Bacon's Rebellion

  • Renewable Energy: Be Careful What You Wish For

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    James A. Bacon

    An unidentified company has filed a “pre-application” to construct 90 400-foot wind turbines in parts of Virginia’s George Washington and Thomas Jefferson national forests. Eighteen miles of national forest crest line would be affected by the proposal, says Rick Webb, an environmental scientist at the University of Virginia who opposed another wind farm proposal, since approved, in Highland County. (See the story on NVDaily.com.)

    Given the incentives to develop renewable energy resources, Webb sees the application as a sign of things to come. “This is the tip of the iceberg.”

    Here’s what’s going on: Virginia, like many other states, has set a goal for electric utilities to generate a significant percentage of their electric power from renewable energy sources in the near/mid-term future. Dominion has been buying wind power projects, and in November it issued a Request for Proposal for more renewable energy projects. (Last week Dominion pronounced that it was “pleased” by the response, which included ideas for wind, hydro, biomass and solar.)

    At present, wind power and biomass are the more economically competitive of the renewable energy sources. But they tend to be small-scale, and a large number of projects will need to be built to generate sufficient electricity to meet the state’s quotas for renewable fuels. Consequently, there will be intense pressure to build on the limited number of renewable-fuel sites that are available.

    I don’t know for a fact that the proposal for wind farms in the national forest is directly tied to the Dominion solicitation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is — the timing is surely more than coincidental. Regardless, the hearings for the wind power proposal undoubtedly will be a replay of the controversial Highland County project — where concerns surfaced about the giant turbine blades killing birds and bats — compounded by the fact that the scenic vistas of national forest are being despoiled.

    Thus, under the guise of environmental values, public policy in Virginia is promoting renewable energy. But under a different set of environmental values, we’ll find that many of those projects are undesirable.

    To my way of thinking, energy conservation is the most pristine environmental policy of all — avoid consuming the electricity in the first place. Of course, our current regulatory apparatus encourages Dominion and other electric utilities to pursue renewable energy sources, whatever the cost, because they can pass on the cost to rate payers. By contrast, power companies in Virginia only undercut their market when they invest in conservation measures.

    We’re getting what we wished for, and we may not like it.

    (Credit for photo of mountain-ridge wind turbines: Appalachian Voice Front Porch Blog.)

  • “Richmond” Has a Credibility Problem – Is There a Solution?

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    James A. Bacon

    The Kaine administration has a credibility problem in Northern Virginia when it comes to matters of transportation. The Department of Rail and Public Transportation has proposed diverting a big chunk of an anticipated $195 million in revenues from HOT lanes along Interstate 95/395 to the Virginia Railway Express. That would mean fewer Bus Rapid Transit buses serving the Interstate — and Northern Virginia politicians are not happy about it. “It’s bait and switch,” says Alexandria Mayor William D. Euille.

    As Eric Weiss explains the problem in the Washington Post, Washington area leaders went along with the plan to turn the carpool lanes on Interstates 95 and 395 into express toll lanes on the understanding that $195 million would be devoted to mass transit, including 184 clean-fuel buses that would ferry commuters into the District or the Pentagon. But DRPT had a different idea: In addition to $40 million for VRE, the state now wants to spend $76.6 million on park-and-ride lots and other facilities south of the converted HOT lanes.

    Northern Virginians lost no time in painting “Richmond” as the villain. “This is diverting resources needed here to another part of the state,” said Gerald E. Connolly, chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. “These are our resources.”

    “This is classic,” Weiss quotes Fairfax resident Bob Perotti as saying. Have you noticed that Richmond has the best roads in the state and Northern Virginia has the worst traffic?”

    Mr. Perotti might be interested to know that Spotsylvania County, where some of the improvements would go, anchors the south end of the I-95 HOT lane corridor and is at least two counties removed from the “Richmond” metropolitan area, and also that the VRE heads north from its point of origin, not south. He also might be interested to know that Pierce Homer, the secretary of transportation who defended the DRPT study, cut his political teeth in Prince William County before joining the Warner administration and staying on with the Kaine team.

