Bacon's Rebellion

  • Give VDOT Credit Where Credit Is Due

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    James A. Bacon

    VDOT is rebuilding public confidence with improved performance. From the Daily Press’ Hugh Lessig:

    RICHMOND – Several years ago, the Virginia Department of Transportation faced withering criticism for its poor forecasting, cost overruns and inability to meet deadlines.

    According to the latest data, times have changed.VDOT announced Thursday that it met or exceeded its on-time and on-budget goals for projects in fiscal year 2007, which ended in June. It is the best performance in the agency’s history.

    Overall, VDOT completed 90 percent of its construction projects on deadline and on budget for fiscal year 2007. Its goal for deadlines was 70 percent and its budget goal was 80 percent.

  • The Plaza at Main Street Station: Creative Use of Urban Space

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    James A. Bacon

    If you’ve ever wondered why old cities are so much more interesting places to visit than the suburbs, take a look at a project in downtown Richmond, the Plaza at Main Street Station.

    First, some background: One of the uglier parts of downtown Richmond has been known as the “spaghetti works,” the spot where Interstate 95 and the Downtown Expressway converge, flyover ramps spilling in all directions, and interlace with three — count ’em, three — different train tracks. Lots of steel, lots of concrete girders. It’s an inhospitable place used mainly for parking cars.

    But that liability is now becoming an asset in Shockoe Bottom, the old warehouse-turned-entertainment district adjacent to the downtown business district. I’ll let Michael Martz with the Times-Dispatch tell the story:

    Interstate 95 arches above Richmond’s newest showpiece, a $3.3 million plaza that the city envisions as a hub for transit, tourism and recreation in a revitalized Shockoe Bottom.

    When Richmond flips the switch at a ceremony tonight, soft blue light will bathe the interstate and the massive concrete piers that support it above The Plaza at Main Street Station. The plaza, with 90 coveted public parking spaces, transforms a crime-ridden abandoned field into a colonnade leading to one of the city’s most venerable landmarks — Main Street Station. …

    The city has turned the area into a nexus for train passengers, tourist buses, taxis, hired limousines, and, soon, hikers and bikers from the new Capital Trail and the Canal Walk….

    Tonight’s ceremony will focus on the rediscovered beauty of the area — from the “Sky Rider” sculpture that hangs from the interstate girders above the bluestone plaza to the uninterrupted view of Main Street Station itself.

    In place of the suburb’s monoculture of shopping centers or single-family dwellings, the Richmond city center offers a rich mix of business, multi-unit residential and entertainment venues (though not much retail yet) with many striking views and vistas. Since I’ve been living in the ‘burbs for the past five years, I love visiting downtown and seeing all the change. The city delights with its array of varied and unexpected scenes. I can hardly wait to see the Plaza.

    Also, it will be interesting to see how Main Street Station functions as an intermodal center for rail, buses, taxis, limos, bikers and pedestrians. Grandiose urban-revitalization projects in Richmond have often launched with high expectations only to fizzle. Will this time be different? With all the people moving into Shockoe Bottom and surrounding precincts, it just might be. There is energy downtown that didn’t exist 10 years ago.

  • TAMU AGAIN

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    James A. Bacon

    A quick review of the newly released “TAMU 2007 Urban Mobility Study Based on 2005 Data” (aka, TTI ‘07) indicates:

    This version has the same basic flaws as the earlier ones that are outlined in our 20 September 2004 column “Spinning Data, Spinning Wheels.” TAMU’s 2007 version is:

    1) Based on two year old data

    2) The data is provided by Agencies who have competitive and professional interest in low balling the congestion numbers

    3) The area of coverage appears to still be the Census “urbanized area” which, especially in disaggregated New Urban Regions such as Washington – Baltimore, leaves out most of the area of the MSA and does not address CMSA conditions – to say nothing of New Urban Region reality. This means those with the longest commutes and most of the Community, Village and Neighborhood scale congestion outside Radius = 20 Miles is not considered.

    4) The study is authored by, paid for by, reviewed by and the information distributed by those (including MainStream Media) who have a professional and financial stake in not addressing the root cause of the Mobility and Access Crisis.

