Bacon's Rebellion

Maintaining the integrity of the power grid is one of those topics that make your eyes glaze over — until the power grid collapses and the lights go out, as it did for much of Virginia after Hurricane Isabel in 2003, and then it becomes all-consuming.

But the power grid gets the juices flowing every day at Virginia Tech’s Consortium for Energy Restructuring. Many of the power grid’s vulnerabilities could be alleviated through the use of Distributed Generation (DG), argues Richard Hirsh, the Virginia Tech technology historian who leads the interdisciplinary consortium. Writes Hirsh in the latest edition of Virginia Tech Research:

It makes sense to begin moving toward a decentralized system that contains small-scale, modular, and diverse types of equipment that produce power close to cities or even within buildings that use a lot of electricity. Employing diesel generators, or better yet — from an environmental point of view — fuel cells, micro turbines, and photovoltaic cells, such a system would reduce the strain on the existing grid by providing power to users without depending on transmission lines at all.

The economic viability of Distributed Generation has improved in recent years thanks to technological advances such as metering enhancements, fuel conversion technology, thermal engineering, and automation and control devices.

Adoption of a DG strategy is impeded in many states, however, by monopoly rules and discriminatory rate structures protecting established electric utilities. The Virginia Tech article was not clear what barriers might exist in Virginia — other than the fact that electric rates here are lower than the national average, which is hard to complain about — but a worthy goal of the task force developing recommendations for a state energy policy would be to investigate what might be done to encourage Distributed Generation in Virginia.

Virginia Tech has just published the Summer 2006 edition of “Virginia Tech Research,” which it dedicates to the topic of energy-related R&D and public policy. Many of the research projects taking place at Tech are interesting in their own right — from pinpointing disruptions to the national power grid to designing solar houses, from developing more efficient fuel cells to creating bio-based fuels.

As a public policy wonk, however, I found most fascinating the commentary by John Randolph, director of Tech’s school of public and international affairs, who explores the concept of “whole community energy.” One element of whole community energy is “distributed energy,” in which small, independent sources of energy are connected to the power grid, supplementing the energy supplied by giant, central power plants. (More on that topic in the next post.) But there’s more.

The Whole Community energy concept goes further than building efficiency and distributed energy. Buildings are part of the fabric of the community. Their location, site characteristics, and density define our neighborhoods, our land use, and our transportation energy, which is 96 percent dependent on oil and consumes 68 percent of the oil we use. Our sprawling land development patterns dictate heavy use of auto transport and preclude more efficient rail and non-motorized commutes.

Green building and development guidelines that recognize the opportunities for improved land use and transportation efficiency will soon appear in building codes and “form-based” zoning. And new personal vehicles can be a part of our Whole Community, distributed energy future. In addition to hybrid-electric vehicles (HEV) and flex-fuel hybrids that can use 86 percent ethanol (E85), plug-in hybrids (PHEV) can use distributed generation energy sources, such as a PV array on a south facing garage. On those sunny afternoons when the car is not in the garage, the array could feed the grid. Vehicles fully charged with off-peak power overnight can be plugged in at home or in parking garages during the day to feed the grid during periods of peak demand. This vehicles-to-grid (V2G) system can provide electrical storage for intermittent distributed generation like wind and solar power, which cannot be controlled to match peak demand.

This vision for Whole Community energy integrates 1) energy-efficient, green buildings, planned and developed in mixed-use, compact, and transit-oriented developments; 2) on-site a distributed electricity generation to add resilience and efficiency to the local power system; and 3) electrified transportation vehicles with V2G storage capacity.

The Commonwealth is undertaking a major study on state energy policy this year. I would hope that it takes Randolph’s vision as a starting point.

Would someone please explain to me what’s so god-awful about importing trash from other states? As long as the landfills are properly permitted, why does it matter from an environmental perspective whether trash winds up in Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York or somewhere else?

The Free Lance-Star observes that trash “imports” decreased 10 percent last year — but “don’t rejoice,” it cautioned, as if declining volumes of garbage were something to celebrate: Waste Management Inc., wants to bring in more trash on barges.

I’d say that the declining volume of trash is bad news, especially for the poor, rural counties that reap a $40- to $50 windfall for every ton of garbage dumped in their state-of-the-art landfills. Take a look at the budgets of some of these counties, like Amelia, Charles City and King George counties. Local residents get tremendous benefits from the presence of a business they can’t see, hear or smell.

The Free Lance-Star cites the problem of traffic accidents caused by the trash-hauling trucks.

