Bacon's Rebellion

For all the sturm and drang over the taxes-and-transportation deadlock, Virginia lawmakers did manage to get a few useful bills passed this year. One of those is a measure, championed by Del. Timothy D. Hugo, R-Centreville, and passed unanimously by the House of Delegates and the Senate, that will encourage telecommuting in the state workforce.

The secretaries of administration and technology are ordered to establish a policy for statewide telecommuting and alternative work schedules. The legislation sets the following goal: “By July 1, 2009, each state agency shall have a goal of not less than 25 percent of its eligible workforce participating in alternative work schedules.”

That’s barely three years away. Pretty ambitious.

Potentially, there are two immediate payoffs. The first is obvious: Telecommuting/alternate workplaces will take state employees off the road during rush hour, providing a modicum of relief for traffic congestion.

The second benefit is less obvious and may require follow-up legislation: More state employees working out of home or in the field translates into fewer employees taking up space in state office buildings. The state needs to follow the lead of the federal government in shifting appropriate sectors of its workforce to “hoteling” accommodations. Hoteling eliminates permanent, personal desks for mobile employees. Instead, laptop- and cellphone-equipped employees reserve desk space only on days they need to be in the office. Some organizations have found they can cut their real estate space requirements by 50 percent or more. That may not be achievable for a largely desk-bound state bureaucracy, but the state clearly stands to save something by integrating hoteling into its plans for optimizing the size of its real estate portfolio.

There is a third benefit, although it is more difficult to quantify: Experience shows that enabling employees to work at home and in the field can lead to higher productivity and job satisfaction. But for now, the first two reasons — taking commuters off roads and reducing the size of state real estate holdings — should provide more than ample justification.

Deena Flinchum raised an important point concerning population in the comment on “Lessons From PRT and “Mass” Transit” posted on 22 May.

Sustainability is not a simple or easy to achieve objective. Sustainability is beyond contemplation without Fundamental Change in the current population trajectories at the regional, continental and global scales.

As noted in “The Shape of the Future,” any consideration of sustainability must address the overlapping spheres of Economic, Social and Physical reality.

In the Social sphere, social stability must address three overarching areas of concern:

Making all humans citizens (democracy)

The number of citizens (population)

The way citizens treat one another (genocide, slavery / subjugation, bigotry / discrimination / xenophobia / the equitable distribution of resources)

Population is obviously key to any discussion of sustainability.

We also argue that achieving a sustainable trajectory for civilization is not possible as a direct goal.

There is an interim launch pad and that platform is functional human settlement patterns. Until citizens understand how to create functional settlement patterns they will not have to tools necessary to address the far more complex issue of sustainability.

It is in this context that we link human settlement patterns and sustainability together.

Without this linkage fantasies like:

The religion with the most souls wins, or

The nation-state with the biggest guns wins are rampant.

These myths are almost as silly as the assertion of Anonymous 8:10 PM who said:

“Well, as far as I’m concerned, they (illegal immigrants) are welcome. After all, most of them will vote Republican, if we let them.

“Would you rather have them here working for us, or over there competing against us?”

Competing for what? The nicest lawns? The cleanest windows?

If potential immigrants become key contributors to Balanced Communities in El Salvador or Ivory Coast that is much better than their contributing to unbalance and over-consumption in Greater Houston or Washington-Baltimore New Urban Regions.

EMR

As the more devoted of our readers may recall, a comment thread on a recent post about roundabouts led to a perplexing question: Who has the right of way inside a two-lane roundabout?

It’s very clear who yields to whom in a normal roundabout — drivers entering the roundabout must always yield to drivers inside the roundabout. But what happens in those rare locations, such as the Lee Circle on Richmond’s Monument Ave., when there are two lanes of traffic around the circle? In particular, who has the right of way (this question will be obscure to non-Richmonders, but please bear with us) when a car in the left lane wants to exit onto Monument/West Franklin and a car in the right lane wants to continue in the circle to Allen?