    Regardless, the perception of facts has greater political import than the facts themselves. And the perception is that the politicians and planners “in Richmond” — regardless of who appointed them, whom they represent, or where in the state they might have come from — cannot be trusted. Once again, Northern Virginians see “Richmond” grabbing their money and spending it for the benefit of someone else.

    In this instance, the perception really isn’t fair. The Kaniacs contend that the new plan still would add five new Rapid Bus Transit stations and 76 buses. Their analysis suggests, however, that they could divert more drivers off the Interstate by investing the balance in VRE and the park ‘n’ ride lots. By expanding the frame of reference from I-95 proper to the I-95 corridor more broadly conceived, they get a different result.

    An I-95 Corridor Authority. The issue here is one of trust. Fairly or unfairly, Northern Virginians don’t trust anyone from “Richmond.” That itself is a political reality that must be addressed. How do we change that suspicion?

    The political dynamic would be very different, I believe, if Virginia embraced the idea of planning transportation around “congestion corridors.” Interstate 95/395, stretching from Spotsylvania to the 14th Street Bridge, would logically fall into a single corridor. But the corridor should be defined more broadly than the Interstate alone. It should include U.S. Route 1, which runs parallel for most of the distance, as well as the VRE. The goal should be to improve mobility and access for the entire corridor, not just a single component of it.

    The corridor would need an operating entity — the “I-95 Corridor Authority” — that would administer the congestion toll revenues and plan how best to spend them. Currently, the politically correct solution is to plow all the revenues into Bus Rapid Transit or VRE. Those may be the best solutions — but, then, maybe they aren’t. No one has seriously examined other options for improving corridor mobility, such as: (1) ramp metering to reduce congestion at interchanges, (2) improved incident response teams to get wrecks off the road, (3) traffic light synchronization along U.S. 1, or (4) more sensors and monitors to measure, and respond to, traffic flow. (If these options have been considered, they have never made it into newspaper accounts.)

    If I might speak even more boldly, I might suggest that a corridor authority should have input into land use planning along the corridor. City councils and boards of supervisors tend to consider the impact of their decisions only upon their own localities. Someone needs to analyze impacts that spill over municipal borders. It is not yet clear how well the Virginia Department of Transportation can fulfill that function — there’s that bugaboo of trust. As long as the authorities are transparent and accountable, citizens and politicians may trust a regional authority to better represent their interests than “Richmond” does.

    (Hat tip: Jim Wamsley.)

  • The War Bill Comes Due

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    James A. Bacon

    As one who came of age during the Vietnam War years, I am amazed at the lack of protest over George W. Bush’s handling of the Iraq War. Not only has the war now claimed the lives of 4,000 U.S. service men and women, it has killed 90,000 Iraqi civilians.

    New estimates put the overall cost of the war at $3 trillion, a quantum leap from the Bush Administration’s original estimate of $50 billion. This is big, big money and is major reason for this country’s current economic woes since the war has grossly inflated the budget deficit and help triple the price of oil. The subprime mess, bursting of the real estate bubble and Wild West financing have been other major causes of the current woes. But the war does far more to negatively impact the U.S. economy that merely land use, which is a popular item, if overrated, of discussion on this blog.

    Even more shameful is that the Weapons of Mass Destruction used as an excuse for the war didn’t exist. And, the neocons’ dream of creating a viable model of American-style democracy for the rest of the Middle East has become a bad joke. (See column in Bacons Rebellion).

    Peter Galuszka

  • Adventures in Transparency

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    James A. Bacon

    Cockroaches famously scurry for their hideouts when the lights come on. Why do they hide? Light brings trouble — swatting brooms, smashing feet and toxic clouds of pesticide.

    In other words, the party’s over (for the moment).

