Tag Archives: James A. Bacon

Bobbing and Weaving on the Northern Terminus

Posted on May 24, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 25 Comments
Really, can things get any worse?

Really, can things get any worse?

by James A. Bacon

The Charlottesville Bypass pile-up keeps getting bigger…

Last night some 300 Charlottesville-area residents packed a meeting at the Holiday Inn to view three design options for the southern terminus of the controversial, $244 million project. After public outcry over flaws in the preliminary design submitted by Skanska-Branch Joint Venture (SBJV) as part of its winning construction bid, the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) last night presented two new alternatives that avoided routing motorists through two traffic lights before accessing the bypass. While VDOT officials said it was too early to attach monetary figures to the new options, Albemarle County Supervisor Dennis Rooker estimated that a flyover alternative would cost an additional $30 million to $60 million. (See Sean Tubbs’ story in Charlottesville Tomorrow.)

Now it appears that there are unresolved problems with the design of the northern terminus at U.S. 29 North and Ashwood Boulevard. More than a half year after VDOT’s central office had accepted the SBJV bid to build the highway, VDOT employees in the Culpeper District office enumerated a number of issues in a technical memorandum dated Jan. 31, 2013, acquired by the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) through the Freedom of Information Act.

Key questions centered on the “weave” — a criss-crossing pattern traffic that can create congestion and safety issues — created by the SBJV design. From the memo:

  • “Has a weave analysis for motorists exiting the by-pass traveling northbound and merging across 29 northbound to reach the right turn lane at Ashwood Blvd been evaluated?”
  • “Has a weave analysis for motorists exiting the by-pass traveling southbound and merging across 29 southbound to reach the left turn lane at Polo Grounds Rd. been evaluated?”

Discussions between VDOT and SBJV ensued. In a letter dated March 19, 2013, also acquired through the Freedom of Information Act, SBJV Project Manager J.J. Moegling suggested that addressing the newly raised issues would cost $13,000 in additional design costs for a northern terminus traffic study, $45,000 for a lane configuration-weave analysis and $500,000 to modify the design of the intersection at Ashwood Boulevard and U.S. 29 — and that’s just counting the design and consulting fees.

Another key issue that had surfaced by that point was how to dovetail the bypass design, which terminated at the Ashwood Boulevard intersection, with a planned widening of U.S. 29 on the other side of the intersection.

Plans for the widening of U.S. 29 that are available now were not available to SBJV during the bid proposal, Moegling said. It is now apparent that SBJV’s proposed location for an extra northbound lane, submitted in its winning bid, does not match up with the proposed lane configuration of a wider U.S. 29 on the other side of Ashwood. Moreover, Moegling contended, “VDOT’s apparent plan [would] create a dangerous merge condition prior to the signalized intersection. … SBJV’s plan did not widen the existing road, but instead restriped the existing lanes to minimize safety hazards….”

In response to VDOT’s contention that the existing right-turn lane into Ashwood Boulevard must be retained, Moegling said that SBJV “is unable to locate language in the RFP that requires this.”

And another bone of contention: “VDOT commented that the weave condition from the US29 bypass to Ashwood Blvd. must be modeled and analyzed; we are unable to locate language in the RFP that requires this. We believe that this model would fail if performed. It is our opinion that the entire intersection would have to be reconfigured in some fashion for this weave to be successful, possibly including an elevated section through the intersection.”

“As you can see,” wrote Moegling, “there are a number of outstanding issues and direction that we need from your office to move forward. … We believe that the order of magnitude to move forward with many of these design initiatives totals in the vicinity of Five Hundred Sixty Thousands Dollars and 00/100 ($565,000).” That number he added, was the direct design cost only and “does not include any markups or associated construction cost as a result of these changes.”

Bacon’s bottom line: Wow. Thirty to sixty million dollars in design changes for the southern terminus. Now potentially millions of dollars more to build an elevated lane at the Ashwood intersection? Holy smokes! This is what you get when you ram a project through the approval process. VDOT did not create this mess, by the way. Mid-level VDOT employees raised red flags throughout the entire process and their concerns were brushed aside. The McDonnell administration owns this fiasco, and VDOT planners and engineers are stuck with the job of making it work.

