Bacon's Rebellion

  • Fire Chiefs Fire Back

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    James A. Bacon

    In two recent articles, I’ve been critical of local fire chiefs for vetoing design starndards — width of streets, turning radii of street corners — preferred by developers hewing to the New Urbanism school of design. New Urbanists like narrow streets with short turning radii, which are geared to pedestrian traffic. Fire chiefs prefer wider streets with wider turning radii that their big rigs can negotiate. (See “Design by Fire Truck” and “Fire Trucks and Bike Lanes“.)

    Now Tom Owens, fire chief for the City of Fairfax and chairman of the Northern Virginia Fire Chiefs Committee, has written, asking me to tell the “other side of the story.” I think he can tell his side of the story better than I, so I will quote him in full:

    I read with great interest your article “Design by Fire Truck”, in which you tied community development plans to the design of today’s contemporary firefighting apparatus. There is without question a direct correlation between the configuration of neighborhood streets and the need for safe and effective access for fire and emergency medical vehicles; however, I would encourage you to look deeper into the many other aspects related to a fire department’s strong stance on unencumbered access to neighborhoods.

    The “built environment” that fire departments must cope with have changed dramatically over the years. In their legitimate quest to keep housing as affordable as possible, building materials used have become lighter weight, construction techniques have become less substantial, many neighborhoods have homes built with zero lot lines that set the stage for rapid fire spread to neighboring properties, these homes are no longer filled with ordinary wood and paper based furnishings…everything is high density plastic and foam based materials that burn rapidly and generate intense fire spread. The level of heat output experienced today results in early structural failure due to the lightweight construction mentioned
    above.

    Fire Departments have continuously offered THE solution to the majority of these problems. Residential Fire Sprinkler Systems…..yet…..this same community of urban planners and developers resists building fire protection into these homes. They fight us in the general assembly when we propose such building code requirements and then complain when we insist on effective access into neighborhoods.

    If you talk to most Fire Chiefs and Fire Marshals, they will tell you that a Fire Department is very willing to make tradeoffs to requirements IF developers will build more fire protection into these homes.

    Owens raises legitimate concerns: the increased flammability of contemporary housing and the danger inherent with putting family dwellings so close together, as New Urbanists are wont to do. I’m delighted to bring those issues to light.

    Following Owens’ logic, though, it sounds like a potential answer presents itself, and it’s not getting the General Assembly to mandate residential fire sprinklers. Let the marketplace decide on a case by case basis. If New Urbanist developers want pedestrian-friendly streetscapes badly enough, and if the local fire chiefs are willing to go along, let them install the residential fire sprinkler systems in exchange for the desired street standards.

  • Loving the One-Car Lifestyle

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    James A. Bacon

    Diana Sun has seen the light. She and her husband, Bob Solymossy, used to live in a detached, single-family house with a big garage in the Oakton area of Fairfax County. Never questioning their auto-centric lifestyle, they owned three cars and took long, time-consuming commutes to work. Now they live in an Arlington County condominium and they’ve downsized their automobile fleet to a single car. They’re loving it.

    As communications director for Arlington County, Diana rolled out the red carpet for me yesterday. She introduced me to Paul Ferguson, the chairman of the board of supervisors, as well as several senior planners, and she took me on an extended tour of Arlington’s revitalized neighborhoods. (I’ll have a lot to say about that in the near future.) After the work day, Diana, Bob and I strolled through the Clarendon “urban village” and enjoyed some sidewalk dining. Bursting with enthusiasm for their new way of life, they told me all about it.

    When they first moved to their condo, Diana and Bob couldn’t conceive of life with fewer than two cars, so they paid to buy an extra parking space to supplement the one that came with their unit. But they hadn’t lived long in Arlington before they realized they didn’t need the second parking space — or the second car. Diana walks to work two or three blocks away. They use the Metro rail service on occasion, and they ride their bicycles a lot. On those rare occasions when they do need a second car, they pay $50 a year to sign up with Zipcar, which allows them to rent one of the cars conveniently stationed around Clarendon for $9 an hour.

