Bacon's Rebellion

Bacon's Rebellion Is Moving!

2011-07-08T16:54:00.004-05:00

It won't be pretty. It won't be quick. But we are migrating the Bacon's Rebellion blog from this Blogger site to a new WordPress blog at the old Bacon's Rebellion web address. All new posts will appear there.

We know of lots of details that need to be worked out. (For instance, we're trying to move all 55,000 comments, too.) But if you see anything that needs fixing, please speak up.

-- Jim Bacon

ALPHA SCALE DENSITY AND RESTON by AZA

2011-07-08T16:16:00.001-05:00

ALPHA COMMUNITY SCALE DENSITY AND RESTON by AZA

Note: Some may have seen that AZA and TMT have been playing “I post, you post” in the comment threads following somewhat unrelated posts concerning the parameters of functional density of Alpha Communities and how these densities relate to the Beta Community of Reston.

In response to TMT’s latest note I have tried to put these perspectives – clarified and updated – together in one place. I asked Prof. Risse to post it and welcomed him to edit and add notes from his perspective. Since this is all about human settlement patterns, I also asked him to alert those that review comments for violations of The Litmus Test to be especially watchful of unfounded Idea Spam and Intentional Information Sabotage.

AZA

DENSITY IN FOCUS

Following the post by Mr. Bacon on school reform, I noted:

Only when there are densities of around 30 persons per acre at the Alpha Community scale can there be efficient and effective transport alternatives that enable students to choose different educational options.

This statement is based on our understanding of the transformations that reflect 1) the end of the era of the ‘Autonomobile’ domination of settlement patterns, 2) the end of vast subsidies for dysfunctional settlement patterns, and 3) the changes in citizen settlement pattern preferences noted below.

In a later comment, TMT noted that “30 persons per acre” seemed high to him. (Most of the dialogue from his comment and my response is summarized below.)

I responded to the reference to “30 persons per acre” by noting that the original statement was “30 persons per acre AT THE ALPHA COMMUNITY SCALE.” I suggested that without a spacial quantifier, a statement on density is a meaningless abstraction. This is NOT just nit picking. Density must always be expressed in terms of quantity per some measure of area that has a specific definition.

TMT said: “I don't think this level of density is politically feasible except in selected locations.”

I responded: Of course, it is not politically (or economically) feasible (or desirable) except in specific locations. At 30 pn ac / Alpha Comm scale, even with with half the land in the County completely vacant, Fairfax County would have a holding capacity of 3.6 million citizens over 3 times the current population. Wall to wall 30 pn ac / Alpha Comm scale would put 7.2 million people in Fairfax County. Further, a wall-to-wall 30 pn ac would be a monoculture disaster.

Sustainable densities vary from Cluster to Cluster, from Neighborhood to Neighborhood, etc. The important metic is density at the Alpha Community scale.

However, the critical fact to understand in this context is that the territory within the present boundaries of Fairfax County contains not one Community but all or part of 11 or Beta Communities.

If these Beta Communities were to mature to be Alpha Communities they would have much larger populations – and all but Tysons Corner and Reston would have more Jobs – but there would also be more open land due to subdivision recycling and parcel recycling coupled with transfer of development rights and transfer of property rights.

TMT said “I believe that many current residents believe the County is already too crowded. Of course that is just my view of the dominant perception. In politics, many times perception becomes reality.”

Unfortunately ‘perception’ IS political reality until that perception is changed through education.

‘Crowding’ is an function of settlement pattern design and use. But the indicators of ‘crowding’ that most NIMBYs harp on are functions of bad design not ‘too many people.’ There is great truth in the statement:

It is not how dense you make it, it is how you make it dense.

By far the most expensive land per acre has far higher densities at Neighborhood and Village scales than are needed to have 30 persons per acre at the Alpha Community scale. In other words the market values density.

It is now becoming more and more clear that the market also values Balance and a Resilient MIX of uses.

Too often, “crowded” is just a term used to deflect the need to change. Traffic problems are thought to flow from ‘crowding’ when in fact they result from a mismatch between the pattern and density of land uses and transport system provided to achieve Mobility and Access.

Research has now demonstrated, it is also a huge mistake to believe that lower densities yields more ‘privacy’ and ‘freedom’ for citizens. This is a common myth perpetuated by those who profit from the conversion of NonUrban land to Urban land uses.

It is also a huge mistake to believe that there is a way to provide affordable and sustainable Mobility and Access to large Urban agglomerations with Larger, Private Vehicles. Prof. Risse calls this the Large, Private Vehicle Mobility Myth and has proven this point beyond a shadow of a doubt for anyone who cares to pay attention. Also see the work of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute often cited by both Bacon and Risse.

The idea that the large single Household dwelling is ‘the American dream’ is slinking away but is still prevalent enough to use to attack ‘density.’ Without informed citizens / voters, the politicians have not choice but to cave in to the irrational demand for ‘lower density and less crowding.’

Reality is dawning due to the success of a well designed Neighborhood and Village scale developments – especially near shared-vehicle system platforms – as documented by the Urban Land Institute and others.

Reality is reinforced , by the work of Richard Florida and by new research such as the 2011 National Association of Realtor’s (NAR) home buyer preference survey. This survey shows a huge swing in potential buyer attitudes from the same questions asked in 2005.

The NAR survey indicates that the majority of potential buyers want to live in places that only exist at and above 30 persons per acre at the Alpha Community Scale.

The other clear indicator of the shift in dwelling Unit preference is the continued decline of the value of Single Household Detached dwellings, especially those outside R=30.

There is a vast glut of ‘large lot Single Household Detached Dwellings’ (28 million nation-wide at last count). This is also called the OVERBUILD of too Big Houses in the Wrong Location. Prof. Risse has documented this in THE CURRENT TRAJECTORY.

WHAT ABOUT RESTON

In the density dialogue, TMT raised the example of Reston. In our view and that of many others, Greater Reston is the closest thing that Fairfax County has to a Beta Community that could easily evolve to become an Alpha Community and thus is a very good point of reference.

“Reston might be a useful example to consider. The Master Covenants limit development in Reston to 13 persons per acre overall.”

Actually it is the Residential Planned Community (RPC) zoning that sets the limit at 13 persons per acre.

In my original response I said that “the 13 person per acre ‘cap’ does not include the Town Center, the Industrial Corridor along DAAR or the outparcels and adjacent projects.”

TMT pointed out that the Town Center is zoned RPC. I had incorrect information on that fact.

What I had heard was that the Town Center development was primarily controlled by a Cordon Line traffic generation formula – perhaps that is only the non-residential uses – and that more dwellings reduced the cross-Cordon Line traffic.

The inclusion of the Town Center in the RPC zone was not central to my comments which TMT did not address.

Reston, along with every other 60s / 70s / 80s Planned New Community, was built to accommodate Large, Private Vehicles. That means to achieve a density that supports functional future settlement patterns, the density needs to move up and alternative modes of Mobility and Access need to be provided.

Perhaps EMR can fill in some details here. [EMR has added a note at the end of this post about the 13 persons per acre issue in Reston.]

The key issue is that at somewhere between 10 and 15 persons per acre Greater Reston (not just the part zoned PRC) is closer to being able to achieve Balance and thus solve the Mobility and Access Crisis, the Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis and the Helter Skelter Crisis than any other Beta Community in Fairfax County.

One asset is an excess of jobs and another is the Affordable Housing that is the result of Bob Simon’s original commitment to have housing suitable for everyone who had a job in the Community and for a living environment every stage of a Households existence should be accommodated within Reston.

