Archive for December 2008
If revenues go down… should we spend more?
The Federal Highway Administration Traffic Volume Trends report for October, 2008 says we are driving less. Traffic (“vehicle miles traveled” or VMT) on all roads in Virginia dropped over 4% in October, compared to October 2007.
We’re driving less. We’re using more fuel-efficient cars. Therefore, we are not generating the gas taxes used by Federal and state agencies to fund highway maintenance and new construction.
When your income goes down and it’s looking like a trend, do you borrow money to add a new room onto the house? When tax revenues for transportation projects go down… should Prince William County go on a road-building spree? Read the rest of this entry »
The wrong place for a VRE station
While VRE is considering a $200 million expenditure for expanding its Manassas line, it faces a fork in the track.
The Norfolk Southern rail line splits south of Manassas. The Broad Run station is on a separate stretch from the proposed stations at Innovation/Gainesville/Haymarket.
Fortunately, there’s a simple solution that avoids an inefficient trip to Broad Run, followed by backing up the train to access the proposed new stations. Read the rest of this entry »
The right place for a new VRE station
The Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation is completing a Statewide Rail Plan. State and Virginia Railway Express (VRE) officials are assuming that PW County officials will automatically support the grandiose plans of VRE to extend its Manassas line.
But those officials ought to pay attention to the county Planning Commission. It’s at risk of doing the right thing. Read the rest of this entry »
Is “smart growth” planning for real – or a fraud in PW County?
Peggy Noonan included a satirical headline in her Wall Street Journal column today: “95% of Americans Support Public Transit for Other People.”
In PW County, smart growth is for other people. Few of us who live in PW County now are going to sell our current houses and move to a new transit-oriented, mixed-use, walkable, tree-shaded, “smart-growthy” community nearby.
But there’s still one great reason to offer incentives to developers to create such communities: Read the rest of this entry »
On the other hand, we don’t really mean what we say about smart growth…
If your teenager told you “I’m going to study at the library” and then in the next breath asked for directions to a bar in Georgetown, would you wonder how the teen was really going to act?
The county might be demonstrating the same behavior with the new Transportation and Land Use chapters. The Planning Department staff claims it is implementing “smart growth” through the Comp Plan update, but the teenager’s claim is more credible.