    The one-car lifestyle saves money. Diana recommends a book, “How to Live Well Without Owning a Car,” that cites the five-year cost of owning a Toyota Corolla as more than $5,000 a year. She spends a fraction of that on mass transit and Zipcar.

    The one-car lifestyle saves time. One of Diana’s jobs in Fairfax County consumed three hours a day in the two-way commute. Now she works minutes away. She marvels at how much more time she and Bob have to doing things they enjoy.

    The one-car lifestyle is good for your health. Walking and riding bicycles makes people more physically fit than sitting in automobiles. Diana and Bob are both in great shape. They have loads of energy for undertaking their long, strenuous vacations to exotic, Third World countries.

    The one-car lifestyle is good for the environment. Fewer cars = less driving = less gasoline consumption = less pollution.

    Indeed, Arlington’s one-car lifestyle is such an improvement over their old, Fairfax County way of life that Diana and Bob have contemplated transitioning to a zero-car lifestyle. Having at least one car does does offer significant conveniences, however, so they haven’t been willing to take that step. Yet. But they’re so enamored with their new way of life, don’t be surprised if you read in the Want Ads one day: “For lease, parking space in Clarendon condominium.”

  • We’re No. 1! We’re No. 1! (But Don’t Look Behind — The Competition is Gaining)

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    James A. Bacon

    Forbes Magazine has once again ranked Virginia as the “best state for business,” but the business pub declares that No. 5, Washington — home to Microsoft, Amazon.com, Starbucks and Boeing — is “the big story.” Washington, whose tagline is, “Innovation is in our nature,” moved up seven notches last year.

    As for Virginia, here’s what Forbes writes:

    Not that Virginia did badly–it just didn’t dominate the rankings the way it did last year. The state finished in the top 10 in four of the six main categories we examined. But in 2006, it finished in the top 10 of all of them. Virginia’s top attributes include an incentive environment that is the fourth-best in the country, according to Pollina Corporate Real Estate, a commercial real estate consulting firm, as well as an unemployment rate that’s the third lowest in the nation.

    (See Virginia’s category rankings here.)

    There was no acknowledgment of Virginia’s diminishing lead in Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s press release or any of the self-congratulatory quotes from leading legislators. Any state that was serious about maintaining its competitive advantage would closely examine the categories where it lost ground and figure out what to do about it. It’s always possible that the Governor and the General Assembly leadership are doing that, quietly and out of the public eye. But judging by the tenor of the press release, they’re just complacent. (Hat tip to Peter Galuszka.)

    On a brighter note, we should acknowledge that Virginia does do some things right. Additional evidence comes from a press release from Attorney General Bob McDonnell’s office, who cites Virginia’s No. 2 ranking in Directorship magazine for its “business liability climate.” Says McDonnell:

    “Expensive and excessive litigation leads to higher costs for consumers, less jobs for our citizens, and slowdowns in economic growth. It discourages investment and has a negative effect on the expansion of the free market. Money that Virginia companies spend fighting lawsuits is money not spent expanding facilities, conducting research, and hiring Virginia workers. This ranking is a bipartisan achievement.”

    Who’s No. 1, you ask? Nebraska.

  • Coming to an Interstate Near You

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    James A. Bacon

    The most important change in Virginia’s transportation policy may be occurring right before our eyes, and we don’t even see it. In typical fashion, the Mainstream Media writes about the individual trees but fails to see the forest. The general public is even more myopic.

    But 50 years from now, when some historian chronicles the evolution of Virginia’s transportation policy, the most significant development of the 2000s won’t be the construction of the Springfield Bypass, or the house-cleaning of VDOT finances, or even the Comprehensive Transportation Funding and Reform Act of 2007. It will be the introduction of congestion pricing to Northern Virginia’s major transportation arteries.

    There is a grand strategy, and Secretary of Transportation Pierce Homer is the architect. Look at a map of Northern Virginia. There are four major transportation corridors: the Interstate 495 Beltway, Interstates 95/295, Interstate 66, and the Dulles Toll Road. As Bacon’s Rebellion intern Lyle Solla-Yates writes in “Coming to an Interstate Near You,” variable-pricing HOT lanes are planned for the Beltway and I-95/395. Limited service could begin as early as late next year.