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Posted in 2013, Transportation

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Botanical Barges

Posted on May 23, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 14 Comments
floating_wetland2

Photo credit: Lewis Ginter Botanical Park

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation has a new idea for saving the bay: Install floating, fertilizer-sipping wetlands in Virginia’s small lakes and storm water ponds.

by James A. Bacon

The Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden is well known in the Richmond region for its Fountain Garden, its Rose Garden, its East Asia Garden and its Wetlands Garden. Its newest addition could well be referred to as its Floating Garden.

Working in conjunction with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CFB) last week, 20 volunteers loaded a large, plastic-mesh raft with perennial plants, lugged it down to Lewis Ginter’s Lake Sydnor, maneuvered it into open water and anchored it into place with cinderblocks.

A small crowd gathered to observe the proceedings. “When we launched the island,” says Ann Jurczyk, outreach and advocacy manager for the CFB, “people standing on the bridges started applauding when they saw it wasn’t going to sink!”

The floating garden, which measures a mere 120-square-feet, may qualify as the smallest attraction in Lewis Ginter’s 50-acre park of exquisitely tended trees, shrubs and flowers. But the plant-laden ark fulfills a critical function: removing fertilizer from the lake.

“The island functions like marsh plants,” explains Grace Chapman, Lewis Ginter’s director of horticulture. Roots grow through the mesh and dangle a foot or so into the water, where they absorb run-off nitrogen and phosphorous that feed the algae blooms and create oxygen dead zones. But treating the scourge of Virginia’s waterways is not the only thing the island does, she says. “It makes a great turtle barge.” At last count, the island had eight turtles.

Lewis Ginter’s floating wetland is one of two launched May 15 as part of a larger initiative to clean up Upham Brook. Restoration of the badly impared urban stream, which feeds into the Chickahominy River, is a top priority for the CFB. The same day saw the launch of a second floating wetland at the nearby Belmont Golf Course. A grant from a statewide restoration fund, financed by the purchase of Chesapeake Bay license plates, paid for the installations.

The idea for floating wetlands originated about a decade ago out West and has drifted east. Floating Island Southeast, based in Chapel Hill, N.C., is the exclusive provider of “BioHaven Islands” in Virginia and the Carolinas. The purchase price runs under $4,000 per island, including plants and shipping, says Jurczyk.

The Environmental Protection Agency has not yet vouched for the efficacy of the floating islands but a number of small-scale studies, including one conducted by Virginia Tech, has shown positive results. Floating Island Southeast claims that one square foot of its buoyant botanicals will suck up 10 grams of nitrate, 15 grams of ammonia and 0.5 grams of phosphate per day.

Lewis Ginter’s floating wetland is doubly important to CFB, says Jurczyk, because many people will see it, learn about it and hopefully grasp the potential to install one in their own neighborhood. Especially well suited for storm water retention ponds, the floating islands are readily installed and easily maintained. “The nitrogen and phosphorous [removed] is pretty remarkable on a cost-per-pound basis,” she says.

The CFB is looking for a home for two more islands, which it is willing to install at no cost. The main commitment it seeks from a partner like a golf course or homeowners association is to pull in the island once a year and weed out invasive species. Says Jurczyk: “This is a pretty good investment to keep pond health where it should be.”

This article was made possible by a Bon Secours of Virginia Health System sponsorship.

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Posted in 2013, Environment

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City of Richmond Leads Regional Population Growth

Posted on May 23, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 9 Comments
The Lofts at Canal Walk in Richmond's Shockoe Bottom

The Lofts at Canal Walk in Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom

It’s only one year’s worth of data, so I don’t want to make too much of it, but new U.S. Census numbers confirm my argument that the center of gravity of population growth and development is shifting back toward the urban core — at least in the Richmond region. Between July 2011 and July 2012, reports Graham Moomaw with the Times-Dispatch, the population of the City of Richmond grew faster than Henrico, Chesterfield or Hanover Counties.

The numbers:

population_gain

That’s all the more remarkable when you consider how many years the population of Richmond shrank. But the the city’s outstanding performance should come as no surprise to anyone who has visited downtown, Shockoe Bottom and Church Hill recently and seen the number of warehouse-to-condominium conversions that have taken place.  And there’s a lot more urban housing stock to come.

