In our column this week “The Devil’s Dance” at https://www.baconsrebellion.com/ we cautioned against expecting positive results vis a vis mobility and access (or anything else) from the 2006 legislative session. In a Wednesday, 4 January posting on this blog (“The Governor and Mobility”) we considered the Governor-Elect’s potential to improve mobility and access.

Right on cue, Governor-Elect Kaine named Mr. Homer as Secretary of Transportation. This assures citizens of the Commonwealth that traffic congestion will continue to grow and the long-term prospects for prosperity, security and sustainability will continue to erode.

This sort of a slap in the face happens to the good-government / community-responsibility / conservation organizations and their supporters after every election. They endorse the lesser-of-two-evils candidates. That candidate wins and then the newly elected office holder turns around and takes actions that support the Business-As-Usual / private-rights / consumption goals of the candidate that the voters turned down. It is clear that enough citizens who would not have voted or would have voted for Woody Woodpecker voted for Kaine because of his pledge to relate transportation to land use (aka, create functional human settlement patterns.)

Mr. Homer’s land use / transportation credentials are clear. He is best known for his cheerleading role for Disney’s American and Nissan Pavilion (nee, Cellar Door) in Prince William County. These are two of the greatest land use / transportation disasters to ever face the R=20 to R=35 Radius Band in the National Capital Subregion. He won one out of two and hundreds of thousands of citizens have been inconvenienced on many summer days since Nissan Pavilion open its gates.

In an interview with WAPO he cited two reasons why the detractors of his nomination (who had been supporters of Kaine) were wrong. Homer said that he had worked to raise money for shared-vehicle systems as well as roads. That completely misses the central point that roads or rails in the wrong location create dysfunctional human settlement patterns and cause long-term immobility. The clincher, however, is that Homer cited his work to support the badly defeated sales tax referendums. In tune with the the real world?

The best anyone has had to say about Homer is that he plays well with others, especially the groups responsible for the growing gridlock and that he understands the need to raise private money to build the wrong infrastructure in the wrong locations. We will address these two issues in future posts.

EMR