Reston is worlds ahead of the four Beta Communities in eastern Loudoun County where there are a plenty of garden apartments and townhouses but still only about 5 to 8 persons per acre at the Alpha Community scale due to failure of the County to intelligently plan (or encourage developers to intelligently plan) at the Village and Community scales as noted by NERE in his comments on the “Stop Short Changing Road Maintenance” post.

A person landing in Reston and told they need to live without a car full-time can look around and say “I can do this!” In the four Beta Communities of eastern Loudoun that person would stare into an abyss. It is a autocentric wasteland – all be it that almost every ‘community’ contains a number of desirable Clusters, some functional Neighborhoods and many individual land uses that could become parts of Alpha Communities – if only they were differently arranged.

Back to the dialogue with TMT on Reston:

TMT said “Some within the county [I think he meant ‘Reston,’ not ‘the county’] want to raise this overall limit to add substantial density in the areas near the future rail stations. From what I have observed, there is general acceptance of adding density at the rail stations, but only so long as the overall cap is maintained.”

I said: “The issue is NOT the ‘cap.’

The critical issues are Balance and Resiliency in the station-area. Given the capacity of the METRO Silver Line, the station-area should be of Village scale, not of Neighborhood scale or Community scale. That will result in being able to achieve Alpha status in the Greater Reston Community.

TMT said: “In listening to residents and leaders in Reston, I perceive that few see any benefit for themselves by increasing density beyond 13 per acre. What economic benefits would flow to existing residents to accept a higher density cap?”

Again, CAP is the wrong question. The question is Balance of J / H / S / R / A.

As for the reasons citizens should understand why it is to their benefit, see the above concerning the work of Richard Florida, the NAR study and others. Then check the trajectory of house values in those eastern Loudoun County’s Beta Communities. Without a Balance in the Village Cores, especially those at METRO stations and in the entire Community, the value of existing homes will decline. Preventing this from happening would be one big economic benefits to the existing residents and would be a good reason for them to encourage the continued evolution of functional and sustainable settlement patterns in Greater Reston.

As Dr. Risse has argued for years – before, during and after he live there (I first met him while he was living in Reston) – much of Reston is just fine for the foreseeable future so long a owners continue to invest in maintaining their properties and the Cluster Associations and the Reston Association have revenue to support their needs.

However, recycling some Clusters and some Neighborhoods would be prudent FOR ALL.

As Risse’s columns in Bacon’s Rebellion 1.0 document, the density related to the new METRO stations should be OVER and Around the Station-Platforms spanning the DAAR. There also needs to be a secondary shared-vehicle system that ties together the Village Centers and the existing Town Center.

In summary, the discussion of a 10, 13, 15 or some other number ‘cap’ is beside the point, the key issues are Balance and Resiliency.

THE BIG PICTURE

Now let me add a note in defense of NERE’s response about the future of Loudoun County in the comments following the “Stop Short Changing Road Maintenance” post.

TMT asked where NERE got his ideas:

“where is the roadmap from today's Loudoun County to one with four Alpha communities? No pun intended.”

NERE told him. It turns out there IS a roadmap and a lot of citizens understood that road map as indicated by their response at public fora in the late 90s and the candidates they voted for.

TMT then went on a tear about what EMR ought to be doing.

I have talked to him about this recently and EMR is not about to launch an new educational campaign. He has been there and done that. He clearly showed that it can be done if there are resources to support it.

It is up to leaders like TMT to establish the support to moving ahead. Citizens must be given the opportunity to become Aware of and become Interested in reality. They must then achieve Understanding and upon which to take Action if citizens are to come to well considered judgements on the path to a sustainable future.

ROCKET SCIENCE

Perhaps my perspective will help here:

There are two major differences between understanding the need to evolve functional and sustainable HUMAN SETTLEMENT PATTERNS and ROCKET SCIENCE.

First:

Understanding humans settlement patterns is much harder, and evolving functional and sustainable patterns and densities of land use is far more complex.

Second:

With respect to human settlement patterns, there is no simple chain of command which can bring together designers, fabricators and ‘deciders’ to produce, fire and reach the target (for good or evil) as there are with rockets.

ORGANIC SYSTEMS

Both of these differences are rooted in the same reality:

Human settlement patterns are organic systems. They are huge, complex systems that result from trillions of decisions by organisms that are ALSO complex organic systems (humans). The understanding of the individual human systems is still has a long ways from clarity.

Then there is this reality:

To maintain a democracy with an informed market economy to allocate resources ALL those who make the decisions that impact human settlement patterns in the market place and in the voting booth must be informed. In Groveton’s terms they must be ‘conversant’ not necessarily ‘fluent.’

(Perhaps every Cluster needs someone fluent in settlement patterns as well as someone fluent in education, someone fluent in health, someone fluent in public safety, someone fluent in communications, someone fluent in recreation, someone fluent in ecology, but EVERYONE needs to be conversant. Then must also understand how they can get answers that they can rely on from those who are fluent. Some resource persons may be at the Neighborhood or Village scales but they cannot be some remote state, federal, NATO, or UN functionary (Mr. Gooze likes to call them apparatchiks, Mr. Bacon calls them rent seeking bureaucrats and Prof. Risse calls them governance practitioners at the wrong scale of the governance structure). As Dr. Risse says in CITIZEN MEDIA, THE NEXT STEP, citizens must evolve a society that does not rely on Agents.)

THE ROLE OF CITIZENS

Long ago it became clear that one single entity cannot be responsible for making decisions on human settlement patterns.

Over the last 8,000 years the organizations created to manage the evolving human societies have changed in many ways. The evolution clearly has a long way to go. The management of civilization framework evolved slowly for 7,300 years. It started changing more rapidly after 1300. Risse lays this out nicely in THE ESTATES MATRIX. There was ‘1492 And All’ (See Guns, Germs and Steel) that stepped up the rate of change. The transformations were kicked into high gear around 1775.

There have been many paths to the current reality. In Western societies one can trace the shared responsibility for decisions on settlement pattens with some ease:

Inside The Clear Edge the responsibility to determine human settlement patterns was extended beyond the dominate chief, priest, prince, king or emperor by the granting of charters to create Urban enclaves (at that time correctly called ‘cities’)

Outside The Clear Edge it is more complex. In the English speaking Regions (lawyers like to say “in the Anglo-American Legal Tradition”) there were two separate paths. First, there was ‘The Common Law’ for private property and second, the ever evolving Law of the Forest (first articulated 1215) for common lands that were primarily crown property.

Unless and until citizens learn about the process and the alternatives to create functional human settlement patterns and to take action on those strategies, humans will struggle in a forest of myths and misunderstandings.

It may be acceptable for citizens to be ignorant about rocket science, molecular biology or celestial mechanics BUT

Humans must come to understand – for themselves, their Households, their Organizations and their the communities to which the belong at ALL scales – about 1) human heath, 2) human safety, 3) successfully raising the next generation of humans (education, et. al.), 4) the parameters of human happiness AND 5) human settlement patterns.

It is clear that citizens cannot rely on Agents or Politicians to make decisions for them if they expect to achieve a sustainable trajectory for civilization.

That may seem like a big task but the alternative is, as Jared Diamond says, Collapse.

AZA

EMR’s Note on Reston density

Ed Prichard (Edgar Allen Prichard – Booth, Prichard and Dudley, 1920-2000) drafted PRC zone category to meet Bob Simon’ objectives. (As most readers of BRB 2.0 know, Bob was the original developer of Reston.) Ed did a great job of meeting Bob’s needs. There were two major obstacles to Bob achieving his goals for Reston: The DAAR though middle of the parcel that Bob bought and Bob lost control to Gulf Oil Co early on. See Reston, the First Twenty Years for all the details.