    The root cause of the Mobility and Access Crisis is, of course, almost exclusive reliance on Large, Private Vehicles and a Large, Private Vehicle Support system with which citizens are expected to achieve mobility and access in an urban, technology driven society.

    There must be a Balance between the travel demand generated by human settlemetn patterns and the transport systems provided to achieve mobility and access. That Balance is not possible relying primarily on Large, Prvate vehicles. It is a matter of physics, not policy.

    The Crisis is perpetuated by a failure to fairly allocate the cost of location-variable goods and services. As Jim Bacon points out, a free, well informed land market is part of the solution. However, without a fair allocation of the costs and a democratic process to evaluate any tweaking of the system (aka, subsidies), Business-As-Usual rules as mobility and access tends to entropy at an accellerating rate as documented by TAMU.

    Obfuscation is compounded by the those with a variety of agendas. The imagination of Peter Gordon and other anti-anti-Autonomobile apologists is nearly beyond comprehension. See “A Different Take on TTI” below.

    While some understand the need for change, most who have access to the data and are willing understand the metrics involved also recognize the personal and organizational economic impact of considering Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns and Fundamental Change in governance structure vis a vis the Mobility and Access Crisis and thus stonewall rational discussion.

    In spite of these and other problems raised in our 2004 column, the TAMU study is the “best available” information on the scope and cost of the Mobility and Access Crisis.

    EMR

  • What’s In the Water in PWC?

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    James A. Bacon

    Sometimes you’ve got to wonder what kind of impression Virginians are making on the world. If it’s not Abuser Fees snagging national headlines, it’s what you read on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Just today, two Virginians, both from Prince William County, figure prominently in separate articles.

    Bundling up for Hillary. Pamela Layton, a resident of the Bristow community, donated $4,600 to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in March, the Journal reports. That’s quite generous for someone who says, “I don’t even like Hillary. I’m a Republican.” It turns out that Layton works for William Danielcyzk, founder of a “Washington-area private firm” (apparently McLean-based Galen Capital Corp.) and a major Clinton fund-raiser. The money she donated was not her own, Layton says. She says Danielcyzk reimbursed her husband and her. Danielcyzk denies the allegation.

    If the charges are true, it looks like we have a Norman Hsu-scale scandal brewing, and Northern Virginia is at the eye of the storm.

    Theological Offshoring. The Rev. John Gurnsey, pastor of the All Saints’ Church in Woodbridge, has been anointed an Episcopalian bishop — by the Anglican Church of Uganda. Although Gurnsey accepts the idea that women can serve as ministers — his wife is one — he takes issue with the Episcopal church’s disregard for Old Testament teachings castigating homosexuality. In that regard, he shares a lot in common with the traditional-minded Anglican churches of Africa. Like many socially conservative Episcopalians, he is looking to the African church for identity and support.

    Whatever one thinks about the gays-as-ministers debate, we can take consolation in one thing: The idea that a Virginia minister would seek theological legitimacy from an African church leader would have been utterly unthinkable a generation ago. Racial identity among social conservatives in Virginia seems to figure a lot less prominently these days than it does to race hustlers like Jesse Jackson, who has just accused Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama of “acting white.”

  • A Different Take on the TTI

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    James A. Bacon

    Via Newmark’s Door comes a different way to look at the numbers in the Texas Transportation Institute numbers. The post, from Prof. Peter Gordon, is very direct, but here’s the point and thrust:

    1. Traffic congestion is a no-brainer; it is the default rationing mechanism because politicians are reluctant to price access. 2. It is remarkable how good traffic conditions are in spite of the policy failures; average journey-to-work times in the largest U.S. metros were less than 28 minutes at last census count (for solo auto trips). 3. These good news are explained by flexible land markets; most employers and employees find ways to locate within reasonable distances of each other. 4. The TTI index misses this phenomenon because it is constructed from metro area-wide average conditions; most traffic relief is found by relocations away from the metro area’s most congested parts. 5. Planners want to shut down this safety valve by increasing land use controls, making land markets less flexible. 6. New transit projects cause increased highway congestion because they take money away from road construction. California has pioneered this approach.

