Bacon's Rebellion

I must have gotten out of the wrong side of the bed this morning: I have something nice to say about the Roanoke Times editorial page. Traffic engineers propose installing two roundabouts, as part of improvements to the 13th Street-Hollins Road corridor in Southeast Roanoke, with construction to start in 2010. Citizens have expressed safety concerns, but the Times assures them that roundabouts are OK:

Such fears are unwarranted. Other communities have found that once roundabouts are in place, they prove safer than traffic lights or stop signs. Moreover, because drivers must slow when approaching a circle, the few accidents that do occur are less severe.

Drivers end up liking them because traffic flows better, and there is no waiting at a red light. Neighbors end up liking them because they calm traffic on local streets.

As Bacon’s Rebellion readers know, (“In Praise of Roundabouts“) we like roundabouts for the very reasons enumerated by the Times. Now… if only we could persuade the Times to take a serious look at the many other strategies for improving traffic flow and managing transportation demand that could address Virginia’s transportation crisis without raising taxes.

Bacon’s Rebellion has long promoted telework as a strategy to help cope with traffic congestion. But telework also makes sense as a tool to preserve business continuity. In Washington, D.C., Cyber Security Industry Alliance (CSIA) Executive Director Paul Kurtz testified earlier this week before the House Government Reform Committee that the federal workforce lags the private sector in its ability to work offsite in response to a large-scale crisis such as pandemic influenza.

Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA) has called for federal agencies to be able to “decentralize” their critical functions in an emergency. But according to a CSIA press release, Kurtz said, “I wish I could say that this goal had been met. [Agencies] have a long way to go before they are ready to work together in a crisis like an outbreak of avian flu. Most agencies’ contingency plans are designed for a maximum downtime of two or three days; a flu pandemic could last as long as 18 months.”

Kurtz urged that the federal government invest in the capability to distribute its workforce, enabling employees to function offsite under normal as well as adverse conditions — not only at home, under the traditional definition of telework, but from anywhere, at any time. “As frightening as a flu pandemic might be, it also provides us with the opportunity, and the impetus, to change the way the government does business by breaking down structural barriers to reform like budget rules, statutory limitations and management inertia. The result will be a more agile, efficient workforce.”

What makes sense for the federal government also makes sense for state government. State government also needs to think about business continuity in the face of natural disaster, terrorist attack or epidemic.

Braawwk! Braawwkkk! It didn’t take long. Route 288, the circumferential highway running around the south-western quadrant of the Richmond New Urban Region, opened in late 2004. Already it is changing development patterns for the worse and causing localized traffic congestion around its exits. The Richmond Times-Dispatch tells the tale today about the impact on the Huguenot Trail in Powhatan County.

Traffic has more than doubled in one section of Huguenot Trail since 288 opened, reports Will Jones. Speeding and accidents have surged as well: 17 accidents have been reported near the intersection of Winterfield Road so far this year, up from 12 for all of 2004.

Dale Totten, resident engineer for the Virginia Department of Transportation, noted that VDOT would four-lane the road for about $13 million if it had more money. Of course, VDOT has no more money for road construction in the Richmond region. One reason is that VDOT, at the behest of local politicians and boosters, spent all its friggin’ money on 288!

Where’s Homer Simpson when you need him? This is a major “D’oh!” moment.

As we predicted, Route 288 is generating residential development in scarcely populated areas all around its exits, overtaxing the local country roads. While the limited access highway might provide limited traffic relief for people driving back and forth between Chesterfield and Goochland counties, other people are making choices about where they live and work, and they are creating traffic congestion in new places. The only thing that surprises me is how rapidly this is happening. Even I thought there might be a lag of three or four years.

If Route 288 has already created a $13 million road-construction in just this one exist, think of the liability it has created for all of its exits!

Here’s another prediction: After a few more years of scattered subdivision development and approval of mega-commercial projects at major 288 intersections, the need for new road improvements will soar. Before the end of the decade, we may well see the unfunded liability zoom well past the original $400 million it took to build the original highway. To the brainiacs who thought Route 288 was such a great idea: Thanks for nothing. I think we could have spent the $400 million better elsewhere.

Saturday May 13th’s Daily Press (Judge the Senator by fitness to serve, not teenage behavior) gave lawyer Mark Ailsworth an op ed to exonerate Sen. Allen. The author provides the political, if not legal, defense of “young, dumb, male.”