    But that’s not all. Virginia’s HOT lanes will dovetail with Beltway HOT lanes planned in Maryland. Variable pricing also could be coming to the Dulles Toll Road, and Homer confirms that congestion pricing on the I-66 corridor is in the early stages of discussion. In each case (in Virginia at least), the HOT lane projects will be financed and administered by public-private partnerships. The tolls will add new capacity, and in the case of 95/395 will support Bus Rapid Transit.

    Congestion tolls are the future of transportation. They are more than a tool for financing the expansion of transportation capacity: they simultaneously modulate demand. By using the price mechanism to allocate scarce rush-hour roadway capacity, they encourage drivers to seek alternatives — shifting their commuting schedules, changing routes, telecommuting, ride sharing, taking mass transit or pursuing other options.

    Virginia needs to upgrade its transportation network, but the state cannot afford to accommodate every uptick in potential demand. We need a transportation system that addresses both the supply and demand sides of the equation. HOT lanes do that, and Pierce Homer will be remembered as the man who championed them.

    It’s a shame that the public understanding of Virginia’s grand strategy is so limited because important issues are going unexplored. As huge a fan as I am of congestion pricing, I do have concerns: To what extent will HOT lanes open up new frontiers for real estate development? Will they act as an accelerant to “sprawl” (scattered, disconnected, low-density development) or as a retardant? How expensive will it be to upgrade the winding country roads serving that new development, and who will pay for it? I don’t know the answers. Nobody does.

  • Every Silver Cloud Has a Dark and Gloomy Lining

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    James A. Bacon

    Let’s see if I get this straight. From a national environmental perspective, ethanol is good: A “green” alternative to gasoline, it burns more cleanly and emits fewer pollutants, including carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, toxic emissions, particulates and greenhouse gases.

    But from a local environmental perspective, ethanol is bad. Most ethanol is processed from corn, and corn farmers use fertilizers, and fertilizers run off farmlands and into rivers and streams. According to a new study, farmers in the Chesapeake Bay watershed will plant 500,000 acres of cornfields over the next five years.

    As the Washington Post summarizes the report findings:

    More cornfields could be trouble, the study warned, because corn generally requires more fertilizer than such crops as soybeans or hay. When it rains, some of this fertilizer washes downstream, and it brings such pollutants as nitrogen and phosphorus, which feed unnatural algae blooms in the bay. These algae consume the oxygen that fish, crabs and other creatures need to breathe, creating the Chesapeake’s infamous dead zones.

    Governments around the bay have pledged to cut their output of nitrogen by 110 million pounds by 2010. But the study estimated that an ethanol-driven increase in cornfields could add 8 million to 16 million pounds of pollution.

    Darn, environmental policy gets complicated! No matter how good an idea sounds, there are always economic or environmental trade-offs.

  • The Next Transportation Crisis

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    James A. Bacon

    Virginia may have raised taxes and fees for transportation, and enabled its two most populated regions to raise even more, but we have not seen the end of travails for the state’s outmoded transportation financing model. In “The Next Transportation Crisis,” I outline how two developments will conspire to shrink federal transportation revenues paid to Virginia in coming years.

    First, beginning in 2010, the federal highway trust fund won’t have as much money to give to the states. Congress goosed spending during the current six-year authorization period by telling the Department of Transportation to draw down the cash balance in the highway trust fund ($13 billion in 2004). That provides billions of dollars a year extra to spread around, but when the money runs out, it runs out. Worse, when there’s no cash balance in the till, DOT won’t be able to smooth out payments to the states — it will be forced to a pay-as-you-go system for dispursing funds, which could cause cash-management issues.

    That brings us to the second problem: Federal receipts from the gasoline tax, which increased at 2.7 percent annual clip for more than two decades, actually showed a year-to-year decline in the early months of 2007. People are driving less. The downturn in vehicle miles driven may be temporary, but a case can be made that driving is entering a slower growth curve.

    Meanwhile, a primary thrust of both the Bush adminstration and the Congress — one of the few things they can agree upon — is the necessity of cutting gasoline consumption. Over the long run, we will see motorists shift to vehicles that use less gasoline, or none at all. This, too, will cut into gasoline tax receipts.

