Check this out, an amazingly prescient forecast of Virginia's political development today, made back in 1966!
America's fastest area of metropolitan growth in the 1960's, Greater Washington, is swallowing the Northern counties of Virginia. [...] Half-surrounding the nation's capital and embracing already some of the most powerful and expensive elements of Government, Virginia will feel the pressure of growing affluence and the restlessness of a population that will be looking for new opportunities and demanding space for sports, for recreation, for education, and for investment. The suburban spread in the northern counties can be expected to double. [...] To face such expansion, ordinary politics and ordinary politicians are not enough. Those who preach retrenchment in the conviction that depression is around the corner are likely to be left behind in the growing new world. Those who would be niggardly in expenditure for education and social improvement will count the cost of miserliness in later social explosion. Those who are content to see the spread of suburban ugliness without provision today for recreation and cultural outlet, without planning for better communities, will face the repeated crises of the many sicknesses of affluence.
Those last two lines, by the way, pretty much nail today's Virginia Republican Party philosophy. (as Waldo notes, back then the writer was criticizing the Democrats, but over the years the parties in Virginia have changed a great deal...)
Also informative is a 1965 map of future roads needed to serve the expected population of Metro DC produced by the predecessor of COG and its projections for population and job growth for 2000.
They got the pop. projection exactly right and were only 50,000 short on the jobs number. Of course, upper middle class Moms didn't work then as they have to now.
Unfortunately, our local Democratic leaders proceeded to take road after road off that map in the delusional ideology that "if we don't build it, they won't come" Well, they didn't build it and the people came anyway. And we're all stuck in traffic as a result.
As someone who has studied these issued for more than 35 years, it's clear that the latest fad, "smart growth," will provide much needed multi-family housing but that will address the housing needs for only about 10-15% of the population and no more than 10-20% of total trips.
Only building the road network shown on that 1965 transportation plan, which included Metro, will get traffic moving again.
That and an end to snob zoning, so that workers can live within a 20 minute drive of their job.
Both of these things are possible and can be achieved within compact patterns as the implementation of Simon's plan has demonstrated.
Widening and building new highways actually causes, not relieves, traffic congestion in Cincinnati and other major U.S. metropolitan areas, according to a new study presented today to the 79th Annual Transportation Research Board in Washington, DC. The study estimated that up to 43% of traffic in Greater Cincinnati is caused just by expanding the area's road network. The study also says that Tri-State traffic congestion would have grown less rapidly if no new or wider highways were built at all, contrary to what highway planners have predicted.[...]
The study's authors, Robert Noland, University of London Center for Transport Studies and William A. Cowart, ICF Consulting in Fairfax, VA., conclude that "induced travel effects strongly imply that pursuit of congestion reduction by building more capacity will have short-lived benefits. This may be evidence for a strong sprawl inducing impact of large increases in lane mile capacity relative to the existing infrastructure."
Lowell, you're smarter than this.
It's growth in jobs, not roads, that induces growth in housing. If new roads induced "sprawl" (whatever that means) there'd be a housing boom along the Coalfield Expressway. Instead the localities in that part of the Commonwealth continue to depopulate.
To show you how silly this canard is I pose the following question: where's the study showing how many more McMansions the HOT lanes will induce?
[crickets]
Just as there's a highway lobby, there is a rail/mass transit lobby. Just one of these multi-billion dollars project can make some private sector corporate v.p.'s career. Sometimes the same corporations participate in both lobbies through different divisions.
For reasons best explained by those entities, Sierra Club and Worldwatch have decided to join/be manipulated by the rail lobby. If we reviewed their contributors list, we might have an answer but those lists are not made public, so we don't know.
I know, proponents will cite studies that show many people from different economic status' have used HOT lanes (where they have already been built) or say they will use them when built. But none of the studies I've seen have addressed regular use. To ask if some average Joe has ever used the HOT lanes is silly - one day he was really late and had to pay $20 to get somewhere on time and that one time it worked out for him. But only the rich will use these things on a regular basis. Seriously, the average Joe is upset about paying $4 per gallon gasoline, does anyone think they'd be happy paying $1+ per mile of HOT lane travel every day?
So, what's your take on the trade off between more roads vs taxpayer supported Lexus lanes?
The genius of one of the few good things Eisenhower did as President was starting the National Defense Highway system and prohibiting tolls which gave reality to the Constitutional right to travel, enabled the poor areas of our country to join the mainstream of the American economy, and the people from those poor areas were able to migrate to places where they could make a living to support their families. That's democracy.
Could the freedom rides have happened and the massive number of white northerners joined voting rights efforts in the south in the 60s without the Interstate Highway system?
Could the sons and daughters of tenant farmers find their way to union jobs in the midwest and far west without those toll free roads?
Could the marches on Washington in favor of civil rights and against the Vietnam war have happened without those toll free roads?
Could the liberating new economy of the South have arisen if it was still isolated with the horrible highway system of the pre-WWII area?
HOT lanes are a scam by their corporate sponsors and a cop out by the pols who voted for them. Just like the Greenway was dumb.