Ailsworth personalizes his history with the Confederate battle flag and writes, “From the moment it was expropriated by the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction, the flag became a symbol of the racism that has plaqued this country since the arrival of the first black slaves in 1619.”

His history is a bit off. The occupying Federal Army didn’t take kindly to Confederate battle flags during Reconstruction. So, when the KKK was the most physically threatening, the KKK used the Christian cross. No one kept the association.

In the 1920s, when the KKK was the most politically threatening (see photo above of parade in the Washington DC), the KKK used the American flag – Old Glory. No one kept the association.

In the 1950/60s, when the KKK was heavily infiltrated by the FBI and a fringe element caught in every act of violence, the KKK used the Confederate battle flag. Liberals, historically challenged Yankees, and politically correct Southerners hold the association as eternal.

Finally, lawyer Ailsworth wrote that white Southerners “would do the nation and ourselves a favor if we folded the Confederate flag and stored it in the attic with our yearbooks and relics of the past.” It depends on how you treat memories of valor. Some families take the shadow boxes of medals of family member’s military service and put them in the attic. Most families put those shadow boxes in the front room.

Clearly, Mr. Ailsworth has lost touch with being a Southerner. Attics are where you keep crazy relatives.

Yesterday, I published a column, “Rail Rip-off,” that decried the funding mechanism for the $4 billion Rail to Dulles extension of the Washington METRO. It was unconscionable, I argued, that commuters on the Dulles Toll Road will be required to pay 25 percent, or $1 billion, of the capital costs of the project, while most of the economic value created would accrue to the owners of property near the METRO stations.

If only I’d known the whole truth, an anonymous phone caller informed me late yesterday. In fact, Dulles Toll Road commuters may well end up closer to half of the METRO project costs, or nearly $1.8 billion, and their fares will ratchet higher for years to do it.

That, of course, is not the official party line. The Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project forwarded the graphic pictured above (cropped and shrunk to fit this blog). The state, which extracts its share from Dulles Toll Road commuters, will contribute 25 percent of the project costs, the localities (including the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority) will contribute 25 percent, and Uncle Sam will generously provide the rest.

By way of background: In February 2005, the Commonwealth Transportation Board enacted a $0.25 toll increase at the main entrance and exit ramps to the Dulles Toll Road. As the CBT explained in a February 2005 press release (my highlights added):

The quarter toll increase will complete Virginia’s share to fund Phase 1, which will extend Metrorail for 11 miles from near East Falls Church station through Tysons Corner to Wiehle Avenue in Reston. The toll increase will also help to fund part of Phase 2, which will further extend the line for 12 more miles from Wiehle Avenue through Dulles International Airport to Route 772 in Loudoun County.

Since that CBT announcement, the Kaine administration has proposed turning over responsibility for the Rail-to-Dulles project to the MWAA (the airports authority). The MWAA outlined its plans for the disposition of the Dulles Toll Road revenues in a December 2005 document entitled, “Proposal to Operate the Dulles Toll Road and Build Rail to Loudoun County.”

On pages 14 and 15 of the proposal, MWAA “assumes” the following contributions to Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the METRO construction from toll revenues:

• Phase 1: $361 million
• Phase 2: $1,409 million

That totals $1,770 million, or $770 million more than acknowledged by the state.

Why is the Phase 2 contribution so huge? Because, my source explains, MWAA assumes that, while the federal government will contribute $900 million to Phase 1, it will not contribute one thin dime to Phase 2. MWAA, in his estimation, plans to accelerate development of METRO by substituting known and predictable Toll Road revenue for not-yet-committed federal revenue.

What does that mean for toll payers? MWAA says that it will “keep average real toll rates flat on an inflation-adjusted basis.” MWAA’s preliminary analysis assumes that tolls will be increased every three years starting 2010 at a 3 percent compounded annual rate for 50 years. Translation: Dulles Toll Road commuters can expect toll increases of about 10 percent every three years (assuming inflation stays at the current rate).

That sounds very reasonable if the sole purpose of the toll is to provide for operating expenses and capital improvements to the Toll Road and related corridor improvements. But roughly half of the tolls will be going to pay off METRO bonds — and bond payments are fixed. They don’t increase with the rate of inflation! In other words, increasing tolls at the rate of inflation over the next 50 years is, in fact, a very aggressive increase. Contrast that to the rate history of the Dulles Toll Road before 2005: From the day it opened in 1984 — 21 years — it did not increase tolls once.