In spite of these and other problems Reston has evolved to be a great place to live, work and seek services. EMR lived there for a decade before moving to a Planned New Community in which he had participated in the design.

EMR used the RPC zone in the development of the Village scale Burke Centre. The RPC zone worked well at that scale. The developer kept tabs of the ‘people pool’ as the project developed. The number of allowable dwellings (the metric that developers, builders and Households are concern with) changed every time the Census Bureau changed the number of people per dwelling unit. In the US and in Virginia, the number of people per dwelling unit declined from 1960 to 2005. It has since started back up and may go much higher due to the overbuild of ‘too- big’ dwellings.

An overarching problem with most municipal plans and most zoning, including the RPC zone, is that it is assumed that once a place is ‘built out’ it will not change. In most cases when change is needed one applies to change the zoning. It appears that this has not happened in the RPC zone because so much depends on the general and final plans required in the multi-phased RPC process. A static RPC may be tolerable at the Village scale but not at the Community scale. Communities must continue to evolve as the last ten years in Reston document.

In addition, once most of the land is developed there is no ‘developer’ to manage the RPC zone.

As EMR has said for years, Reston needs a new plan and a new plan process before it can evolve to become an Alpha Community. The idea that there is an immutable ‘cap’ is a product of poor strategy and a misunderstanding of organic system health.

There is one other question about which EMR has no information. Where did Ed Prichard come up with the 13 persons number? As documented in THE SHAPE OF THE FUTURE no developer of any Planned New Community in the US who had to pay for most of the costs of creating the Community designed or built a Community of less than 10 persons per acre. This is the 10 Person Rule, one of the Five Natural Laws of Human Settlement Patterns laid out in THE SHAPE OF THE FUTURE. Ten persons per acres is about what 13 persons per acre RPC zone yielded when the land along the DAAR, outparcels and adjacent land is figured in. Reston was a pioneer Planned New Community and Prichard came up with that number before Reston or any of the others were planned beyond the rough conceptual sketch phase, much less built.

Long story, short: AZA is right about the cap issue. The critical issues are Balance and Resiliency. The 30 persons per acre at the Alpha Community scale makes a lot of sense as a target for those who do not want to live in the Zentrum of a large New Urban Region and not have to rely on the Autonomobile for Mobility and Access.

EMR

Blocking Canadian Oil: A Descent into Bizarro-World

2011-07-08T09:37:00.010-05:00

As I argued back in April (see "Sandy Alberta, the Saudi Arabia Next Door"), America can import its oil from our democratic, market-oriented, environmentally friendly neighbor to the north, or from anti-American crackpots like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and anti-American madmen like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Obama administration appears to be leaning toward the crackpots and madmen.

As the Wall Street Journal reports today, the administration has been subjecting to endless delays the efforts by TransCanada Corp. to build a pipeline linking the oil sands of Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico refinery complex where that oil would be refined. By approving the pipeline, the United States could create thousands of construction and oil refinery jobs and capture much of the economic value of the oil production in Canada itself-- American companies are big participants in the oil sands boom --in the process.

But President Barack Obama has said publicly that he wants to investigate "how destructive" oil-sands operations might be to the environment before approving the line. The Environmental Protection Agency has urged a more thorough environmental impact study. And the State Department is dragging its feet in signing off on the transnational pipeline, which would cross the Canadian-U.S. border.

Let's set aside the concern that America's job creation numbers remain dismal: only 18,000 net jobs created last month. Let's overlook the arrogance of the United States dictating environmental policy to Canada, a nation with mature democratic institutions and a mature environmental movement. Let's look at the hypocrisy. Canada's heavy oil is very similar to the heavy oil we import from Venezuela. Which country do you think is a better steward of its environment -- Canada, where the nation's strong democratic institutions provide for ample input by environmentalists, or Venezuela, a Third World kleptocracy where a populist thug is running the economy into the ground through short-sighted policies geared to keeping him in power?

Is President Obama concerned about the oil pollution in Lake Maracaibo and the Caribbean? Does he want to investigate "how destructive" Venezuelan policies are to the Amazonian rain forest? Of course not.

Wow, this is just breathtaking. In one policy-debacle trifecta, the Obama administration is harming U.S. energy security, dampening U.S. job creation, and discriminating against an environmentally friendly democracy.

The Wonk Salon, July 8, 2011

2011-07-08T09:33:00.002-05:00

Studying Health Care Disparities
National Academy for State Health Policy
A Virginia study of health care disparities is one of two initiatives highlighted in this report. That document, the 2011 Health Equity Report, should be published soon.

Moral Dimensions of America's Obesity Epidemic

2011-07-08T08:33:00.006-05:00

A half year ago, I didn't think that I had a weight problem. At 6' tall, I tipped the scales at 193 pounds. I exercised fairly regularly, ate balanced meals and indulged little in desserts, snacks or fast food. I had a little flab around the waste but didn't feel overweight, much less obese. Then, in a routine physical, my doctor told me my blood sugar was running high. I was pre-diabetic, he said. If I didn't control my nutrition, I could wind up a full-fledged diabetic.

Boy, was that a wake-up call! There was no way I would let myself become a diabetic. I would take control of my diet. Out went the soft drinks; in came the flavored water. Out went the starch at dinner time; in came the vegetable salads. Out went the breakfast cereals; in came yogurt, granola and fresh fruit. Out went the processed bread; in came whole-grain bread. My intent was to restore my blood sugar to healthy levels. I wasn't looking to lose weight. But as a side effect of adopting a better diet, I did lose 10 pounds.

Through the lens of that experience I now report the latest findings of a new study by the Trust for America's Health, "F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America's Future 2011." Twelve states now have obesity rates above 30%. Four years ago, only one state was above 30%. The obesity epidemic is the worst in the South, lowest in the Northeast and West. But viewed over a 20-year timeline, obesity is increasing across the board.

Virginians can take some small consolation that we are less fat than the national average. We rank 30th nationally. But considering that higher-income people are less likely to be fat and we Virginians rank among the 10 highest income-per-capita states in the country, we have no grounds to get smug. Obesity is a major contributing factor to heart disease and diabetes, which runs up health care costs, which we all pay. So, one person's obesity is not just his or her problem, it's everyone's problem.

(See the detailed statistics for Virginia here. Fifteen years ago, Virginia had a combined obesity and overweight rate of 48.9 percent. Today, the combined rate is 61.2 percent.)

There are many explanations of America's rising obesity rate. The population is getting older, for one, and people who put on one or two pounds a year can find themselves overweight by middle age. Our lifestyles are more sedentary, and we get less exercise. (Our auto-centric human settlement patterns play a role here.) And we eat way too much processed food, and not nearly enough fresh fruit and vegetables. But none of these contributing factors is destiny. Every one of us has free will. We all know what we need to do -- it is impossible to escape the mantra that we need to eat right and exercise more. We just need to do it.

I know that it can be done because I have done it. It's not easy changing food-eating habits but it is possible. It's not easy finding the time and energy to exercise but it is possible. Here's the question: Will other Americans do the right thing? Or do they have such an entitlement mentality -- "I'm entitled to health care, and I'm entitled to have someone fix my medical problems, even if they are of my own making"-- that most of them are too complacent and lazy to change? My fear is that preaching and moral suasion will not work. The morality of personal responsibility is dying in this country. And the logic of the social engineer -- we'll tax soda pop so people will drink less of it -- is all that is left to save us from ourselves.

