Charlottesville Tomorrow has posted a podcast of a speech I delivered Tuesday to the Free Enterprise Forum in Charlottesville. It’s a variant of the stump speech I’ve delivered on several occasions in the past two months, laying out in concise form my view of (a) what’s wrong with transportation in Virgina today, (b) why the current proposals being considered by lawmakers in Richmond won’t cure it, and (c) the deep-rooted institutional changes we need to make.
It’s old-hat material for long-time Rebellion readers, but newcomers to the blog might find it useful — if you’ve got nothing better to do with a half hour of your time — to hear the conceptual framework I use when approaching transportation issues. Yes, believe it or not, the comments I make on this blog are not random, disconnected observations. They all tie together and, ultimately, support one another.
A side note: I really must commend the Charlottesville region for the sophistication of its civic organizations. The Free Enterprise Forum, which hosted my speech, is putting on a year-long series of speeches exploring different facets of the transportation issue from free-market perspectives. The organization has emerged as an important player in the dissemination of information and ideas related to community improvement.
Additionally, Charlottesville Tomorrow does a fantastic job of compiling information related to transportation, land use and community design in the region, making information from obscure and dusty corners of the governmental process readily available to the public, and taking full advantage of digital technology to incorporate photos, graphics, audio and video into the website.
As newspapers continue to suffer erosion of readership and resources to keep tabs on the local governance process, organizations like these two may well represent the future.