After numerous reports of nonfatal accidents involving trash haulers, two motorists died when their vehicles were struck by trash trucks. Then recently, a county deputy was run off the road on a foggy morning by three trucks traveling together, possibly going too fast for the conditions. The three drivers were arrested on reckless- driving charges; two of them face deportation to their native Ecuador. Though the truckers in the fatal accidents were not ruled at fault, the situation points to a roadway woefully unprepared for the heavy truck traffic that is using it.

The answer isn’t fewer trucks, it’s more. With more tax money rolling in, Prince George can afford to fix the roads!

Bad news for rail junkies: Despite rising gasoline prices and ever-worsening congestion, ridership on the Virginia Railway Express is falling. VRE ridership declined about 2 percent, or by about 178 passengers, in the fiscal year that ended June 30 compared to the prior year, according to the Manassas Journal-Messenger. That’s quite a contrast to the average ridership growth of 13 percent annually in the five previous years.

VRE officials blamed rail maintenance by CSX and Norfolk Southern, which own the rail lines, hot weather that warps the steel rail and forces trains to slow down, and limited parking around the stations.

Zounds! I never thought it possible: A sliver of economic logic has entered into the discussions over how to finance the Rail-to-Dulles project — in particular, how to pay for the heavy-rail tunnel that everyone in Tysons Corner prefers to running above-ground. The Washington Post reports that the Governor’s office will receive a two-month study tomorrow by a panel of independent engineers and that a go/no go decision on the tunnel is imminent. Although digging the rail line for four miles underground would add $200 million to the $4 billion price tag of the entire Rail-to-Dulles project, it would contribute to the vision of Tysons as a walkable, urban-style business center.

Richmond is leaning toward the tunnel option, sources tell writer Alec MacGillis, which raises another question: how to pay for it.

The funding option getting the most attention, at least for now, is to increase the tax being paid by landowners along the Tysons portion of the line, who are contributing $400 million to the project through a special tax district. The landowners — the owners of shopping malls, office buildings and car dealerships, among others — agreed to the contribution partly because Fairfax zoning rules will allow many of them to build more densely once rail is in place.

The landowners are likely to gain even more from a tunnel, because an elevated track would be less aesthetically pleasing and would limit development along the route. That is why they are a natural candidate to contribute even more toward a below-ground approach, said Fairfax Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D).

Some of the financing is anticipated to come from a special tax district already. But here’s the kicker, says MacGillis: “There is also talk of creating a second district that would apply only to those with land closest to the four planned stations at Tysons. The argument for the second approach is that those nearest the stations would be granted the biggest increases in allowed building density.” (My emphasis.)

Please forgive me for engaging in a little self-congratulation. That is almost exactly the logic I laid out in a column “Rail Rip-off” back in May 15! It is very, very encouraging to see public officials embrace the core principle that those who benefit from a transportation project are those who should pay for it, even if in a limited way.

No surprisingly, Macerich East Development president John Anderson told MacGillis that he is open to paying more for a tunnel. “We’d need to see the details … but . . . we would certainly give a tax district change our best consideration.” Of course, Macerich would go with the plan. The company is getting higher density and a Metro station out of the deal! Macerich would be willing to pay up a lot more than its share of just $200 million, I would suggest. Even with this deal, the state could be leaving a lot of money on the table. But it’s a step in the right direction.

Step by step, fast-growth Virginia jurisdictions are adopting a philosophy rarely stated in its baldest terms: that new growth should fully pay its own way. But that’s where things are headed. Local governance practitioners are increasingly impatient with development proposals that require existing taxpayers to share in the cost of providing new roads, schools and public services for new development.

The latest evidence comes from Prince William County, where the planning commission rejected a rezoning petition from Wheeler’s Grove LLC and HC Land Company LC to build 1,000 new homes near Gainesville. According to the Washington Post, the developer’s offer to proffer $2.5 million towards construction of a new school was not enough: The developer did not designate any space for the school. Wrote reporter Ian Shapira:

In a county where 16 schools are expected to open or be built in the next 10 years, developers are being pressured to offer school sites with their proposals because vacant land has become so scarce.

“This is a change in direction for us. Before, in the late 1990s, we started to request monetary contributions because we wanted to use the funds to buy sites near where the demand was,” said Sean T. Connaughton (R), chairman of the Board of County Supervisors. “Now, we’re switching back to asking for school sites because the price of land has gotten so high.”

