Posts tagged General Assembly

Still No (Legal) Radar Detectors for VA

Feb 12th

Posted by 757HR in Politics

It seems as if the General Assembly has once again voted down the bill to repeal Virginia’s unique ban on radar detectors. Their reasoning? “Speed on the roads of the commonwealth is a major problem,I don’t think we ought to be passing laws that make our roads less safe.” Well, that was Del. Manoli Loupassi’s (R-Richmond) reason. I wonder if that is the same reasoning behind raising the speed limit to 70. If they are, however, trying to make our roads safer, why have they not passed other laws. That might include banning cell phone use while driving. Or making a stiffer penalty for the guy I saw shaving, eating, and trying to read the paper a while back on the interstate. I would have taken a picture, but I felt the irony of crashing while trying to take a picture of a distracted driver would be too great.

Here is my list of activities that I have seen that should be banned while driving:

  • All phone use
  • shaving
  • eating anything that requires two hands or a table
  • any kind of sexual activity
  • reading books, newspapers, reports, etc.
  • photography
  • applying makeup
  • looking at other accidents
  • actually programming your radio
  • watching TV/DVDs
  • Smoking (ban smoking because you can’t just ban dropping it in your crotch)
  • writing
  • searching the internet

Have I touched the tip of the iceberg yet? I won’t claim that I have never done at least one (or five). I will say though, that it is decidedly riskier to attempt one of these actions than it is to simply drive over the speed limit. There are many roads around (especially in Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, and Suffolk) that were actually designed for speeds as high as 65 mph, but their speeds are lowered due to residential areas, schools, etc. It is not the speed that causes the accidents, it is the combination of other activities with the speed. The only speed that contributes to accidents is the low speed of slow interstate drivers. They themselves are rarely involved, but the drivers going the speed limit have to pay extra attention (that they may not have due to other activities) to avoid them.

Come on General Assembly. Allow radar detectors. Work on actual problems. I will file this story with the one about Norfolk trying to ban low riding pants awhile back.

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New Governor McDonnell’s First Speech

Jan 19th

Posted by 757HR in Automotive Transportation

Our new governor made his first speech to the General Assembly yesterday. His major issue was, of course, the budget deficit that Virginia faces. He promised to make the cuts necessary to balance the budget without raising taxes. To lead this charge, he promised to take a pay cut and his most of his staff take pay cuts and decrease the number of support staff. Once again, he also swore to privatize the ABC stores, asserting the more than $500 million could be raised with the proceeds. He promised to push for off-shore drilling. Amidst all of this, very little was actually mentioned about our transportation problems. Aside from raising the speed limit and reopening rest stops, he made no push for more highway or transit money. To help his campaign promise to create more jobs, he wants to raise the amount of money available for small businesses and lower the threshold for jobs required to be created to qualify for tax credit. He also proposed to drastically increase the amount of money available to state tourism advertising and movie recruiting, citing a new movie called “Secretariat,” about a Virginia race horse. The movie was filmed in Kentucky and West Virginia due to a lack of state promotional money. Finally, he pushed for promotional money for Virginia’s wineries and Virginia’s commercial spaceport at Wallop’s Island.

He seems to be full of ideas. Some of them I agree with (Privatizing ABC) and some of them I think are terrible ideas (off-shore drilling). I only hope that he can muster the political will to fix our transportation system. We need more money to be devoted to transit construction and operation and we need to focus highway money on the construction of rebuilt choke points.

Good Luck Governor. Good Luck GA. Good Luck Virginia. There is definitely a lot to be done.

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HRT Mismanagement – A Day Late, A Dollar Short

Dec 26th

Posted by 757HR in Detriment to Regionalism

I didn’t actually think that I would be writing an article such as this. While I assumed that HRT was just as mismanaged as every other government-run organization in the region, state, or country, I also assumed that HRT would at least step up their game for this project. The HRT President and CEO, Michael Townes is a nice guy with good ideas. Unfortunately, whether his direct fault or not, he is the President and CEO, therefore making him ultimately responsible for the inner workings of HRT. This problem is deeper than Mr. Townes. If we ever want to have a strong, regional transit company, we need to get to the root of the problem. In my opinion, the root of this particular issue stems from poor project management. That is not Mr. Townes’s direct responsibility. The Tide has a project manager and a third-party consultant whose stated job is project management. All of this management should be held immediately accountable. First off, the consulting company is over budget. How in the world can we allow a company tasked with keeping costs under control  to go over budget? I consider that a failure. According to a story by WVEC, “Factors cited by HRT include unexpected conditions in the field, requests for design changes, underground utility relocation, consultant issues, and management problems.” I will go with the first three. Sh*t happens. but the final two are unacceptable. If HRT themselves can point out that consultant issues and management problems are the cause for part of our problems, why are these people still employed. It is my personal belief that when a person is hired for a job, they are to do that job. If they fail to do that job, they should be terminated. This applies to head executives as well as 7-Eleven employees. You are paid to do a job. Your employment agreement is a contract between you and your employer. A breach of contract should result in termination unless some rare circumstance exists. Fire the consultants and sue for the money back. As far as I am concerned, if your job is to keep an eye on the money and you instead rob us blind, you should be held accountable. Additionally, there are others that should be docked pay at a minimum. Take the Senior Vice President for Development, Jayne Whitney. Her HRT bio states that she is “currently responsible for the planning, engineering, design and construction and funding of major capital projects in the organization, including New Starts projects such as the Norfolk Light Rail project.” (By the way, Ms. Whitney, if you ever read this, could you please remind your webmaster that stating that you “began [your] professional career with VDOT and performed highway planning and public transportation planning,” just screams inept to this part of the state?)  Or look at Jim Price, Vice President of Rail Operations. What does he do right now? There are no “rail operations.” This means that either he sits on his hind parts all day (and we should lay him off) or he is actively involved in the management of this project (and should be held accountable).

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.

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