Too many people in too small a place and all wanting their own personal freedoms to be accomodated--then they'll bitch, moan, gripe, and complain about the traffic.  There's never going to be a consensus anywhere in NoVa because everyone wants an option that gets the "other guy" off the street so they can continue to drive their own car.  D.C. traffic problems are self-inflicted and I can't believe the idiots there spend three hours or more of their day on the road to and from work in a perpetual three-lane parking lot. There's a lot that smells about this story but when the city and counties are managed so poorly by incompetent Marion Berry-type boobs and political hacks, sometimes an adult has to come in and say "just do it." My only real problem with this is that it's a band-aid on a gun shot wound.  It won't have the intended result and then what?

contracts, lack of accountability, etc, etc?  Also, what you call "too many people in too small a place," others would call an example of amazing economic success - a huge jobs magnet. As far as people living in NOVA all being "idiots," well all I have to say to that is "huh, I don't get it...can you please explain that slower cuz we're all real stupid in Arlington, Fairfax, Falls Church, Loudoun, Prince William, Alexandria, etc."

Democracy is premised on open access to information, as is our entire capitalist system.  (For example, lack of information or information distortions -- sometimes referred to as asymmetries in the econ lit -- tend to screw consumers.)

Yes, democracy is messy.  And inefficient at times.  But it's been proven to be the best system.

Here's how our current "secret" national government works.  At an agency in town I just found out that a key job -- right at the top of the decision ladder -- has been given to an assistant of Ohio's Ken Blackwell.  You know, the corrupt Ohio Secretary of State?  In an area the woman knows nothing about?  And everyone is being hush hush about it.  What a waste of the taxpayer's money.

That's how this bullshit national administration works.

And I don't care if it's VDOT or an ultraliberal president -- I want to see the facts.  No party or group has exclusive ownership of the truth.  We're a liberal blog, but we know liberals can screw up badly too.  (They just tend to be more open about the screw ups and fight publicly about it.)

Secrecy led to the wrongful invasion of Iraq.

Secrecy is what totalitarian governments thrive on.

We need openness, but not because democracy and capitalism are the same. Democracy demands an open society and an informed public. The idea that somehow the capitalist economic model is democratic was a PR invention by Edward Bernayse (the father of PR) for the benefit of the Chicita Banana Company to overthrough a government to keep their banana company in business. The American government hired Bernayse (Sigmund Freud's nephew)on behalf of Chicita to create a PR campaign to merge the idea of democracy with capitalism in the minds of the American people. The overthrough of the government was put forth as "bringing democracy". Actually, it was the creation of a dictatorship and a Banana Republic. We have been "bringing democracy" to countries ever since.

"We have been "bringing democracy" to countries ever since."

Allowing you to strengthen your point, I guess I'm looking for the logical extension of this and that is we should have been doing....what?  I'm hoping you can think of a  case where a truly democratically elected government has waged war on another truly democratically elected government to help make your point. 

To facilitate a shortfall in reading skills I'll type more slowly...If you're sitting in traffic for three hours a day (the focus of that comment) going to and from work, you're an idiot.  Hard to really argue with that.  If you're making it easier for a larger number of people to cram into a smaller space making the problem even worse (even though commuters are already coming into DC from as far away as Fredericksburg 80 miles away), then , yes, you're an idiot.  If you complain about the lack of more public transportation, but drive your car anyway, yep, you're an idiot (as well as a hypocrite).  You can define that awful, congested, overcrowded insanity as "amazing economic success" if you want -- each to his own -- but sane people know better and will stay away.  Hmmmm, maybe that explains some of the decisions that come out of that place, ya think?

Building a rail line to Tysons without expanding the Metro footprint throughout the suburbs is a poor approach.  There should be a hub and spoke metro and light rail system throughout the DC greater metro area.

is a low priority compared, for instance, to building trolley lines down Glebe Road, Columbia Pike, and into Seven Corners.  Or how about a trolley from King Street Metro to the waterfront in Old Town, plus the other direction, towards the west end of Alexandra and Annandale?  Projects like this would be hugely beneficial to the region, and would probably cost a lot less money than a disastrously flawed, no-bid, no-accountability rail project to Dulles. 

with upgrading bus service big time, like they've got in Boston with their "silver line" from Logan Airport?  I just took that a couple weeks ago and it worked great, connecting me right into the subway system easily and inexpensively...

I've had nagging doubts about the whole rail to Dulles project for a long time.  The longer this drags on, the more it becomes a boondoggle for big business, the more secrecy and games that are played, the more my doubts are re-enforced. 

We're talking about a rather large sum of money that if spent wisely (Buses and similar as Lowell notes) would likely provide better system wide improvements than rail to Dulles.

things like dedicated bus lanes can move a whole lot of people cheaply.  Also, if a bus breaks down, you pull it over to the side.  When a subway train breaks down in a two track system --- well, we all know what that is like.  And I have concerns about the ability of the tunnels into Washington DC to handle more and more traffic. 

All that said, I'm all for open government. 

Part of light rail is psychological.  You see a fixed rail line on a street, and see people waiting for the trolley, and it implants the thought in your head -- "hey, I could take that."

Compare that to the county bus systems, which as valuable as they are, are somewhat invisible. 

is one of the hurdles facing a strong bus based transportation infrastructure.  Whether it's seen as the "low income" solution or people have deep scars from busing in their school days, people generally don't like buses. 

Sure, urbanites will usually get on a bus, but ask a suburbanite and they'll say they'd rather sit in hours of traffic than hop on a bus.  Hell, they don't need to say it - just look out on any NOVA at rush hour and you'll see that mindset in action.

This is exactly (or similar) to what happened with the Big Dig. The State Secretary of Transportaion was taking money from the company to shut up and cover up about cost overruns. Its no wonder these folks want secrecy. Even though I don't believe democracy and capitalism are the same thing (it was a PR gambit to cover the creation of banana republics), I say this to fans of free trade:

This is not free trade and it is not competing in the marketplace. It is a setup. Some greedy folks have seen how much money we have in Northern Virginia and they want some. They don't want oversight.

is an economic engine for more parts of Virginia than just Northern Virginia, and it needs to have better access or Maryland's Baltimore-Washington Airport will crush it.  No kidding. In other words, the Dulles rail line is about more than just the self-important commuter, although that, too, is a factor.

When the Metro was under discussion some of us lobbied for exactly a hub-and-spoke arangement with Metro running all the way around the Beltway in a loop with lines running out (or under) major arteries such as, for example, Columbia Pike which, with all its apartment complexes would have provided thousands of riders. The politicians, including many Republican ones on the County Board of Supervisors, rejected this concept as far far too expensive, especially the Columbia Pike line with its requirement for tunnels. 

Penny wise and pound foolish, the short-sighted short term view again trumps the far-sighted vision.

Bus lines use gasoline and, dedicated lanes or not, screw up other traffic; still, they on the face of it are the quickest reasonable answer. Trolleys are great, we used to have them all over major cities (I took one from work out to Georgetown at night for graduate school), and we even had one that not too long ago ran out to Herndon, but the rails were torn up and we now have a string bean of a park from Arlington to Herndon. Trolley rail lines laid in the middle of streets screwed up traffic, too. No answer is perfect, but I do like the idea of rail-less trolleys and more convenient buses, especially local convenience buses like C.U.E. in the City of Fairfax.