    Now loop back to #2 on this list.

    “Flexible land markets.” I like the sound of that.

  • Virginia Congestion Costs: Getting Worse

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    James A. Bacon

    Here are the latest congestion cost numbers from the 2007 Annual Urban Mobility Report for Virginia regions (based on 2005 numbers):

    Washington, DC-VA-MD
    Total annual congestion cost (in time and gasoline): $2,331 million
    Annual cost per traveler: $1,094
    Increase in congestion costs per traveler since 2000: 33 percent
    Needed lane miles built yearly to maintain constant level of congestion: 218

    Hampton Roads
    Total annual congestion cost: $467 million
    Annual cost per traveler: $550
    Increase in congestion costs per traveler since 2000: 22 percent
    Needed lane miles built yearly to maintain constant level of congestion: 70

    Richmond
    Total annual congestion cost: $181 million
    Annual cost per traveler: $362
    Increase in congestion costs per traveler since 2000: 42 percent
    Needed lane miles built yearly to maintain constant level of congestion: 130

    As a Richmonder, I find the numbers alarming. While our congestion costs are low compared to NoVa and Hampton Roads, they are increasing much more rapidly. Congestion is directly correlated to the size of the metropolitan area. Richmond has less congestion than NoVa and Hampton Roads because it is smaller. But we’re catching up fast despite the addition of significant highway capacity in the past decade?

    Why? My hypothesis: Because new highway construction, combined with local zoning policies, has accelerated the scatteration of development over broader areas. If I’m right, that scattered development has led to fast-rising increase in Vehicle Miles Driven. One of these days, I’ll track down that data to prove or disprove my hypothesis.

    Also, consider this, Richmonders: While the Washington region has five times the Richmond regoin’s population, it requires only 68 percent more lane-miles of roadway construction to maintain current levels of congestion. Our region has an impending crisis — one that we can’t possibly build our way out of — and we’re utterly oblivious to it.

  • Can We Build Our Way out of Congestion?

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    James A. Bacon

    The 2007 Urban Mobility Report contends that, in theory, it is possible for regions to build their way out of congestion. In regions where traffic growth exceeded the growth in road capacity by a wide margin, congestion got worse faster than in communities with a smaller gap. In the short run, it appears, you can mitigate congestion by adding capacity, as shown in the chart above. (I’ll defer discussion of the problem of “induced demand” and what happens over the long run when that new capacity enables dysfunctional land use patterns.)

    Here’s the problem: Adding new transportation capacity is really expensive! Here’s how the Urban Mobility puts it:

    It would be almost impossible to attempt to maintain a constant congestion level with road construction only. Over the past 2 decades, only about 50 percent of the needed mileage was actually added. This means that it would require at least twice the level of current-day road expansion funding to attempt this road construction strategy. An even larger problem would be to find suitable roads that can be widened, or areas where roads can be added, year after year.

    As regions urbanize, acquiring the rights of way to expand roadway capacity increases exponentially. And here’s a factor that the study does not mention: As large developing countries like China and India become major consumers of construction materials, they drive the global cost of those materials. The real, inflation-adjusted cost of road building is more expensive than it used to be. As the cost rises, the Return on Investment declines.

    What worked in the 1950s — building Interstate highways with inexpensive construction materials and acquiring cheap right of way by running roughshod over the property rights of poor communities — won’t work today. Transportation strategy must adapt to the reality that adding capacity is more expensive than it used to be. Unless we want to tax ourselves into oblivion, we have no choice but to pursue other strategies.

  • TTI’s Multi-Pronged Approach to Congestion Mitigation

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    James A. Bacon

    The Texas Transportation Institute has published the 2007 Urban Mobility Report, the most comprehensive study of traffic congestion conducted anywhere in the country. The main conclusion offers few surprises: Traffic congestion is getting worse almost everywhere.

    “There is no ‘magic’ technology or solution on the horizon because there is no single cause of congestion,” says study co-author Tim Lomax, a research engineer at TTI. “The good news is that there are multiple strategies involving traffic operations and public transit available right now that if applied together, can lessen this problem.”