    Like those apocalypse-proof denizens of the baseboard, governments aren’t too keen on the idea of having a light shined on their activities, either. The more exposed their activities are to scrutiny, the more likely someone is to ask uncomfortable questions (Three grand charged to the Holiday Inn? I didn’t know they had a presidential suite. They don’t? Maybe it was those mini-bar Snickers, then. All of them. On the entire fifth floor).

    The move to shine even more light into Virginia’s budget is the topic of my latest column. I take a spin through Commonwealth Data Point to see where the money is going, and find lots and lots of data.

    But for all the numbers and all the names, one critical piece of the puzzle is missing: Context.

    For example, why did someone at VDOT charge over $500 at a Bass Pro Shop? There might be a legitimate reason for this expenditure (after all, how many people still dig up their own night crawlers?). But you’ll never find out why the money was spent there, or at any number of tire centers, or hardware stores or newspapers because there’s no context for the charge.

    Putting the state’s finances in perspective is one of the goals of transparency. It will allow some, of course, to say that the holy trinity of waste, fraud and abuse is rampant and needs to be addressed immediately. Others will be able to discern spending patterns — who the favored vendors are, why spending increases in December, and more. Still others will look at the mess and wonder how they can get in on the good times (cut-rate night crawler salesmen will be beating down VDOT’s door at any moment).

    The legislature had a shot at passing a wide-ranging transparency bill in this session, but refused. Meanwhile, other states are passing measures either unanimously or by executive order. Some are more comprehensive than others, but all are aimed at the same, general goal:

    Turning the lights on, and seeing what scurries toward the baseboard.

  • No More Free Lunch: User Pays

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    James A. Bacon

    Everybody knows that Virginia needs to invest more money in its transportation infrastructure. The central questions that have concerned lawmakers is how much money, and who pays? (I’ll leave aside for now the nettlesome issue, which has received insufficient attention, of coordinating transportation improvements with human settlement patterns.)

    As the collapse of the HB 3202 funding formula shows, Virginia’s transportation funding policy is in total disarray. In this week’s column, I argue that the only approach to raising more money for transportation that can be sold politically to the public is one built around the principle of user pays. In the normal course of politics, constituencies lobby for road and transit improvements that benefit them — but do their utmost to shift the cost to someone else. That just won’t work anymore. People don’t trust the system to treat them fairly. The only politically palatable way to raise funds is to ensure that those who use, or benefit from, transportation improvements pay for those improvements themselves.

    No more taxing the public and cycling billions of dollars to Richmond where politicians, bureaucrats and rent-seeking lobbyists can divert funds to their own special uses. From now on, transportation revenues must go directly back to those who pay for them. And if the money can’t be found to build a pet project, then maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t deserve to be built.

    But never fear. There are many, many sources of funds that we can tap to expand our transportation system. In “User Pays,” I outline many of them and show how they can be sold politically to a skeptical public.

    Most of these ideas are familiar to faithful readers of Bacon’s Rebellion. But for the benefit of those who don’t haunt this blog every day and read all the comments, here is an outline of the main points:

    • Dedicate the gas tax to maintenance. Raise or lower the tax as maintenance costs rise or fall.
    • Prepare for the day when the gas tax doesn’t work anymore by investigating a Vehicle Miles Traveled tax.
    • Use privately financed tolls to build major new bridge and limited-access highway projects.
    • Charge impact fees on commercial and residential development
    • Use CDAs and TIFs to finance local projects when impact fees do not suffice
    • Use congestion tolls to allocate scarce highway capacity. Create congestion “corridors” and “districts” where the tolls apply, and plow back revenues into improvements that increase mobility and access within those corridors and districts.
    • Tap the General Fund only for projects that can be justified on the basis of public safety or economic development.
    • Pass a constitutional amendment to protect dedicated transportation revenues from legislative raids.

  • Springtime for the Rebellion

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    James A. Bacon

    The flowers were blooming, the birds were singing and the Rebellion was spreading. There was optimism in the air. And hope, real hope, for fundamental change — an end to Business As Usual. Feel the freedom. Read the March 24, 2008, edition of the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine.

