The meeting the Hampton Roads/Tidewater members of the General Assembly had with the HRTA folks yesterday in at the state-funded Suffolk modeling and simulation facility held an interesting moment.
I got an email telling how it was revealed that the funds to model Hampton Roads traffic were cut from the budget. So, multi-billion dollar decisions are made on the basis of the bogus analysis I read back in 2002. Even that flawed work projected that building the big projects dreamed up in 1997 – pour concrete, pour concrete, pour concrete – would actually INCREASE congestion when they were completed in 20 years or so.
Oops.
We don’t need no stinking models to make decisions. Do we?
Speaking of which, guess which Commonwealth doesn’t have a econometric model of its state economy?
I’ve been referred to a spread sheet model which is a modification of one made for Texas about a decade ago. I saw that one. Is there another out there?
I suggested to my Delegate to put the money in the budget for our public universities to put together a consortium to develop a very good model of our economy. It would help to analyze spending and taxing options. Didn’t happen.