    The Virginia Department of Transportation is well aware of the impending downturn in aid from the federal government, so we shouldn’t be caught flat-footed when it happens. Even so, VDOT’s six-year transportation plan is built upon the assumption that gasoline receipts will continue to rise at the modest rate of one percent annually. That assumption is looking increasingly precarious.

    It’s only a matter of time before Virginia’s pols come back wanting more money. Once again, we are reminded of the necessity to put our transportation system on a user-pays system relying upon congestion fees and a road-maintenance fee based on vehicle miles driven.

  • FOIA Fiddle-Faddle

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    James A. Bacon

    While I’m promoting the musings of regular Bacon’s Rebellion readers (see previous post), I dare not forget the column authored by Becky Dale: “FOIA Fiddle-Faddle.” Becky is devotee of Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act and she keeps everyone, including the Attorney General and the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council on a short leash.

    This week’s topic: should the student senates and other student organizations of public universities be subject to FOIA? Becky concludes, “no,” but she would urge them to voluntarily hold open meetings and take minutes, which are good habits of governance.

  • Economic Development and Broadband Connectivity

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    James A. Bacon

    In February, Bacon’s Rebellion published a column, “Reforming Regional Government,” by Reid Greenmun, a regular contributor to the comments section of the blog. I did not give his column the build-up it deserved. But I won’t make the same mistake with our second contribution from a regular reader.

    The blogger who goes by the name of Groveton has penned a piece, “The Commonwealth is Flat,” which explores two interconnected ideas: (1) that the potential exists to “outsource” jobs from growth-choked Northern Virginia to downstate communities, and (2) that a prerequisite to the first goal is lacing the Commonwealth with better broadband connections. Groveton is the chief technology officer of a major Northern Virginia technology services firm, so he knows of what he speaks.

    The first idea is not entirely novel. A string of Virginia governors has endeavored to interest Northern Virginia’s dynamic tech community in investing downstate, particularly in depressed regions like Southside and Southwest Virginia. Delegations of Northern Virginia luminaries have made the trek to Blacksburg, Abingdon and Danville to see for themselves that downstate is not a total technology wasteland. The Virginia Business Pipeline periodically hosts gatherings to introduce NoVa-ites and Downstaters in similar business fields. Outside of the outsourced state IT facility in Lebanon, however, the yield has been disappointingly small.

    In what may be the most telling passage of the piece, Groveton suggests that downstate economic developers may not be trying hard enough.

    Someone has to organize the people who want to be employed (at a distance) and then sell their services to potential employers. That’s just not happening in Virginia.

    I have worked in one or another of those nameless, faceless office buildings in D.C. or Northern Virginia for the last 26 years. Since 2000 or so I have been deluged by people asking me why I don’t outsource some of our work to them. These salesmen come from India, China, Texas, Israel, Oregon, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Russia, Belarus, Vietnam, Canada and countless other countries and U.S. states. They talk about the energy and the skill of their citizens, their lower wages (and therefore prices), their fluency in English, the stability of their currency relative to the dollar and they talk about their networks, always the networks. They tell me that they will create our PowerPoints, do our secretarial work, test the systems we write, develop the systems we design, read our X-Rays if we’re sick and answer our phones when we’re away.

    Through all those years and through all those meetings I have never been approached by a single person from any Virginia jurisdiction with any outsourcing offer. Not one person.

    Regarding the second key point Groveton raises, Virginians are kidding themselves if they think they have a world-class telecommunications infrastructure. According to the Speed Matters website, Virginia has only the 11th best broadband connections among the 50 states and D.C. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States ranked only 15th among the countries of the world for broadband connectivity. Even more discouraging, the U.S. is falling further behind: The OECD ranked the U.S. 21st in the rate it was increasing connectivity.

    Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s newly appointed “Broadband Roundtable,” to be chaired by former Gov. Mark R. Warner, is a positive step, writes Groveton, but way overdue.

    Image credit: Speed Matters, page 52 in the PDF file. Green shows areas where median download speeds exceed 6 megabits per second. Yellow is between 768 kilobits to 6 megabits, and red is less than 768 kilobits. The median download speed in Japan is 61 megabits per second!)