Good Riddance, Thomas Jefferson Institute!

2011-07-08T08:31:00.004-05:00

To be frank, I have always had a bad feeling about blogging for Bacon's Rebellion while its sister electronic magazine of the same name was controlled by a right-wing, lobbyist-infested outfit grandly called the Thomas Jefferson Instutute for Public Policy.

Thankfully, this unholy arrangement will be coming to an end soon. Bacon's Rebellion has achieved a good reputation as a spot where serious policy discussions can be found -- an important point given that mainstream media outfits have so badly cut their staff there's not a lot of informed discussion. Sure there's a lot of sparring that sometimes goes over the top. Ditto the e-zine which used to have some of the best reporting and analysis on Virginia's land use and transportation issues.

Somehow, the so-called Thomas Jefferson people got hold of the e-zine and now they are supposed to give it back. From the git-go, it was a bad conflict of interest since their supposedly scholarly and libertarian sounding board was actually run by a bunch of less-than-scholarly hacks who were really lobbyists in sheep's clothing.

Nowhere is this more clear than in a study the institute did regarding affordable housing policies in Fairfax County. The report, written by Michael Thompson, a major Republican contributor and director of the "institute," slams the county for "subsidizing" luxury housing by putting housing aid recipients in apartments where there may be swimming pools, gyms and other benefits, according to The Washington Post. The reasoning seems to be that if you are poor and you get government aid, you have no right to exercise.

Thompson's skewed report has split the supervisors down party lines. Board Chairman Sharod Bulova, a Democrat, says only 15 of the 41 condo projects where the poor are housed have swimming pools. Thompson apparently ignores the fact that many of the county's housing units

were built with amenities and that in towards serious downturn, many more people can't afford the usual, high rents.

So what are they supposed to do? Live in cinderblock cells without TV sets because they are poor? Michelle Krocker, executive director of the Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance characterizes the report this way: "There are no data, no interviews, no sources. There are no statistics. I'm finding it very curious that a think tank would put out something less than scholarly."

No surprise there. I've scratched my head at some of the papers I've read from the TJ people because they don't offer many statistics or facts to back up their opinions. I remember one Thompson report lauded offshore drilling and gave a laundry list of supposed benefits without
any sourcing.

The point is that the institute is not really a think tank -- it is a Republican lobby. It is hardly "non-partisan" as it pretends to be. Bacon's Rebellion is severing its relationship with these people. Not a moment too soon.

Peter Galuszka

MWAA Vindicated in Federal Suit

2011-07-07T20:37:00.006-05:00

A lawsuit seeking to block the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority from assessing tolls on the Dulles Toll Road has been dismissed by Anthony J. Trenga, United States District Judge in Alexandria. The judge ruled against the plaintiffs in all important particulars. Details to come tomorrow.

I so unhappy!

Update: I talked to Pat McSweeney, one of the attorneys behind the suit. Trenga's logic was so obviously flawed, McSweeney says, that he thinks there is a good chance that the ruling will be overturned in higher court. The plaintiffs expect to appeal the case to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals next week.

Abolish MWAA, Return Dulles Toll Road to the State, Says Radtke

2011-07-07T10:06:00.008-05:00

Someone is finally going to bat for the much-abused users of the Dulles Toll Road. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-10th, took the first step by introducing legislation that would increase Virginia's representation on the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA), which oversees the toll road, and make it easier to replace directors serving on the board. But that's a half measure, argues Jamie Radtke, Republican candidate for Jim Webb's U.S. Senate seat.

If she were elected, Radtke announced today, she would introduce a bill that would: (1) Abolish MWAA, (2) return the Dulles Toll Road to the Commonwealth of Virginia, and (3) give the commonwealth the option to manage Dulles International airport, Reagan National Airport, the Dulles airport access highway and construction of the Rail-to-Dulles Metrorail project.

The issue is all about accountability, says Radtke. MWAA, created by federal legislation in 1986, is governed by board members from Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. Wolf's legislation would increase Virginians' representation from a minority to a majority. But Radtke contends that Maryland and D.C., shouldn't have any representation over decisions affecting users of the Dulles Toll Road. The lack of accountability to Virginians or their elected representatives, she said in a prepared statement, is "unacceptable and unconstitutional."

In 2005, Gov. Tim Kaine sealed an agreement in which MWAA would take over management of the Rail-to-Dulles project along with the Dulles Toll Road, which would be tapped to help pay for the project. In January 2006, Phase 1 of the metrorail project was projected to cost $1.8 billion. Sixteen months later, the estimated cost had risen to $2.8 billion and it was decided that Dulles Toll Road users would pay the extra $1 billion. Meanwhile, the cost of Phase 2 escalated by more than $1 billion, no thanks to MWAA board decisions to build an expensive underground rail station and to mandate the use of union labor. At present, toll roads are the only available revenue source to cover that overrun.

MWAA consultants have warned that Dulles Toll Road users, who currently pay a top charge of $4 for a round trip, could be paying $40 (that's not a typo) for a round trip by 2040. "This mismanagement has the potential for devastating financial repercussions on Northern Virginia residents and businesses," said Radtke. "Virginians are paying hundreds of millions of dollars in additional costs incurred by MWAA, but these decisions are being made by a board where a majority of the members are non-Virginians."

Characterizing the MWAA experiment as a "financial disaster" for Virginians, Radtke blasted Kaine for giving MWAA "unfettered power and control" over the toll road and its revenues without General Assembly or Congressional approval.

Abolishing MWAA might strike some as using a sledge hammer to drive home a nail. Sure, the state should take back control of Rail-to-Dulles and the Dulles Toll Road, but what's wrong with having an independent airports authority? Here's the problem: Once the state has contractually committed to giving MWAA control of the rail project and the toll road, it can't readily back out. The only solution, then, is abolishing MWAA through federal legislation.Think of MWAA as collateral damage.

Radtke's proposal would not require the state to take control of Dulles and Reagan airports, only give it the option to. If the state chooses not to exercise the option, the airports presumably could refashion an independent authority to do what MWAA was doing before it got entangled in the Rail-to-Dulles project.

The Wonk Salon, July 7, 2011

2011-07-07T09:24:00.008-05:00

Stalemate in the War on Poverty
Brookings Institution
Forty-seven years and trillions of dollars later, Americans haven't come close to winning the war on poverty. Unemployment, low wages, dissolving families, mediocre education and an influx of ill-educated immigrants keep poverty rates high.

Want Better Schools? Deal with the Bad Teachers
Hoover Institution
Replacing the worst 5% to 10% of school teachers would dramatically lift educational the achievement level of American students.

Let States Opt Out of the Dysfunctional Highway Trust Fund
Heritage Foundation
Let states opt out of the federal highway trust fund, from which a third of the revenue is pillaged for non-road projects, and hand over the money in a block grant.

The Impact of Job Losses on Student Achievement
National Bureau of Economic Research
When you're rating school systems by their ability to show Adequate Yearly Progress under No Child Left Behind, just remember that high unemployment among parents and in the community has a deleterious effect on student achievement.

Tort Reform Won't Halt Rising Health Care Costs
Century Foundation
Conservative arguments that capping awards on medical malpractice lawsuits can contain health care costs are totally bogus.

Time to Get Cracking on Setting up Health Care Exchanges
Center for American Progress
Obamacare requires states to set up health care exchanges by 2014, or Uncle Sam will do the job for them. States have a lot to think about before they get started.

