Posts tagged Transportation

ODU Predicts Poor Future for HR

Oct 7th

Posted by 757HR in Development

As reported on PilotOnline recently, ODU’s recent State of the Region report is predicting a poor outlook for the region for the foreseeable future. It predicts a decline in Military funding and, in conjunction, a decline in military-related industries. This would ripple through our economy, sending us into a much longer, regional recession. It also predicted a continued decline in population. This could be due to a number of factors with the biggest being a lack of jobs that young people are looking for. Also, in an area such as Hampton Roads, there is an abundance of former military people looking for jobs. This crates a pool of experienced people looking for employment, which makes it very difficult for new college graduates to find entry-level positions.

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.

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HRBT, MMBT Tolls?

Jan 27th

Posted by 757HR in Automotive Transportation

The Pilot is reporting today that Del. Joe Lee, of Leesburg, has proposed $2 tolls on the bridge-tunnels that cross Hampton Roads. While I do not necessarily oppose tolls as a means to make users pay their fare share, I do wish that the proposal has some support from our own representatives. When I read that a Northern Virginia lawmaker had proposed tolls for our area, I got the feeling that it was more of a ‘pay for your own roads, so the state can afford ours.’ I think that Mr. Lee needs to reconsider his bill to either get a local co-sponsor or include his own area in the tolling. Our bridges are not the only roadways in Virginia that are old and will need replacing.

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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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Fairfax Gets It, Why Can’t We?

Dec 9th

Posted by 757HR in Automotive Transportation

Fairfax recently released a new 10-year plan aimed at making transit travel more attractive the vehicle travel. The plan would increase service and frequency, create new routes, and use innovative techniques such as tying traffic lights to bus schedules, so that they never wait at lights. They also plan on utilizing dedicated bus lanes and fixed-route-style fare collection on some bus routes to speed the buses through stops. These new routes, including their already planned BRT routes, would work in unison with METRORail to make transit commutes faster than traditional, usually single-occupant, private car transportation.

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.

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Better Get Ready To Walk

Nov 17th

Posted by 757HR in Local Politics

The Future of Hampton "Crumbling" Roads

The state is getting ready to cut another billion dollars from VDOT. This is in addition to the over $3 billion that has already been cut out.We already can no longer afford to build roads or even maintain them. Now, we will be unable to plan and design them, meaning that we will be ineligible for future federal stimulus money that requires projects be ‘shovel-ready.’ In other words, you might want to look at moving closer to your work, because in the not-to-distant future, the roads will not only be completely gridlocked, but also reverting to gravel. We need to think outside of the box on this. We can no longer rely on the State legislature to fund our transportation projects. We have to start looking at options that we would have thought unthinkable in years past. Nobody wants tolls or new taxes. But I can guarantee you that there are even fewer people that want to have to walk to work because our roads are closed or crumbling. To make it worse, our new Governor wants to pay for roads with education money and money from profit sharing oil operation off of the coast of Virginia. We need to make it known to our representatives that we will not tolerate lack of action.

Either we act now to raise money for our roads or we need to raise money for new welcome signs. They will read:

Welcome to _______
A Hampton ‘Crumbling’ Roads Community
Proudly Sponsored By:
Fix-A-Flat

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