    If you don’t subscribe to the e-zine, you should. It’s free. Click here.

    Here’s this issue’s line-up:

    User Pays

    Virginia’s transportation system needs more money. But how we raise the money is just as important as how much. Only a user-pays system can break the political gridlock.

    by James A. Bacon


    Good News, Bad Reporting

    As the economy weakens, you can count on the MainStream Media to defend MassOverconsumption and Business As Usual in a desperate bid to keep the advertising dollars flowing.

    by EM Risse


    Learning from Big Boxes

    Consumers love big box stores for their “bargains” and “everyday low prices.” What they don’t see are the costs imposed by hidden subsidies and the scatteration of human settlement patterns.

    by EM Risse


    Extend Foot, Pull Trigger

    The unilateral rewriting of the Dulles Greenway legislation sends a bad signal to potential investors in Virginia roads: When times turn tough, lawmakers renege on deals.

    by Leonard Gilroy


    Pork and Transparency

    The Commonwealth is slowly, grudgingly opening up its books to citizen scrutiny. Putting credit-card bills on a Web-accessible database is a big step forward, but it raises more questions than it answers.

    by Norm Leahy


    The War Bill Comes Due

    The hidden costs of the Iraq war are a bigger economic debacle than the sub-prime mess.

    by Peter Galuszka


    Juice Junkies

    The Day household is addicted to electricity. Our careless consumption has consequences beyond the light bill: pollution, mountaintop removal and greenhouse gases among them.

    by Barnie Day


    I’ll Take the Two BMWs, Please

    Rail to Dulles is so expensive that we could lease two BMWs per rider with the money. The Feds were right to turn down funding, and Virginia Congressmen should leave well enough alone.

    by Wendell Cox and Ron Utt


    Smokes, Litter and Drugs

    Youngsters who smoke cigarettes are more likely to litter and abuse drugs as well. The campaign to snuff out smoking is not just a public health issue, it’s a crusade to save our children.

    by Frank Kilgore


    More Roads Are Not the Answer

    The unraveling of Virginia’s transportation funding plans could be a blessing if it prompts lawmakers to wean the Commonwealth from its auto-centric, sprawl-inducing policies.

    by Michael Cecire


    Nice & Curious Questions

    Doggie Happy Hours, or

    Virginia is for Canine Lovers

    by Edwin S. Clay III and Patricia Bangs

  • Rotoscope and Virginia’s Cultural Revolution

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    James A. Bacon

    Yes, folks, there is a soft and gentle side to Bacon’s Rebellion — a side that is sensitive to the arts and culture in Virginia. Part of the Bacon’s Rebellion manifesto is to liberate Virginia’s artists from the cultural hegemony of the New York/Hollywood axis that determines who makes it into the Big Time and who does not.

    Virginia has many musicians and artists who are every bit as talented as the “product” (think Britney Spears, Hannah Montana) cranked out by the New York/Hollywood star-making machinery. (If you’re into country music, I suppose you can call it the New York/Hollywood/Nashville star-making machinery.) In the winner-takes-all economy, the winners get fabulously famous and fabulously rich while those of equal talent labor in lifelong obscurity. Thanks to the digital revolution, however, it is increasingly possible for local artists to bypass the star-making establishment.

    I don’t pretend to know much about Virginia’s music scene, but I do stumble across talented groups from time to time, and I do what I can to give them a little visibility. My latest discovery is Rotoscope, an alternative band from the Washington area. The band has a great song, “Under the Milky Way,” which you can listen to on MySpace. You can also download some of the band’s more progressive music on iTunes. Check out Rotoscope and lend these Virginia boys your support.