The Wonk Salon, July 6, 2011

2011-07-06T10:04:00.009-05:00

Kentucky Medicaid: Expensive and Ineffective
Bluegrass Institute
Obamacare will suck people people out of private health plans and accelerate the rising cost of Medicaid. Program incentives thwart sound medical practice, and participants show little improvement in their health.

Maternity Leave Has Little Impact on Childrens' Cognitive Development
National Bureau of Economic Research
Paid maternity leave is often justified on the grounds that stay-at-home moms foster babies' cognitive development. Turns out that, at least among Canadians, that's not true.

Cut Driving to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions and End Oil Imports
World Resources Institute
In 2008 transportation accounted for 71% of U.S. oil consumption and 31% of carbon dioxide emissions. Transportation spending should be targeted to projects that reduce both.

Making Transit-Oriented Development Equitable and Inclusive
Urban Land Institute
Transit-Oriented Development is a glorious thing but planners must take care not to price out the poor.

Meeting the Infrastructure Challenge
Urban Land Institute
The United States lags its global competition in investing in the infrastructure needed to support economic prosperity. Among the recommendations: Maintain what you've got, prioritize gateway regions, and institute user fees to generate sustainable revenue streams.

Most Local Government Pension Plans in Better Shape than State Funds
Center for Retirement Research
Despite some prominent exceptions, local governments are doing a better job overall than state governments in keeping their employee pension funds in sound actuarial condition.

Stop Shortchanging Road Maintenance!

2011-07-05T10:28:00.007-05:00

The General Assembly had the right idea in 2007 when it passed legislation to enable Virginia's urban counties to take over responsibility for secondary roads from the Virginia Department of Transportation. Accountability for road-building decisions should be seated at the same level of government as accountability for land use decisions.

But as Jonathan Gifford, a public policy professor at George Mason University, explained in a report to Transportation Secretary Sean T. Connaughton, there was one little problem: There weren't any takers. "County officials," he wrote, generally agreed that state payments, as currently set under the Virginia Code, will not cover all the costs of a local road program for maintaining secondary roads."

Gifford then explored a range of options for secondary road policy, from sticking to the current policy, which effectively means doing nothing, to raising budgetary allowances for secondary roads, implementing performance-based maintenance contracting, empowering localities to raise revenues and imposing devolution upon the counties.

Ultimately, it all boils down to money. There's not enough of it, and county supervisors don't want to impose new taxes upon their citizenry. What's the solution? Here's my proposal. VDOT should jack up maintenance payments to levels that approximate costs. Where does VDOT get the money? By fully funding its maintenance budget, even if it means sacrificing new road construction.

Remember, the state's top should be to maintain the existing road network. Allowing the system to deteriorate will not save money -- it will only postpone expenditures. Because roadways deteriorate at an exponential rate over time, the postponed expenses will increase exponentially over time. Such a policy is incredibly short-sighted and stupid.

How, then, do we fund new construction? Through mechanisms like tolls, time-of-day pricing, tax increment financing and a Vehicle Miles Driven tax in which the users (drivers) and beneficiaries (property owners) of roadway improvements are the ones who pay for new infrastructure, not the general public. For details, I refer the reader to any number of past articles and blog posts.

The Wonk Salon, July 5, 2011

2011-07-05T10:13:00.004-05:00

The Disconnect Between Government Supply and Private Demand in Highway Infrastructure
Heritage Foundation
The private sector manufactures cars; there is no shortage of cars. The public sector owns and operates most transportation infrastructure; there is a chronic shortage of roads, highways and bridges. Connect the dots.

Public-Private Finance Tools for Energy Efficiency
World Resources Institute
Financing has long been a barrier to investment in energy-conservation projects, but a variety of public-private financing tools can help unlock capital flows.

Planters, Merchants, Speculators, Rebels

2011-07-04T07:14:00.011-05:00

Upon the 4th of July, one's thoughts naturally turn to the founders of this great country who risked everything to protect their liberties. As 21st-century Americans, we look back upon the people and events of 1776 from a vantage point that views the struggle for independence as entirely natural. Of course Americans wanted their freedom! What else would we expect?

In chronicling the American Revolution, historians tend to focus on the causes of the rift between the colonies and England. As a consequence, they dwell upon the factors that separated us. Overlooked in such a perspective are the ties that bound us to the mother country. I have a new-found sense of those links from reading "The Fabulous History of the Dismal Swamp Company."

Author Charles Royster follows the fortunes of the men who in 1767 founded the Dismal Swamp Company. Investors included George Washington, William Byrd and several lesser-known though no less fascinating personalities. The purpose of the venture was to drain the swamp and create land that could be sold to settlers. The enterprise floundered from the lack of strong on-the-spot management and never succeeded in its primary aim, but it did manage to cut and sell a lot of timber. Tangible remains of the company can be seen in the Dismal Swamp Canal, which has since been incorporated into the Intracoastal Waterway.

The commerce between the colonies and mother country was lively. Ambitious young Englishmen came to the colonies to make their fortunes, then returned to live a more cosmopolitan life in London. English financiers and merchants extended large amounts of credit to Virginia planters. The planters, while aspiring to aristocratic lifestyles and often living beyond their means, were far a far more entrepreneurial bunch than I had imagined. Tobacco cultivation was merely a sideline for many. Investors in the Dismal Swamp company also were merchants and land speculators. (George Washington was one of the great land speculators of American history.) They would pursue profit wherever it took them, be it growing wheat and hemp, cutting timber, mining iron or shipping produce to the West Indies sugar plantations.

Business was organized around a nexus of trade and credit built upon relations of trust. Economically and financially, Virginia spun in the orbit of London. The planters, always financially overextended, were beholden to the bankers, lenders and insurers in the great metropolis. One of those described in the book was Anthony Bacon (no relation), a ship's captain turned colonial investor and arms contractor to the English government. Just as Bacon had his agents in Virginia to look after his interests, Virginians had their agents in London. In the world of business, Virginia and England were joined at the hip.

In 1776 the Virginia signers of the Declaration of Independence risked everything. As modern-day pundits commonly observe in their obligatory July 4th columns, the revolutionaries put their property, their lives, their sacred honor, at risk. Less commonly recognized are the mundane risks they took. In war, their goods would be shut out of English markets. Their ships would be subject to seizure. Their lines of credit would be cut off. Vital business relationships would be severed. Their livelihoods would be put in jeopardy. Yet they rebelled anyway.

As we celebrate our independence with hotdogs and fireworks, we would do well to remember the men and women who, however short they fall from our 21st-century ideals, risked much so we could enjoy our freedoms.

Broadband: Who's Got It, and Who Doesn't

2011-07-03T13:21:00.006-05:00

The state Office of Telework Promotion and Broadband Assistance has published a map showing broadband penetration in Virginia. There is a broadband "gap," as one would expect. But I would argue that it's nothing to worry about -- a gap exists only because the bar for what constitutes cutting-edge broadband service is always getting raised.

Personal cell phone coverage blankets nearly the entire state. Even the most lightly populated counties in the the Old Dominion have pockets of cell phone coverage. Broadband wireline is a little patchier but nearly every community of any size is connected. The gap today is between those who have access to "advanced" wireless mobile broadband and those who don't. That service is still limited, for the most part, to the state's largest metro areas. (Click on map for more legible image.)

But never fear. If the past is prologue, the telecom companies will first penetrate the densest most populated markets because that's where the biggest revenue gains and profit margins are. Then they will move into smaller communities. To ask them to do otherwise would be foolhardy. It's the cash generated by the early investments that make possible to make the later investments. Living in the countryside has its advantages and disadvantages. You get to see the stars at night. But, then, you have to wait for access to the latest broadband technology.