The picture really couldn’t be any clearer. The fastest population growth occurred in the walkable, mixed-use urban center, the slowest growth in auto-centric, low-density exurbia (Hanover County) and middling growth in the medium-density suburbs of Henrico and Chesterfield. The only thing likely to skew this trend, to my mind, is if the Innsbrook office park in Henrico successfully transforms itself into a second node of walkable urbanism.

Update: Clearly, this is a national trend, as reported by this Associated Press article, among others.

– JAB

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Posted in 2013, Demographics, Land use & development

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“How Can We Urbanize Where We Are?”

Posted on May 22, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 17 Comments
Innsbrook in 20 to 40 years?

Innsbrook in 20 to 40 years?

Around the country, local governments are proposing plans to re-develop aging office parks as urban-style, mixed-use complexes, reports the Wall Street Journal, which cited the Innsbrook office park in Henrico as a case in point.

“Suburban office buildings are passe,” said Burrell Saunders, a principal with Lyall Design and a prime mover behind the re-development of the Pembroke area of Virginia Beach. “We need to have office space integrated into daily life.”

Suburban office parks flourished in the 1980s as corporations moved their facilities closer to where Baby Boomers were living. But many decried them as boring places to work; workers relied upon their automobiles for running errands,going to lunch or attending business meetings. Urban geographer Richard Florida called the office parks “nerdistans.” Now the suburbs are experiencing a reconfiguration as walkable urbanism, even in the absence of mass transit. Innsbrook is a case study of the new thinking. Writes the Journal:

In the Innsbrook area, about 15 miles northwest of Richmond, Va., a plan allowing denser development on office parks met an initial resistance, said R.J. Emmerson, Jr.,, Henrico County planning director. Then the area lost major tenants including Lawyers Title Insurance Company and Circuit City. The need for change became clear, Mr. Emerson said.

Highwood Properties … has received approval to redevelop the first 40 acres of a site that will include 400,000 square feet of retail, 1,000 hotel rooms, some 6,000 apartment and condo units and 3.5 million square feet of office space.

“We’re not going to move our buildings in Innsbrook to the [Richmond central business district]. How can we urbanize where we are?” said Ed Fritsch, president and chief executive officer of Highwoods.

How can we urbanize where we are? We’ll be hearing that question more and more in Richmond, Northern Virginia and, indeed, every metro region across the country. That’s why I maintain that the center of gravity of growth and development is shifting from the periphery back toward the urban core — not necessarily to downtown areas but to existing employment centers. Mixed-use re-development of Innsbrook alone could absorb years and years of population and commercial growth in the Richmond region. And that’s just one candidate for re-development.

(For more info, see my previous post, “Innsbrook: The Future Urban Face of Henrico County.“)

– JAB

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Posted in 2013, Land use & development

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PW Supervisors Delay Endorsement of Bi-County Parkway

Posted on May 22, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 14 Comments
Traffic back-up on two-lane Sudley Road near the Stone House in Manassas battlefield park.

Traffic back-up on two-lane Sudley Road near the Stone House in Manassas battlefield park.

So much news today, I can’t keep up! … The Bi-County Parkway, the key missing link in the proposed North-South Corridor, took another hit yesterday when the Prince William County Board of Supervisors delayed a vote to reaffirm its support for the project.

The issue has pit Republican vs. Republican. PW Board Chairman Corey A. Stewart blasted legislators who oppose the road, saying that they need to propose their own solutions. “Everyone who is opposed to the road and not offering an alternative is a coward,” he said, as reported by the Washington Post.

Six Northern Virginia delegates, all Republican, had previously denounced the proposed highway, which would cut along the edge of the Manassas National Battlefield Park and potentially open up western Prince William to development.

The business wing of the Republican Party, including Stewart and Governor Bob McDonnell, tout the North-South Corridor as an economic boon to Washington Dulles International Airport. But the populist wing, including legislators representing the affected districts,  sides with local residents who worry about the impact on their way of life. Del. Bob Marshal, R-Manassas, and others have argued that the $1 billion-or-more cost of developing the North-South Corridor should be reallocated to eliminate current traffic bottlenecks, not to alleviate anticipated future growth that may or may not occur.

