A New Transportation Option, Part Three

<< Continued from A New Transportation Option, Part Two.

Over the last 30 years we’ve seen occur in Hampton Roads that lead people to question their use of personal vehicles,

particularly the increase in congestion, unpredictable and lengthy delays and high gasoline prices. As a result, more and more citizens say they would like to have other choices. Yet alternate modes of transportation are not available or practical for many Hampton Roads citizens. Last year Cathy Lewis of WHRV’s HearSay program chronicled the delays and other travails she encountered trying to use HRT’s express bus service between Norfolk and Hampton. Citizens with tighter time constraints can hardly be expected to endure such hardship.

Yet our local zoning codes encourage use of personal vehicles by requiring building owners, even those in downtown areas, to provide ample parking. McArthur Center Mall, the new Wachovia Tower and the town centers in Virginia Beach and Newport News are just four examples of how this requirement adds tens of millions of dollars to the cost of these buildings and the cost of doing business there. In many cases, these requirements further require local taxpayers to co-sign the debt cities take on to build or subsidize parking for new office buildings, hotels and other commercial developments.

Invest for the Future, Not to Repeat the Past

Citizens expect elected leaders to be fiscally responsible, as well as honest and foresighted in preparing cities and counties for the future. For citizens to feel confident in making changes in their own driving habits, they need to see a solid and practical plan for building the transportation system of the 21st century. They also need to have confidence that the plan will be managed responsibly and that funds dedicated to it will be used prudently.

Several local initiatives demonstrate how a regional transportation system plan worthy of public support can be developed: The Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization (HRTPO) is currently working on the federally mandated 2034 Long Range Transportation Plan. Development of this plan will include more opportunities for Hampton Roads citizens to have input than ever before.

• The City of Virginia Beach’s Envision Transportation initiative invites residents to help define the City’s transportation future. This project could easily be scaled up to a regional level to address regional transportation issues.
• HRT is understandably focused, at least in the short term, on cleaning house, keeping its network of buses maintained and running and getting the Norfolk starter light rail project finished. After that, however, HRT planners should be key players in developing a new regional transportation plan.
• The Hampton Roads Partnership has taken the lead in proposing a regional transportation vision. It’s a bold vision and may be worthy of public support. But it will require greater citizen involvement to gain the necessary credibility and momentum to carry it to the next step of implementation.

An Example We Can Follow

Last summer the citizens of the Seattle area welcomed the opening of the first sections of their light rail system. There were hiccups along the way, and not every citizen favored such a massive rail investment. But the project persisted because it was the culmination of a 20-year infrastructure development plan approved by Seattle-area citizens determined to change Seattle from an economically provincial region into a world-class metropolitan center.

Photo by Joe Mable : Passengers board a bus at a Seattle transit station.

There are many similarities between Seattle and Hampton Roads. Seattle has land and water challenges similar to Hampton Roads. It has good deepwater ports. Seattle’s commerce was historically based on the shipping of timber just as Hampton Roads’ was based on coal. The Seattle region also has a large defense and defense support presence, as well as large-scale manufacturing.

Seattle’s grand plan didn’t happen overnight. It took significant commitment and continued investment in an area hard hit at times by job loss. It took institutional support from local governments, major employers and civic groups. But already improvements made by this initiative have made life better for Seattle-area residents, made it easier to keep and attract good people and jobs and helped make Seattle not only a more competitive region domestically, but also a major player in the Pacific Rim economy.

If this can happen in Seattle, it can certainly happen in Hampton Roads. We can start today by deciding to build no new highways and instead use our talents and resources to develop a regional transportation infrastructure that meets the changing needs of our residents and serves as a tangible example to the world of what we are capable of in Hampton Roads.

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• Anonymous | July 20, 10 @ 8:57 am

  First, let me say I am a huge proponent of public (no car) transportation. When I lived in Nashville, TN, I rode the commuter train to downtown then took a bus to my office. When I lived in St. Louis I would take the metro to the Airport or Downtown. When I go on vacation it is my family’s (there are 5 of us) 1st choice to use public transportation instead of driving ourselves around.

  That being said, I think Hampton Roads presents unique problems not associated with these other regions, especially Seattle.

