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For anybody interested (and you should be), the Midtown Tunnel Project’s Independent Review Panel (IRP) will hold their two public comment meetings today (Tuesday) and tomorrow (Wednesday). These will be the only two meetings where public comments will be accepted. If you have absolutely any concerns, you should attend one of the two meetings. Information is as follows:

Date: Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Time: 5 – 9 PM
Location: City of Portsmouth Council Chambers, 801 Crawford Street, 6th Floor City of Portsmouth, VA 23704

Date: Wednesday: April 22, 2009
Time: 6 – 9 PM
Location: City of Norfolk Council Chambers, 810 Union Street, 11th Floor Norfolk, VA 23510

REMEMBER! These are THE ONLY TWO MEETINGS where you can submit you comments.

For more information, visit http://www.midtowntunnel.org/

Watch out! Virginia Beach is slowly installing more and more traffic cams. They currently have 4 up and running:

• Kempsville Rd & Indian River Rd.
• Independence Blvd. & Virginia Beach Blvd.
• Indian River Rd. & Military Hwy. – Grace period ends April 30th
• Holland Rd. & Rosemont Rd. – Grace period ends May 21st

I’m not sure where I stand on the actual use of traffic cameras. Right now I lead to the ‘opposed’ side of the fence. I am definitely opposed to Virginia Beach’s new installations, however. They should be spending more wisely but apparently they think otherwise.

VA Beach Traffic Cams

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VA Beach Traffic Cams in a larger map

The Federal Highway Administration has once again nixed the Southeastern Parkway plans due to environmental concerns. This is the fourth time the FHA has denied approval for the $95.2 million per mile toll road. According to the FHA, the 170 acres of wetlands that would be destroyed would be too much damage to the environment for the traffic benefits that we would realize. AGREED. These wetlands that the Southeastern Parkway would cut through are linked to nearly every tributary that we have in Hampton Roads. The Linkhorn Bay, Broad Bay, Lynnhaven Bay, Lynnhaven River, North Landing River, Back Bay, Albemarle Sound, Southern Branch Elizabeth River, Hampton Roads Harbor/Bay, and the Chesapeake Bay ALL would be affected by this new highway.

Chesapeake and Virginia Beach want this highway to fix their traffic created by years of failing to plan. This project has been in the works since the 1980s and has continually failed approval. The project price tag keeps ballooning. A few years ago, the price was estimated at $1 billion (VDOT’s website still states $1 billion on its project page). Today, the Virginian-Pilot reported a $2 billion price tag (if built right now). According to the Final Environmental Impact Study, the estimate is between $2.2 billion and $2.7 billion when we consider inflation for a 2014 construction midpoint. So lets get this right, if built today, this highway would cost $95 million/mile. If we wait for a more reasonable deadline, and assume that construction would be half-completed by 2014, it would cost between $102.8 million and $126.2 million per mile. Remind me again why this is a better option than light rail… Even if we assume the 35% inflation ($2 billion in 2009 to $2.7 billion in 2014), if you use Norfolk’s cost-per-mile for light rail, you could build over 51 miles of light rail. That would be more than sufficient to build the LR to the Beach with enough southward spurs to pick up Oceana, Lynnhaven, Princess Anne, and Greenbrier.Why are we wasting money on building yet another highway? This highway will become congested just like every other highway in Hampton Roads.  In fact, in the “Transportation Capacity” section under “Preferred vs. No Build Comparison,” the paragraph reads:

As with the freeway segments themselves, SEPG will benefit the congestion forecasted on the local street approaches to freeway
interchanges. SEPG will substantially reduce traffic volumes at all approaches, but the reductions will not always result in improvements in service levels, given the thresholds for
the various service level categories. For example, at the Battlefield Boulevard, Greenbrier Parkway and Indian River Road approaches to I-64, the SEPG causes daily volume reductions of 11,500, 7,100 and 13,800 vehicles, respectively. These reductions are not sufficient for improved service levels; the forecasted service levels remain at F on all three roadways. However, some volume reductions do improve the service level. For example, Rosemont Road is reduced by 3,100 vehicles (6.0%), which will improve the service level to from F to E.