    The report recommends a multi-pronged approach to addressing traffic congestion:

    • Create more travel options. Mass transit, telecommuting, and congestion pricing that allows travelers to bypass congestion when time is critical.
    • Add capacity. The traditional solution. There’s no getting around it. But it’s only a partial solution.
    • Manage demand. “Transportation system demand and land use patterns are linked and influence each other,” says the study. “Among the tools that can be employed are better management of arterial street access, incorporating bicycle and pedestrian elements, better parking strategies, assessing transportation impact before a development is pproved for construction, and encouraging more diverse development patterns.” Got it? Tim Lomax, Mr. Traffic Engineer, says land use is critical. (Now, if we could just sell him on the concept of Balanced Communities.)
    • Increase system efficiency. Make micro-level improvements to intersections, traffic signals and freeway entrance ramps, and do a better job of managing special events and traffic accidents. Less sexy than opening a new four-lane bypass, but a lot more cost effective.
    • Construction management and maintenance. Road construction projects designed to mitigate congestion are themselves a cause of congestion. Provide contractor inventives to complete work ahead of schedule, or penalties for missing construction milestones. Use design-build strategies. Undertake maintenance in tandem with construction projects to minimize delays.
    • Congestion pricing. Use variable-pricing tolls to allocate access to scarce roadway capacity.

    Although Virginia’s transportation strategy is overwhelmingly geared to adding new capacity, whether roadway or mass transit, Virginia is inching towards Lomax’s multi-pronged approach. Congestion pricing is coming to the transportation arteries of Northern Virginia, and perhaps, later, to Hampton Roads. Attention is being given to land use at last, though little concrete has been accomplished yet. On the other hand, there seems to be a strong bias in favor of highly visible mega-projects as opposed to micro-projects that would offer a higher return on investment.

    Finally, I would add one critical component to Lomax’s list. States need to move to a beneficiary-pays system for raising transportation dollars. That means (a) a gasoline tax (or, better, Vehicle Miles Driven tax) to pay for roadway maintenance, (b) congestion tolls to allocate scarce roadway capacity and fund corridor improvements, (c) privately funded projects to build new bridges and limited-access highways, and (d) Community Development Authorities and Tax Increment Financing to help pay for projects where developers expect a big increase in property values.

  • Dominion Takes a Big Step in the Right Direction

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    James A. Bacon

    Dominion Virginia Power is getting the message — at last it’s taking substantive steps to promote conservation and energy efficiency. The power company has asked the State Corporation Commission for permission to bring to Virginia a number of strategies implemented successfully in other states. A series of programs would:

    • Enroll 4,000 residential customers in four different energy-saving pilots that would (a) control air-conditioning during peak-demand times, (b) inform consumers about their real-time energy consumption patterns, (c) promote programmable thermostats that allow customers to control their use of electricity, and (d) educate customers about the value of reducing energy use during peak-demand times.
    • Provide free energy audits and energy efficiency kits to 250 existing residential customers and 50 small commercial customers.

    • Incentivize large commercial, industrial and non-residential customers to reduce load during periods of peak demand, by using their generators, to produce up to 100 megawatts of electricity. This would supplement an existing program in which large commercial and industrial customers already reduce demand by 275 megawatts during peak-demand periods.

    Additionally, in partnership with Home Depot, Dominion will distribute 1.4 million energy-saving compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) at significantly discounted prices. CFLs cut energy usage by 75 percent.

    These initiatives, which are expected to begin early next year and continue through 2009, are designed to complement efforts by the SCC to determine the feasibility of reducing electrical consumption by 10 percent by 2022 — a target established by the Virginia General Assembly in electric utility re-regulation legislation adopted earlier this year.

    Said Dominion CEO Thomas F. Farrell II in a prepared statement: “These pilots will gather valuable information about what customers are willing to do and what programs may be most effective in achieving sustainable energy savings. … It is important that our company learn as much as possible through implementation of the pilots so that we can design programs with the greatest customer satisfaction, market participation and energy savings.”