  1) There is no MAJOR center of buisness. Yes there is downtown Norfolk, but if you compare the amount or percentage of office space/buisness in downtown to the other main downtown areas of similar size you’ll find it’s a lot smaller. That makes public transportation more difficult because you don’t have a mass of people all going in the same direction or all living in the same area.

  2) Seattle style ferries would be more difficult because our water distance is less and the population/work is more evenly disbursed. When I visited Seattle the ferries were a great way to get from the Olympic Peninsula or other far flung areas to Seattle. However, in Hampton Roads your dealing with a space of several miles instead of tens of miles. Sure, ferries work in NY/NJ, but you’re dealing with a greater mass of people. I was sad when the Hampton/Norfolk ferry stopped. Of course, I never used it. . . .

  On a final note: all new roads aren’t bad.

  There I said it.

  I am a huge proponent and user of public transportation that believes that not all new roads are bad. New roads to undeveloped areas when there is still plenty of developable/redevelopable land closer to an urban core is bad. That’s not the case with Hampton Roads crossings. What we are facing here is a new road to deal with the urban/close in suburban growth that has occured over the last 30 years. Hampton Roads DESPERATELY needs a third crossing. If our region wants to present a unified front for buisness, tourism, and gov’t work you should reasonable expect to get from a place on the Peninsula to a place on the Southside in a known amount of time. Right now that’s not possible. If I want to go from Newport News or Hampton to downtown Norfolk, I have to swing way out through one of the two existing bridges (yes, I know there is the JRB, but I’m not counting that because it (basically) goes to Smithfield and is even further away from the population and employment centers) and then head into downtown Norfolk. It creates extra burden on the roads, mixes seasonally (unbearable?) tourist traffic with local rush hour, and hinders buisness and civic cooperation between the two sides of the water. Yes, it would cost billions, but 10 years ago when the idea of connecting downtown Norfolk (almost) directly with a new bridge tunnel to the Peninsula with a dedicated line for light rail was proposed I thought it was a great idea. Instead, now I never know if a trip from Hampton to Norfolk is going to take 10 minutes or a couple hours.

  There, that’s my 2 cents. :)

  
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• Chris Bonney | July 20, 10 @ 4:42 pm

  Anonymous – I applaud your use of public transportation. Hampton Roads is a transportation challenge precisely for the reasons you cite: There is no single center of employment. We have five or six of them. But this is the case in every city anymore, including Seattle. Think Tyson’s Corner in Northern Virginia or Clayton in ST. Louis. Atlanta, Boston and LA are ringed with edge cities as large or bigger their downtowns.

  As for ferries, until the late 1950s or early 1960s, Hampton Roads was full of them. In my youth that’s how you got across the water now served by the HRBT, or to the Eastern Shore. Not too much earlier, that’s how you got between Norfolk and Portsmouth. (The illustration on the street side of Waterside illustrates this.) It’s still how a lot of people get between Knotts Island and Currituck.

  The whole point of my thesis is that no single mode can be depended on to handle the needs of the region. Of course, there will always be the need to have roads, bridges and tunnels. But they can only handle so much volume and will always been prone to bottlenecking. As we saw not that long ago, all it takes is one broken pipe in one tunnel to bring the entire region to gridlock.

  Thanks for your comments.

  
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• Anonymous | July 21, 10 @ 2:44 pm

  Chris,

  This is the guy who posted the comment above. What do you think is a realistic time frame for SOMETHING to happen on the transit/transportation/please no more gridlock at 1 am situation of Hampton Roads?

  I ask for several reasons:

  1) I think it’s absurd that the transportation system of HR 10 years ago, when I moved to HR for the first time, is pretty much the same as it is today while the load seems to have gotten much heavier.

  2) Have attitudes changed or is it still a no new roads, transit, ferries, flying saucers because that will cause my taxes to go up and I’d rather spend three hours of my live stuck in traffic going to Richmond or Virginia Beach than see my taxes go up or pay a toll.

  3) Is the buisness community behind improved transit of ANY type? It seems like if you were a buisness you would want reliable transit between the Peninsula and the Southside or WIlliamsburg or Norfolk and Chesapeake or Virginia Beach (you get the idea).

  Just wondering

  
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