Bacon's Rebellion

  • Rail-to-Dulles: Off the Tracks?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    The Rail-to-Dulles heavy rail project is in big trouble — even more than it already was. A report by the Inspector General of the Department of Transportation, posted online this afternoon, highlights major project risks and recommends a potentially fatal change to the cost-benefit calculus used to determine whether the project warrants federal support.

    Plans for financing the controversial Metro extension call for a $900 million federal “New Starts” grant, a $375 million federal loan and a $200 million federal line of credit. But there is intense competition nationally for federal transit funds, and Rail-to-Dulles must leap a number of hurdles, including a cost-benefit analysis, assurance that local funds will be available, and credible plans for managing the project. Among the alarums raised by the Inspector General:

    Cost growth and schedule slippage. In December 2004, Phase One of the project to Tysons Corner was estimated to cost $1.52 billion and to be completed by 2009. By March of this year, the cost had escalated to $2.4 – $2.7 billion, and the completion date had slipped to 2013.

    “Earlier this year,” writes the Inspector General, “the project was already near an unacceptable cost-effectiveness rating of low, when the cost estimate was much lower, $2.065 billion. Now the cost estimate could be as much as $2.7 billion. The project must achieve a final cost-effectiveness rating of at least medium-low or it will not be eligible for New Starts funding.”

    Dulles Toll Road revenues. Under its agreement to manage the Dulles Toll Road, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority is responsible for funding improvements and repairs to the road. States the Inspector General: “The project could be endangered if these revenues are not sufficient to cover [rail] project costs and maintain the road. Users of the Dulles Toll Road could be subjected to large toll increases in the future if higher project costs require more and more local funding.”

    Cost-Benefit Analysis. The Federal Transportation Authority has refined its methodology for calculating the cost-benefit ratio of transit projects. An old version of the software included as benefits certain travel-hours saved during off-peak hours. Now FTA officials are inclined to exclude those travel hours. With that change the economic viability of the project, marginal to begin with, becomes even more problematic.

    Management oversight. The project’s complex organizational structure — management by the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation transitioning to management by the MWAA, and then to ultimate ownership and operation by the Metropolitan Washington Area Transit Authority — increases the risk of cost overruns.

    “In the past, we reported on projects that failed to implement an effective project management and oversight structure,” the Inspector General writes. “For example, the Boston Central Artery/Tunnel (CA/T) Project, which experienced massive cost overruns and schedule delays, presents many lessons learned regarding the project sponsor’s ineffective oversight. These lessons are relevant in light of the MWAA’s lack of experience in managing a mass transit project.”

    Design-Build contract. Washington Metro was not a participant in negotiating the contract even though it will be forced to live with the consequences. The Metro needs guarantees of protection against defects in design and construction, and it needs assurances that the MWAA will not declare “substantial completion” of the contract on a product that does not meet Metro’s needs.

    This report foreshadows the eventual federal rejection of the Dulles Rail project. And without federal funding, the project is a dead. The political reaction to this report undoubtedly will be furious. Virginia’s legislators will try to mau-mau federal administrators into revising their appraisal. But facts are facts, and Rail-to-Dulles faces stiff competition from transit projects around the country, each backed by its own lobbyists and Congressmen.

    The Kaine administration had better start preparing a Plan B to improve mobility and access in the Dulles corridor.

  • The Virginia Patriot

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Jim Gilmore has a new blog, “The Virginia Patriot.” He hasn’t posted much content yet, but it looks like he’s maintaining an interest in Virginia-specific issues. Among the links to articles and resources are these: “Civil Remedial Fees Repeal Petition,” “Unelected Taxing Authority,” and “Immigration Data: Virginia.”

  • The Infinite Ingenuity of Human Perversity

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Fairfax County imposes height restrictions on new houses built in old subdivisions to prevent jarring disruptions in scale from one house to the next. So, what are the McMansion builders doing now? According to complaints filed with Fairfax Supervisor Gerald Hyland, “Home builders are artificially elevating lots, as much as nine feet at one house, by moving dirt from the basement, or bringing in fill, and piling it around the lot to disguise the first floor and meet the 35 feet building height limitation.”