Virginia Secondary Roads -- Bad and Getting Worse, with No Remedy in Sight

2011-07-03T08:49:00.005-05:00

Strap on your seat belts, folks, it's going to be a wild ride. The condition of Virginia's secondary road system is deteriorating. State funding available for road maintenance is shrinking. And not a single county has accepted the option to take over responsibility for their own secondary roads because they are worried that the state won't provide them enough money to do the job.

Those are among the conclusions of a new report commissioned by Secretary of Transportation Sean T. Connaughton and authored by Jonathan L. Gifford with the George Mason University School of Public Policy, "Policy Options for Secondary Road Construction and Management in the Commonwealth of Virginia."

A defining characteristic of Virginia's road system is that it is overwhelmingly controlled by the state. The state owns 94.62% of all "rural" (non-urban) roads, the highest percentage in the country. Secondary roads comprise nearly four-fifths (78%) of all lane miles maintained by the Virginia Department of Transportation. Only West Virginia, Delaware and North Carolina are remotely close. By contrast, the state of New Jersey owns only 6.23% of rural roads.

There are two very big problems with the current arrangement. First, there is a disconnect between land use planning at the county/city level and transportation planning by VDOT. As Gifford writes, "There is a large and growing recognition that successful development is inextricably tied to transportation facilities and services at every spatial scale, from the parcel level, to the block level, to the neighborhood level, to the corridor level, to the regional level."

The transportation and urban design community is increasingly focused on street design and traffic operations that accommodate a wide range of users, including not only motorists and trucks, but also pedestrians of all ages and levels of able-bodiedness, cyclists, and transit. "Complete Streets," as they are sometimes called, involve a complex set of design elements, including pro visions for parking, bicycle lanes, transit stops and stations, sidewalks, street furniture and other appurtenances.

Legislators tried to address the disconnect during the Kaine administration through new regulations for accepting of new secondary streets into the state system, managing access (curb cuts, driveways) to state roads, and requiring VDOT review of traffic impact for major rezoning and redevelopment plans. But some local governments and developers regard the added layer of review as needlessly intrusive and time-consuming.

The second very big problem is VDOT's inability to properly maintain the roads. With each passing year, revenue from the gasoline tax becomes less and less adequate to pay for maintenance and new construction. Although Virginia supposedly prioritizes maintenance, funding for secondary road maintenance has dropped over the past six years from $483 million in FY 2007 to $345 million in FY 2011.

The consequence has been deteriorating road conditions. Between 2007 and 2009, Gifford says, "the prevalence of deficient pavement on the secondary system increased from 25% to 31% -- that's just two years. In some districts, the pavement deficiency rate approaches 50%. VDOT estimates total needs for secondary pavements of $1.3 billion.

Now, here's the part that should scare everyone. As the condition of roadway assets deteriorates, the cost of returning them to a state of good repair increases exponentially. "The basic science of pavement deterioration recognizes that the cost of restoring a pavement to a state of good repair rises rapidly as the pavement deteriorates," Gifford writes. "Poor pavements also impose a social cost on users in the form of discomfort, increased vehicle operating and repair costs, and compromised safety."

The longer we delay repairs, the more expensive they will get. One day we will rue our short-sightedness.

It makes economic sense to turn over responsibility of the secondary road system to county governments, which can then prioritize road improvements to mesh with their land use plans and supplement with local funds. But that's a losing proposition politically. In 2007 the General Assembly passed a law that would allow several higher-density counties to establish Urban Transportation Service Districts that would allow them to assume maintenance and operation of the roadway network within the district. So far, there have been no takers. No one had faith that VDOT would be able to pay them sufficiently to offset their costs.

Clearly, the status quo is a mess. Gifford advances a range of options for rectifying these problems, which I hope to discuss in a future post.

The Wonk Salon, July 2, 2011

2011-07-02T14:26:00.003-05:00

A Decade of Change in Virginia's Population
The Virginia Newsletter
Northern Virginia dominated state population growth in the 2000s while many non-metro localities lost population. Racial minorities, Asians and Hispanics especially, gained population share.

California Enacts "Amazon" Tax on Online Sales
Tax Foundation
California is the latest of seven states to tax sales of in-state affiliates of online retailers. If its experience follows that of the first six states, the Golden State won't yield much gelt -- just chase business away.

How to Succeed in Economic Development: Create a Positive Business Climate

2011-07-01T12:15:00.011-05:00

Anyone who still equates economic development with recruitment of manufacturing investment ought to read a new report by the Brookings Institution, "Responding to Manufacturing Job Less: What Can Economic Development Policy Do?"

The report takes a close-up look at eight metropolitan areas -- Charlotte, Cleveland, Grand Rapids, Hartford, Indianapolis, Louisville, Rochester and Scranton -- over the period of 1980 to 2005 to see what policies and strategies the regional leaderships adopted in the wake of manufacturing job loss. The conclusion is not terribly comforting. While some initiatives might have perked up investment in particular manufacturing sectors, few of the policies pursued appeared to change a region's economic trajectory.

Louisville's airport expansion in the 1980s and Indianapolis' strategy to boost amateur athletics did shape economic growth in those two regions but the impact of most other initiatives was too limited to affect metropolitan regional economies. What seemed to have the most impact was (a) successful business strategies of major corporations and (b) basic economic characteristics of the region, such as access to transportation, quality of the labor force, state business regulations and the like.

A logical conclusion of the Brookings report is that regional civic and political leaders are better off focusing on economic fundamentals than pursuing the economic development chimera of the day, be it semiconductors (the 1990s), biotech (the 2000s) or green energy (the 2010s). Local leaders are not very good at predicting what hot company in their region will take off, creating a new ecosystem of vendors, partners and buyers in its orbit. Rather than picking winners and losers, they should create an all-around business climate in which a wide array of industries can succeed.

That happens to be something that Virginia is good at. In the latest CNBC ranking of the Top States for Business, the Old Dominion scored No. 1, edging out Texas, which had snagged the top spot last year. CNBC bases its rankings on the basis of cost of doing business, workforce, quality of life, infrastructure, economy, education, technology and innovation, business friendliness, access to capital and cost of living. Virginia moved up this year thanks to improvements in the tax burden, education and cost of doing business. (It lost ground in quality of life, due mainly to an increase in the percentage of uninsured.)

States CNBC: "Virginia did what it does best -- and has done in each year of our study: It turned in a solid all-around performance, with top ten finishes in five categories." Virginia's metropolitan regions could benefit from the same philosophy.

The Wonk Salon, July 1, 2011

2011-07-01T10:59:00.006-05:00

Time for the MWATA Board to Look in the Mirror
Government Accountability Office
The Metropolitan Washington Area Transit Authority needs to proceed with its proposed self-evaluation. The hoped-for result: A stronger focus on strategic planning and less time spent micro-managing the organization.

New York's Middle Class Under Attack
Demos, Drum Major Institute
New York's rich are getting richer. The middle class is shrinking. Mind-blowing statistic: The top 1% of New York City's income earners make 44% of the income.

CHIP Children Have Hard Time Getting Physician Referrals
Government Accountability Office
Eighty-three percent of primary care physicians have CHIP-funded children enrolled as patients. But only 78% accept new CHIP patients. And only 47% of specialists take new CHIP patients.

Minority Districts Make Congress More Liberal, Not Less
National Bureau of Economic Research
Forget the conventional wisdom: Creating majority-minority districts, both for blacks and Hispanics, makes states' congressional districts more liberal.