Now, if only we could just convince planners and supervisors to build schools that are integrated into the communities they serve, rather than have them fenced off and surrounded by oceans of parking lot. Wouldn’t it be nice if parents could buy houses where their kids could walk to school?

One of the most important laws to be enacted this year requires the Virginia Department of Transportation to review the traffic impact of rezoning cases in fast-growth counties. Officially, the law doesn’t go into effect until next year, but it’s already had a test case — in the fastest of fast-growth jurisdictions, Loudoun County.

As chronicled on this blog, VDOT studied the impact of proposed changes to the Loudoun County management plan that would increase the number of dwelling units from 5,000 in the South Dulles region to 28,000. The results, VDOT asserted, would lead to the lowest Levels of Service — gridlock, essentially — for hours a day and miles around. Greenvest, the lead developer, countered that VDOT neglected to include $700+ million in road improvements planned by the private sector and failed to consider that those extra 23,000 households would strain the local transportation system wherever they lived. The Piedmont Environmental Council contended that the study understated the magnitude of congestion by underestimating the length of likely commutes. (See the details in my most recent column, “Loudoun Lightning Rod.“)

This VDOT report won’t settle anything. That’s OK. It’s still early in the game. VDOT, we hope, will continue to refine its methodology. And local planning departments, which supply the underlying data, will continue to collect better information.

At the risk of putting readers to sleep, I will renew a recommendation that failed to elicit any comment whatsoever when I last mentioned it on this blog. To make rational land use and transportation decisions, Virginia needs the best traffic modeling system available. The one that VDOT uses now is state of the art — as in, no one’s got a better one — but it still falls short of what’s needed. Virginia is a national leader in the modeling & simulation of complex systems. We have the capability to build the world’s best traffic/land use model. Why not set the new global standard?

A next-generation traffic modeling system would allow us to delve into the complex interactions between transportation and land use, answering questions that leave Bacon’s Rebellion bloggers and readers chasing their tails in endless circles of argumentation for the lack of conclusive evidence. Thanks to the Division of Motor Vehicles, we know how many miles every car is driven each year, and the address of its owner. With a world-class modeling system, we could cross-tab that data with variables — development density and the presence of sidewalks, grid streets and mass transit, just to mention a few examples — that would yield definitive answers about which types of development are associated with the most driving, and by what margin.

Such a system might be expensive in the sense that it could cost tens/hundreds of millions of dollars to set up and maintain. But that would seem to be a relatively small price if the output would better inform decisions affecting tens/hundreds of billions of transportation improvements and real estate investments. That should be Virginia’s number one transportation priority before spending one more dollar on new roads and rail.

The July 24, 2006, edition of Bacon’s Rebellion is now online. Columns include:

Loudoun Lightning Rod
VDOT sparked a storm last week when it released a traffic-impact analysis of development planned in Loudoun County. Agree or disagree with the findings, the debate is healthy.
by James A. Bacon

Break the Tax-and-Spend Cycle
Many politicians, and the reporters who cover them, regard bloating state budgets as inevitable. But that’s true only if voters settle for the same-old, same-old.
by Patrick McSweeney

Summer Budget Savings
As we while away the long days of summer, let’s give some thought to creative ways of getting more for our tax dollars. Here are some suggestions, some old, some new.
by Michael Thompson

The Politics of Cake
Tom Davis and other GOP moderates in Congress want to have their cake and eat it too — hold onto a Republican majority while voting with the Democrats.
by Phillip Rodokanakis

Never-Ending Racial Wrongs
The choice is simple: Does Virginia want to treat all citizens equally or does it want to treat Virginia Indians as a special classes of citizens to assuage white guilt?
by James Atticus Bowden

The Rail to Nowhere
Tom Davis has engineered the largest Congressional earmark in industry, a subsidy for the Washington Metro, that dwarfs the infamous Bridge to Nowhere.
by Ron Utt

The J,A,Bs of Marriage
Jim Bowden is right when he says marriage is a vitally important institution. But he’s wrong to say that it should be denied to same-sex couples.
by Bryan Drake

Marriage and Gender Polarity
Opponents of same-sex marriage confuse the rigid biological roles that males and females play in procreation and the far more flexible roles they play in parenting.
by David Weintraub

Nice & Curious Questions
Crossing the Waters: Ferries in Virginia
by Edwin S. Clay III and Patricia Bangs

A pagan cult, Asatru, is gaining adherents in among white prison inmates in Virginia and nationally, the Associated Press reports. A polytheistic, pre-Christian faith native to Scandinavia, the religion venerates pagan gods including Thor and Odin. On the positive side, it emphasizes a connection with one’s ancestors and values honor, loyalty, generosity and truth. But prison officials fear it may encourage violence.