    The Connection newspapers have the story here.

  • A Report on Privatization

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    The Reason Foundation’s annual report on privatization is now online, covering topics from transportation to education and more.

    There’s an interesting section on emerging issues — privatizing state lotteries and government transparency. Strangely, they omit some private attempts at the latter, especially in Virginia through the Waldo-created Richmond Sunlight. Maybe next year.

  • Questions About Dominion’s Electric Supply/Demand Forecasts

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    The year 2011 will be upon us shortly. That’s when Dominion Virginia Power says Northern Virginia could begin experiencing summer brownouts and blackouts during periods of peak electricity demand. KEMA, a power system engineering firm hired by Dominion, projects that 17 “overload violations” could occur that year. The number could increase to 67 by 2016.

    It is Dominion’s job to issue such warnings. Federal law requires Dominion to maintain transmission reliability for its service area. And it doesn’t take much imagination to forecast the hysteria — and anti-Dominion recriminations that would fly — if the citizens of Northern Virginia were to experience more than two or three such overloads.

    No doubt about it, folks, Northern Virginia is facing a serious problem, and Dominion is doing the right thing by running up the warning flag. But is Dominion’s proposed solution — building a high-power transmission line across northern Virginia’s piedmont — the only one? It is certainly the solution that Dominion prefers, for it dovetails nicely with the power company’s strategy for increasing shareholder value by building more power plants in isolated spots, connecting them to population centers with transmission lines, and generating a low-risk but favorable return on investment under “partial” reregulation. But is it the only alternative?

    Dominion says it is, and cites an extensive study by KEMA in support. In addition to scrutinizing alternative transmission-line routes in mind-numbing detail, the study covers the following options:

    Demand Side Management (DSM). Demand-side management — conservation — would be of limited value, KEMA says, because it cannot be targeted to the specific weak links in the transmission chain — the Mt. Storm/Doubs circuit in particular — where the overloads will occur. To alleviate the projected 226 megawatt overload at Mount Storm would require reducing Northern Virginia-wide demand by 2,850 megawatts, or about 40 percent — more than anyone thinks is realistically possible.

    Distributed generation. The idea of installing small, dispersed power generators throughout Northern Virginia won’t work either, KEMA says, because they, too, cannot be targeted to the optimal locations. Each 1,000 megawatts of effective capacity would require 1,100 megawatts of distributed generators. More than 31,000 new units would be required by 2011, and 77,000 by 2016.

    Larger power plant. Building a large power plant inside Northern Virginia is impractical also, says KEMA. The facility would have to generate 3,000 megawatts, making it one of the largest power plants in the country, and it would have to come on line by 2011, which alows insufficient lead time to license and build. Alternatively, three to five smaller plants might do the trick, but they would require upgrades to transmission lines in Northern Virginia.

    Here’s what KEMA did not study: A combination of alternative strategies. Conservation + distributed generation + one or two smaller power plants in the Northern Virginia region.

    The fact that conservation strategies alone cannot solve the problem is no reason not to pursue them as a partial solution. The same applies to the fostering of numerous, small-scale power sources across Northern Virginia, and also to the idea of adding one or more small power plants in the region.

    And here’s what’s not clear: The maps and tables in the KEMA study include the notation “Possum Point off”, but there is no explanatory text. Possum Point is a four-unit power plant overlooking Quantico that burns natural gas and oil. Do Dominion’s projections of electric supply and demand assume that these units will be phased out, as the two oldest units have been already? If so, what are the reasons? Can a case be made for running them for several years more as a bridge to a longer-term solution? Again, I don’t know the answers. I’m just asking questions.