    Some people will never be satisfied with anything that Dominion does. But this looks to me like a good indication that attitudes within the Dominion hierarchy are changing. The SCC is exceedingly cautious and won’t implement any conservation measure without testing it first, so there is no avoiding the pilot test phase. Unless I see evidence to the contrary, I presume that Dominion will implement the tests in good faith.

    While these pilot programs are a very big step in the right direction, they hardly begin to exhaust the conservation possibilities. For starters: Dominion should be working with Northern Virginia technology groups to phase in more energy-efficient computers at the energy-hogging server farms that are so ubiquitous in the region. (A Dominion spokesman told me that another 23 server farms are on the drawing boards!) We don’t need to pioneer anything — just follow the lead established by California tech companies. Question: Where is the Northern Virginia Technology Council on this? This program would be a natural for that group.

    Another option: Reform SCC regulations to allow Dominion to earn a favorable rate on investments made in energy efficiency. By energy efficiency, I refer to improvements that enable the company to squeeze more electricity from the same number of BTUs expended in coal- and gas-fired plants, and to waste less electricity in transmission and distribution. My understanding — and I’m willing to stand corrected — is that Virginia does not treat such investments as favorably as investments in new generating capacity. We can’t blame Dominion for neglecting these investments if they don’t make an adequate return. If we need to change the rules to change Dominion’s behavior, let’s change the rules.

    Of course, these measures don’t even touch the realm of renewable energy sources. Much remains to be done. But Dominion should be commended for moving as far as it has. Clearly, the terms of debate are changing. No longer will Virginia meet its electricity needs solely through adding capacity. Now the state will seek a balance between conservation/energy efficiency/renewable fuels on the one hand and investments in power plants and transmission lines on the other. Once we’ve established that principle, it’s a matter of finding the right balance.

  • Dominion and Eminent Domain

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    James A. Bacon

    In a recent post, “Transmission Lines and Electricity Imports,” I wrote that I wouldn’t have a big problem with regional electric transmission lines if Dominion (or any other electric power company) purchased its rights of way through voluntary negotiations with the landowners whose land the transmission line crossed. My problem was Dominion’s use of eminent domain to compel people to settle.

    Jim Norvelle, director of media relations for Dominion Resources Services, responds as follows: “We negotiate with individual property owners all the time. In fact, we have been successful 96 percent – 97 percent of the time in reaching an agreement with those landowners on transmission line rights of way. We only use our eminent domain authority as granted by the state as a last resort.”

    I also stated that eminent domain recompenses the landowner for the right of way only, not the loss in value to the surrounding land, such as a farm or estate, when its viewshed is wrecked.

    Norvelle responds: “True, the compensation does not cover what someone may perceive to be ‘visual blight.’ But in many hearings before the State Corporation Commssion on previous transmission lines we have successfully presented witnesses and studies that have shown any loss of property value is limited to about the first four years after the line is built. After that time the value returns to its pre-line level.”

    Fair enough. Here are my follow-up observations.

    (1) Negotiations may appear to be voluntary, but the threat of government-backed coercion lurks in the background. Surely, the power of eminent domain shifts the negotiating advantage to Dominion. I would hypothesize that many landowners would settle for less than they think they deserve knowing that Dominion can acquire the land through eminent domain anyway. They know they can push only so hard on price before the case gets turned over to the eminent domain litigators.

    Furthermore, I would surmise, the burden of legal costs weights heavily. Landowners must pay the legal expenses spent negotiating or fighting eminent domain out of their own pockets. To them, the payments represent a dead loss. For Dominion, legal expenses are a cost of business. If the enterprise is regulated — Jim Norvelle, please tell me if I’m wrong — Dominion can incorporate the legal expenses into its rate base and be recompensed by rate payers.

    (2) I’d like to see those witnesses and studies regarding visual blight. I can imagine that some properties — woodland, remote farm fields — may well return to pre-line level in time. But it’s hard to believe that properties where a line crosses the viewshed of a home or estate would ever recover their value.

  • Another Data Point on the VW Deal

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    James A. Bacon

    In closing the Volkswagen USA deal, which will bring 400 jobs and a $100 million investment to Fairfax County, the Kaine administration committed $6 million in state funds to grease the skids — more than the state/regional funds invested in all other economic development projects across the state combined so far this year.