  • Gilmore’s Independence-from-Foreign-Oil Plan

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    James A. Bacon

    Because Bacon’s Rebellion focuses exclusively on state/local policy issues, I normally don’t comment on U.S. Senatorial campaigns, even those here in Virginia. But I’ll make an exception in this case because Republican Senatorial candidate Jim Gilmore has issued a proposal for a “U.S. Declaration of Independence from Foreign Oil,” which , if enacted, would have significant ramifications for energy production and the environment in Virginia.

    Besides opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska for oil development, Gilmore would encourage exploration and drilling on the U.S. continental shelf. Virginia, for one, is believed to have extensive reserves of natural gas off its coast — the exploitation of which is a highly charged political issue.

    Gilmore wants to streamline regulations to allow construction of more oil refineries, and “eliminate counterproductive regulations that are raising our gas prices and damaging our economy.” Unfortunately, he does not specify what those counterproductive regulations are, so there is no way to tell whether his plan would affect the State Security Commission’s regulation of natural gas tariffs.

    Finally, Gilmore says he would “pursue the added benefit of nuclear power,” which would help reduce dependence on foreign oil, but offer a cleaner power source for the environment. It’s not clear, however, how nuclear power would reduce the demand for foreign oil. Nuclear power is used to generate electricity. Only a tiny percentage of the electricity in the United States (and virtually none in Virginia) is generated by oil, so there is little to be displaced by nuclear power. We could reduce oil consumption if we converted combustion-powered automobiles to electric vehicles on a large scale, but Gilmore does not discuss that possibility.

    Missing from Gilmore’s proposal: any mention of conservation or renewable energy. Gilmore’s proposal is the photographic negative of environmentalist energy policies, which emphasize conservation and renewables exclusively while restricting fossil fuels and nuclear power. I’m more humble: I don’t pretend to know which approach is the most economical. My approach would be to create an equal playing field for all energy strategies, including an adjustment for pollution and other externalities created by fossil fuels and nukes, and then letting the marketplace decide which is the most cost efficient.

  • BY DEFINITION

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    James A. Bacon

    In a comment following the 18 March post “ON THE ECONOMY” Anon 12:00 PM said…

    “Functional human settlement patterns will solve all our problems – by definition.”

    He / she was, perhaps, doing a funny but they have a point.

    We are painfully aware that many – ranging from advocates of remineralization; to vegetarians; to enforcers of family values; to those who advocate the right to carry concealed weapons into PTA meetings – suggest if everyone would just do as they suggest “all our problems will be solved.”

    That is why we spent over a decade writing The Shape of the Future and why PART TWO (Chapters 5 thru 14) spellS out in detail the economic, social and physical impacts of dysfunctional human settlement patterns.

    So far no one has disputed the reality of these impacts. They have disputed the collective will of citizens to do anything about them.

    It is silly to say functional human settlement patterns will solve “all our problems.” It is accurate to say that functional settlement patterns will facilitate solving many problems like the Mobility and Access Crisis and the Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis that underlie the current financial market turmoil.

    What is more, as documented by Chapter 23 of The Shape of the Future, evolving functional human settlement patterns is the first step on the road to creating a sustainable trajectory for civilization.

    Even with functional human settlement patterns there are some complicating factors such as human genetic proclivities and the question:

    Will the genetic proclivities that got humans to this point keep them from going farther?

    And, what IS “farther?”

    EMR

  • The Physics of Traffic Congestion

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    James A. Bacon


    I won’t have much time for blogging today, so I’ll leave you with this short video clip, from New Scientist, of a Japanese experiment probing the “shockwave” phenomenon: traffic slowdowns that spontaneously appear without any obvious rhyme or reason.

    Ah, human behavior… If it weren’t so complex and so demented, it wouldn’t be anywhere near so interesting!

  • Look, Ma, No Traffic Signals

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    James A. Bacon

    Could this work in the United States? Ron Utt with the Heritage Institute offers (tongue in cheek, I think) this example from India of “a novel Libertarian/ Communitarian fusion for a cost effective, multi-modal approach to a signal-free system of traffic flow.” Whether he’s kidding or not, it makes you wonder.