    (Update: Jim Norvelle, a Dominion spokesman, reports, “We have no plans to shut down the Possum Point Power Station units. Units 1 and 2 are retired, Units 3 and 4 were converted from coal to natural gas a few years ago, Unit 5 uses oil as its fuel and Unit 6 is the newest unit, a natural gas, combined-cycle unit. Total output of the site is about 1,630 megawatts, or enough electricity to power 407,500 houses at peak demand.”)

    Of course, the longer Dominion pursues the transmission-line option to the exclusion of other options, the closer it gets to a fait accompli. At some point, enough time will have gone by that there are no other options. To preclude that possibility, the State Corporation Commission should be prodded to pursue multiple tracks.

  • Is HOT Compatible with HOV?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Fluor Virginia and Transurban Development Inc. have proposed converting the High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane running down Interstate 95 in Northern Virginia into a variable-pricing toll lane. The public-private partnership would collect tolls from motorists wanting a fast lane around traffic congestion but would allow carpoolers to use the lanes for free, as they do now. Sounds good in theory. But how do you tell the difference between cars with a single passenger and cars with multiple passengers?

    That was the critical question asked by people attending the first public hearing on the proposal, in which Fluor-Transurban also would extend the HOT lanes 28 miles to the south and invest in Bus Rapid Transit along the corridor. Remarkably, Virginia Department of Transportation officials had no clear answer.

    Reports Lillian Kafka with the Manassas Journal-Messenger:

    How electronic tollbooths would differentiate between high occupancy vehicles and ones that should pay the toll is unclear. Toll booths deduct money from prepaid devices as cars pass through at constant speeds. Marsheela Hines of Dale City pressed [senior VDOT official Dennis] Morrison on the issue.

    “We don’t have the right answer for that,” he said.

    “This is a lynchpin issue,” said Steve Walters of Dumfries. “You can’t move forward without this technology.”

    A VDOT engineer said Fluor, which operates toll roads around the world, was still working on developing that technology.

    Sounds like a core issue: Will the HOT lanes enable carpoolers to ride for free or not? Fluor and VDOT had better figure out the answer.

  • More Immigrants, Less Crime?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    There’s a flip side to the commentary I posted yesterday, “Good Idea: Deporting Criminal Aliens,” in which I argued that it makes sense to deport illegal aliens convicted of crimes and sitting in Virginia jails — a position I still support, by the way. However, focusing on the criminality of a relatively few illegal aliens does tend to unfairly stigmatize the whole group.

    There are many things that can legitimately be said about illegal immigration: It depresses wages for unskilled Americans, and it adds a burden to schools and hospitals. But it does not threaten to swamp Americans in a wave of crime.

    Indeed, according to a study by the Immigration Policy Center, illegal immigrants have significantly lower incarceration rates than native-born Americans. Some interesting factoids from the study:

    • Even as the undocumented population has doubled to 12 million since 1994, the violent crime rate in the United States has declined 34.2 percent and the property crime rate has fallen 26.4 percent.
    • Among men age 18-39 (who comprise the vast majority of the prison population), the 3.5 percent incarceration rate of the native-born in 2000 was five times higher.
    • The foreign-born incarceration rate in 2000 was nearly two-and-a-half times less than the 1.7 percent rate for native born non-Hispanic white men and almost 17 times less than the 11.6 percent rate for native-born black men.
    • Native-born Hispanic men were nearly seven times more likely to be in prison than foreign-born Hispanic men in 2000, while the incarceration rate of native-born non-Hispanic white men was almost three times higher than that of foreign-born white men.

    Bottom line: The shorter the time spent in the United States, the less likely an illegal immigrant is to run afoul of the law. The longer the time spent here, the more likely aliens are to become criminals. And we want them to acculturate to our culture? Maybe we have something to learn from them.