Becky Dale took it upon herself to find out. Diligently, she worked her way through ranks of state and local officials who, shockingly, did not know the answer to this elementary question. But at last she identified a certain Sergeant John E. Bowman, of the Richmond Police, who seems to speak with authority. Bowman, she reports, pronounces as follows:

The car in the right-hand lane must yield to the car in the left lane because it would have to cross over the center divided line of the lanes in order to continue in the traffic circle. Because it is changing lanes, it must yield. If the lines were painted differently, if the center divided line went around in a circle too, there would be a different answer: the car in the left lane would be crossing the center divided line and would have to yield. The car changing lanes must yield to the car staying in its lane.

Got it? I think we can all be thankful that there are not more accidents at the Lee Monument.

As a final note, Becky adds for the general edification of the roundabout-phobes among you: “As you enter a roundabout, yield to any traffic in it. Once you’re in it, yield to traffic if you have to cross a lane divider. And keep your eyes open for drivers who don’t know what they’re supposed to do!”

(Photo credit: Americatravelling.net.)

With major input from the public, Albemarle County planners have submitted three alternatives for taking back control of its horrendous U.S. 29 corridor north of Charlottesville. The best-received options sketched out ideas to focus growth and redevelopment around one of two higher-density nodes — one, a “midtown” around the Rio Road intersection, the other an “uptown” near the airport.

Major public investments in the corridor would include enhancement of a parallel road network, Bus Rapid Transit connecting employment centers along the corridor, and possibly a streetcar running circuits within the uptown and midtown centers. (A word of unsolicited advice: While you’re still in the conceptual stages, take a look at Personal Rapid Transit, too.) Read more details about the Places29 master plan in this article by Charlottesville Daily Progress.

Albemarle, a jurisdiction known for its strict growth controls, has bowed to the inevitable. Neighboring Charlottesville and the University of Virginia are reinventing the regional economy, spitting out a growing cluster of knowledge-intensive businesses. The region is going to grow, and growth is going to spill into Albemarle. The county can smear the growth over the landscape in the scattered, disconnected, low-density development pattern that has ruined countless other counties, or it can shape growth — through public investment, alternative zoning codes and an updated comprehensive plan — so that it creates real places that function where people enjoy living, working and playing.

Whatever Albemarle was doing before, it wasn’t working. U.S. 29 is an abomination, identical to countless other horror corridors across Virginia, and it detracts from Albemarle’s identity as a uniquely desirable place to be. It has been a slow process, but county officials are reconceptualizing an alternative vision for development and they’re gaining the buy-in of local citizens.

The U.S. 29 Corridor redevelopment is more ambitious than anything conceived for the Richmond region and anywhere that I know of in Virginia — outside of Columbia Pike in Arlington County. This project bears watching.

The state Senate has approved a budget that strips out a major taxes-for-transportation provision that had bogged down talks with the House of Delegates. The chances are vastly improved that the Senate and House can agree upon a budget for fiscal 2007-2008 without triggering a government shutdown. Assuming that compromise is now attainable, what’s next for transportation?

My sense is that the terms of debate have decisively shifted. The logic of the situation dictates that legislators’ focus will move from “how do we pay for more roads and rail?” to “how do we encourage motorists to drive less?”

The Senate leadership, backed by the Warner and Kaine administrations, narrowly defined traffic congestion as a matter of insufficient transportation capacity. The solution: Raise revenues to increase capacity. The ultimate expression of this thinking was the VTrans2025 report published by the Warner administration, which asserted that the state faced a funding shortfall of $108 billion over the next 20 years — an average of $5.4 billion a year. That document was predicated upon the assumption that the state would match increases in travel demand with construction of new capacity, either roads or rail. But Senate proposals to increase taxes by roughly $1 billion a year would have fallen far short. According to the Senate’s own calculus, the sum was a mere fraction of what was needed.

The irrefutable conclusion is that Virginia’s transportation policy — the policy that has guided the state for a half century or more — is broken. Sustaining the current policy framework requires massive sums of money that the political system is not willing to disgorge. There is no escaping the necessity to re-think transportation from top to bottom.

The first assumption that must be abandoned is what Ed Risse refers to as the “Private Vehicle Mobility Myth,” the notion that individuals have a right to drive wherever they want, whenever they want, in their own private cars, without suffering the inconveniences of congestion. In Virginia, that myth has run off the road and slammed into the brick wall of tax resistance.