  • Toll Roads in Action

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    James A. Bacon

    I normally don’t have much good to say about transportation planning in the Richmond region, but one institution does seem to be working well: The Richmond Metropolitan Authority, which governs the Powhite Parkway and Downtown Expressway, two critical commuting arteries funded entirely through tolls.

    The RMA is in the news today because the board took the not-very-popular decision to raise tolls. While I’m not exactly excited about paying more to drive on highways I use with some frequency, I really can’t complain. Based on reports in the Times-Dispatch, I believe the money will be put to good use.

    The higher tolls will raise $80 million in projected maintenance and construction costs over the next decade: bridge repairs, installation of high-speed toll lanes, and $500,000 in annual routine maintenance (snow removal, pot-hole repair and grass cutting) that the Virginia Department of Transportation has provided until now.

    I think it’s a good thing that the RMA has the flexibility to raise tolls as needed to maintain the system and make spot improvements to eliminate bottlenecks. The thing I’m looking for more than anything when I hop on the Expressway is free-flowing traffic. One day the original construction bonds will be paid off and the RMA will be able to lower tolls. But I hope the board doesn’t eliminate the tolls entirely and turn the highways over to VDOT. I like knowing that the RMA is running the show and has a dedicated source of revenue to keep the highways in top shape and congestion-free.

    If other regions of Virginia had any sense, they’d adopt the RMA model for themselves.

  • Still a Lot to Learn about Climate Change

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    James A. Bacon

    As the governor’s commission on climate change starts digging into the impact of Global Warming on Virginia — a particular concern is the expected three-foot rise of sea levels by the end of the century — it would do well to acknowledge the evolving state of climate science. Nearly every day brings some new discovery that refines our knowledge of the mechanics of climate change. The latest, as reported by National Public Radio, highlights “the mystery of Global Warming’s missing heat.”

    While surface temperatures on the earth have been warming over the past four or five years, temperatures in the oceans have showed no warming — indeed, according to reports of some 3,000 robotic sensors scattered around the earth’s oceans, known as the Argo system, the waters might actually have cooled a bit. That’s relevant to Virginians for a couple of reasons: (a) the oceans hold significantly more of the earth’s surface heat than the atmosphere does, and (b) the warming of the ocean, which slightly expands its mass, is expected to be a driving force of rising sea levels.

    For Virginians, rising sea levels are the cutting edge of climate change. Other than New Orleans, Hampton Roads is the lowest-lying large metropolitan area in the country, and it is exceptionally vulnerable to rising sea levels. Also, the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem is vulnerable to salification as ocean water displaces fresh water in the estuary.

    The new Argo system measurements appear to be inconsistent with the predictions of climate change models that temperatures and are destined to rise. Scientists are baffled. Perhaps it’s just a measurement error: The ocean’s heat might be circulating to deeper levels not tracked by the sensors. Alternatively, the earth’s natural thermostats may be allowing more heat to be released into space than expected. Or, concedes Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, there may be a dynamic at work that science has not yet identified.

    Here’s another curve ball. In theory, because ocean water temperature should account for about half of rising/falling sea levels, sea levels should not have been rising over the past few years. But they have continued to rise — about 1/2 inch over four years. Scientists guess that the melting of Greenland and Antarctic icecaps may account for the rise. There are so many variables in the climate, however, that nobody knows for sure.

    One more thing for Virginia’s climate change commission to think about: If sea levels are rising 1/2 inch over four years, that implies a rate of one inch per eight years. If the rate stays constant for the rest of the century, that implies that sea levels will be 11.5 inches higher — less than one foot — by the year 2100. As I recall, the commission is operating on an assumption that sea levels will rise three feet over that period.

    The fact is, nobody knows what sea levels will do, and anyone who speaks with certainty is blowing hot air. What we can say with some confidence is that there is a significant risk, based on our current knowledge, that sea levels will rise. We need to take those risks into account as we plan for Virginia’s future, and we need to continually update and modify our assessment of those risks to reflect the best scientific knowledge as we go forward.

