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

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.

• $257,700,000 – Debt Service
• +$405,100,000 – Support to other agencies and administration
• +$306,700,000 – ‘Special financing’ and earmarks
• =$969,500,000 - Does NOT include Road Construction OR Maintenance.

• $656,800,000 – Construction
• +$1,698,000,000 – Maintenance
• =$2,354,800,000 - Maintenance and Construction

So your $900 million in gas tax pays for administrative costs. That means that VDOT needs a 70% subsidy over what gas tax covers. Sure that sounds a little bit better than the 80% subsidy that HRT pulls in, but think about this: HRT’s 80% subsidy equals roughly $60 million while VDOT’s 70% subsidy equals $3.3 billion. Also, VDOT is not the only maintainer of roadways. Each city in Hampton Roads pays for some of their roads and the feds kick in the rest. I would venture to guess that the subsidies’ true cost are nearly equal. Let’s move on. Once you get past the negative aspects of the Pilot’s article, you get to this:

Two scenarios could change the cost/benefit ratio: if gas prices rise enough to move commuters from their cars to light rail; and if the rail is expanded to reach more people.

So here is this economist, the same one who just said that the cost was not justifiable, saying that if the system were expanded or if more people used it, the cost would be easier to swallow.  OK. As an economist, I am sure that he would agree that the first part should include all commuter costs, not just fuel cost. Right? If the total cost of operating a motor vehicle increases, then people will start to move from cars to transit. As part of the State of the Region article, the Pilot wrote:

Long standing transportation problems also make the region less attractive to businesses and the military, Koch said. [...] Road improvements, he said, will demand higher gas tax and steep tolls.

As part of his predictions of the future, he acknowledges that the cost of commuting will be higher in the future if we want to fix our transportations shortcomings. Since our transportation problems are a direct result of our region’s lack of planning and cooperation, I would also assume that he would agree that we need to start today if we want to have any chance of improving our outlook. That would be where light rail comes in. We have to built a regional mass transit system because, in the long run, it will be more effective than building roads. If you had asked me 20 years ago (or asked someone else, since I was 3 year old twenty years ago) I would have agreed that roadways were more effective. Gas was cheap. Road construction was (relatively) cheap. Now, however, we can see that there is an end to that. There will be no more cheap gas. It is on an uphill trend. The second game-changing scenario was that the cost would be more acceptable if it were expanded to reach more people. Is that not in the works? We could never afford to build a multi-billion-dollar system all at once. It has to be built in stages. In the end, despite the Pilot’s attempt at more anti-light rail news, I think that, when read into, it is actually quite positive. The Pilot itself wrote that this economist said that if there were more people and higher commuter costs, than light rail would be more cost efficient. Since we should all be able to agree that those two scenarios are approaching, then we should also agree that, while expensive at first, light rial will be more cost-effective than roads as we enter the future.

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.

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

I will start at the end and work back. While the soccer stadium and the TPC course might not have brought their positive effects to fruition for Virginia Beach, Norfolk’s Nauticus and Waterside have, overall, been successful. Over the past two years, for example, did you know that according to the city, Nauticus has operated at a slight profit. Its certainly not a windfall but black ink is black ink. The more important effects of Nauticus include the 300,000+ visitors it receives annually. Those people do not fall out of the sky, visit Nauticus, and the get sucked back to some heavenly origins. They spend time Downtown. They pay for parking. They purchase meals at Downtown eateries. The patronize MacArthur Center. Even if  they only spend one day Downtown, they certainly spend more than the $12 admission fee. Now for Waterside. It is true that Waterside is currently a drain on the city. It is true that the city is spending a fortune to keep it operational right now. It is also true, however, that the construction of Waterside was a monumental achievement for the City of Norfolk and it can successfully be argued that without Waterside, Downtown would not be what it is today. I will agree that it needs major renovations for a turn-around. It was not, however, a failure in any sense of the word.

Next, lets look at the subsidies. Yes, public transit in the United States, in general, depends on public subsidies to operate. But wait. Does the entire highway system not depend on the same heavy subsidies? Yes, you pay a gas tax. But does anyone really believe that this tax single-handedly pays for our roads? Of course not. Millions more are tagged for road-related projects from city, state, and federal budgets. Currently, the Tide will cost $45.7 million per mile. Some notable highway projects: Southeastern Parkway – $100 – 121 million/mile, 3rd Crossing – $131 million/mile. Our fuel tax in Virginia is $0.175/gallon. Even if you only got 10 MGP, you would only pay $0.35 for each trip on a road such as the Southeastern Parkway. Each transit trip in Hampton Roads costs $1.50 per passenger. Seems to me that the transit riders pay more out of pocket than the car drivers.