– JAB

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Posted in 2013, Transportation

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IG of the Day: Teen Birth Rate

Posted on May 22, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 10 Comments
Source: Atlantic Cities Blog

Source: Atlantic Cities Blog

This map, posted by Richard Florida to the Atlantic Cities blog, shows state-by-state variations in the teen birth rate. Florida makes an unconvincing case that ties higher teen birth rates to the practice of religion, posture on birth control and red state governance, confusing correlation with causality. “Despite all the hectoring and moralizing,” he writes, “teen births are higher in red states and more religious states.”

Toward the end of his post, he does observe that, yes, there might also be a connection between teen birth rates and socio-economic status, and there might be a connection between teen birth rates and pockets of concentrated poverty. The culture of class is a key variable, as sociologist Charles Murray has demonstrated vividly. Florida is a brilliant guy in many ways, but it disheartens me to see him conduct such superficial analysis that tries to score cheap partisan points. Frankly, it casts a shadow over his good and valuable work.

On the other hand…. It’s good to see that Virginia has one of the lower teen birth rates in the country, a standing that I would attribute largely to the fact that it also has one of the lowest poverty rates in the country.

– JAB

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Posted in 2013, Abortion, Children and families, Demographics, Health care, Poverty & income gap

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The Fiscal Benefits of Smart Growth

Posted on May 21, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 17 Comments

better_budgetsby James A. Bacon

Compared to conventional suburban development, smart growth development can save 38% in up-front infrastructure costs and 10% of the cost of supporting police, ambulance, fire and other public services, according to a new report by Smart Growth America (SGA). At the same time, concludes “Building Better Budgets,” smart growth generates 10 times more tax revenue per acre.

In 2010, state and local governments spent $1.6 trillion, including $525 billion on projects and activities heavily influenced by human settlement patterns and another $250 billion on capital projects. Apply the SGA findings to those numbers and the implication is that adopting smart-growth strategies could save state and local governments $100 billion or more per year while simultaneously bolstering revenues.

Smart growth advocates have long claimed that compact, walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods are more fiscally efficient for local government than conventional suburban development characterized by low-density and segregated land uses. While anecdotal evidence is abundant, it has been difficult to back up smart growth claims with comprehensive data. For this report, the SGA conducted a meta-analysis of 17 case studies comparing smart-growth to conventional surburban scenarios over the past 10 to 15 years.

“In case after case, localities determined that smart growth reduces costs,” the report concludes. “In some cases the savings were modest, in some cases the savings were significant.”

The reason for the savings in capital cost is straightforward, explained Bill Fulton, SGA vice president and director of policy, in a Tuesday conference call. Smart growth consumes less land. Because smart growth is more compact, it requires fewer lane-miles of roads and fewer linear-feet of water and sewer line.

The savings in operating costs are almost as direct. The cost of delivering services such as fire, police, rescue, snow plowing and school busing varies in proportion to how much driving is required. The fewer the number of miles that vehicles drive, the lower the cost of services, Fulton says. There is a second layer of savings as well. More compact development can reduce the number of cars, trucks and even the number of stations needed to serve a given population.

For instance, a Charlotte, N.C., study found that fire stations could maintain their five-minute response times for more households in areas with compact development and strong street connectivity than in low-density suburbs with cul de sacs. The initial cost of building a fire station is about $6.5 million and the annual cost to operate it is about $2.5 million. The number of households served by each of the city’s fire stations ranged from 6,000 to 27,000 and the annual operating cost varied from $159 to $750 per household. If Charlotte were built out according to smart growth standards, the city could eliminate the need for two fire stations at a savings of  $13 million per year and $8.4 million in annual operating expenses.

Chris Zimmerman, a member of the Arlington County board, credited the county’s steady pursuit of smart growth (even before it was called smart growth) over the past 40 years for the lowest property tax rate of any Northern Virginia county. Eleven percent of the land built around Metro stations contributes about half the county’s tax revenue. The resulting revenue gusher since the 1990s has allowed Arlington to spend more freely than its neighbors on public services.