Bottom line: Dulles Toll Road commuters are the beasts of burden upon whose backs Rail to Dulles will be built. When all is said and done, they will wind up paying about 44 percent of the cost of the METRO extension even though, by definition, they will not be using it. By contrast, as explained in yesterday’s column, the contribution of Fairfax County commercial property owners will be capped at $400 million for Phase 1, even though they will be the most direct beneficiaries.

Tax revolt, anyone?

If you haven’t heard yet, Will Vehrs has given up blogging. One of the very first Virginians to take up blogging in any form, he had a wonderful, dry wit. He was often incisive but always fair. The Virginia blogosphere will be much diminished without him.

Conaway Haskins caught up with Will a couple of days ago, and interviewed him for the “Blogology” department in the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine. You can read “Ten Questions for Will Vehrs” here.

J.R. Hoeft at BearingDrift also interviewed Will for a podcast. You can listen to it here. (J.R. even has a cool new musical intro!)

Update: Maybe Will hasn’t given up blogging entirely. Read about his penitential trip to Martinsville.

In my column this week, “Rail Rip-off,” I tout the benefits of the heavy-rail transportation option in Northern Virginia, as long as it can pay its own way. Were the planning process not so far along, making it politically impossible to consider an alternative mass-transit system, I would urge the Kaine administration to take a close look at Personal Rapid Transit, or PRT.

In his column today (“The Problem with ‘Mass” Transit“) Ed Risse takes a detailed look at the PRT option. In theory, PRT would be less expensive to build and far more flexible than rail. Because it’s so new and relatively untested, PRT is not a political option for Northern Virginia, which is demanding answers right now. But other metropolitan areas no so deeply committed to heavy rail — e.g. Hampton Road and Richmond — should consider it.

Heavy rail like the Washington METRO is a wonderful thing… as long as it can pay its own way. As I argue in today’s e-zine column, “Rail Rip-off,” the extension of METRO rail to Dulles Airport could catalyze billions of dollars of redevelopment in Tysons Corner, transforming Virginia’s leading business center into a much more livable, workable community. Rail to Dulles is much to be desired.

My problem with the project is the financing mechanism the state has cobbled together to pay for it. The financing scheme and zoning plan (as currently articulated) sticks Joe Blow commuters along the Dulles Toll Road with $1 billion in tolls while it lavishes the benefits of higher densities and METRO access upon select landowners in Tysons Corner and along the Dulles Corridor.

This financing package represents an unprecedented transfer of wealth from the poor (or middle class) to the super rich. How this could take place under a Democratic Party administration is a mystery to me. Where are all the populists who stand up for the little guy? For that matter, how can Republicans, who supposedly recoil from the corporate welfare state, remain silent?

Enough wealth would be created by a METRO line and increased density around the rail stations that property owners — the primary beneficiaries — are perfectly capable of footing the cost. There is no need to bilk highway commuters. Conceptually, the financing solution is fairly simple, as I explain in my column. The devil is in the details, I’ll concede. But there should be enough wealth created to negotiate a win-win scenario for everyone.

The May 15, 2006, edition of Bacon’s Rebellion has been published. You can read the entire edition online here. Our columns and departments this week include:

Rail Rip-off
Extending METRO rail to Dulles Airport will enrich select landowners to the tune of billions of dollars. Why, then, are Fairfax County commuters being forced to pay so much of the project cost?
by James A. Bacon

Sense and Census
Opinions about new and different Americans are fine. Facts are better.
by Doug Koelemay

Shades of Francis Nicholson
Like the power-hungry royal governor of old, Gov. Tim Kaine seems willing to misuse the powers of his office. But his budget brinksmanship could backfire.
by Patrick McSweeney

Another Grandiose Plan
Apparently, $120 million to renovate the state Capitol complex is not enough. The state Senate wants to spend another $400 million.
by Patrick McSweeney

The Problem with “Mass” Transit
Light and heavy rail are expensive, inflexible alternatives to the automobile. It’s time to consider a 21st-century solution to mobility in New Urban Regions: Personal Rapid Transit.
by EM Risse

Learning from Pocahontas
Gov. Kaine smartly bailed out the Pocahontas Parkway project by granting a concession to a private toll-road operator. Too bad he didn’t apply the same creative thinking to the Dulles Toll Road.
by Geoffrey Segal

Republican Blues
The GOP has more than the Democrats to worry about this November. The Party is struggling from internal divisions, as seen in the convention battle in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District.
by Philip Rodokanakis

