Transportation Money Diverted To Build Bike Trails
By Greg L | 21 June 2007 | Virginia Politics | 19 Comments
The Commonwealth Transportation Board has announced the projects it intends to complete with the funds made available under the transportation funding compromise from this year’s legislative session. There’s rail, there’s improvements to highways, and there’s a lot of mass transit spending. There are also paved bike trails. That’s right. We’re bonding out money not only to actually relieve traffic congestion, but while we’re at it we might as well build a trail or two.
The DC Examiner reports on this interesting project:
A new 55-mile Virginia Capital Trail, a paved bicycles-only path that will snake along eastward from Richmond to the Williamsburg, often near the James River.
This just pisses me the heck off. Diverting resources from transportation improvements in order to build bike trails, which never would have been considered a vital priority before, only becomes a priority once you hand unaccountable government bureaucrats a billion or two dollars to play with. I’d like to restrict those who made this inane decision to using only this trail in order to commute to and from work. If it’s that important of a transportation priority, they should be forced to make use of it for their transportation needs.
What a bunch of morons.
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19 Comments
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My My. Hard to believe that hidden in the last transportation bill that went through the VA Assembly was a 5% tax on auto repairs that now will help fund bike trails around Richmond. Sounds like a double lobotomy to me.
I’m not surprised given that Chesapeake is building a “bike path to nowhere” that will cost almost as much to build as the road that China is building up Mt. Everist (except that road will be finished in 4 months — I guarantee you that the Chesapeake bike path won’t even be started by the time the Everist road is complete.)
http://virginiavirtucon.wordpress.com/2007/06/19/bike-path-to-nowhere-being-built-in-chesapeake/
Greg,
I wish we could chart a graph that correlated the quantity and volume of your fury and invective against a particular expenditure, on the one hand, against the actual amount of such expenditure relative to the total expenditures made by a particular entity in a particular budget. So far, your fury has been directed against schools (education in general, rather), the arts, public infrastructure, and public safety expenditures. In each case the target of your fury and invective, always characterized as an object of waste, was actually a teeny tiny expenditure relative to the budget subject to your investigation. How nice it would be were you to broaden your inciteful investigations into the area of the material and meaningful. You are nothing, if not consistent, in your attacks upon anything that builds qualitatively our sense of community, which contributes to our civic infrastructure in any material way. You just want to be left alone…. but that feeling is not universal (thank God).
Greg,
I wish we could chart a graph that correlated the quantity and volume of your fury and invective against a particular expenditure, on the one hand, against the actual amount of such expenditure relative to the total expenditures made by a particular entity in a particular budget, on the other hand. So far, your fury has been directed against schools (education in general, rather), the arts, public infrastructure, and public safety expenditures of nearly every kind (wouldn’t want those Mexicans to have access to a play lot, so we better not spend the money for the advantage of anyone else!). In each case the target of your fury and invective, always characterized as an object of waste, was actually a teeny tiny expenditure relative to the budget that was the subject to your meaty investigation. How nice it would be were you to broaden your investigations into the area of the material and meaningful. You are nothing, if not consistent, in your attacks upon anything that builds qualitatively our sense of community. Commitment to community… BAD, commitment to civic purpose… BAD, commitment to public beauty or health or education… BAD , investment in public infrastructure… BAD, investment to attract quality business investment… BAD (those white collar stuffies have no place in our community, right?), You and your compadres (oops, used a Spanish… er, I mean, Mexican word there by accident). Bottom line is that you and martial arts brethren just want to left alone to enjoy your above ground pools and black velvet art. You just want to be left alone…. but that feeling is not universal (thank God).
As an avid bicyclist, I’m all for the bike trails although I can understand how some may become upset if these funds were meant for easing traffic yet diverted to something that may not ease traffic. It is a shame more people don’t bike to work.
It works in the Netherlands, and they’re healthier and live longer.
Netherlands also have more people per square mile then most of United States. If we were all bunched in, bike trails would make sense.
Netherlands has about the same people per square mile as Prince William/Manassas. Bike trails make sense for this area. I would take a bike on my 10 mile commute if there was a trail (but only when the weather is nice).