    The VW subsidies include $1.5 million from the Governor’s Opportunity Fund to assist Fairfax County with the project and $4.5 million in funds from the Virginia Economic Development Incentive Grant (VEDIG).

    That compares to $5.265 million for all other economic development projects across the state combined, including monies invested by the Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission. (I tallied these numbers from press releases posted at the Virginia Economic Development Partnership website.) The other, non-VW, economic development projects accounted for $724 million in total investment and 2,300 new jobs.

    As I’ve always maintained, corporate recruitment is an effective economic development strategy in parts of the state where a significant percentage of the workforce is either unemployed or underemployed, and where job creation is not overwhelming the ability of state/local governments to provide roads, infrastructure and public services. But, as argued in “The Bug in the Ointment,” it makes less sense for the state to subsidize job creation in Northern Virginia, where infrastructure is overloaded.

    I’m not blaming anyone in particular for this mismatch. Everyone is just doing their job. But that’s the problem: It’s time to re-think economic development priorities. Of all gubernatorial administrations in my memory, the Kaine administration is more acutely aware of the trade-offs between the traditional model of economic development and growth management issues. I’m surprised that the Governor signed off on the VW subsidy.

    Update: As I go through the deals announced in 2006, I see that the state made significant investments in a number of downstate projects: $19 million for SRI Inc., in Rockingham County, $5.9 million for Swedwood North America in Danville, and $6.6 million for ABB in Halifax and Bland Counties. I mention this because it would be unfair to imply that the Kaine administration is neglecting the interests of downstate Virginia.

  • Oh, the Pain, the Pain! Fifty State Employees (out of 119,000) Might Get Laid Off!

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    James A. Bacon

    The Kaine administration may have to lay off state employees to help close an anticipated $640 million revenue shortfall. The total number of jobs to be eliminated could number “several hundred,” according to the Washington Post. But Gov. Timothy M. Kaine hopes to accomplish most of the reductions through attrition and retirement. The number of lay-offs could be “fewer than 50,” according to the Times-Dispatch.

    Finding 50 employees to lay off shouldn’t be too difficult in a workforce that numbered nearly 119,000 in June. That’s up 8,300 since Kaine took office in January 2006.

    In fairness to Gov. Kaine, 85 percent of that increase can be accounted for by a hiring spree at Virginia’s institutions of higher education, which operate with considerable autonomy, not at state agencies under the governor’s direct control. When you deduct higher ed from the state employee count, however, the number of employees still has increased more than 1,140. On the other hand, the Virginia Information Technologies Agency shows a 647-person reduction in employee count, which, I presume, reflects the outsourcing of jobs to Northrup Grumman. The jobs are still there, they’re just accounted for differently. So, a fair number would be closer to 1,800.

    The much-maligned Virginia Department of Transportation has been the productivity star of the Kaine administration, reducing its head count by 512. Big gainers have been the Indigent Defense Commission, the Department of Health, the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control and the Virginia Port Authority — the last two of which are business entities.

    Question One: Where are the promised productivity benefits from handing over IT functions to the much-touted VITA? From the rumblings I’ve heard in the trenches, VITA has increased agency overhead costs without adding much value.

    Question Two: What approach is the Kaine administration taking to its budget cuts? Is it applying the ol’ 5-percent-across-the-board formula, which afflicts every agency equally? Are the Kaniacs making special dispensations for investments and reorganizations that would cut spending down the road, or are productivity-saving initiatives sharing the pain with everything else?
    Question Three: I know student enrollments are up at state colleges and universities, but are they up enough to justify a 15 percent increase in the number of employees in the state higher ed system in less than two years?

    For your viewing convenience, I have extracted, condensed and consolidated the data from Jan. 2006 and June 2007 so you can analyze the numbers yourself. Click here to see the Excel file. (Higher ed institutions are shaded in light yellow.)

  • CONNECTING THE DOTS

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    James A. Bacon

    No “Shape of the Future” column this week but here is an exercise in connecting-the-dots on the path to understanding the shape of the future.

    Yesterday and today WaPo devoted much of the front page to a two part series of great significance.