The AP reports that Michael Lenz is scheduled to be executed this week for killing a fellow prisoner at the foot of an altar. He stabbed Brent Parker dozens of times at Augusta Correctional Center in Staunton during a gathering of inmates devoted to Asatru. At his trial, Lenz testified that Parker had not been taking the religion seriously and had to die to protect the honor of the gods.

Another complication has surfaced in the Personal Property Tax Relief Act of 1998: dealing with people who lease their cars. The aim of the tax is to provide relief for individuals, not leasing companies. But sorting out ownership can get very complicated.

Writes Jessica Kitchin with the Charlottesville Daily Progress:

Initially when Virginia passed the Personal Property Tax Relief Act of 1998, those who leased vehicles were ineligible to receive the tax break from the state. The state eventually opened the door for leasers to get tax relief, but that move opened up a world of complication for localities.

“It gets down to being able to really know who that owner is, and who is using that vehicle,” said Robert Walters, chief of administration taxation at Albemarle County. “You need some kind of identifier. We need to make sure we’re dealing with the right people.”

That means county officials need to verify who owns what. Then the county reimburses the leasing company, which reimburses the owner. The situation can get incredibly confusing, and Albemarle County is calling for state legislation to simplilfy the process.

Relief for the car tax was a worthy idea — state spending was out of control during the go-go yeras of the 1990s, and taxpayers deserved to get some of their money back. But it’s increasingly apparent that the idea of getting the state entangled in a local tax is not working. Furthermore, the General Assembly isn’t even living up to the original deal: It capped state payments to localities, and the tax on the first $20,000 in value will never be fully phased out as promised. Taxpayers are getting short-changed, and the state is causing headaches for localities administering the tax.

The General Assembly should scrap the entire Rube Goldberg arrangement — let localities set their own rules for the personal property tax — and apply the proceeds towards a reduction in the state sales or income tax.

There’s a revealing comment buried deep in a Washington Post story about the furor over VDOT’s traffic estimates of development in Loudoun County.

“There is virtually no development going on now on the Fairfax side of the line,” said James R. Hart, a member of the Fairfax County Planning Commission who lives in the western edge of the county. “The traffic is attributable to what’s happening in Loudoun.”

The chickens are coming home to roost. Fairfax County purchased itself temporary relief from traffic congestion by restricting housing development, even as it lapped up all the commercial development it could. The commercial/residential ratio in the tax base is highly favorable as a result, allowing Fairfax to maintain a lower overall tax rate. But the people who work in Fairfax County have to live somewhere. Increasingly, they’re living in Loudoun County. And they’re driving long distances — congest Loudoun and Fairfax roads — to get to work.

The problem is the inevitable result of the failure to build communities with a balance of housing, jobs, retail and amenities. If I sound like a broken record, I’m sorry: This fundamental principle has to be repeated over and over until people get it.

The Virginia League of Conservation Voters has given the General Assembly much higher scores for votes on environmental issues in 2006 than it did the year before. The House garnered a 56 percent rating this year, up from 40 percent in 2005. The Senate scored 54 percent, up from 42 percent.

The scores measured floor votes on conservation issues including the land preservation tax credit, the Virginia Energy Plan, air emissions controls, billboard vegetation control, water protection permits, construction of an I-95 alternative, and impact fees for transportation. “Extra credit” was also issued to legislators who patroned conservation-friendly bills that VALCV supported.

For details on the Conservation Scorecard, click here.

Just one question: A bill on “billboard vegetation control”?

Yes indeedy, the bill, which passed, grants VDOT “the authority to impose on a billboard company requesting approval of a vegetation control permit, the obligation to relocate or replant vegetation according to a landscaping plan approved by VDOT, at the sole cost of the billboard company.” The VALCV was against it:

This legislation arose from a situation in Virginia Beach in which a billboard owner applied to VDOT for a permit to cut down crape myrtles in the median of Virginia Beach Boulevard. The permit was rejected because the roads are city-maintained and not within VDOT’s jurisdiction.

I can’t tell from this explanation what the League was opposed to. But what the heck? Who could possibly support the cutting down of crape myrtles — especially when the alternative is looking at billboards?