Stuck on Stupid
The Senate Republicans who worked out a proposed regional transportation authority are the same geniuses who thought up the Transportation Tax Scam that voters rejected in 2002.
by James Atticus Bowden

Nice & Curious Questions
Have You Ever Seen the Rain: Droughts in Virginia
by Edwin S. Clay III and Patricia Bangs

Blogology
Ten Questions for Will Vehrs
Conaway Haskins

It turns out that Bacon’s Rebellion isn’t the only media outlet enthralled with the minutiae of traffic planning in Virginia. According to Washington Post columnist John Kelly, Tom Cruise plays a traffic engineer in the upcoming movie, “Mission Impossible III.”

Actually, Cruise plays Ethan Hunt, a member of the Mission Impossible team, whose cover story is that he’s a traffic engineer with the Virginia Department of Transportation. Writes Kelly:

How do we know Tom/Ethan is a traffic engineer? Because in a party scene early in the movie, some civilian friend asks him, “How’s the Department of Transportation?” And then Tom delivers a moving little monologue about how fascinating traffic is, about how a single motorist tapping on the brakes can slow things for miles behind him.

“Booooooring,” says the friend.

No, NOT boring! The dynamics of transportation flow are fascinating stuff…. OK, OK, Maybe not as fascinating as saving the free world. But definitely less dangerous.

Had enough of the saccharine, over-commercialized Mother’s Day fare?

Try going to npr.org and downloading Tom Wolfe’s National Endowment for the Humanities Jefferson Lecture delivered last Wednesday.

We have always thought that “From Bauhaus to Our House” was Wolfe’s best work. Think what he could do with McMansions (and on what they mean for mothers)!

In the meantime, Wolfe’s Jefferson Lecture on the impact of “modern” language is outstanding (nothing directly to do with mothers or Mothers Day).

Wolfe is off in his time-frame by a factor of 5. He is a novelist after all. The perfection of the voice box and brain organization which enabled the articulation of “modern” language occurred 50,000 thousand years ago +/-, not 11,000 years ago. These enablers evolved about the same time as a new generation of tools and artifacts in what Jared Diamond terms “The Great Leap Forward.” By 11,000 years ago the earliest urban places were already 2,000 years old +/- and they required language for sure.

Like most novelists Wolfe uses far too many words but his perspective on language and communication’s impact on religion, status and what it means to be human is worth wading through the verbiage. Actually the lecture is 34 paragraphs long and if you read the first five and the last three you will get the core message:

Language and what we call “Civilization” has terminated the process of evolution.

We will expand on a theme we addressed in The Shape of the Future in an upcoming column: Society is too complex for Homo sapiens (or Homo loquax as Wolfe calls us) to navigate with dysfunctional settlement patterns. The Forest Gumpp perspective.

Wolfe adds a new twist: If evolution is over why bother to create functional human settlement patterns since we are doomed anyway?

EMR

I have posted this for Jim Bowden whose Blogger controls still aren’t operating properly. – Jim Bacon

The Peninsula’s Daily Press offered their two kopecks on L’Affaire Will Vehrs in an editorial, “Blogger Blow-Up” (May 13, 2006). The DP is the only one commenting, that I’ve seen, on Will Vehrs’ political persuasion. He “works from the right side of the street.”

“Which is why those engaged in blogging may wish to recall the adage that “politics ain’t beanbag” and take care not to leave themselves vulnerable. By blogging on the job, Vehrs effectively affixed a ‘hit me’ sign on his back. Furthermore, the DP said, “Such is life in the Blogosphere, venue of the ad hominem attack.”

That’s funny coming from the DP. Why does their editor, Gordon Morse, read and comment on blogs? To learn how to sharpen his ad hominem attacks?

The reporting in the DP is so bad and biased that Republican Delegate Melanie Rapp will answer only their written inquiries – in writing so there is a clear paper trail of truth.

I laughed seeing the DP put its little claws out. BTW, who are bloggers vulnerable to…?

Back in 2003, Dr. Hassan Aref, dean of the Virginia Tech School of Engineering, generated national headlines by overseeing construction of what was then the world’s third fastest supercomputer — and the fastest university supercomputer in the world. Comprised of 1,100 Apple MacIntosh computers networked together, the supercomputer was known officially as “System X” and unofficially as “Big Mac.” System X was a triumph in more ways than one: Aref built the machine for about one-fifth the cost of supercomputers with comparable performance.

