Category: Transportation
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Virginia’s Top 10 Stories (Told and Untold) of the Year
Phew! I finally made it through the all-consuming Christmas season, and I’m still alive to tell the tale. Christmas is a wonderful but grueling time of year for the Bacon family, marked by numerous feasts, expanding waistlines, excessive gift giving, shrinking bank accounts, and considerable out-of-town travel to distant relatives. But I’m back in the…
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Yikes, the I-66 Toll Hits $44
Uh, oh, the Interstate 66 inside-the-Beltway toll hit a new high — $44 — Thursday morning. That price lasted only six minutes, and Virginia Department of Transportation officials attributed the increased demand along I-66 to congestion at the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge and an incident on Interstate 395 that created a “potential ripple effect.” Whatever the…
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Actually, Travel Times Are Faster on I-66, VDOT Says
Many Northern Virginia motorists and politicians seem to be having mental breakdowns over the opening of HOT lanes on Interstate 66 inside the Beltway. Most notably, they point to the first-day, one-way $34.50 peak toll as an outrage against the driving public. Ironically, though, morning and afternoon commutes were faster during the first four days…
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Hey, I-66 Whiners: Join a Friggin’ Carpool!
The Interstate 66 toll lanes opened yesterday in Northern Virginia, and dynamically priced tolls during the morning commute hit $34.50 for the 10-mile stretch from the Beltway to Washington, D.C., reports the Washington Post. The high price for the tolls — among the highest that drivers have paid for the privilege of traveling on a…
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The Looming Mass Transit Apocalypse
Outside of a handful of the nation’s largest, densest cities, public transit in the United States is doomed, contends Randal O’Toole, a Cato Institute scholar, in a new analysis, “The Coming Transit Apocalypse.” Nationally, commuter rail and buses already commandeer $50 billion a year in public subsidies to cover operating expenses, O’Toole says. The cost…
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NoVa HOT Lane System Nearing Completion. Now What?
Several years ago I found myself sitting in the office of Pierce Homer, who served as Virginia’s Secretary of Transportation between 2005 and 2010 during the Warner and Kaine administrations. He pointed to a large map in his office showing the multiple spines of the Northern Virginia transportation system — the Interstate 95/395 corridor, the…
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How to Inconvenience Drivers and Punish Businesses for No Discernible Reason
One of these days, when Richmond’s Pulse service is running buses up and down the Broad Street corridor, and investors are redeveloping properties around the transit stops, Richmonders will be really glad they have a bus rapid transit system. But until then, residents of the entire metropolitan area can be forgiven for roundly cursing the…
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Business As Usual in the Old Dominion: Gridlock, Greed and Confusion
After LaHood report, more squabbling over Metro’s future. In the wake of recommendations by former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., are edging toward compromises that would reform the ailing mass transit system’s governance system and shore up its financing. LaHood’s proposal to shrink the Metro board from six seats to five is…
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Bacon Bits: Campaign Contributions, Bronze Parachutes, and Bus Subsidies
Herewith some follow-ups on stories we’ve been tracking on Bacon’s Rebellion: Election fallout for electric utilities: Tuesday’s election wasn’t just a rout for Republicans. The General Assembly will be a more hostile place for Virginia’s electric utilities as well. As Robert Zullo with the Richmond Times-Dispatch points out: “Thirteen candidates who signed a pledge refusing to…
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Disaster + Fiscal Insolvency = Puerto Rico
I can watch only so much CNN and MSNBC before I get nauseated, but I have seen enough the past day or two to be appalled at how the media are spinning the post-hurricane disaster of Puerto Rico: It’s another Katrina. The Trump administration hasn’t responded fast enough or aggressively enough to help the battered…
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Bacon Bits: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
U.S. still globally competitive. The United States has climbed past Singapore to become the world’s second most competitive economy — second only to Switzerland, according to the 2017-18 Global Competitiveness Report published by the World Economic Forum. U.S. strengths are its technological progress, capacity for innovation, and sophistication of its business enterprises — all private…
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Wakes Be Damned! The Potomac Needs a High-Speed Ferry!
Many years ago my mother wearied of living in Washington, D.C., so she traveled to New Zealand to check out a nation that was blessed by natural beauty, governed by English common law, and poised to benefit from China’s economic boom. She happened upon Waiheke Island not far from Auckland, which had been inhabited mainly…
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Uh, Oh, Metro Needs Another $9.5 Billion
Washington Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld has been pushing for $15.5 billion in additional contributions from participating states and localities over the next 10 years, including $500 million in dedicated funding, to make the ailing commuter rail system safe and reliable. That request has set off serious jockeying between Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia…
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Bacon Bits: Bristol, Big Ships, and Blue on Blue
Petersburg, Meet Bristol. The City of Bristol has been identified as “City A” in the recent report by the state Auditor of Public Accounts that scored even lower than Petersburg in a rating of fiscal stress, reports the Bristol Herald-Courier. Bristol hasn’t experienced the dramatic budget deficits of its fiscally challenged counterpart on the Appomattox…
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Washington Metro as Wealth-Redistribution Tool
Paging Karl Marx. Karl Marx, please. Three left-leaning think tanks think businesses should be taxed to subsidize lower Washington Metro fares. The progressive outfits — the Virginia-based Commonwealth Institute, the DC Fiscal Policy Institute and the Maryland Center on Economic Policy — have declared their opposition to a region-wide one-cent sales tax to fund the Washington…