    Caveat: You always have to be cautious dealing with data like this, which the Immigration Policy Center is spinning in the most pro-immigrant light. I would ask this question: Are the study authors comparing apples to apples? Is the incarceration rate the most valid unit of comparison? Why not the conviction rate? Presumably, people convicted of a first or second crime are less likely to be incarcerated for lengthy periods of time than career criminals. Illegal immigrants, being new to the country, have a lot of catching up to do. I don’t know the answers — I’m just asking questions, trying to reach the truth.

  • Cool New Technologies that Could Revolutionize Transportation

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    I have no idea if these technologies will prove commercially viable, but they show the incredible range of creativity and innovation driven by our free market economy. If only our government systems could prove as adaptable!

    First, the Air Car, a mini-car that runs on compressed air. The vehicle reaches top speeds of 68 and has a driving range double that of the most advanced electric car, making it ideal for city driving. The cost of re-filling the “gas” tank is about 1.5 Euros (less than $3). Oil changes are needed only once per 50,000 kilometers. Oh, and did I mention that it has zero pollution? Watch out, Detroit (and Tokyo), the car, designed by a small French firm, will be manufactured by India’s Tata Motor. (Read the BusinessWeek article.)

    Second, the SeaPhantom, a powerboat capable of cruising comfortably at 120 miles per hour. Foils lift the vehicle out of the water, reducing the wave pounding and attendant shock on passengers that can take the fun out of riding it. Besides its obvious military uses, the SeaPhantom has potential as a fast water taxi with a range of several hundred kilometers. (Read the Gizmag article.)

    Why would Hampton Roads crave upgraded railroad service when passengers could reach Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York even faster by sea?

    Third, a slew of services that create a marketplace for parking spots. Parkingsearch.com is a “virtual exchange” that lists parking spaces for rent, lease or sale within a specific zip code, reducing search times for drivers desperate for parking spaces. Another service, Bestparking.com, allows motorists to compare locations and rates of commercial parking services. Meanwhile, XM Satellite Holdings is testing a service that downloads real-time parking data into automobile GPS systems. (The Wall Street Journal has that article here.)

    The private sector can’t solve every transportation malady. As Ed Risse frequently observes, there are physical limits to society’s ability to provide mobility. But entrepreneurial innovation can open up options that never existed before. (Hat tip: Larry Gross.)

  • Does Anybody Know What Time it Is?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    It may not matter…because of the possibility that time doesn’t really exist.

    Regardless of how expertly we think we can arrange, measure, quantify, identify and categorize the world, nature always seems to have the last laugh. It’s playing by rules we still don’t understand.

  • Coal Plants Going Out of Style?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    As recently as May of this year, U.S. power companies had announced intentions to build as many as 150 coal-fired power plants. But within the last few months, “plans for a new generation of coal-fired power plants are falling by the wayside as states conclude that conventional coal plants are too dirty to build and the cost of cleaner plants is too high,” reports the Wall Street Journal today in a front-page story.

    Dominion, which recently highlighted plans to build a $1.7 billion clean coal facility in Southwest Virginia, appears to be an exception to the trend of canceled plants. But many of the same concerns apply: It may be possible to burn clean coal, but it’s darned expensive. (See “Another Inter-Regional Transfer of Wealth .”)

    The Journal cites a controversial proposal by Northern States Power Co. to build a coal-fired plant in Minnesota. A hearing judge at the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission is urging rejection of the plan.

    The judge concluded it would cost an extra $472.3 million, in 2011 dollars, to make the power plant capable of capturing about 30% of its carbon dioxide emissions, and another $635.4 million to build a pipeline to move the greenhouse gas to the nearest deep geologic storage in Alberta, Canada. Thus, $1.1 billion in pollution controls had the potential to inflate the cost of power coming from the plant by a whopping $50 a megawatt hour, making electricity from Excelsior twice as costly as power from many older coal-fired plants that simply vent their carbon dioxide.

    Dominion’s proposed plant in Wise County would sequester C02 in local coal seams, sparing the cost of building a long pipeline. But the facility would still cost some 60 to 70 percent more to build than the average new coal plant.