Finally, the part about replacing cars. Light rail (or any new transit system, for that matter), is not created to take current cars off the road. They are built to take future cars off the road. Nobody in Hampton Roads would argue that are population is never going to increase from what it is now. The goal of having a usable mass transit system such as light rail is to guide the construction of high-density, urban centers. The residents of these centers would be the most likely riders of fixed-guideway transit like light rail. 10,000 Downtown employees could move to Town Center. Without light rail, they would all take I-264. 10,000 more cars. With light rail, however, they would not increase traffic for those who live to far away to use light rail. The second letter to the editor (“Rail Stop,” by Dick Jones) fits this place as well .

In this age of huge deficits and debt, the government (both state and federal) cannot afford to continue pouring money into a wasteful roadway system. A road is not free once it is built. It takes continuous maintenance. A road without maintenance will turn into a gravel road. I am sure that you have heard the argument for using transit money to buy the people that use transit their very own cars. This would be great if we had a place to put them. HRT averaged 50,857 passengers per weekday in May 2010. Can you imagine if Hampton Roads suddenly had 50,000 more cars on our roads. The increased load would also wear our roads out faster. If this method were followed nationwide, the hundred of millions of additional cars would choke highways and increase demand for fuel (even hybrids use fuel), leading to higher prices. More cars also means more accidents which means higher insurance for everyone.

What I want everyone to get out of this is that  the visible day-to-day cost may look higher for transit, but that is only because you can actually quantify the cost. The cost to support individual car commutes is much higher. Even if you do not ride or plan to ride transit, don’t complain about or try to destroy those that do. As time progresses, fuel will only get more expensive. Land will get more expensive. Public transportation, like it or not, is the future.

Cities Without Suburbs - By: David Rusk

I recently finished reading a book by David Rusk called “Cities without Suburbs.” I highly recommend this book to everyone. The book argues in support of regional cooperation and/or consolidation of suburbs with their historically central cities. Going beyond your typical benefits of regional cooperation, this book explains, with evidence, that there are many benefits for regional consolidation of services. He thoroughly identifies the problems facing inner cities today including, increasing poverty rates, decreasing tax revenues, and the inherent problems with solving complicated social, transportation, housing, economic, and budgetary problems when cooperating with a number of municipalities. Using census data, he explains why cities that have expanded their boundaries to encompass their own suburbs have historically done much better than cities that are unable to expand their boundaries.These locked-in cities lose revenue, resources, and opportunities in the long run to their independent suburbs. This same reason is also why suburbanites fight consolidation/annexation. They believe that their suburbs are doing well and that they don’t want to take on the inner city’s problems. There are a couple of problems with this philosophy, however. First, history and statistics have shown that suburbs that are independent from their central city do not grow as fast as suburbs that are connected to their city. In fact, the average income for the entire region is lower for regions that are segmented versus those that are not. Second, when connected to their suburbs, central cities have fewer problems and the region as a whole has a lower crime rate and a better quality of life.

While I have always felt that a regional Hampton Roads would be a good thing, this book got me thinking that it should go further than that. It is certainly a step in a positive direction to have regional organizations. Certainly don’t get me wrong. Our current institutions such as HRT, SPSA, HRPDC, HRTPO etc all have their problems but when it comes down to it, they make certain things simpler for our area. Imagine if each city had to run its own bus service. You would have to transfer to another bus every time you crossed a city boundary. What if each city had to compete individually for transportation money from the state and federal government? You think we get shorted our share now? Despite current and planned or possible future regional entities, we still need to go further.

Let’s look at one thing that our region does. It may seem minor but think about it. Tourism. Our region has many great tourist attractions. From the Virginia Beach Oceanfront and Ocean Breeze to Colonial Williamsburg and Busch Gardens/Water Country and everything in between such as Nauticus and the Wisconsin, Hampton Roads has a lot to offer. Each city spends millions a year in tourism advertising money to attempt to attract visitors to patronize their respective city. While places like Virginia Beach and Williamsburg spend money to directly advertise their attractions, other places such as Chesapeake advertise to attract visitors to stay in their hotels, hoping to capture tourists’ shopping dollars at Greenbrier, etc. The reason this has to be done is because otherwise, Chesapeake makes no money off of Virginia Beach’s tourists. If our cities were one jurisdiction, however, things would be much different. We could combine our money to advertise for our regional attractions and the whole area would benefit. The area of Chesapeake would benefit just as much from tourists that came to Greenbrier as from those that never shopped west of Lynnhaven.