    “Coming of Age: Graying of ‘Suburbs’.”

    The stories, maps, graphs, pictures and captions (“Frank Brown, 66, has worked at Hollin Hall Automotive Service Station since 1992. Every morning, he helps Ruth Ann Harvey, 84, up the hill to work. Harvey, whose family has owned the shop since 1960, is behind the register six days a week. The full-service station is a favorite among elderly drivers, who don’t have to get out of their cars to pump gas.” “Rita Turner of Falls Church, seated, whose neighbors call her the Queen Mum, sold her car because she thought she was too old to drive. Now she must depend on others, such as driver Shobha Sahgal, to get her errands done.”) tell a compelling story.

    Also see “Shape of the Future” column of 30 July “The End of Family as We Knew It” concerning the demographics of Dooryards and use of the word Household.

    (Warning: For anyone who is aware of the importance of understanding of scale of components of human settlement patterns, the use of “community,” “village” and “neighborhood” in these WaPo stories is confusing in the extreme.)

    In today’s WaPo Business Section (that is the “how to make and manage money” section) devoted most of the front page to two stories:

    “Rejuvenating Loudoun: To Attract Young Workers, County Looks for Ways To Shed the Perception That It’s a Bit Middle Aged” and “Perks Give Area Firms a Silicon Valley Feel: Whether Posh of Quirky, Extras Help Lure Talent To the High-Tech Sector.”

    Those who understand what they read at Bacons Rebellion should have no problem connecting the dots to grasp the necessity of Balanced Communities in sustainable New Urban Regions (aka, functional human settlement patterns.)

    PS:

    A regular reader e-mailed us last week and asked that we outline a simple way those who claim “I do not understand” to grasp the metrics of functional vs dysfunctional human settlement patterns. If this is a case where “you get WaPo but you don’t get it” then Civilization as we know it may be lost because these stories provide a wonderful primer. Here are some thoughts that will be expanded upon in TRILO-G:

    Mobility and Access Crisis:

    The level of Mobility and Access for those too young, too old or otherwise unable to use an Autonomobile.

    (NB: “otherwise unable” includes economic as well as physical limitations. This is important since the percentage of Households that can afford and safely use one – much less more – Large, Private vehicles will decline dramatically as energy costs and vehicle complexity continue to escalate.

    Just as alarming is the complexity and cost of the Large, Private vehicle support system as it grows to meet Business-As-Usual demands.)

    Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis:

    Percentage who can live in the Community where they are employed. (NB: “Community” as defined in GLOSSARY.)

    Helter Skelter Crisis:

    Absence of unreasonable subsidies to achieve Balanced Communities. (NB: “unreasonable subsidies” can be defined by democratic processes once all of the location variable costs are fairly allocated.

    In addition to the Loudoun stories noted above, See Jim Bacon’s “Bug in the Ointment” posted earlier today.)

    EMR

  • Economy 4.0: Measuring Prosperity

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    James A. Bacon

    Stop any 10 people on the street in Virginia and ask them, “Who has a higher standard of living — the inhabitants of Roanoke County or Loudoun County?” I would wage that all 10 of them (assuming you could find 10 who had actually heard of both counties) would say Loudoun County. Oh, sure, Roanoke is surrounded by beautiful mountains and all that, but the economy of the Roanoke Valley isn’t exactly setting the world on fire. By contrast, Northern Virginia is where the job creation is, the entrepreneurial success is, the material prosperity is. And Loudoun is at the epicenter of growth in Northern Virginia.

    But let’s take a look at the numbers. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis:

    2005 Per Capita Income
    Roanoke/Salem………….. $35,140
    Loudoun/Leesburg………..$41,193

    First impression confirmed. Loudoun County’s per capita income is 17 percent higher.

    Now, do this: Go to the CNN cost of living calculator, and see what you have to earn in Loudoun County to get the same standard of living as Roanoke County. It’s $45, 695. In other words, adjusted for the cost of living, Roanokers are 10.9 percent better off than Loudounites! (The gap looks even worse if you take into account the highly progressive nature of the federal tax code that punishes regions, like Northern Virginia, with high nominal salaries and wages.)

