Category: Transportation
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Gramercy District a Game Changer
by James A. Bacon Northern Virginia technologist and developer Minh Le is partnering with Microsoft Inc. to build Gramercy District, a $500 million “smart city” development adjacent to the planned Ashburn Metro station on the Silver Line, reports the Washington Business Journal. Not only will Microsoft contribute technology it will participate as an investor. (Details on Microsoft’s…
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Time for Richmond and Hampton Roads to Join Forces?
by James A. Bacon Virginia’s economic growth ground to a standstill in 2014 and lagged the nation in 2015. Recognizing that metropolitan regions are the growth engines of the early 21st century economy, civic boosters are looking to spur growth and development at the regional level — but that picture doesn’t look much prettier. The Brookings Institution’s Metro…
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Bi-County Parkway, R.I.P.
Debate over the north-south Bi-County Parkway between Prince William and Loudoun Counties roiled the closing months of the McDonnell administration. Today, plans for that highway, which would have skirted by the Manassas Battlefield, is about as dead as a transportation project can be. As Inside NoVa, writes, the parkway existed for thirty years as only…
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Running Out of Options
Declaring the the global economy is “highly vulnerable” to adverse shocks, the International Monetary Fund is urging the United States and other major governments to prepare contingency plans that could be rolled out quickly to boost growth. What options does the U.S. have? Traditionally, the federal government has two main policy levers: monetary and fiscal policy.…
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Threading the Needle on Long-Term Debt
by James A. Bacon Virginia has more than tripled its tax-supported debt over the last decade, according to the December 2015 report of the Debt Capacity Advisory Committee, but the state still has enough capacity to support the issuance of another $603 million per year in added debt in Fiscal years 2016 and 2017 without undermining…
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Uber and Lyft Are Wonderful, but Not that Wonderful
It makes a great story: The Department of Motor Vehicles registered some 86,000 drivers under new “transportation service company” rules in 2015, Virginians are availing themselves of Uber and Lyft ridership services in record numbers, and the rate of alcohol-related automobile crashes declined markedly last year. It stands to reason, more Virginians are taking rides with…
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Is Virginia Ready for Car Tax Reform?
by Bill Tracy I was encouraged last week when Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax, joined the “car tax blues” chorus.* According to the Washington Post, Petersen filed bills proposing to eliminate the car tax through a constitutional amendment and then giving localities the option of levying a local gasoline tax to make up for the lost revenue.…
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Who Needs a Chauffeur When Your Favorite Driver Is a Click Away?
by James A. Bacon The Uber revolution continues apace, spawning a host of competitors, imitators and add-ons. An interesting example comes out of Richmond, where four former Uber drivers are developing an app for passengers who want to reserve specific drivers at specific times. Uzurv (pronounced YOO-zerv) is beta testing an app that lets customers reserve…
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Mobility-As-a-Service Is Coming Soon
by James A. Bacon In the world of surface transportation, self-driving cars are generating a tremendous amount of excitement. While such vehicles undoubtedly will transform the driving experience, I question whether they will alter the underlying economics of transportation. Yes, they will be safer, and they even may allow a passenger to stream Netflix or answer emails instead of keeping his…
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Another Reminder of the Impending WMATA Disaster
by James A. Bacon The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) is a slow-motion train wreck unfolding before our very eyes. An article in the December 2015 issue of Washingtonian Magazine, “The Infuriating History of How Metro Got So Bad,” provides a timely reminder of just how dysfunctional the commuter rail system has become. One glaring example:…
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What Virginia Millennials Are Looking For
by James A. Bacon Three out of four Virginia Millennials (belonging to the 18- to 36-year-old age cohort) are largely satisfied with the quality of life in their communities. But local quality-of-life indicators often fall short of what Millennials are looking for, and many are open to moving to other parts of Virginia or even to other states.…
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Richmond Boldly Plotting a Post-19th Century Mass Transit System
by James A. Bacon The City of Richmond has procured funding for a study to see if GRTC Transit System bus routes can be organized more efficiently, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The study will bring in the Jarrett Walker + Associates consulting firm that showed how rearranging the route structure could triple the frequency of bus service in Houston without requiring additional funding. “The…
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Tracking Virginia’s Quality of Life
by James A. Bacon Virginia’s economy, dependent upon federal spending, has under-performed the national economy since 2010, and will continue to do so in 2016, according to the Virginia Chamber of Commerce’s 2015 State of the Commonwealth Report. But lead author James V. Koch, president emeritus of Old Dominion University, does find a silver lining: Once…
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Increased Density, Increased Costs
By Carol J. Bova Jim Bacon’s post on November 12th, “Too Little Density, Too Much Road Surface,” concludes that if local zoning policies encouraged higher density population areas, there’d be fewer roads, resulting in lower road maintenance costs. This is urban-centered thinking that assumes only nearby residents use the roads and that none are privately…
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Too Little Density, Too Much Road Surface
by James A. Bacon It goes without saying that New Jersey is dissimilar from Virginia in many ways, so it’s hazardous extrapolating conclusions from one state to the other. But a new study about New Jersey roads co-authored by Smart Growth America and New Jersey Future implies that the Old Dominion could have saved hundreds of millions…