If anyone thought that analyzing the traffic impact of local zoning and planning decisions would lead to more rational land use patterns, it’s time to reconsider. The Kaine administration’s pilot project — using VDOT traffic analysis to inform the land-use debate in fast-growing Loudoun County — took less than a week to become totally politicized. Traffic analysis, it seems, will become just one more tool that political interests use to batter one another.

In a letter last week, the Virginia Department of Transportation criticized a planning proposal to permit 28,000 housing units in the Dulles South district of Loudoun County, up from 5,000 previously allowed. VDOT’s “preliminary analysis” indicated that the development in the South Dulles district of the county would overwhelm the local transportation infrastructure, creating gridlock for miles around. (See “Batteries Not Included.”)

According to Leesburg2Day, Loudoun supervisors responded by describing the letter as a “distortion” and a political ploy by the Kaine administration to make the case for tax increases. Setting aside the rhetoric, VDOT critics leveled two substantive charges during a Board of Supervisors meeting. First:

It was unclear whether VDOT’s study showed that the impacts described in [the] letter would be caused specifically by new homes in the Dulles area or anticipated growth in general. In addition, [VDOT official Dennis] Morrison said a baseline study was not performed to compare the proposed new homes’ impact with a less dense option.

Translation: People gotta live somewhere. If you put those 28,000 households somewhere else, they’re still going to generate traffic congestion. And second: VDOT did not factor in the roads that developers were offering to build as part of their rezoning applications.

“Interestingly enough, they did not take into consideration our network plan, which we believe is the right way to do this,” [Dulles district Supervisor Stephen] Snow said, referring to a package of roads being proffered by several developers. “The didn’t take that into account.”

Translation: Dulles South developers are planning hundreds of millions of dollars worth of transportation improvements as proffers and other contributions.

I’m sure that the Piedmont Environmental Council and other opponents will offer responses to the responses. I’ll do my best to keep up.

Dulles South is shaping up as the hottest zoning/planning controversy in Virginia since the 80s-era controversies over the Manassas Battlefield and the Disney theme park at Haymarket. Watch the sparks fly! I’ll be taking a detailed look at Dulles South in next week’s edition of the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine.

The Virginia Department of Transportation backs approval of a proposed interchange along Interstate 64 near Regent University on the condition that some local roads also are expanded, the Virginian-Pilot reports. The interchange would provide access to the 500-acre Blenheim Park development proposed by Pat Robertson and his Christian Broadcasting Network.

States the Pilot: “Building the City Line Parkway interchange would help relieve pressure at the Indian River Road and Greenbrier Parkway interchanges, VDOT officials said in a report sent Wednesday to the Federal Highway Administration in Richmond.”

(For a more detailed commentary on the project, see “Hurricane Pat.”)

It was a rare pleasure to read the lead editorial of the Richmond Times-Dispatch today about passenger rail. The piece, undoubtedly penned by Barton Hinkle, dispenses with the usual platitudes and takes a hard look at the economics of this oft-touted solution to Virginia’s transportation woes. As the writer unsentimentally observes:

When all the capital and operating costs of both mass transit and automobile travel are accounted for, rail travel is almost four times as expensive as vehicular travel. In 2002, rail cost 82 cents per person per mile; vehicular travel cost 21 cents, even after factoring in government spending on roads. Travelers might be willing to pay that higher cost in return for conveniences such as briefer commute times, diminished highway congestion, and less road rage. But passenger rail travel in most of the U.S. — and certainly in Virginia — promises few such offsets.

The problem, as the T-D observes, is that there is insufficient density in Virginia to economically support mass transit. “Mass transit works in places where people are, well, massed together.” Like New York (26,000 people per square mile), Chicago (13,000 per square mile), Washington, D.C. (9,300 per square mile). Rail does not work well in places with suburban densities of less than 1,000 people per square mile. Here’s why:

Low density rates force transit systems into an unhappy tradeoff: Either they maintain numerous stations along their routes, which slows travel speeds considerably, or — for the sake of greater speed — they maintain just a few stations separated by large distances. The latter option not only makes use of the system inconvenient to most potential passengers, it also requires them to drive to the stations — which largely defeats the point.

Impeccable logic. My only quarrel with the editorial is this: Just because average density may be too low for transit, that doesn’t mean Virginia jurisdictions can’t support rail transit. The key is placing islands of high density around transit stops, along with mixed uses, intermodal connections and pedestrian-friendly streetscapes. In the absence of appropriate zoning, however, rail as a commuting option is a waste of money.