The second assumption that must be abandoned is the idea that a transportation policy geared toward cheap fuel is practical, or even desirable, in an era of moderately priced fuel, never mind in an era of expensive fuel. Long commutes are one thing when gasoline sells at $1 per gallon and quite another when it sells for $3 gallon. As drivers change their behavior, transportation policy must adapt.

Instead of feeding the driving “habit” — the average Vehicle Miles Driven per licensed driver has increased 70 percent over the past 25 years — by continuously adding to capacity, it is clearer than ever that the Commonwealth must devise policies that enable people to drive less. In other words, it’s time to beginning managing transportation demand. And that means, above all else, changing the scattered, disconnected, low-density pattern of development that has prevailed in Virginia since the 1950s, and gotten increasingly worse with each passing decade.

If the Senate and the Kaine administration want to devise a “stable, long-term solution” to Virginia’s transportation woes, then land use reform is where they must start. The laws enacted in 2006 represent a positive step forward but only a tentative one. Much more needs to be done.

Bob Holsworth, Virginia Commonwealth University’s oft-quoted observer of Virginia politics, has been promoted to dean of VCU’s College of Humanities and Sciences. He had been serving as director of the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs and director of the Center for Public Policy.

As appreciated as Holsworth is for his political commentary, he is even more respected for his skills as an academic administrator. At VCU he oversaw the merging of four distinct but related disciplines — government & politics, urban planning, criminal justice and public administration — into a unified interdisciplinary program. He also helped launch VCU’s B.A. degree program in Homeland Security, the nation’s first.

I don’t imagine that Holsworth will have the time to follow Virginia politics as closely as he has been. His sober analysis will be missed.

(This news is a few days old. If other bloggers have picked it up already, my apologies for failing to give credit. I’m still catching up after my bout with the flu.)

The anticipated closing of the Ford Motor Co. plant in Norfolk was back in the news today. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and Mayor Paul D. Fraim met with leaders of the United Auto Workers to brainstorm on the future of the plant’s 2,275 workers. (Read the Virginian-Pilot story here.)

How important is the closing of the Ford plant? Consider this point of comparison: The 15 plant expansion/relocation announcements made by the Kaine administration so far are expected to create new 1,882 jobs. (See the Virginia Economic Development Partnership website.) More than four months of industrial recruiting work canceled out by one plant closing.

There is nothing that the Kaine administration could have done to save the Norfolk jobs; the plant closing was based on internal Ford considerations. But the continued loss of manufacturing jobs in Virginia is a real possibility. Thus it came as a disappointment to read in the Richmond Times-Dispatch Saturday that Kaine had vetoed a measure to provide some modest tax relief to the manufacturing sector.

Local governments collect an estimated $194 million a year in machinery and tool taxes in 2005. A bill supported by the Virginia Manufacturers Association (VMA) would have reduced the length of time from 12 months to three that machinery had to stand idle before it could be exempted from the tax. R.J. “Buddy” Klotz, a VMA board member and founder of Electromagnetics Inc., of Ashland, said that the structure of the tax hurts companies’ abilities to adjust to changing market conditions. Kaine sided with local governments, which worried about the potential impact on municipal revenues.

The state offers millions of dollars a year in “incentives” to attract manufacturing business. The Kaine administration would be well served to think about what it takes to keep manufacturers here. No one wants to see any more closings on the scale of Norfolk’s Ford plant.

FREDERICKSBURG, Va., May 23 (Christian Newswire). The Fredericksburg City Council has told the Rev. Hashmeal Turner that he is not allowed to pray in the “Name of Jesus,” at City Council meetings.

There will be a vigil on Tuesday, May 23, at 7:00 P.M., in front of the Fredericksburg, Virginia, City Hall building ( 715 Princess Anne Street).

The Rev. Hashmeal Turner filed an historic federal lawsuit against the City of Fredericksburg arguing that his First Amendment rights are being violated.

This marks the first time a lawsuit of this nature has been filed in federal court.

Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition, comments, “We are gathering in support of the Rev. Hashmeal Turner’s right to pray according to his own faith tradition. No one should be told how they are to pray by civil authorities. The First Amendment affords every American the right to worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience and faith practice. By denying Councilman Turner the right to pray in the ‘Name of Jesus,’ the City of Fredericksburg is crushing the principles of religious freedom and liberty. Both are cornerstones of a free and open society.”