Read that again. If you are paying attention, it says that at the Greenbrier, Battlefield, and Indian River Rd. interchanges, the Southeastern Parkway  will not result in a Level-of-Service (LOS)  improvement. Additionally, the best example that they could put for a LOS improvement was Rosemont Road, which would improve from an ‘F’ to an ‘E.’ Is that similar to moving from an ‘F-’ to an ‘F+’ on a school report card? Are we prepared to spend over $2 billion on a highway whose success is measured by how many fewer hours it will be congested? For the record, the FEIS states that the Southeastern Parkway will be congested 12.9% less and move 11.7% faster during congestion than if we did nothing. In other words, instead of sitting in traffic for an hour at 24 mph, you’d only sit in traffic for 53 minutes at 27 mph.

Is Hampton Roads ready to pay over $2 billion to save 7 minutes on our rush hour commute? I don’t think so. I think we should look at diverting this money to things such as LRT, which can be expanded MUCH easier, quicker, and cheaper than a highway.

I once read a comment on an article about our new light rail that said something to the effect that we shouldn’t compare ourselves to Charlotte, NC because it is not the same situation. I finally found the right statistic to refute that and to show why Hampton Roads is already doing better than Charlotte.

Population:

• Hampton Roads = 1.65
• Charlotte MSA = 1.70

Population Density:

• Hampton Roads = 425 persons/sq. mile
• Charlotte MSA = 500 person/sq. mile

Now, you might be tempted to think that their higher population and density contributed to their having 181% of their first year projected ridership. I’m sure that has contributed to the large ridership, but consider this:

Total Commuters:

• Hampton Roads = 795,343
• Charlotte MSA = 801,778

Percent of Commuters using Public Transportation excluding Taxis:

• Hampton Roads = 1.86
• Charlotte MSA = 1.75

In other words, despite their larger population and larger number of commuters, Hampton Roads has a larger percentage of commuters using public transit. Charlotte also faced a large number of cost-overruns and delays and even a referendum to reject the half-cent transportation sales tax (tax funds mass transit in the region). The referendum would have essentially killed all future Charlotte Light Rail. Fortunately, despite a large amount of public outcry against the project, the referendum failed by 70%.

Hampton Roads can do this. Even more-so if the Beach gets on board. I do think that Norfolk needs to look at a larger parking deck for the Newtown Road Station. Charlotte’s end-of-the-line 1,120 space deck fills up by 8:15 AM.

I have a few interesting things to point out in The Hampton Roads Center for Civic Engagement’s Batten Surveys. These surveys aimed to find out where our region’s leadership stood on regional issues. The first somewhat alarming result was from the youth leader category. This category was made up of young people ages 17-22 who were considered youth leaders; most have started, organized, or were in charge of organization in their communities or schools. This is what I find rather frightening:

Does your local government invite citizen input?

To me, this is frightening. We are in a time when there are a large number of issues that need to be resolved. Many of these issues have been caused by our current or former government officials. Young people are the ones that will have to solve these problems. Many young people already have solutions or suggestions in mind. If only they could find somebody that would listen. A large majority of older people almost immediately write off the comments of young people almost entirely on their age. For some reason there is a large misconception that young people cannot possibly have an idea that has not been heard already because older people have more experience. Older people need to give young people a chance. Most of us have excellent ideas. Now would be a great time for older people to listen to young people and guide them instead of putting them down.

Regardless, I’ll move on to the next issue I have with the Regional Survey. There was one particular question of great interest: What are the most important regional issues in Hampton Roads? The result? The top three issues across all groups are Transportation, Regionalism, and the economy, in that order.

Most Important Hampton Roads Regional Issues

While this in-and-of-itself is very interesting, showing that a very large group of people in Hampton Roads have Regionalism on their mind, there is an even more interesting result. This is the breakdown of people that responded to this question:

Top 3 Issues Broken Down by Interviewee Groups

Note that among government officials, Transportation and the economy is put before regionalism. Appointed officials recognize that, while taking a back seat to transportation and the economy, regionalism is important to Hampton Roads’ future. Elected officials, on the other hand, did not mention regionalism. In my opinion, the ‘others’ group, made up of other various community leaders, was a closer representation to the majority of Hampton Roads residents.

We need to find these elected officials and vote them out of office. Our officials need to recognize that regionalism is important to the future of Hampton Roads. A Regional Hampton Roads would have more power to compete nationally and internationally for outside investment, both public and private. You think New York City would look like it does today if each borough competed against the other for everything?