Category: Transportation
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Richmond’s New Growth Corridor
In 1950, the population high water mark for many American cities, about 230,000 people lived in the city of Richmond. A few years later, when the city annexed a large swath of Chesterfield County, population peaked around 250,000. Then, as suburbanization took hold and average household size shrank, the population declined steadily over the following…
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Yippee! Traffic Accident Stats Now Viewable Online
The Department of Motor Vehicles has posted on its website an awesome tool that allows website visitors to explore the geographic location of traffic accidents by individual city and county. You can drop back for a macro overview, as seen in the map of western Henrico shown above, or zoom in to examine precise specific…
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Another Useless, Irrelevant Debate
Ed Gillespie, Republican candidate for governor, has gotten himself in a political pickle. According to press reports, he has been blasting his Democratic rival Ralph Northam for backing the 2013 transportation tax package as “the largest tax increase in Virginia history.” But as Democrats have been pointing out, Gillespie was gubernatorial campaign chairman for Bob…
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Officials Celebrate Completion of U.S. 29 Projects
More than three years after the Federal Highway Administration halted construction of the Charlottesville Bypass on U.S. 29, state and local officials celebrated yesterday the opening of a package of alternative projects known as the Route 29 Solutions projects, the Daily Progress reports today. The Bypass was one of the most contentious highway projects of…
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Metro Sales Tax: Bad for Virginia, Worse for Loudoun
by Dave LaRock The Washington, D.C., Metro system serves three jurisdictions: Maryland, Washington DC and Virginia. The Virginia jurisdiction includes Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax City, Falls Church, and, starting in 2020, Loudoun County. For several years, D.C.-based interest groups have been pushing for a 1% sales tax increase across the region served by Metro to fill…
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Business Leaders Demand WMATA Governance Reform
An alliance of Washington-region business groups is calling for a fix for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) that would create dedicated funding streams for the Metro rail system and a restructuring of the authority’s board. Twenty-one chambers of commerce and employers groups outlined the proposal in a letter to the region’s political leaders,…
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From Roads to Rail a Great Idea… In Theory
Richard L. Beadles, founder of the Virginia Rail Policy Institute, is dissatisfied with the structure of the U.S. railroad industry. While the rail freight industry has done a good job of moving large volumes of freight long distances, he says, it has yielded the short-haul business to trucks, abandoned thousands of miles of track, and built…
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$150 Million a Year More for WMATA? Good Luck with That!
Downstate Virginia legislators are inclined to block increased capital funding for Washington’s dysfunctional heavy-rail commuter system unless the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) undertakes serious structural reforms. WMATA officials say they need about $15.5 billion for capital spending over the next 10 years to work through a massive backlog of deferred maintenance. Virginia’s state-government…
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A Business-Like Approach to Paying for I-87
Sen. Frank Wagner, R-Virginia Beach, is the Republican candidate you’d almost forget was running for governor were it not for the occasional newspaper article like the one in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch. He doesn’t have Ed Gillespie’s financial resources, and he lacks Corey Stewart’s penchant for controversy. But he’s out there, plugging away. As a long-time legislator,…
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John Fishwick Takes on Railroad Mogul in “CSX Train Robbery”
John P. Fishwick, Jr., grew up in a railroading family. His father, after whom he was named, was president of the Norfolk & Western Railway before it merged with the Southern Railway to become Norfolk Southern. The younger Fishwick established a law career in Roanoke, working as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia…
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Woo hoo, Wonks! Interactive Map Shows Average Commute Times by Zip
If you squint real hard, you can see the map above displays Virginia and parts of surrounding states. The color codes mark the average commute time by zip code. The dark purple indicates zips with the shortest average commutes and the pinkish-yellow colors the longer commutes. To view the specifics for any given zip code, check…
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Philip Shucet, Transportation’s First Responder
Elizabeth River Crossings (ERC), the public-private partnership that built new tolled tunnels linking Norfolk and Portsmouth, has hired Philip Shucet as CEO. His first task, according to the Virginian-Pilot: Fix customer service. “I’ve got to understand it, then we’ll fix it,” Shucet told the Pilot minutes after the announcement. “But know this – everyone who…
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McAuliffe Orders WMATA Review
Governor Terry McAuliffe has announced an independent review of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (MWATA), the troubled organization that runs rail and bus systems in the Washington metropolitan area. Hampered by massive maintenance backlogs, high labor costs, safety issues and declining ridership, the authority requires billions of dollars in capital funds and hundreds of millions…
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Loudoun County Never Bargained on This
Loudoun County doesn’t even have service on the Metro Silver Line yet, but potential liabilities are escalating beyond levels county officials ever imagined when they signed up to participate. Metro’s capital needs and operating deficits are growing as the transit system grapples with a multibillion-dollar maintenance backlog, union featherbedding, and declining ridership. The system’s operating…
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Autonomous Cars — a Cheap Economic Boost?
Who needs to build new roads or create tolled express lanes when the driverless car revolution is almost upon us? Clifford Winston and Quentin Karpilow suggest that autonomous cars will reduce traffic congestion by boosting highway throughput, creating a huge boost to economic productivity and output. In a new paper published by the Mercatus Center,…