I look forward to a legal victory for free speech as this works its way through the courts.

Seventeen students arrested during in a “sit in” at the University of Virginia president’s office have been found not guilty by Judge Robert H. Downer Jr., of the Charlottesville General District Court. The judge’s rationale: They were not given enough time to leave the building before their arrest.

What’s going on here? Does the People’s Republic of Charlottesville operate by a different set of laws than the rest of the Commonwealth?

Demanding that UVa President John Casteen pay “a living wage” to the university’s lowest-paid employees, the students held a sit-in in the lobby of Casteen’s office in Madison Hall. Casteen gave the students numerous opportunities to leave without being arrested. On day one of the protest, university authorities denied food to the students; on day two, they cut off wireless access. Then before the arrests, according to Carlos Santos’ account in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch, Leonard W. Sandridge Jr., UVa’s chief operating officer, read a statement giving them five minutes to leave.

But Judge Downer said the students had less than five minutes before they were arrested by UVa police. Santos quoted Downer as follows: “It didn’t appear to me that anybody was going to leave … But that time (five minutes) had not elapsed.”

What does that have to do with anything? Did the students trespass, or did they not? Were they there illegally, or were they not? How is it even remotely relevant that, after occupying the lobby for two days, they were given less than the promised five minutes to leave?

There may be considerations omitted from Santos’ story, so I am willing to modify my statements in the light of additional information. But based on the facts presented, Downer comes across like some radical lefty judge from California who bases his ruling on personal whim, not the law. I hope this ruling is not typical. Do any of our readers know anything about Downer?

Yesterday was an absolutely gorgeous day for graduation. Grand day for all. When the odd balloons carried by students to help family find them in the crowd of black robes and bright faces were let go, they soared into the breezy, bright, blue sky. The Lawn was beautiful.

Glad to see the Colors applauded and saluted when they came forward. Shared the Pledge and National Anthem with thousands, not expecting either, but not knowing, really, what would be observed. This was my first graduation at The University.

Gov. Timothy Kaine’s speech was expertly delivered. I can see why many non-ideological voters would be quite taken with him. His positive personality came through in a very natural, engaging way.

His speech was good. I was so grateful it wasn’t some political junk. The Governor spoke on the theme of 400 years of Virginia’s celebration – yes, celebration. The graduates were encouraged to seek adventure, discovery and surprise like the original colonists.

Gov. Kaine touched on the big ideas in establishing and expanding the freedoms of the English-speaking Peoples in Virginia with their complexity without the Liberal pandering. Well done.

He mentioned the selfless service of graduates in teaching, the Peace Corps and Foreign Service, but forgot to add the selfless, dangerous service of the ROTC graduates going into the Armed Services.

President Casteen closed with one obligatory, Liberal comment about racial diversity. But, he finished with the stirring words, even though we may interpret them differently, of individual rights, freedom, the Rule of Law and the Republic.

My daughter, Maggie Kyle Bowden, graduated with a degree in English. She starts a marketing job in Atlanta on 1 July. So thrilled to share our joy and pride with her.

Thus, ends 11 years of my family having a kid on campus in Virginia universities. We may grow to miss I-64. Or not. The school loans will be paid in another 10 years.

Wah-hoo-wah!

Gleaned the dialogue (both the online and offline) generated by the column “The Problem with ‘Mass’ Transit” are the following observations:

It is important to keep in mind several axioms that can be distilled from the principles found in The Shape of the Future:

• Limiting citizen’s access erodes quality of life, eliminating the need for a vehicle to achieve access enhances quality of life.

• Eliminating the ability to make trips erodes citizen’s quality of life, eliminating the necessity of making vehicle trips (except for joy-rides and touring places like Tuscany, Bavaria and the Alsace) enhances quality of life.

• Shared-vehicles are more efficient and provide access to more destinations than private vehicles due to the space required to move and park private vehicles.

• Shared-vehicles can support a much higher flux and diversity of the sort of places that citizens need and want to be, Autonomobility disaggregates origins and destinations of vehicle trips and thus creates dysfunctional settlement patterns.

• Balanced Communities create places where citizens are already where they want and need to be.