Next to Virginia Tech’s winning football team, System X probably did more to generate positive publicity for Virginia Tech than any other achievement in the university’s 130-year+ history. And it gave Tech scientists and engineers a valuable tool to assist in their research.

Barely one year later, in January 2005, Virginia Tech President Charles Steger announced that Aref would step down from his position as engineering dean, although he would stay on as a tenured professor. The university press release read like an accolade:

“Over the past two years, Hassan Aref implemented a number of changes that position the college for sustained growth and development in the years ahead,” said [Provost Mark] McNamee. “His leadership in faculty recruitment, curricular enhancement, the development of the System X supercomputer, and the launch of the new Institute of Critical Technology and Science, are significant achievements during his tenure as dean.”

Remarkably, there was no explanation as to why Aref was stepping down. Family reasons? Desire to spend more time teaching? No explanation whatsoever. I’m sorry, but it doesn’t add up. There’s a lot more to this story than was ever made public.

By all accounts, the new dean, Richard C. Benson, brings many strengths to the engineering program. Benson came from Penn State University, where he headed the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering. But the question lingers: Why did Aref step down?

“Who cares?” some may respond. “That’s ancient history.” No, it’s not. As documented in a recent post, “What is Happening in Hokie Town?”, Virginia Tech’s national ranking as an R&D powerhouse had been slipping between 2001 and 2003. The engineering school had been plagued by a series of short-tenured deans. But as vividly demonstrated by the System X coup, Aref created enormous excitement and buzz during his two years in office. I hear that he was extremely popular with engineering alumni, although he had trouble “managing up” — handling relations with the Virginia Tech administration in Burruss Hall.

Here is the question: Are Tech’s slipping R&D rankings during the early 2000s a momentary dip that can be blamed on temporary factors like the wrong dean or external causes such as state budget cuts? Or are there deeper, more pervasive problems? Virginians need to know. Virginia Tech is Virginia’s No. 1 research university, and it’s an economic anchor of Western Virginia. It’s too important for the Commonwealth to let fall behind.

The captions on two front page pictures in today’s WaPo tell a lot about the obliviousness of MainStream Media and of governance practitioners.

Under the picture of the New Wilson Bridge Span the caption reads:

“The new Woodrow Wilson Bridge, a project almost 20 years in the making, is opened to the media in advance of an official gala ceremony next Thursday. The 1.1. mile-long span will begin carrying traffic early next month and is expected eventually to ease some of the region’s worst congestion – at least for a while.”

First, credit where credit is due: The caption and the story correctly notes that this 2.44-billion (that is a “B”) dollar “solution” is only temporary. The story focus is on the upcoming “celebration” and self-congratulations by governance practitioners and their contractors. The caption (and the story) provides no clue about the overarching cause of the traffic congestion that makes this bridge only a temporary fix. See “Self Delusion and Fraud,” 7 June 2004 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com

Under the picture of a verdant yard the caption reads:

“Sean Kelley kisses his wife, Shannon (a Charles County Commissioner), goodbye before going off to work (in a car), while James P. Gates prepares to pump out the septic tank at their La Plata home.”

The Page 1 story is about unsuspecting home-owners (including County Commissioners) coming to the realization that at low density one cannot just flush and forget. It is also about citizen education concerning a major source of groundwater contamination. Unfortunately the story is laced with Core Confusing words. See three columns on vocabulary starting with “The Foundation of Babble,” 28 November 2005 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com

There is no indication anywhere in the story about the overarching connection between septic tanks, driving to work and subregional traffic congestion. The nexus is, of course, dysfunctional human settlement pattern.

Based on these front page stories it can be predicted that had WaPo been publishing in Florence during the spring of 1348 it would have run two stories during May. One about workers on a new bridge across the Arno becoming sick and dying in alarming numbers and another story (deemed to be unrelated to the first by the editors) about an infestation of rats on the docks at Pisa where dock workers had died earlier in the year.

In 1348 there was little knowledge about the cause of the disease that later would be known as “The Black Death.”

In “The Shape of the Future” it is noted that about as much is known in 2000 concerning the function of human settlement patterns as was known about maintaining human health 500 years earlier. See opening sections of Chapter 4. In 1348 the level of understaning about human health was not much different than it was in 1500. In 2006 the level of understanding about human settlement patterns is not much different that it was in 2000.

EMR