    The big question: With electricity demand soaring, what will take the place of coal? Nuclear power is the obvious alternative, but new nukes will take years to permit and build. Wind and solar offer only limited near-term potential, and don’t provide around-the-clock power. Natural gas is extremely expensive, and likely to get more expensive if the coal plants don’t get built.

    Implementing conservation measures to dampen rising demand is the obvious short-term way to plug the gap in supply and demand, but current goals, if met, would conserve only 10 percent by 2020. Virginia needs to set much more ambitious electricity conservation goals and create regulatory mechanisms — smart metering, peak load pricing — to incentivize savings.

    I don’t know how residential customers will respond, but I am quite certain that commercial and industrial consumers would move aggressively to cut their energy costs. I am judging submissions to the Governor’s Environmental Excellence Awards right now, and I am impressed by the ongoing programs that several of Virginia’s largest manufacturers have put into place to curb energy consumption in general, and electricity consumption in particular. As a requirement for participating in the awards, they are required to share their best practices. We can achieve dramatic savings we just put our minds to it.

  • Good Idea: Deporting Criminal Aliens

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    People make all sorts of excuses why we should let illegal immigrants stay in the United States. But there should be one thing most Virginians can agree upon: If illegal immigrants are already in jail — if we already have them in custody — we should go ahead and deport them. The logic is doubly compelling if they have been convicted of a crime.

    The State Crime Commission gets it. Virginia sheriffs would be required to initiate deportation proceedings against suspected illegal immigrants under a proposal announced Tuesday by the State Crime Commission’s illegal immigration task force, reports Tim McGlone with the Virginian-Pilot. If approved by the General Assembly, jailers would begin the deportation process instead of waiting for federal immigration agents to take custody.

    Writes McGlone:

    Jails have complained that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency responsible for taking deportees, sometimes does not respond to their calls. That means that a jail must release a suspected illegal immigrant after he or she has served jail time or gets out on bond. …

    Only a handful of Virginia sheriffs departments participate in a voluntary federal program that trains deputies to recognize illegal immigrants and initiate the deportation process. The plan announced Tuesday would make the program mandatory for every jail in the state. [State Sen. Kenneth] Stolle [R-Virginia Beach]said legislation would be prepared before the next General Assembly session in January.

    If defenders of illegal immigration want to go to bat for criminal aliens, not just hard-working paysans who slip into this country to make a living, let them go ahead. It’s a losing proposition.

    In related news… It turns out that there’s a 40-person cap on how many illegals Prince William County can deport each month. The Examiner quotes Board Chairman Corey Stewart as noting that more than 100 illegal immigrants could be deported each month if the Immigration and Customs Enforcement had the money.

    Hmmm. That may be an issue the State Crime Commission should consider. There may not be much point in cranking up the illegal-immigrant enforcement apparatus if the federal government can’t handle the volume.

  • Hey, Sometimes Democracy Works!

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Del. L. Scott Lingamfelter, R—Prince William, Fauquier, has called for the repeal of Virginia’s notorious abusive driver fees. As he wrote in his constituent newsletter today:

    I have done some soul searching on this bill in recent days and I’ve decided it would be best to repeal it and start over. It’s just too complex and the out-of-state piece would have taken major surgery. … This is a representative democracy, not a dictatorship. When we make mistakes, we must act to correct them.

    As Lingamfelter noted, however, abusive driving remains a real problem in Virginia.

    Some people think it’s their right to weave in and out of traffic, speed, drink and drive, drag race, and otherwise endanger innocent drivers. It’s a serious issue. But bad driving is in large measure a law enforcement problem. I think the focus should be there. If you want to use the money to improve traffic safety, fine. But the law should be focused on bad driving, not bad roads.

    Well said. Abusive driving is a real problem. And the way to deal with it is to consult with Virginia’s prosecutors and traffic judges, study the experience of other states, and devise penalties with the express goal of modifying dangerous behavior — not raising revenue. It’ll take a lot of study, deliberation and hard work. But the end result will be far superior.