It is also important to understand as documented in our three columns on settlement patterns starting with “Wild Abandonment” 8 Sept 2003 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com that:

• The market values on property in the Untied States demonstrate without fail that citizens most highly value those places that meet the criteria for viable components of Balanced Communities.
• Citizens are willing to pay far more for functional places on a square foot basis than for places that required vehicle trips to get everywhere they want or need to be.
• Viewed from the perspective of maintaining a democracy with a market economy, desirable mobility options are far different than when viewed from the perspective of traditional transportation agencies geared to providing a vehicle (private or shared) for every desired trip.
• Business-As-Usual makes money from building and running big, expensive vehicles (private or shared) and the systems to support them. BAUI agents never fail to attack any alternative.

It will require a broad understanding of these axioms and relationships before citizens can move beyond providing for homes, places to work and places to seek services, recreation and amenity for Jim Bacon’s Pod People.

Also note the “Housewatch” column by Katherine Salant on page F 5 (Real Estate Section) in the Saturday 20 May WaPo. “Today’s Housing Model Is Unsustainable for the Long Haul.” Now that the builders of houses in dysfunctional locations are desperate to advertise, WaPo can run this sort of column without fear of the advertisers boycotting the paper. Look for BAUI agents to attack.

EMR

I returned from Charlottesville Sunday, where Honorable Daughter No.1 graduated from the University of Virginia. I had accumulated several bloggable observations, which I had hoped to post this morning. But I’ve been laid low by a nasty virus. I’ll return to blogging as soon as I am able.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine wants to add another $300 million to out-of-control spending on K-12 education by creating a universal pre-school program for four-year-olds. He has appointed a Strong Start Pre-K Council to oversee development of the programs. (See the Richmond Times-Dispatch story here.)

Kaine appears to be willing to invest significant political capital into launching this program. Predictably, he will generate a lot of opposition. Writing for the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine late last year, Chris Braunlich evinced skepticism in his column, “Does ‘Universal Pre-K’ Work?” Today, the Times-Dispatch editorial page sounded similar themes.

Color me skeptical — but open to persuasion. We have eight months until the next General Assembly session. Both sides cite social scientific research in support of their arguments. There’s no excuse for not giving that research a thorough airing.

Virginia needs more conversations like the one sponsored by the Prince William Council of 100 yesterday. The Council invited four speakers representing distinct perspectives to participate in a roundtable discussion about transportation.

The speakers included Virginia Secretary of Transportation Pierce Homer; Speaker of the House William Howell, R-Stafford; Coalition for Smarter Growth Director Stewart Schwartz; and development attorney Patrick McSweeney. What a great line-up!

The speakers didn’t reach a consensus, the Gaineville Times observes, but at least they “exhibited none of the anger that has been characteristic of the transportation debate in Richmond.” Hey, it’s a start.

The big transportation story played up by the Washington Post yesterday was the dedication of the first of two drawbridges in the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, which will expand the capacity of Interstate 95 across the Potomac River. I’m sure that’s exciting news to commuters, who have to wait only three more weeks for the long-awaited span to finally open. But the important transportation news — important in the sense that it may presage changes to Business As Usual — was buried in a two-paragraph insert in the Fairfax County Times.

Addressing the Dulles Area Transportation Association, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine announced a regional pilot program that will use Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties as a testing ground for Senate Bill 699. That bill, which will officially go into effect in 2007, allows localities to submit rezoning and comprehensive plan changes to VDOT staff for an analysis of the transportation impact. The idea is to alert local governments when growth resulting from proposed zoning changes would overwhelm local transportation facilities.

The law is the first tentative step toward linking transportation and land use planning. The Kaine administration has picked a good place to start: Much of the new growth in Washington New Urban Region is funneling into the Loudoun/Prince William area where the transportation infrastructure clearly does not exist to accommodate it. VDOT analysis will no doubt confirm what everyone already knows. Now we will be able to put numbers on the problem.

What the new law cannot do is tell us what to do with the information. Should Loudoun and Prince William impose growth controls, which might funnel growth to outlying localities even less prepared to handle it? Should they institute crash campaigns to build more roads, as Prince William appears to be doing? Or… and long-time readers knew this was coming… should the state acknowledge that one way to accommodate growth is to allow the Washington New Urban Region to grow up, by means of greater density in core municipalities, so it is not forced to grow out?