Regional Politics
Apologies and Ramblings
Feb 25th
We have a lot of potential here, but for some reason, our leaders won’t make the best of it. Portland looked just like Norfolk in the 70s. They had blocks of vacant parking lots. New construction was taking place in the Portland suburbs and the central city was decaying. This is where our regions split. Hampton Roads kept spending money on new highways and infrastructure designed to facilitate new suburban construction. Portland, however, fought the idea that unrestrained growth was good for the region. Their biggest concern? That this new growth was destroying vital farmland, forestland, and other open space. They took their concerns to their legislatures and, after much debate, enacted some of the most comprehensive growth control regulations in the country. This accomplished their goal: protecting open spaces. It also had an unintended consequence. It forced growth back into the city. All of the money that would have been spent on suburbs was then available for the city. They opposed new highways and even fought to get some torn down. They used the savings from that to build a first class public transit system. One of the most important aspects of the new Portland was that they came up with a real comprehensive plan and stuck to it. For this reason, Portland is a well run, well designed city.
Back to Hampton Roads. While Portland was engineering a new city, Norfolk decided the best course of action was to tear ours down. Hampton Roads as a whole, spent a fortune building new highways to allow for quick driving to and from the suburbs. While Portland worked and grew as a region, Hampton Roads cities decided to compete against one another. Each city had to fight for its share of new development, for is share of tourists, even for its share of defense dollars. For this reason, we live in a region with a half-dozen “downtowns,” each of them only a fraction of what they could be if they were built as one. We now live in a region with no pattern of employment or housing centers but rather a sprawling mass of congestion. While cities like Portland are the places-to-be amongst todays young people, Hampton Roads is not. Without finding some way to attract new younger residents, our problems will only get worse.
We need to get more forward thinking people in our elected offices from local to state levels. We need to learn from places like Portland and act accordingly. They aren’t perfect, but they still have alot to teach us. Projects like the Southeastern Parkway are a waste of money. New highways only serve to promote new suburbs at the expense of the rest of the region. Positive investments would include a true all-encompassing master plan for the region. This plan would include a well thought out fixed guideway mass transit system like light rail. It would also work to rezone the areas around transit stops to encourage high-density developments. An emphasis should also be put on expanding freight rail to take more trucks off the roads. Above all, Hampton Roads needs to formulate a plan to share revenue between cities, preferably by merging into one jurisdiction. People should not be afraid of a merger. They will still live in the same place. Taxes can even stay the same for each segment of the new city. The goal, however, is to create a region where growth in one part is good for the whole region. It won’t matter if a new tower is but in Downtown Norfolk or at Town Center. The increased tax base will pay for both areas. Once we have a region that can function as a region, we should split our collective economic development money between attracting the relocation of large companies and creating new businesses, preferably start-ups owned by recent graduates of local colleges and universities. The opportunity presented to graduates will encourage them to stay in the area. If they stay, their friends are more likely to stay and/or move to the area.
Hampton Roads can do this. We have to make our leaders know we will accept no less.
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HRBT, US460 Both Get Private Proposals
Oct 30th
HRBT
The HRBT plan calls for a new, four-lane bridge/tunnel from the Peninsula to Norfolk. The existing lanes would be used for westbound traffic. Additionally, the Monitor-Merrimac Bridge Tunnel and the James River Bridge will also receive upgrades. It would cost $4.5 billion and use tolls as high as $6 each way. These tolls would apparently be applied to the HRBT, the MMBT, and the JRB.
While nobody can argue that an expanded HRBT would ease traffic flow, I also do not think that anybody would argue that tolling all three crossings would not hurt our economy. As described, this project would give the Southside a serious disadvantage over the Peninsula. It would also negatively impact what weak regional drive for mass transit that we have. Alternatively, the “Third Crossing” would most certainly benefit our regional economy, even with tolls. Its multi-modal design would take cars and trucks off the road by allowing freight traffic and transit. The HRBT plan is designed simply to make money for those involved. The “Third Crossing” was designed to improve our regional competitiveness in the global economy. Money would still be made in a public-private partnership, but the impacts would be positive for the region.