“In tax terms,” said Zimmerman, “we’re eating their lunch. We’re known as the People’s Republic of Arlington — not shy about spending public dollars. We spend more on our schools than anyone in sight, pay more for teachers and principals, and yet we have the lowest tax rate in Northern Virginia.”

A Nashville, Tenn., study conducted for the “Building Better Budgets” report compared three developments in Davidson County: Lenox Village, a greenfield New Urbanist project; Bradford Hills, a conventional suburban development; and The Gulch, a downtown infill development. The New Urbanist development was the most cost efficient at $1,300 per year per unit to provide government services, followed closely by The Gulch at $1,400 per unit. Bradford Hills, the suburban project, cost $1,600 per year.

A fiscal analysis conducted by the Strategic Economics consulting firm determined that at full build-out, The Gulch would have a net positive impact on the Nashville-Davidson metropolitan general fund of $116,000 per acre. Lenox Village would have a positive impact of only $780 per acre, and Bradford Hills was essentially break-even at $100 per acre.

To facilitate walkable, mixed-use development, Nashville has implemented form-based zoning codes downtown and along major corridors, said Rick Bernhardt, executive director of the Metro Nashville Planning Department. “If you compare over the last eight years, the value of appraised property in Davidson County is up 30% — 115% in areas where we put new codes in place.”

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Posted in 2013, Budget, Infrastructure, Land use & development, Taxes, Transportation

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Role Reversal: Poverty Increasingly a Suburban Phenomenon

Posted on May 21, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 8 Comments
Houses with boarded-up windows in Henrico County

Houses with boarded-up windows in Henrico County

by James A. Bacon

Mirroring national trends, poverty in Richmond region suburbs has grown far more rapidly since 2000 in suburban counties than in the City of Richmond, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, reporting numbers published in a new book, “Confronting Suburban Poverty in America.”

Writes the T-D’s Graham Moomaw: “From 2000 to 2011, the number of poor people in Richmond-area cities grew by 30.5 percent, while the number of poor in the suburbs grew by 69.8 percent, according to the study.”

The poverty rate still remains roughly three times higher in the city compared to outlying counties (which the T-D did not identify, but presumably include Henrico, Chesterfield and Hanover). But the shift marks a dramatic change since the 1970s and 80s when poverty was a negligible problem in the Richmond region’s fast-growth counties.

Here’s the larger and more significant point, which the T-D did not make: There is no evidence that the shift in poverty from city to suburbs is slowing. Indeed, I would go so far as to suggest that there is a tipping point at which the shift will accelerate, and that it is possible that the poverty rate — and all the drawbacks associated with it, such as crime, social dysfunction, problems in schools, higher tax burdens — will be worse in the suburbs than the city 20 to 30 years from now.

Several factors are driving this reversal. First is continued gentrification in Richmond, similar to the trends we see in Washington, D.C., and other major cities, in which more affluent households move back into the city to be closer to job centers, cultural amenities and walkable neighborhoods. (Gaining proximity to mass transit is not, in my estimation, much of a motivator for affluent Richmonders.) The dramatic decline in the crime rate makes people far more comfortable living in the city than they once did. The poor quality of schools, especially middle schools,  and higher tax rate still remain deterrents — but that could change in time.

Meanwhile, poor people are leaking into the suburbs — typically into  unwalkable, lower-density neighborhoods that the middle and professional classes no longer find desirable. Unlike older city neighborhoods, with houses set on smaller lots within walking distance of retail, these older suburban tracts offer nothing to the affluent home buyer. Because their owners have been unwilling to reinvest in them, they have deteriorated and lost value. The poor are the only people willing to move into them now.

So, Henrico and Chesterfield now find themselves dealing with the problems associated with poverty — higher levels of crime (though down from the peak), social dysfunction and disruptive kids in school. Now, just like in the city, there are dicey districts in the counties where public safety is an issue. Now there are schools in the county to which  affluent households avoid sending their kids. Now counties have to share in the fiscal burden of dealing with poverty.