  • Bringing Light to a World in Darkness

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    James A. Bacon

    The July 16, 2007, edition of Bacon’s Rebellion is now online, once again inflicting reason upon the irrational, logic upon the illogical, and facts upon the uninformed. To view the edition, click here. To make get a free subscription and ensure you never miss a future issue, click here.

    This week’s commentary includes:

    The Next Transportation Crisis
    The federal highway trust fund has blown through its cash balance, and gasoline tax receipts are down. In the years ahead Virginia will be hard pressed to make up the difference.
    by James A. Bacon

    All in a Night’s Work
    The Northern Virginia Transportation Authority is gaining respect with its business-like approach.
    by Doug Koelemay

    How About Sustainable Logic?
    In the community of people who think seriously about economic development and the natural environment, “sustainable” has a specific meaning. In Virginia, that meaning has been corrupted by loose usage.
    by EM Risse

    Recreo Lectio!
    The Harry Potter books have done what a nation of parents backed by an army of educators could not do: Inspire a revival of reading among young children.
    by Chris Braunlich

    A String of Fish
    An assortment of political observations as varied as catfish and trout, bass and shad…
    by James Atticus Bowden

    The Politician Surplus
    George Allen, Mark Warner and possibly even Jim Gilmore could be eyeing a race for governor in 2009. Virginians would be better off with fresh faces and fresh ideas.
    By Norman Leahy

    FOIA Fiddle-Faddle
    Not all publicly funded organizations are public bodies. Student governments should not be subject to the Freedom of Information Act — but they should practice good government.
    by Becky Dale

    The Tax Increase That Dares Not Speak Its Name
    Abuser fees are needlessly harsh and will be applied inequitably — all because the General Assembly wanted to raise revenue without calling it a tax increase.
    by Publius II

    The Commonwealth is Flat
    Northern Virginia has more work than it can handle, and it makes sense to “outsource” jobs to downstate communities. But someone has to build the broadband connections first.
    by Groveton

    The Unfair Service Fund
    Proposed changes to the federal Universal Service Fund would limit wireless investment in rural Virginia, slowing the deployment of critical broadband access.
    by John E. Rooney

    Halfway to Healthy
    The condition of the James River has improved in recent years, but polluted runoff from farms and asphalt threaten the historic waterway’s continued recovery.
    by Bill Street

    Nice & Curious Questions
    Crossing State Lines: Virginia’s Neighbors
    by Edwin S. Clay III and Patricia Bangs

    Road to Ruin: Coming to an Interstate Near You
    Congestion pricing is coming to Northern Virginia, promising to help with otherwise intractable traffic problems.
    by Lyle Solla-Yates

  • A New Dominion Virginia Power? Or Just a Repackaged One?

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    James A. Bacon

    Dominion, Virginia’s leading electric power company, has launched a major energy conservation initiative designed to dampen consumer demand for electricity. The program complements an commitment, including a major investment in wind power, to generate 12 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2022. Stated CEO Thomas Farrell in a Friday press release:

    Virginia’s need for electricity is burgeoning. The projected additional demand for power in Virginia in the next 10 years is 4,000 megawatts, or the equivalent electricity to power 1 million new homes.

    The only way to meet that demand effectively is through a combination of energy conservation, efficiency and peak-load management along with a systematic program to add new generation facilities. This approach will provide our customers with a balanced and flexible portfolio of reliable, cost-effective energy.

    Elements of the program include:

    • Load management. Dominion will test programs to encourage customers to reduce electricity consumption during periods of peak demand such as during extreme winter and summer temperatures. Pilot programs include residential and commercial energy audits, an air-conditioning control program, “smart-metering” technologies, and critical peak-pricing plans to help customers shift energy usage to off-peak times.
    • Energy Star. Dominion will promote the purchase and use of energy-efficient appliances, energy-efficient building practices for new homes, and energy-efficient improvements for existing homes. The company also will collaborate with retailers to make efficient compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs available to customers at a discount.
    • Technology. Dominion will accelerate the development of new fuel cell technology through an investment in the Microcell Corp. of Raleigh, N.C. Microcell’s proton exchange membrane (PEM) micro fiber fuel cells have applications in electric vehicles and in distributed generation devices. The power company also will support the Dynamic Energy Management initiative of the Electric Power Research Institute.