Race to the Top Needs to Share Best Practices
Government Accountability Office
The Obama administration invested $4 billion in 12 Race-to-the-Top initiatives. It would be a good idea for participating states to share best practices with each other and non-participating states as well.

U.S. Needs to Train More Electrical Workers
National Commission on Energy Policy
An estimated one-third of the 400,000 employees of the nation's electric power sector will retire in the next 10 years, and another 60,000 will be needed for renewable energy sources. A concerted effort is required to educate and train the workforce of the future.

New Jersey Wind Initiative Will Cost Billions
Beacon Hill Institute
New Jersey's Offshore Wind Economic Development Act aims to build 1,100 MW of generating capacity from offshore wind power. This study concludes that the net cost (cost, not benefit) to New Jersey will be $3.2 billion.

Not "Virginian" Enough? Dial Buford

2011-06-30T15:14:00.005-05:00

How do you make a company seem more "Virginian?" One way could be to hire an old-school, molasses-voiced, aristocracy wannabee who likes to wear bow ties and runs a Richmond brokerage.

The problem is that Virginia Uranium, the Chatham-area company, wants the General Assembly to get rid of a two-decades-old moratorium on uranium mining so they can exploit the radioactive mineral's wealth found underneath two farms owned by the principals of the firm. The chairman is Walter Coles Sr., a former Agency for International Development official who recently gained notoriety by taking a dozen or so legislators on an expenses-paid trip to visit Paris and an abandoned uranium mine also in France.

Virginia Uranium, however, has been absorbed by a Canadian firm that used to be called Santoy Resources and has the new moniker, after its 2009 merger, of Virginia Energy Resources. So, it's "Virginia" this and "Virginia" that for a firm that is actually based in Vancouver, British Columbia, 3,000 miles away and whose stock is traded on the Toronto bourse, not in the
U.S.

This is embarrassing because the Coles and their ilk are promoting the uranium mining plan as "Virginian." Opponents to the mining, who fear it will ruin the rolling hills of Southside and the water supplies of several Tidewater cities, like to point that out.

What to do? Call in S. Buford Scott, according to Richmond Times Dispatch columnist Jeff Schapiro. Scott, the chairman of the Richmond brokerage of Scott & Stringfellow, is apparently recruiting high-asset investors in this state to pony up at least $25,000 each to help with the mining effort. The goal is $2.4 million and to use these anonymous investors to lobby the
General Assembly behind closed doors and, of course, anonymously, to lift the uranium ban, according to Schapiro.

I was curious about the Canadian background aspect, so I called up Tony Perri, the investor relations man of Virginia Energy Resources in Vancouver. Perri was pleasant. His voice has a Canadian lilt and not a "Virginia" drawl. He told me that the firm has raised about $17 million. He works out of an office with just a few people. They are trying to get some uranium mining started in Canada, too. Why Vancouver? "Because it's the home of thousands of publicly-traded mining companies," he says. Publicly-traded in Canada, that is.

Virginia Energy Resources's stock symbol is "VAE" and the stock was going for about 17 cents (Canadian) today. Back in 2007, when global uranium prices were skyrocketing and the plan was hatched, the stock, then that of Santoy, was around $8 a share (Canadian).

So one can see why there's still another reason to drum up Old Dominion investors -- the recent nuclear disaster in Japan, coupled by Germany's decision to shut down its nuclear reactors in the future has gutted the world market for uranium. In Virginia, France's Areva nuclear service firm will not be hiring hundreds of workers in Newport News as planned and Dominion still is nowhere on plans for a third reactor at its North Anna plant.

It could be that S. Buford Scott's investors could lose their shirts. Could be. But using Old Money Virginians to work behind the scenes to push this questionable and possibly environmentally disastrous project stinks just as much as the freebee trips to Paris. And it's all so "Virginian."

Peter Galuszka

The Renaissance in Inter-City Buses

2011-06-30T12:30:00.007-05:00

Given all the bad news about safety problems with the Chinatown buses and all the billions of dollars being pumped into high-speed rail projects, you might be tempted to conclude that it's just a matter of time before inter-city buses become as extinct as chariots. And you'd be wrong. Inter-city buses are undergoing a renaissance -- and with virtually no assistance from the government. Indeed, one gets the impression from reading Randal O'Toole's new paper, "Inter-city Buses: The Forgotten Mode," that they represent the future of inter-city transport.

Until 2006, it did appear that inter-city buses were going the way of the stage coach. That year, scheduled, inter-city traffic reached a nadir not seen in decades. Transportation planners had all but written off inter-city bus travel as a viable transportation mode.

Then something remarkable happened: an entrepreneurial revolution transformed the stodgy old business. The old inter-city bus model, epitomized by Greyhound and Trailways, required people to visit central bus "stations," akin to train stations, where they would buy a ticket and wait for their bus. The system required a lot of overhead. Today, upstart bus lines allow passengers to book and pay over the Internet, and they provide curbside loading and unloading. Furthermore, bus lines differentiate themselves by price: If you want cheap transportation with no frills, you can get it. If you are willing to pay more for bigger seats, leather upholstery, Internet connectivity and even meals and drinks, you can get it. Inter-city buses now appeal to a broader audience than ever before.

As O'Toole describes it, the entrepreneurial vitality came from two sources, both from abroad. In 1998, a Chinese immigrant named Pei Lin Liang began offering bus rides between the Chinatowns in Boston and New York for $25. The business boomed and before long the Fung Wah (Magnificent Wind) bus line was providing seven trips daily. Competition grew as tour bus operators, many of Chinese heritage, crowded into the business. The rivalry got so fierce that a Chinatown bus war, complete with vandalism and two deaths, broke out.

Meanwhile, across the pond, the United Kingdom had privatized and deregulated the government-owned bus service. Those moves lead to the creation of dozens of bus companies, which consolidated under the names of FirstGroup and Stagecoach. In 2006, Stagecoach established a U.S. presence and began expanding service.

Buses have no trouble competing with government-subsidized Amtrak. Many bus lines charge lower fares (although those that provide superior comfort and service might charge more), their trips take no longer than high-speed rail for the most part, and bus lines offer a wide variety of pick-up and drop-off points. Between 2007 and 2010, inter-city bus travel increased by 27%.

I would like to report that bus entrepreneurs accomplished all this with no government assistance whatsoever. That's not quite true. Bus lines benefit from a lower fuel tax than automobiles (which means they still pay more taxes than Amtrak) as well as federal grants to help them comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act -- equivalent to about $17 million a year. But that's about one one-hundredth of the money dumped into Amtrak, O'Toole says.

The one downside of the buses is safety. Most bus companies have an exemplary safety record, and inter-city bus travel compares favorably with automobile and rail traffic. But a number of high-profile crashes involving the Chinatown buses -- see the Gooze's treatment of this issue in an earlier post -- suggest that tighter enforcement of existing safety rules is in order.

If state, local and federal government wanted to help this transportation mode, which pays its own way and contributes less per passenger-mile to greenhouse gas emissions than either automobiles or trains, they don't need to throw around a lot of money. What they need to do is get out of the way. O'Toole suggests ending Amtrak and high-speed rail subsidies. He also suggests that cities could encourage more bus competition by leasing curbside locations for loading and unloading passengers. (As much as I would like to see inter-city buses flourish, I would end the gasoline tax break. Put all transportation modes on a level playing field!!)

The big takeaway here is what an entrepreneurial revolution can accomplish. If we want to end the dominance of what EMR calls the "autonomobile," we need to systematically evict government from the shared ridership business, chase out the social engineers, end monopolies and franchises, and turn the entrepreneurs loose. If governments would only stick to the one thing it does well, setting and enforcing safety standards, shared ridership in Virginia, and America, would flourish.