US 460
Turning US 460 into an interstate-grade highway is a noble goal… if it were 1960. While it would certainly improved travel time to Richmond and aid in evacuations, it would not serve to increase the region’s competitiveness. The 460 project would make the Western Tidewater communities more appealing to industry and business, but at the expense of Norfolk, Virginia Beach, and Chesapeake. The new highway would only serve to expand the sprawl of Richmond towards Hampton Roads. I think it would be fair to define our region as anything within a 45 minutes drive. The US 460 project would make Isle of Wight County a mere 30 minutes away from Petersburg.
The money would be better invested in High Speed Rail. It has already been estimated that if we had true HSR from both Norfolk and Newport News, that we could operate with profits exceeding $30 million a year. That money could pay for a lot of transportation projects. The economic development that HSR would bring would also benefit the entire region, not just the outlying counties.
I am not against public-private partnerships. On the contrary, I think that they can bring much-needed capital to a tight state budget. We do, however, need to spend it wisely, in a way that will allow us to grow our tax base. This way, in the future, we will not have such a tight budget.
ODU Predicts Poor Future for HR
Oct 7th
Regardless, it doesn’t have to be this way. Our various regional entities need to step up and create programs (and capital) that encourage new college graduates to start new businesses in the region. Another program could be created by the region’s universities that would give businesses a monetary incentive to hire new local graduates. That could be combined with a local/state government tax break for companies that hire local graduates for local jobs. These initiatives would solidify a young, educated base that would help our economy stay strong for years to come. Businesses would want to relocate here for the new ideas and opportunities that come with an intelligent, entrepreneurial workforce. It would also step up the appeal for local universities, making them more in-demand and, in turn, making them more likely to get grants/research projects from federal and private sources.
For the jobs themselves, we need to work harder to shift our focus from government-supported to private, developing industries. For example, the proposed project for the former Ford plant is a good step. A mixed-use development, it would be focused around a solar panel factory. There are a number of industries that would be great to focus on. A wind turbine plant would be a great addition to Hampton Roads. A high-tech battery factory would be another great addition that could also increase our appeal for a hybrid car plant of some sort. These jobs would be both industrial manufacturing jobs and jobs that would require high-tech research and development employees.
Once we started landing jobs for some of these new college graduates, more jobs would follow. Despite the widespread belief that my generation is one of moronic, half-educated slackers whose only aspirations are government welfare and tree-hugging, I strongly believe that we are more than that. Current college graduates want things to change for the better. I believe that you can have both environmental protection and free market business. Our biggest barrier to becoming our own economic force is that those currently in charge seem to have no regard for us. Once that changes, once our current leaders see that they should be focused on encouraging the younger generations to take part in the economy, the regional economy will be what we make of it.
Forget $5 Million, Try $1.5 Billion
Sep 24th
VDOT has $5 million extra?
Sep 16th
View
Hampton Roads Third Crossing in a larger map
The biggest question here should not be which road to widen, but how to fund the Third Crossing. The estimated cost of the Third Crossing is nearly $6 billion (adjusted for inflation since 1997). That is obviously not going to be funded by Hampton Roads alone. $6 billion is approximately the same as the all of the Seven Cities’ budgets combined. This is the part where we need to get creative. The only way to get this built is to explore a combination of funding streams. Here is my plan:
First, we need to identify all stakeholders and get contributions. For example, the military will benefit from a Third Crossing, so they should chip in around half a billion dollars. The ports will benefit enormously, so the VA Port Authority should chip in around a billion dollars. The state should definitely chip in close to a billion dollars. The federal government is going to have to supply most of the money, perhaps 2.5 or three billion. The rest is going to have to be made up for with tolls. Of course, a Public-Private partnership could be reached that would allow the state, federal, and port subsidies to be reduced (but not eliminated). A one- or two-cent region-wide sales tax could also help reduce the subsidy from the state.
I know everyone hates tolls and taxes. I do to. However, nothing is free. Like I said, the cost of this project is the total of the budgets for all of the Seven cities. If we rely solely on the state or federal government, it will never get built. As for the HRBT, why waste $2-3 billion to build something that we may not need if we build the Third Crossing