    There’s more, but those are the highlights. Skeptics will denounce these measures as insincere or insufficient. I regard the initiative as a positive development. Regardless, proof will come not from a press release but from real-world behavior. How vigorously will Dominion, which makes its money selling electricity, follow through on measures to curb those sales?

    The timing of the announcement is hardly coincidental. The State Corporation Commission is holding proceedings to determine if a legislative goal of 10 percent savings in electricity consumption through conservation by 2020 can be achieved cost effectively. Here is the question: Is that goal aggressive enough? Should the SCC expect more of Dominion and Virginia’s other power companies?

  • End Women’s Suffrage!

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    James A. Bacon


    This YouTube video shows a couple of wisenheimers at Chantilly High School passing around a petition to “end women’s suffrage.” Such is the ignorance of history in Virginia, like the rest of America, that the jokesters had no trouble finding young women to fill up the petition page.

    Chantilly was listed in Newsweek in 2004 as the 94th top public high school in America. Presumably, that makes it one of the very best in Virginia.

    (Hat tip: Joe West.)

  • An Important Part of the Political Dialogue

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    James A. Bacon

    The Daily Press and the Virginian-Pilot covered the Blogs United conference that I missed because I can’t keep my schedule straight. I’m still kicking myself. As reported by the DP’s Kimball Payne, here’s the money quote from Del. Brian Moran, D-Alexandria:

    [Moran] told bloggers that they have morphed from a fringe group into an important part of the political dialogue – especially for elected officials looking for instant, unfiltered feedback. “It’s an exciting phenomenon. … Politicians who ignore it do so at their own peril.”

  • BALANCED COMMUNITY NOTES

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    James A. Bacon

    In his 9 July post “Downtown Plans and Balanced Communities,” Jim Bacon mentioned that we are working on a book (TRILO-G) to be published “in the near future.” That is “near future” in book writing time, not in blog time. Do not expect to see a copy of this three Volume set in your in box soon.

    We will soon, however, be putting on line a revised “Brief Summary of TRILO-G” as well as two items on the Vocabulary used in the three Volumes of the book.

    In the meantime Jim’s post and comments on this and other settlement pattern related posts prompt a note of clarification and update on Balanced Community.

    Larry:

    In the string “New Urbanism Comes to an Old Downtown” you raised a question about the Bureau of Census’ “Metropolitan Division” and its relationship to New Urban Regions.

    Long ago we gave up looking for guidance on human settlement pattern issues from mid-20th century authority figures like the Bureau of Census (BS) and Brookings. One can learn much more about human settlement pattern by examining how those who have a choice choose to spend their time and money.

    Since it had not yet come to my attention, I was happy to see your mention of “Metropolitan Division.” (BS also added “Micropolitan Area” about the same time which we have noted on this blog and in columns.)

    In general, BS is far too beholden to the political pressures of Business-As-Usual and Government-As-Usual. In general for the big picture they look through the wrong end of the telescope (seeking smaller agglomerations) and for data agglomeration they rely far too much on municipal borders – especially counties that vary in function from state to state.

    BS is also institutionally blind to the organic components of human settlement patterns.

    All this suits their political employers very well. They think in terms of wards, precincts, and gerrymandered election districts that have little or nothing to do with the organic components of settlement be they council, magisterial, delegate, senate, representative and senate districts.

    There are others who have tried to draw a bigger picture of urban structure:

    Jean Gottmann with Megalopolis (aka, “BoWash” that now stretches into North Carolina with the inclusion of the Richmond and Hampton Roads NURs). Lewis Mumford by the way, points out that to suggest that Megalopolis is a single urban agglomeration is pure fantasy.

    C. A. Doxiadis with his Small megalopolis, Megalopolis, Small eperopolis and Eperopolis did not attract many supporters.

    Joel Garreau with Nine Nations of America pointed out a number of important multi NUR and USR patterns.