The Wonk Salon, June 30, 2011

2011-06-30T11:28:00.004-05:00

State Budget Cuts Slow Economic Recovery
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
State and local governments have slashed payroll by 535,000 since the beginning of the recession. The loss of jobs, combined with cuts to vendors and nonprofits, has slowed the economic recovery.

The Lake Wobegon Effect: All Schools Are Above Average
Demos
Americans have a dim view of the quality of the nation's schools. But more than three out of four think that their child's school is just dandy.

Teacher Bonuses Work in North Carolina
American Enterprise Institute
North Carolina's teacher work-for-performance program delivers more bang for the buck than reduced class sizes and most other nostrums for improving education.

The Age Wave Is Coming

2011-06-30T09:04:00.010-05:00

The nation's population is aging, as everyone knows. But it is aging at an uneven pace, reports a new Brookings Institution study, "The Uneven Aging and 'Younging' of America." In 36 of the 100 largest metro areas the population below the age of 45 declined between 2000 and 2010. But in 29 metro areas, the under-45 population grew by 10% or more.

Even though retirees continue to migrate in large numbers to the Sunbelt, most prefer to "age in place," meaning that they don't move anywhere. The people most likely to move are young. As a result, the areas areas with the greatest concentration of seniors are located primarily in Florida, the Northeast and the Midwest. The areas most likely to see gains in the number of young people are in the South (including Florida) and the West.

Virginia saw fairly rapid growth in the over-45 population -- in the 25% to 33% range. And it saw modest growth in the under-45 population, in the 0% to 5% range. (Click on map to see a national comparison.)

As my former colleagues at the Boomer Project like to remind us, the age wave is coming -- and Virginia is ill prepared. Unless the topic is pensions or entitlements, there is zero discussion of age wave-related issues in Virginia political campaigns. Fortunately, the Older Dominion Project, a public-private consortium, is doing yeoman's work to highlight the issues.

One of the questions asked in a recent statewide survey is whether Virginia's transportation systems will become "age ready." Currently, one in seven drivers is 65 or older. By 2030, the number will be one in four. As people age, their sight and hearing increasingly fail them and they process information more slowly. Safety analysts predict that by 2030, when all Boomers have turned 65, they could be responsible for 25% of all fatal crashes. What will seniors do when the keys are taken away?

About 10% of the 65-and-over population, or 90,000 Virginians, report that lack of transportation made it difficult or impossible to conduct one or more daily tasks listed to the left during the past month.

How will seniors get around? Will we have made our roads easier for seniors to navigate? Will we have built more walkable communities? Or will seniors have to depend increasingly upon neighbors, churches and social services to perform basic daily tasks?

Bioenergy Villages in Virginia? No way.

2011-06-28T10:08:00.006-05:00

As a follow-up to EMR's post, "Job Creation in the Countryside," which highlighted how German villages are adapting to contemporary economic challenges, I would point readers to a Wall Street Journal article, "In Bioenergy Villages, Power to the People."

Dozens of villages across Germany have begun generating their own heat and electricity from biofuels such as liquid manure, wood and locally grown energy crops. "We don't want to be getting 3,050 liters of oil off some ship from Saudi Arabia," one villager told the Journal. This way, "the money stays here in the community."

In Oberrosphe, villagers voted that residents would pay a flat rate of €6,000 (about $8,500) to link to the new heating grid. While the central government did subsidize the project by €1 million, the villagers came up with the rest. They estimate they will save €400 to €500 annually on heating costs, and even more when oil-heater maintenance costs are included. As a bonus, the village makes €1.1 million annually by selling electricity from the solar panels atop the wood-chip burner back to the local power grid.

Buried in the article is a key point: German villages can consider communal projects like this because the buildings are clustered close together. Thanks to the density and compactness of development within a clear edge, these urban enclaves (to borrow EMR terminology) can connect every residence to the heating system at relatively modest expense.

Given differentials in energy costs, it's not clear that small bioenergy plants would make sense in the United States. Unfortunately, Virginians in the countryside will never get a chance to evaluate the potential. Because they live in scattered residences with nothing resembling a clear edge, the high cost of creating a collective bioenergy facility is a non-starter.

Likewise, scattered, low-density human settlement patterns in the Virginia countryside make it exceedingly expensive to install and upgrade high-bandwidth Internet connections. And don't get me started about the cost of driving between scattered U.S. countryside locations as opposed to the cost of walking around in compact German villages.

I don't credit the Germans with any special prescience when it comes to their preference for clustering in villages (although I'm guessing that EMR will tell me otherwise), but there can be little doubt that the village form of human habitation, however it arose historically, is superior to the scattered, frontier-farm form of human habitation for purposes of leap-frogging into a globally connected economy. When Virginians think about economic development in the countryside, they need to think about fundamentals like human settlement patterns. If they are unwilling to evolve, I cannot see how they can create viable communities.

(Photo credit: Wall Street Journal.)

Even the WaPo Opposes Mandatory PLA in Rail-to-Dulles

2011-06-28T09:52:00.004-05:00

Wonders never cease. The Washington Post editorial board and I agree on the propriety of mandating a Project Labor Agreement (PLA) for Phase 2 construction of the $3 billion+ Rail-to-Dulles project. In a recent editorial, the WaPo said it was imperative to reign in costs on the heavy rail project, even if that meant constructing and above-ground station at Dulles airport and scrapping the mandatory PLA.

The airports board was pushed to adopt the “project labor agreement” by board member Dennis Martire, who, in his day job, is a senior official in the Laborers’ International Union of North America, which represents hundreds of thousands of construction workers. Mr. Martire had an obvious conflict of interest, as his union would be a direct and major beneficiary from a labor deal. He should have had the common sense to recuse himself from the decision, even if his vote did not technically violate the board’s narrowly drawn ethics policy.

There is serious debate about whether a labor pact would drive up expenses. The airports authority says a similar pact for the project’s first phase, under construction from Falls Church to Reston, has helped contain costs and enhance efficiency by ensuring a steady supply of workers and avoiding labor trouble. But that agreement was adopted voluntarily by the contractor. There are concerns that a mandatory labor agreement for the second phase could dampen competition and drive up costs by discouraging bids from some large contractors, and by imposing cumbersome union rules. In an era of belt-tightening, the airports authority must go the extra mile to ensure that the Silver Line’s construction is managed as frugally as possible.

Now, if we could get the WaPo editorial board to see the light on human settlement patterns, we'd be making real progress!

The Wonk Salon, June 28, 2011

2011-06-28T09:30:00.005-05:00

Drug Courts Do Prevent Crime and Substance Abuse
Urban Institute
Drug courts are effective at reducing substance abuse and preventing crime. They work equally well for most subgroups of the population. Adoption of best practices can make them work even better.

Why Oregon Should Not Cut Its Capital Gains Tax
Oregon Center for Public Policy
The capital gains tax proposed for Oregon is unfair -- the richest 1% would get 65% of the benefit. It wouldn't attract significant capital investment, and Oregon's economy out-performs the nation's anyway. And the state needs the tax revenue.

Wisconsin's Middle Class Under Attack
Demos
As the rich get richer, Wisconsin's middle class is shrinking. Earnings are stagnant and public benefits are threatened. The peoples' strong work ethic and union militancy are signs of hope.

The High Price of Romneycare
Beacon Hill Institute
Five years after Massachusetts passed health reform, it can now be evaluated. The verdict: Health coverage has expanded, costs have shot up by $8.6 billion over the period.