As I have argued elsewhere, human settlement patterns in the City of Richmond are inherently more fiscally efficient to maintain and replace than the scattered, disconnected, low-density settlement patterns of the outlying counties. That differential was masked while Richmond was coping with a 19th-century sewer-storm water system and the counties were basking in the newness of their infrastructure. But now, counties have aging infrastructure, too. At some point, a strengthening tax base in the city and an eroding tax base in the counties will be reflected in a shrinking tax differential between the two. When city taxes are no higher than county taxes, poof, there goes another reason to live in the counties.

When it comes to the distribution of poverty, the Richmond metropolitan area will be barely recognizable 20 to 30 years from now. The authors of “Confronting Suburban Poverty in America” fret that suburban counties are not prepared. They lack the soft infrastructure of governmental and not-for-profit social services, and poor households residing in the auto-dependent suburbs will be even more isolated than their counterparts in the city, who at least have access to mass transit.

To some people, the year 2043 might sound like the far-distant future. But the far-distant future has a way of arriving with frightening speed.

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Posted in 2013, Crime and corrections, Demographics, Infrastructure, Taxes

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A Whole Lot of Commuting Going On

Posted on May 20, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 7 Comments
Source: Governing Magazine

Source: Governing Magazine (Click for more legible image.)

The Governing magazine blog has published some fascinating U.S. census data on commuting patterns in the U.S., and though the author did not pick up on this particular angle, the data shows Virginia as a real outlier.

The chart above, extracted from the census data, shows Virginia counties with populations of 60,000 or more. There are 796 such counties in the United States. Arlington County ranks at the very top of the list, higher even than Washington, D.C., as measured by the percentage of the county workforce that commutes from outside the country. York County, Va., ranks No. 4 in the country — just behind New York County, N.Y. Five other Virginia counties make the Top 50. And Montgomery County (where the town of Blacksburg is located), the bottom-listed county in Virginia, still makes it into the top half for all U.S. counties.

This is remarkable: Virginia’s most populous counties appear to lead the nation in the extent to which workers drive to work from other jurisdictions.

What does it mean? I’m not sure. The phenomenon is conceivably an artifact of the fact that Virginia is the only state in the country in which cities and counties are separate jurisdictional entities, not overlapping entities — although I cannot readily see how that would make any difference.

Another possibility is that there is an extraordinary amount of sprawl going on — Arlington residents commuting to D.C.; Fairfax residents commuting to Arlington; Loudoun and Prince William residents commuting to Fairfax; and residents of outlying counties commuting to Loudoun and Prince William.

Conversely, it’s conceivable (though, based on anecdotal observation, not likely) that a tremendous amount of reverse commuting occurring.

If anyone has any thoughts as to what is going on please submit your observations in the comments. (Hat tip: Rob Whitfield.)

– JAB

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Posted in 2013, Demographics, Labor & workforce, Land use & development, Transportation

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No Excuses Left!

Posted on May 20, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 5 Comments
Bicycle power!

Bicycle power!

Now that Governor Bob McDonnell and the General Assembly have restructured transportation taxes away from a user-pays system to an everybody-pays system, they have (perhaps unwittingly) undermined the justification for short-changing funding for bicycle routes. Cycling advocates Tom Bowden and Champe Burnley drive home the point in a Times-Dispatch op-ed today.

Now our streets and roads will be paid for by everyone, through the sales tax and other general revenues. … With this change comes an obligation. Our streets and roads must be designed for the benefit of all legal users. No longer will pedestrians and cyclists have to endure the snide retorts of motorists that “Roads are for cars because cyclists don’t pay gas tax.” It was never really true in the first place, but now it’s laughable.

Our local streets and roads are for people and always have been. Most roads in Virginia existed long before automobiles, and now that we all pay for them, it’s time our planners and our government acknowledged this simple fact.”

I still believe in a user/beneficiary pays system for funding roads, bridges, highways and mass transit — and bicycles, too, if I could figure out a revenue stream for them. But now that we’ve butchered that principle and stuffed its various precepts and axioms into the incinerator, it’s time to follow through on the implications. Pedestrians and cyclists are taxpayers, too. They have every right to insist upon a share of the revenue stream to support projects that benefit them as well.

– JAB

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Posted in 2013, Transportation

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