    Most recently, Robert Lang suggested the emergence of Megapolitian Areas. (That is so much better than “regional cities.”) Megapolitian Area by in large follow NURs but over-aggregate based on tenuous Interstate highway corridors. (I-35 links Dallas-Fort Worth with Oklahoma City and Kansas City as a single component of human settlement?) Lang also seems to play down important differences between coterminous NURs.

    The New Urban Region Conceptual Framework is anchored by the New Urban Region (NUR), the smallest organic component of human settlement that is “sustainable” based on 1990 to 2000 data. It turns out that NURs are larger than BS’s MSA or CMSA but smaller than Megalopolis (or Megapolitian Areas in some cases).

    Now back to your question:

    We spent the whole day on the 4th of July refining the definitions of “region,” “Region,” “subregion” and “Subregion.” BS’s “Metropolitan Division” is a Subregion made up of all or part of several Beta Communities. As you know from our past posts, Beta Communities are places that have the potential to become Alpha / Balanced Communities. Metropolitan Division is far smaller than a New Urban Region (NUR).

    The NUR in which we both live in is called the Washington-Baltimore New Urban Region. You live in it because, as you noted recently, the vast majority of the commuters from Greater Fredericksburg go north, not south. The boundary between Wash-Balto NUR and Richmond NUR is closer to the North Anna River than the Rappahannock River. That is logical if you consider the NUR economic pull to be similar to gravitational pull in celestial mechanics.

    Now back to the Jim’s “Downtown Plans and Balanced Communities.” The “Downtown” of a Richmond-scale NUR is not a Beta (potential Balanced) Community. We call this place a “Zentrum” and it is most likely of Beta Village-scale.

    In the post, Jim’s description of a Balanced Community is solid except that our Aloha / Balanced Community has a relative Balance J / H / Services / Recreation / A. The elements are not J / H / retail (or as suggested in a previous note by Jim “shopping”) / A. There is a big difference.

    “Services” includes both public and private services – everything from water and sewer and communications to retail, repair, health … it includes all the services that urban individuals and households need and want to be happy and safe. There are about 40 of these Services for which the cost varies with location and thus the importance of fair allocation of location variable costs.

    “Well!” you say there are a lot of ways to divide up human settlement patterns to establish Balance.
    For example, “I am in the textile business and I see the world through the eyes of industrial processes: Mining / Growing Fiber / Pumping Oil / Refining / Manufacturing / Milling / Fabrication / Assembly / Distribution / Warehousing / Wholesale / Retail and my friend is in pharmaceuticals and she ….”

    All true, but… Human settlement patterns are driven by residential activity (80 percent of the urban land area) and it is what individuals and households need, want and use that makes up the third of the Big Five determinants of settlement patterns.

    All those categories of Jobs noted above are important in establishing Balance at the NUR scale to achieve sustainability but are not critical in establishing relative Balance and the Community scale.

    With the exception of shorting the five basic elements of Balance, Jim’s description and discussion of Balanced Community is on target.

    Larry:

    Later on in the comments you discuss the need for “Regional Comp Plans.”

    You are right but municipal planners have so tainted the use of “Comprehensive Plan” that we avoid those words and refer to Regional strategies to create Balanced Communities. In a number of places you rely on “Comp Plan” to solve problems. It is now a weak reed. The 1926 ideal of the Comp Plan (especially as embellished by Jack Kent) is far better than the 2007 practice. (See “The Role of Municipal Planning in the Creation of Dysfunctional Human Settlement Patterns” a Backgrounder at https://www.baconsrebellion.com/)

    We agree with you that whatever it is called, without a Regional framework there is no validity of “plans” of any scale.

    As Roger points out, places such as Arlington County and others have done a much better job of “planning” than most but all are hampered by a fixation on municipal borders.

    Portland, a favorite of Roger’s, is indeed a leader. But by refusing to cross the river (to embrace Vancouver, Washington) Portland Metro demonstrates a failure to recognize that their policies and programs have scattered Portland NUR urban land uses beyond their territory.

    Also the Portland approach to regionalism fails to recognize the importance of subregional organic components and thus the need to evolve
    Balanced Communities and other Balanced components. This is a critical problem inside the Clear Edge (the Urban Growth Boundary in Oregon terminology).