The same goes for transportation. Think of our major projects. The HRBT is a good example. As it stands, Hampton and Newport News want an expanded HRBT. Norfolk, however, is against it because the outcome on our side of the water would be destroyed properties. If we were one city, though, we would be much more likely to support it. An expanded HRBT would almost certainly be a catalyst for a better business climate on the Peninsula. Norfolk doesn’t really care about that. Hampton voters can’t vote for Norfolk’s City Council. As one city, the Peninsula’s economic climate would be Norfolk’s economic climate meaning that the expanded HRBT would benefit the city. Same goes for the Dominion Blvd. project. Peninsula, Norfolk and VB leaders can see how it is important to Chesapeake and the region overall. Secretly, though, they also know that Chesapeake residents are not their constituency. They can support Chesapeake’s project but at the same time they are obligated to do what is best for their constituency.

We can look at social issues. Public housing for example. First, current housing projects were built in Norfolk, Portsmouth, Newport News, and Hampton simply because the cities were there. Chesapeake, Virginia Beach, Suffolk and the counties of Hampton Roads did not have the capacity to support large scale housing projects at the time. Current housing policy no longer supports concentrated ‘projects.’ Studies have shown that everyone does better when the poor are dispersed throughout the middle class housing areas. This dispersion keeps the poor from feeling hopeless about their situation. Their income rates increase as does the pass rate for their school children. College attendance and graduation rates increase. Despite the objections by some middle class areas, the property values do not decrease and crime does not increase. In cities that are serious about this policy, overall crime rates tend to decrease and overall income averages go up. In our area, however, due to our segmented cities and therefore our segmented housing authorities, the residents of the current projects cannot be transferred to other cities using funds from their home city to pay the rent. This condition severely limits the ability of our housing authorities to successfully assist the poor residents of the housing projects. As one city, the authority could move residents freely around the region to make sure that they have the best opportunity to advance their situations.

I think that this can be accomplished with the right amount of public support. This will not be easy, however, and will take careful consideration to make a thorough proposal to the General Assembly (required for consolidation in Virginia). This will require public education and public input to make sure that all issues are addressed. I know that not everyone will support this but that is typical of any major proposal. I also know that if we could consolidate our area so that the central cities encompasses 60-75 % of our regional population that we would be a force to be reckoned with at the state, federal, and economic levels.

Hampton Roads needs this to succeed. We cannot continue to allow waste and incompetence to drive our regional organizations. Bone fide mistakes do happen. I understand that.Especially when you work Downtown, you never know what is lurking underground. When you work in an office, however, and are tasked to not drop the ball, you should either do it or get out. SPSA, HRT, VDOT, each individual city council, the CTB, the General Assembly, etc. all seem to just maintain the status quo. In Hampton Roads this appears to be, “screw the taxpayers.” Light rail can and will work here. So will HRT. As citizens, however, we need to strongly voice our opinion that we want competent staff members before we want expensive ones with lofty resumes.

My only question is why can Hampton Roads not come up with something this comprehensive. We did work on a plan for the future of transit but it seems to be viewed more as a dream and less of an actual this-is-what-we-need-to-work-for plan. Think about it. You see city after city create plans and actually follow them. Our area can do that too. Virginia Beach has been working on the Southeastern Parkway for 23 years now because it falls into their now-outdated plans to make the Corporate Landing office park successful. Why can’t we work this hard to make transit plans come through? If you ask any city, they will tell you that they want it to work, but nobody seems to be actually pushing for it.

In my opinion, the reason for the lack of drive for this issue is the lack of regional cooperation. Fairfax’s plan will work and has support because it only deals with one locality, Fairfax County. It ties into existing routes that go into other municipalities, but the plan itself, only expands service inside county lines. Here, however, our plan encompasses Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Newport News, Hampton, Williamsburg, James City County, and York County. In fact part of our Transit Vision Plan extends service toward Moyock, NC. How in the world do our leaders think that they can make something this expansive work if they can’t make simpler regional systems work. It is hard enough to get two cities to work on a bus route together let alone a system including both light rail and commuter rail. We need a functional regional government. If our localities could combine services and resources, we could actually overcome the problems that we face now. Look around. we are facing budget cuts all the time and money can no longer be guaranteed by the state. We have to help ourselves. Nobody else is coming to our rescue.