    (Image credit: From Vanity Fair, a photo of what Manhattan might look like if sea levels continue to rise, “Notes of Intelligence” blog.)

  • Too Much of a Good Thing

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    James A. Bacon

    Congestion tolls are coming to the Washington metropolitan region: The big question is whether they will be one piece of a patchwork approach with modest ambitions or the underpinning of a massive, region-wide plan to raise billions of dollars for transportation priorities, mainly mass transit.

    Plans are already in the works to use congestion tolls to pay for construction of new lanes along the Interstate-495 Beltway and Interstates 95 and 395 in Northern Virginia, and the Intercounty Connector in Maryland. Now in a new report the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board is exploring the idea of imposing variable pricing tolls on all major highways and parkways in the region, not just transportation arteries where new lanes can be added.

    As Eric Weiss explains in a Washington Post piece, regional transportation planners see no other option for keeping the roads moving. In an ideal world, congestion tolls would pay for new two-way lanes, as is planned for the Beltway and I-95/395, but in most cases the cost of acquiring the land for expanded roadways will make the cost prohibitive. Meanwhile, more money isn’t forthcoming from state governments. The only realistic alternative, the planners contend, is to impose tolls on roads that motorists now ride for free and to plow the money — as much as $2.75 billion a year — back into mass transit.

    Tolls would range in price from $.20 per mile to more than $2 per mile for some stretches of road during periods of peak demand — even more for crossing Potomac River bridges

    In the abstract, this a Bacon’s Rebellion fantasy come true. If new highway capacity is too expensive to build, use the price mechanism to ration it and incentivize drivers to utilize transportation alternatives from mass transit to telecommuting. Ideally, the incentives would be so powerful that they could stimulate meaningful shifts to move transportation-efficient human settlement patterns as well.

    However, there are major political obstacles, not the least of which is the fact that people tend to be hostile to tolls imposed on roads and highways they once drove for free. Additionally, while the study contends that the preferred “DC and Parkways Restrained” plan would not impact any demographic group disproportionately, it does suggest that the tolls would stimulate a significant relocation of jobs within the region. A shift in jobs would create changes in land values and the tax base of different municipalities. Inevitably, the plan would create winners and losers among municipalities and within the politically influential developer/home builder community. Just as inevitably, as soon as the potential losers understand what’s a stake, they will start agitating against the proposal.
    Click on this image for a close-up of a map published in the report. The flesh-colored areas designate where jobs will be lost — primarily in the inner ring of “suburbs” around the District of Columbia — and where jobs will be added, primarily in the urban core and outlying areas along the metropolitan periphery. Where the jobs go, property values will follow. Not only would the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board plan impose $2.75 billion a year in tolls upon a reluctant citizenry, jurisdictions such as Arlington and Alexandria would come out big losers. Are the elected representatives of those communities likely to support a plan with such an outcome?

    Another stumbling block: A massive shift of the job base westward to Loudoun County and western Fairfax may not be what many Virginia smart growth advocates have in mind.

    Bacon’s bottom line: As much as I am a huge fan of market-based solutions to transportation, this plan strikes me as overkill. The $2.75 billion-a-year cost exceeds the total $2.331 annual congestion cost for the Washington metropolitan area (as calculated by the Texas Transportation Institute). That’s plain crazy! This plan would apply a machete where a surgeon’s knife is called for. I can’t conceive of a plan like this winning public support.

    There is definitely a role for congestion pricing in addressing the transportation needs of the Washington region, but the strategem needs to be applied selectively, and the public needs to be persuaded that it has an ameliorative effect before it can be rolled out on a regional scale. Furthermore, although the authors of this study did examine the impact of the tolls on land use patterns, they did not consider the reverse: how changes in land use could make the tolls work more effectively. As Ed Risse ceaselessly points out, there needs to be a balance between the travel demand generated by land uses and the transportation capacity planned for those land uses. I could detect no sign of such a sensibility in the study.

