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October 11, 2006
Richmond is Taking Us for a Ride
I am going to talk about 2 different transportation issues in this post. First I open with a picture I took of the George Washington statue near the Virginia Capitol.
George is facing to the South, riding on his horse. At this point, I’m going to offer 3 different jokes before I continue.
1 - And yet this statue is not the largest Horses’s Ass in Richmond.
2 – This horse was the last transportation idea that Richmond accepted for us up North.
3 – As George’s transportation goes South, so does all of our money.
Anyways. Northern Virginia is the wealthiest part of this state. We send a lot of money down to Richmond. We even offered to levy a small tax upon ourselves in order to pay for things that we desperately need – like road improvements, and mass transit! No cost to the rest of the state! And what do these anti-tax Grover Norquist jackass Republican legislators from other part of the state do? They say they won’t let us raise taxes so that we can build more roads because of some bullshit principle! Governor Kaine keeps calling them back, and they keep on being obstructionist to real progress. The State Senate is on our side! Everyone in Virginia is on our side – except for these ideological morons in the House of Delegates!
The next time you’re sitting in traffic in the Washington area, think about House Speaker William J. Howell, a Stafford Republican. And then think about how if we keep sending Republicans to the State House, Howell will remain the speaker.
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I’m rather surprised I said nothing about the Tysons tunnel/el issue. As a policy wonk (see above) as well as a train nerd (please see posts regarding the differences between the Alstrom 6000 Series Metro Cars and the CAF 5000 Series Cars) it’s amazing that I failed to chime in. Well – now that it’s been pretty much decided, I open my mouth! Nothing quite like being fashionably late.
It is absolutely stupid that the state was backed into the corner on the tunnel issue. The Tysons tunnel would’ve paid many long term dividends, and contributed to a well developed corridor. The el isn’t as bad as some are making it out to be – checkout the Loop in Chicago or the BART in San Francisco.
I read Zack Schrag’s Book “The Great Society Subway” which is a history of the Metro. And yes he’s a Professor at Mason (and I hope to take his history of DC class at some point) . Anyways, Schrag points out in the book that the goal of Metro's designer wasn't to lowbid everything - they wanted to do it right.
And yet, even with the potential for outside money for the tunnel that reduces the overall taxpayers costs of the project, because the price tag rises it all of a sudden it doesn't meet some kind of arbitrary "cost effectiveness" metric. But this metric is flawed - it doesn't account for the differences in potential economic development, nor does it consider costs over time.
Governor Kaine was faced with a very difficult choice - try to build it right and risk have it not be built at all, or have build it flawed but guarantee it will be built. While it is the wrong decision for Tysons corner, it was the right decision for Governor Kaine - for far too long the Dulles corridor has been choking on the products of its own success. The Governor understands that the Silver Line must be built.
That said - it's not like this isn't still rapid transit. The Metro coming through Tysons and Reston will still be a major boon to the area. It will pull thousands of cars off the road and will still contribute to Tysons being a walkable downtown. Take a look at the Silver Spring stop on the Red Line.
In this case, a flawed approach is better than no approach at all.
Posted by MikeSager at October 11, 2006 3:00 PM
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Comments
You should note that in the old days, before the State Pen was moved out of Richmond, the joke was that Washington's statue faces the General Assembly building, but is pointing in the direction of the State Prison.
Posted by: Bwana at October 25, 2006 12:57 PM
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