    By the way in the “Downtown Plans and Balanced Communities” string there was a comment by Glenn Weiss about New Urbanism. His comments, and Jim’s response contain a lot of truth. I hope to get to a post on New Urbanism called “Shooting Themselves in the Foot” soon. The long and short of it is that having never grasped the importance of a Comprehensive Conceptual Framework and a robust Vocabulary, they are plagued by Geographical Illiteracy and as a result often shoot themselves in the foot.

    Jim put his finger on the biggest problem: Jack Legs who try to steal a few good ideas from the New Urbanism pattern book and then call the project “New Urbanist” when it is not. That is especially true with respect to locational dysfunction and scale blindness.

    EMR

  • World’s Biggest Dumbass

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    James A. Bacon

    Yes, that would be me. Right now, I feel head-smackingly stupid.

    I had every intention of attending the Blogs United conference in Newport News today. I registered, sent in my check, lined up a hotel room at the Marriott and entered the date into my calendar. I got up early this morning, hit the road and made it to Christopher Newport University in time for the 8 a.m. conference check-in. But when I found my way to the student center ballroom, instead of a mob of bloggers, there was some Virginia teen leadership confab.

    Whoops. The conference begins this evening. The program starts 8 a.m. tomorrow. Alas, I had too many things to get done to hang around Newport News all day with nothing to do. I headed home, very much regretting my dysfunctional scheduling skills. I’d been looking forward to the conference so much: partly for the great line-up of topics but mostly to meet my fellow spirits in the blogging community.

    Hey, guys, have a great conference. Maybe next year.

  • The Phase 1 Contract: Read It and Weep

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    The Rail-to-Dulles Metro rail project is getting scarier and scarier. The likelihood of massive cost overruns increases with each passing day.

    William T. Coleman, a senior partner of O’Melveny & Myers LLP, has written a devastating critique of the contract negotiated for the construction of Phase I of the Rail-to-Dulles extension of Metro heavy rail. The design-build contract was approved June 6 by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA). Basing his analysis on a redacted version of the contract posted on the MWAA website, Coleman detailed his concerns in an unsolicited letter to Gerald Connolly, chairman of the Fairfax County board, dated June 14.

    (I have obtained a copy of Coleman’s letter through a correspondent who informs me that it “was obtained through a FOIA request.” I have no knowledge of who might have filed that FOIA request or whose hands the letter might have passed through before reaching me.)

    Writes Coleman:

    The proposed DTP Design-Build contract which was negotiated by the Commonwealth and then the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) without competition on a sole-source basis with Dulles Transit Partners (DTP) — a consortium of Bechtel and Washington Group International — is not an advantageous contract for the taxpayer, Virginia governmental entities and toll payers, who must pay for 100 % of the contract costs and for any other final design and construction work.

    The proposed DTP Design-Build Contract … is full of non-standard provisions that will certainly drive the current Phase I Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project much higher than the current disclosed budget of $2.647 billion, including:

    – Inappropriate secrecy provisions

    – Award of the construction contract without a fixed price

    – Award of the construction contract prior to final design approval, without right to bid competitively the approved final design without penalty

    – A supposed “fixed price” portion of the contract which really is not a “fixed price,” instead by its written terms adjusting automatically to price changes of major construction items, i.e. steel and concrete

    – Uncompetitive procurement procedures for future sub-contractor “allowance” work

    – Award of utility relocation work under separate contract and without a fixed-price

    – Loose provisions to control “differing site condition” costs

    – “Concurrent Non-Project Activities” which are expected to be designed and built as part of the Project but have an unclear relationship to the proposed contract

    – – Provisions allowing the contractor to cause the conditions for its own Change Orders and Delay Claims that would increase cost to the taxpayer

    Coleman did not offer any recommendations. His stated purpose was simply to bring the flaws in the contract to Connolly’s attention so he “can make informed decisions and take appropriate actions as the project advances through the federal system.”

    Update: Reader Becky Dale notes that a Washington Examiner editorial referred to the letter on Wednesday. No mention how the Examiner acquired the letter.

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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.
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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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