  • Speeding Insurance

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Via Hit & Run, a new idea out of Denmark that just might catch on in Virginia: speeding insurance:

    For just 2.50 Danish crowns (33 euro cents) per day, the club will pay up to four speeding tickets and four parking tickets per year, up to a value of 10,000 crowns.

    The idea, Fartklubben founder Poul Winther told Danish daily Politiken, is not to give Danes license to put the pedal to the metal, but rather to protect motorists from over-zealous traffic cops.

    The Danish government isn’t happy and is looking for ways to shut it down (because it’s all about safety, or the children, or some such thing… NOT revenue. Nope, never about the sweet, sweet flow of cash into the treasury).

  • Dueling Methodologies

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Is the United States lagging other economically advanced nations in the deployment of broadband infrastructure? That’s the ineluctable conclusion of a study published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and cited by the blogger Groveton in a recent Bacon’s Rebellion column, “The Commonwealth is Flat.”

    In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece today, Robert M. McDowell, a commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission, argues that the OECD methodology is “seriously flawed.”

    First, says McDowell, the OECD measures broadband connections per capita, not per household. Per capita metrics favor nations with smaller family units, like those in Europe, and punishes nations with larger households, like the United States. It doesn’t matter if you have one, two or six people living in a household — if the household is served by broadband, everyone in that household has access to it.

    Secondly, contends McDowell, the OECD does not include Wi-Fi hot spots unless they are used in a so-called “fixed wireless” setting. One third of all wireless hot spots in the world are located in the U.S. As an increasing number of computer users access the Internet through laptop wireless connections in hot spots, U.S. access to broadband may be significantly undercounted under the OECD methodology.

    As for the Asian countries like Korea and Japan, where broadband penetration is significantly, higher, McDowell argues that their dense, urban populations make them more economical to serve. Compare densely populated New Jersey with Korea, and guess what: New Jersey has a higher penetration rate.

    The United States has more telecommunications competition than most European countries, McDowell says, and the rate of broadband penetration continues to increase rapidly as video applications create market demand for higher bandwidth. Bottom line: We’re really doing OK. Our system works.

    Is McDowell taking a Pollyannish view? Darned if I know. His reasoning does seem to make sense. I just don’t know if his arguments have counter-arguments.

  • Is Gasoline Consumption Really Plateauing?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    In my recent column, “The Next Transportation Crisis,” I quoted Department of Transportation figures to the effect that federal gasoline tax receipts had declined slightly in the first few months of 2007, possibly foreshadowing a long-term slowdown in gasoline consumption.

    Reader Bill O’Keefe, a consultant who closely tracks the oil and gas industry, offers different numbers and a different interpretation. According to the American Petroleum Institute, he says, gasoline deliveries in 2007 set a first half record, averaging 9.2 million barrels per day — 1.5 percent higher than the first half of 2006. Gasoline imports set a record of 1.3 million barrels per day for the second quarter.

    On a month-to-month basis deliveries may not match up with consumption, says O’Keefe, but they do track closely over longer periods of time. Monthly comparisons are tricky because a number of variables, such as weather, can briefly skew the numbers. “For example, if last February was unseasonably warm and this one was colder, there would be less driving and less gas consumed. But that would be weather driven and not an underlying change in demand.”

    Let it never be said that I don’t entertain both sides of the story!

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.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

About

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.

Fund the Rebellion

Shake up the status quo! Your contributions will be used to pay for faster download speeds and grow readership. Make a one-time donation by credit card or contribute a small sum monthly.

Can’t wait until tomorrow

For your Bacon’s Rebellion fix?

Enter your email address to receive immediate notifications of new posts by email.

SUBSCRIBE

Search Bacon’s Rebellion

Categories

Archives

The Jefferson Council

Protecting Thomas Jefferson’s Legacy at the University of Virginia

Forgot Your Password?

Shoot me an email and I’ll generate a new password for you.

Latest