From the Road to Ruin – Gov. Mark Warner yesterday announced the creation of a Commission on Transportation in Urbanized Areas which will, as the release says, “recommend strategies for better integrating planning and transit options in Virginia’s urbanized areas.” It’s supposed to come up with those recommendations by Dec. 31.It would have been nice if someone from the Charlottesville/Central Virginia region had been selected. We do happen to be one of the biggest North-South bottlenecks in the Commonwealth, for goodness sakes. From now until 31 December, they are supposed to develop viable solutions to Commonwealth and local land use, transportation, growth issues?
Browsing Category Transportation
Belvedere and Wickham Pond
The County has finally approved the latest Neighborhood Model planned development – Belvedere, about which I have previously written. The County’s constant delaying tactics have, due to market forces in my opinion, most likely driven up the prices of these properties, once they get built. WINA and the DP report.What will the impact be of adding up to 775 units to East Rio Road?… In a possible moment of clarity, Supervisor Ken Boyd asked, ““Just how far ahead of infrastructure do we want to get with these developments?—
More is better.
Cville Tomorrow notes the MPO’s final report.
APF, Bird Flu
Jim Bacon says:Tim Kaine has gone astray. He’s taken a populist, NIMBY-like position here. The problem in Virginia isn’t “out of control” growth, and the solution isn’t giving local governments the power to nix proposed developments that will generate negative traffic impacts. Kaine’s proposal would simply give local governments power to block projects without enouraging them to make the kinds of positive changes they need to make.APFs are good in a theoretical vacuum; in practice, they simply don’t work.Bird Flu preparations.
Places29 planning continues
From yesterday’s DP article by Jessica Kitchin – A look at old maps of the U.S. 29 corridor north of Charlottesville underscores the amount of development it has undergone in recent years. What was secluded in the 1980s has become a bustling assortment of stoplights, strip malls and parking lots.That urbanization and an intensive effort to better plan the developing areas of the county have led local officials to focus on the often-derided highway.Better late than never. The Places29 project continues in the same vein as the Crozet Master Plan and the equally belated Pantops Master Plan. From the same article – “The Places29 study is really a flagship model for a comprehensive approach that incorporates transportation and land-use issues,†said Harrison Rue, executive director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.
Reading today
Regardless, here are a few of what I was reading today.PROPONENTS OF limitless growth in Loudoun County keep inventing new ways to railroad their designs into law. (WashingtonPost) The similarities between Loudon and Central Va are frightening sometimes.A NYTimes eminent domain article showing the merits of eminent domain in some occasions – With local government officials throughout the nation struggling to defend themselves against the storm of criticism unleashed by the Kelo decision, the International Economic Development Council, a professional group based in Washington, cites the Best Buy headquarters to illustrate why eminent domain is sometimes a crucial tool in combating urban decay and sprawl.Another WSJ eminent domain article showing the merits – Situations such as this, rather than those in which people are pushed out of their homes, make up a large percentage of cases in which St…. Louis if the Supreme Court hadn’t upheld eminent-domain rules in its Kelo v. New London decision, Ms. Geisman adds.Study it again!The Albemarle supervisors will join Charlottesville in sharing the cost of a road study…. prior studies show 40% of the Pantops traffic coming into and leaving Charlottesville uses East High Street.Well, golly, that makes sense …
Urban transit and the monorail
This discussion over at Slashdot sheds some light on why the monorail project in Seattle appears to be coming to a crashing halt.Is mass transit economically feasible?… As a result, these cities tended to emphasize a “build up, not out” approach to development resulting in more compact cities realtive to their size.Then came the concept of Suburbia….country living for everyone…. It also means that unless it’s a fairly comprehensive network (even more expensive) it’s ridership will be relatively low.We’re not ready yet to address mass-transit or the requisite land-use policies and issues that are involved. Urban sprawl and all that it entails ensures that urban transit will be expensive, whether using fossil fuels or mass transit.This and this are two of the more interesting parts of the discussion.