responsibilities might be like. NVTA is
responsible for solving one of the most
important economic, social and physical problems
facing the citizens -- advancing Regional Rigor
Mortis. (See “Regional
Rigor Mortis,” June 6, 2005.) As noted
above, the Authority's purview is not really
regional (the Washington-Baltimore New Urban
Region) or even subregional. NVTA is only
responsible for the inner part of the Virginia
portion of the National Capital Subregion. That
should not stop it from doing something of
value, as the agency has voting members who are
well connected and, to the best of our
knowledge, persons of good will. However,
NVTA is not working very hard on reducing
congestion or improving mobility and access. The
Authority board has met only six or seven times
a year since July of 2002. The web site says the
minutes of the board meetings take a month to
appear, but March 2005 and June 2005 has not
been posted online in August of this year. The
Authority canceled its August 2005 meeting and
did not meet in September. There is one project
listed on its website. That project is
“TransAction 2030,” billed as the
process to revise the badly conceived and
ill-fated NOVA 2020 subregional transportation
plan. The core of the process to date is a
citizen response poll on which transportation
improvements from a pre-selected list are
ranked. The
graphic depiction of the alternatives is
instructive. A TransAction 2030 map covers the
jurisdictions in NVTA, but not all of the
Virginia portion of the National Capital
Subregion. This territory is crisscrossed with
eight colored corridors. The corridors cover up
about half of the total area within Radius = 30
Miles from the core of the National Capital
Subregion. Two corridors (“Dulles/VA 7
Corridor and I-95/I-395/US 1 Corridor) look like
the python that swallowed a pig. The “I-66/US
29/US 50 Corridor” looks like a python that is
about to swallow Fauquier County and everything
else to the west. There is something very
symbolic about this Python Map. Some
of the corridors on the Python Map are
confusingly labeled. One hopes they are not
intentionally mislabeled. An example is
the “Tri County/Loudoun County Parkway &
VA 234/VA 659 Corridor.” Although the scale is
small and the graphics generalized this corridor
does not appear to cover the Prince William,
Fairfax or Loudoun parts of the Tri County or
the Loudoun County Parkway proposals. The
corridor looks suspiciously like the VA Route
234 option for the Western Transportation
Corridor. The
most chilling part is the idea that a poll based
on this map would guide public mobility and
access policy. Citizens are asked to “vote”
on which of these corridors and which projects
within the corridors they want to improve first. In
addition to the “vote-on-the-map-poll,”
agency’s consultants contacted 1,263 residents
in a very long telephone poll. One can view the
questions and the results at the web site.
Shared-vehicle systems (aka, mass transit or
public transit) scored very well vis-a-vis
roadways, but the alternatives all were drawn
from the Python Map and the laundry list of
possible facility “improvements” in each
corridor. The
overriding problem is that in the NVTA online
poll and the phone poll, there is no option for
a person to say “Stop! No more roads or rails
until there is a plan to balance transportation
system capacity with the trip generation of
planned land use.” It
turns out NVTA is a “regional authority”
that falls into a vast cohort of agencies and
groups that call themselves “regional” or
talk about regional issues but are not regional
and do not serve a useful purpose. (See End
Note Six.) Here
are three rules of thumb for any “regional
authority” that might effectively deal with
transportation in the New Urban Regions in which
citizens of the Commonwealth live:
-
The
authority must have “balanced and
appropriate” responsibilities in both
transport and land use. In other words, the authority must be part of a region-wide
system of agencies and jurisdictions that
provide for democratic participation at the
cluster, neighborhood, village and
especially the Balanced (Alpha) Community
scales. See “Balanced
Communities,” Aug. 23, 2005.
Without
these elements the idea of a “regional
authority” is just be another election year
joke.
In
an Oct. 1, 2005, post on the Road To Ruin blog
("Are
NoVa Communities Restoring Regional Balance?"),
Jim Bacon says: “The root cause of Northern
Virginia’s transportation woes is the
imbalance of jobs and housing at the community
level.” He goes on to state that “Arlington,
Alexandria and Fairfax have been incredibly
successful at attracting commercial development
but have restricted new residential development
with the consequence that workers have been
forced to seek housing in outlying jurisdictions
– and rely upon a handful of increasingly
congested transportation arteries to get them
back and forth to work.”