    That simple comparison leads me to the key insight of the second installation of “Economy 4.0: Measuring Prosperity“:

    Thanks to the federal tax code, affluent Virginians are subject to high taxes on every extra dollar they earn. Strategies geared to increasing incomes are worthwhile, but they are pushing the rock up-hill. A more effective way to raise comparative living standards in Virginia may be to hold down living costs.

    In “Measuring Prosperity,” I also discuss the implications of the “time famine” on living standards, the vulnerability of living standards to rising energy costs, and the impact of environmental degredation on the stock of Natural Capital.

    Bottom line: Public policies that increase incomes are good. But public policies that increase incomes while simultaneously driving up living costs, consuming more energy and degrading the environment by perpetuating dysfunctional human settlement patterns are misguided and counter productive.

    Can anyone say, “Fundamental Change?”

  • Economy 4.0: A Bug in the Ointment

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    James A. Bacon

    About 10 days ago, I posted a brief piece, “Questions about the Volkwagen USA Deal,” that questioned the wisdom of using $6 million in state subsidies to bring 400 high-paying Volkswagen USA headquarters jobs to Fairfax County. That question was the perfect segue into the second installment of my “Economy 4.0” series, which asks the core question, what exactly are we trying to achieve with economic development — job creation for the sake of job creation, or better places to live? As I expanded my arguments, what started as an introduction to an essay about the metrics of prosperity became a detailed case study. So I hived it off into a story of its own.

    Here’s my argument in a nutshell: In a regional economy like Northern Virginia characterized by chronic labor shortages, the only way that VW can fill 400 new jobs is to bring 400 wage/salary earners into the region. While corporate VW will pay taxes and its employees will pay taxes, they also will require public services and infrastructure. Northern Virginia’s infrastructure, especially schools and roads, is already overloaded. Someone will have to pay a lot of money in up-front capital costs to accommodate the newcomers. Therefore, the creation of those 400 jobs is a mixed blessing.

    Some might argue, well, those are very high-paying jobs. Surely those people will pay their own way. There’s no denying that the VW jobs are the kind of jobs that economic developers salivate over. At $125,000 per year on average, VW headquarters employees will earn twice the regional average and three times the state average. But we must consider two things. First, through the multiplier effect, those jobs generate another 100, 200 or maybe more retail- and service-sector jobs in the economy. That means even more people will move into the region — teachers, policemen, hair dressers, Seven 11 clerks, etc., who certainly will not be earning $125,000 a year.

    Secondly, it is theoretically possible that governance structures and human settlement patterns in Northern Virginia are so dysfunctional that even jobs paying $125,000 on average do not pay for themselves! According to Virginia Employment Commission data, Fairfax County is projected to increase the number of jobs by roughly 250,000, or 21.9 percent, between 2004 and 2014, but population growth in the county has slowed to the 6.0 to 6.5 percent range. In other words, three out of every four new employees will work in Fairfax County but live somewhere else.

    That’s the jobs/housing imbalance that Ed Risse is always warning us about. The result is more people crowding onto more increasingly overloaded roads and driving ever longer distances. How much will it cost to upgrade the transportation network to handle those additional employees, and how long will it take to recoup that cost in tax revenues? The fact is, we don’t know. No one is asking the question, so we clearly don’t have the answers. Absent hard data to the contrary, we have to consider the possibility that the Commonwealth of Virginia spent $6 million to subsidize Northern Virginia in an entirely self-destructive enterprise of digging itself into a deeper hole.

Now Available

Book cover of 'Dust Mites: A Second American Revolution' by James A. Bacon, featuring astronauts planting a flag with a blue and white emblem on a lunar landscape, with Earth visible in the background.
For sale on Amazon.com

The year: 2075. The American colonies on the Moon are getting restless under Washington’s tyrannical rule….

This second edition of “Dust Mites” has a snazzy new cover, includes helpful lunar maps, and is 5,000 words tighter than the original. The sequel, “Trogs,” is scheduled for publication this summer.

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Bacon’s Rebellion is Virginia’s leading politically non-aligned portal for news, opinions and analysis about state, regional and local public policy. Read more about us here.

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