  • ON THE ECONOMY

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    James A. Bacon

    As we point out in PART IV of THE PROBLEM WITH CARS, 15 May 2007 may be thought of decades from now as the ‘Ides of March’ of the Autonomobile – Large, Private Vehicles.

    The week that proceeded and the week that followed the 15 th of March in 2008 may be thought of as the ‘Ides of March’ for the leveraged, securitized, subsidized Global Economy, as we knew it.

    The last few days there has been a “too-numerous-to..” count, cite or link-to flood of MainStream Media coverage but there is no examination of the bottom line:

    Two items get no press.

    First the real cause of the current crisis. Behind (or perhaps underneath?) the current financial Enterprise meltdown is the very same problem that was the root cause of the Savings and Loan Crisis (mid-80s), the Banking Crisis / Commercial Real Estate Meltdown (late-80s to mid-90s). The problem?

    Dysfunctional human settlement patterns.

    We had dogs in all these fights. We also had friends who we had warned five years before they went under in every downturn since Boise Cascade was wiped out by raw land speculation in the mid 70s. Our personal, inside experience includes not just national poster children like Boise Cascade and Continental Illinois Bank but a lot of Regional ones as well.

    The lesson for citizens is simple: Evolve functional settlement patterns or suffer the economic consequences.

    Sure, the “cause” of the current crisis is said to be the securitized sub-prime loans and securitized credit card debt that kicked over the house of cards. There were many other sub-problems too.

    However, those most who were convinced by MainStream Media ads and low initial mortgage payments to buy a $300,000 to $900,000 dollar house in the R = 25 Miles to R = 60 Miles Radius Band could have afforded a $120,000 to $500,000 dwelling in R = 2 to R = 20 Radius Band.

    The cause of the Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis is this: Agency regulation and Enterprise short term profit objectives resulted in the building the wrong size house in the wrong location. The cause of the Mobility and Access Crisis is the need to rely on Autonomobiles to get from where citizens are to where they need to be.

    The second overlooked issue: The headlong rush to solve the wrong problem.

    Some – the Lame Duck White House and the lame candidates who want to next occupy the White House – are pretending there is no Recession. Recent polls indicate that around 75 percent of the citizens think, and are acting as if, there is a Recession at hand With about the same percentage of the economy dependent on consumer spending, citizens and not Wall Street Titans or Federal regulators, are the ones who will make the decisions.

    For most citizens, the past 10 years have been much like a recession as we point out in “Good News, Bad Reporting,” 5 March 2008.

    At the same time as some some are in denial, others are focused on bailing out the leveraged, securitized, subsidized fools who got us here.

    Steven Pearlstein quotes Nouriel Roubini: The current system has perfected a system of “socialized risk and privatizing gain.” E. J Dionne Jr says the Wall Street Titans have turned into “a bunch of welfare clients.”

    Yes, there is a lot to be said for Groveton’s point that now that everyone in the boat is where they are, Agencies have to bail out the fat cats that caused the problem because if not far more citizens will suffer.

    The point we make in “Good News, Bad Reporting” is that trying in vain to prevent a needed Recession may throw us all into a Depression.

    EMR

Now Available

Book cover of 'Dust Mites: A Second American Revolution' by James A. Bacon, featuring astronauts planting a flag with a blue and white emblem on a lunar landscape, with Earth visible in the background.
For sale on Amazon.com

The year: 2075. The American colonies on the Moon are getting restless under Washington’s tyrannical rule….

This second edition of “Dust Mites” has a snazzy new cover, includes helpful lunar maps, and is 5,000 words tighter than the original. The sequel, “Trogs,” is scheduled for publication this summer.

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Bacon’s Rebellion is Virginia’s leading politically non-aligned portal for news, opinions and analysis about state, regional and local public policy. Read more about us here.

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