Add
to this observation the following resources:
With
the Bacon statement and these three
understandings, one would have a formula for
creating functional transportation and land use
in the northern part of Virginia and the basis
for a Virginia sub-agency to be of a real regional
authority.
PART
FOUR:
PROGRESSIVE
REGIONALISM
A
few days ago those who follow the Bacons
Rebellion blog witnessed a great flip flop
on the part of our leader, Jim Bacon. As noted
above Tim Kaine claims that he recognizes the
need for a link between transport and land use.
Kaine has provided no details on what he might
do about this reality if elected governor. On 10
October Kaine attempted to address the issue. He
suggested giving municipal governments new
powers to turn down development proposals based
on their traffic impact.
A
fire storm erupted. Many pointed out that
municipal governments already had that power if
the choose to use it. Others noted the net
result of increasing municipal powers without
other action would be a further scatteration of
urban land uses to even more remote
jurisdictions that increased the total travel
demand and made housing less accessible. Others
noted that, like the Gilmore Car Tax, this was
something a governor could not deliver.
Jim
Bacon was so incensed that he wrote on the Bacon’s
Rebellion Blog that Kaine had “lost his
vote.” Some assumed that meant he was voting
for the other “leading” candidate –
“Transportation Authority Kilgore” – even
though Bacon previously had detailed why
Kilgore’s transportation plank was rotten to
the core. (See End
Note Seven.)
The
bigger question is why would anyone assume that
just because Bacon is not going to vote for
Kaine, that he (or anyone else so offended)
would vote for Kilgore? Is it not time to say:
“Enough of this political charade”?
Is
there not very good reason to make this the
party (election) to which no one bothered to
come (vote)? Two recent op eds got us focus on
the wisdom of the none of the above option:
On
Sept. 25, 2005, Robert J. Samuelson explored the
issue of “Capitalism Vs. Democracy” in WaPo
and his other op ed outlets. His starting point
was not contemporary economic currents but the
recent elections in Japan and in Germany, the
second and third largest economies in the world.
Samuelson suggests that Capitalism (thrives on
change and innovation) and Democracy (relies on
constituencies with a stake in the status quo)
are in opposition and that a stable contemporary
society depends on a healthy balance between the
two forces. This summary does
not do justice to Samuelson’s arguments but
few could look at current leadership of
capitalism (Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphi, GM
or Microsoft) or of democracy (check the job
approval ratings of the current national, most
state and municipal administrations) and feel
very good about the future. We need better
capitalism and better democracy.
The
second piece appeared in WaPo on Oct. 9,
2005, is by Joel Kotkin. Again a summary does
not do justice to the supporting arguments but
the headline and subhead gets across the idea:
“The Era to Bring Back: The Progressives Knew
how to make Government Work. Today’s
Conservatives and Liberals Don’t.”
Kotkin
is not completely right on the details but he
argues convincingly that the contemporary
liberal vs conservative dichotomy is meaningless
and the Republican vs Democrat ideology is just
as intellectually bankrupt. Conservatives are
not for conservation but favor consumption. A
liberal can be defined as a person whose
interests are not currently threatened.
Compassionate Conservatism is either an oxymoron
or a sick political joke. We have Big government
/ Big Debt / Tax Breaks for the Rich Republicans
and Big Donor Liberals. Politics is broken and
the “American System” has become a
Semi-Participatory Plutocracy or a Two Party
Dictatorship.
There
is no better indicator of political bankruptcy
than the current campaign for governor in
Virginia. Why continue the charade by
participating?
We
will explore this issue further in future
columns but perhaps we need a new banner to
rally around -- one that is worthy of the United
States’ past and its potential future,
something like “Progressive Regionalism”? It
could be based on everyone paying their fair
share to support their enlightened self interest.
--
October 17, 2005
End
Notes
(1)
Where is John Lancaster when we need him?
John, for those who came in late, was WaPo’s
first transportation reporter in the early 80s.
Over the last 20-plus years no one has been able
to grasp the issue as well as he did. Think how
much better WaPo’s transport coverage
would be with a clear understanding supported by
over two decades of institutional memory. John
Lancaster is, by the way, in Islamabad, Pakistan,
providing coverage of al Qaeda and the recent
earthquakes. His stories provide grist for the
issues raised in PART TWO – DEADLY
DYSFUNCTION. (2)
The Brookings Institution has just issued a 43-page
summary on Katrina (“New Orleans After the
Storm: Lessons from the Past, a Plan for the
Future”) that presents the Brookings patented
myopic, “urban-core- is-the-world”
orientation that mirrors the WaPo. (3)
The inability of a camera lens to convey cause
and effect is a problem with TV News that is
explored in Chapter 2 of The Shape of the
Future. (4)
Morris’s book is deserving of a full review.
For now you may check out the review in Oct /
Nov New Urban News. New Urban News also
did a good, but uncomplimentary, review of the
Hirschhorn, Ph.D. book in June 2005.
Hirschhorn did a guest column at Bacon’s
Rebellion in August of 2004. (5)
Bacon's post on the Road to Ruin blog,
Sept. 29, 2005, reads as follows: Unlike
the Washington Post, which hasn't
evolved past a zombie-like level of analysis --
based on the previous post, I envision its
editorial writers lurching forward, arms
outstretched, muttering... must... build...
more... roads... must... raise... taxes --
Jerry Kilgore is at least thinking seriously
about transportation. I differ with some of his
conclusions, but he's raising points that the WaPo
editorial writers would be discussing if they
weren't brain dead.
Among the novel features of Kilgore's
transportation plan is a proposal to create
regional transportation authorities. If
implemented as it now stands, the idea probably
would prove to be disastrous. But the proposal
takes the transportation debate in a useful
direction.
Here's what's good about Kilgore's proposal.
Transportation congestion is a metropolitan-wide
phenomenon, tied intrinsically to patterns of
residential and commercial development that
overlap municipal boundaries. What Kilgore
understands and the WaPo editorial
writer doesn't, is that traffic congestion can
be addressed effectively only in a regional
context. Kilgore
says he would would create Regional
Transportation Authorities "empowered with
real decision-making authority to find solutions
to their transportation problems." These
authorities:
...will have the power to issue bonds, hold
referenda to involve taxpayers in certain
financing decisions, sign private maintenance
contracts, enter into public-private
partnerships, and use other financing mechanisms
to fund new road, bridge and mass transit
projects over and above existing funding from
the state.
That's moving in the right direction. Just one
big problem -- and it's a killer. Kilgore would
not give these regional authorities any power
over land use planning. Instead of a disjunction
between state transportation and local
land-use planning, Virginia would experience a
disjunction between regional
transportation and local land-use planning. With
its new power to tax, regional authorities would
be empowered to waste even more money than the
state currently does on ill-considered projects.
Very, very bad.
But don't expect to read that kind of analysis
in the Washington Post, which defines
the transportation crisis purely as a revenue
problem. (6)
For a startlingly bleak cross section of the
status of “region” and “regionalism,”
one can subscribe to Thomas J. Christoffel’s
weekly news letter “Regional Community News”
at TomChristoffel@gmail.com.
We have not been able to convince Tom to embrace
a comprehensive conceptual framework for, or a
robust vocabulary to describe, regions or
regionalism. Tom works tirelessly to search the
Internet for any use of the words "regional”
and “regionalism” and then sorts some of his
findings into 10 to 15 pages of mind boggling
entries from across the country and around the
world. (7)
A few days later Bacon did the flip flop because
he learned that Kilgore supported the Coalfields
Expressway and had accepted a contribution from
an engineering contractor who is designing the
Expressway. Bacon was right about the flip re
municipal controls and the flip flop re the
Coalfields Expressway. It is a boondoggle, a
waste of money that would continue the
historical trend of throwing good transportation
money after bad economic development fantasies.
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