Ah, Mr. Hall…the gentleman who believes that the taxpayers are not only obligated, but should be grateful for the opportunity to have their taxes increased so that an overpriced elementary school in a small municipality (Manassas Park) can be built as a monument for posterity…regardless of the education which may be sacrificed in exchange. The gentleman who pointed out (in the thread “The Park’s Taj Mahal Gets Funding”) that he, along with any intelligent and successful individual, has the majority of his money invested overseas (translation: hidden from US taxes), so I imagine his lack of concern for the average taxpayer is justified…in his mind. A gentleman who strongly endorses any and all burdens upon the taxpayer, whether justified or not, because he, himself, has managed to slyly avoid the burden.
Welcome back Mr. Hall.
[Ed note: typo corrected]
Folks, this is all part of a big picture. Once were taken over by illegal aliens and our economy and culture equate to the countries from whence these folks are presently fleeing, none of us will be able to afford automobiles and we’ll be thankful for the foresight exhibited by folks like Mr. Hall in establishing trails for the 50’s vintage Huffies we’ll be riding (or more likely, pushing).
Maybe this is a heavily biked route. Couldn’t these trails ease congestion by removing bikes and pedestrians from a highway, thus opening up the highway without actually widening the road itself?
Bikes and pedestrians aren’t allowed on interstate highways, so it won’t help I64.
It MAY help US60. But US60 is a 4-lane divided highway, not a two-lane cowpath like, for example, 28 south of Nokesville.
It’ll help along Rt. 5. Also, transportation is not limited to cars and trucks. If a bike trail leads not only to fewer bikes on heavily traveled roads but to a greater usage of alternative means of commuting, it eases traffic on those roads.
I do like bike paths. In the past I worked at a bicycle shop. There are people who do use bicycles to commute to work and I am in favor of that but what about Northern Virginia? We desperately need funds to improve traffic problems here. It amazes me that money always go south. So, I’m with you on this Greg. Even more bike paths around here for commuters to use would help.
Meanwhile Virginia will have the most expensive public works program in the country with the rail to dulles airport.
Did you ever notice how the one road in northern virginia that never gets a traffic jam is the toll free road going to the airport. The airport isn’t even that busy.
While I can understand the invective against a “scenic bike trail,” bicycles, last I checked, were a mode of transportation. That doesn’t justify the Virginia Capital Trail, but it does mean that bike paths can and should be considered as part of any overall transportation plan.
While we tend to think of them as relics of our youth relegated to collect dust in the garage, bikes are a viable form of transportation that work well in a number of countries (and localities in the US). Smart bike trail networks would relieve congestion by taking people out of their cars and putting them on bikes. I, for instance, live in PWC and commute to Tysons daily. It’s about 28 miles door to door–a commute that can take up to two hours by car. I can bike 28 miles in about 1.5 hours. Would I want to attempt it? Not with our current cars-only infrastructure. I can’t fathom taking a bicycle onto 29 through the Battlefield or 28 through Manassas Park.
Thumper, narrow your parameters a little. I bet the population density in NoVa rivals the Netherlands or at least comes pretty close.
Anonymous (22 Jun 2007 at 11:09 am): Just because bikes and peds aren’t allowed on an interstate does’t mean a bike path wouldn’t relieve congestion on the interstate. If there were bike paths I could take to get to Tysons, I would. That’s a car off INTERSTATE 66. Bike paths don’t just relieve congestion on the routes they parallel. They offer another option to get from point A to point B.
The question is, “Couldn’t these trails ease congestion by removing bikes and pedestrians from a highway”
And the answer is, “No, when bikes and pedestrians aren’t allowed on the highway.”
“If there were bike paths I could take to get to Tysons, I would.”
You would–how many other people would?
I work from home a couple days a week. That relieves congestion, too.
Why don’t more people work from home? There is NOTHING I can do in the office that I can’t do at home, or anywhere there is a broadband, high-speed internet connection, for that matter.
Working from home is a great theory but it never pans out. When I was working, my employer could easily have let us work from home but guess what. They like to keep tabs of us which requires commuting to work. I even tried car pooling but when overtime is required that makes it difficult.
My employer can easily keep tabs on me even when I’m working from home. For example, they can check that I’ve handled tickets in a timely manner. They can check that I’ve filled out my timecard on a daily basis. My boss even works from home–in another state! He lives about 200 miles from here. The customer I work for is in yet another state. The network servers and devices that I work on–I’m not even sure where they’re physically located!
There probably was a point to coming into the office to work, back when all you could get was a slow dialup connection and the office had a nice, fast T1 line, but now…that’s all changed. The network at work isn’t any faster than what I have at home. I can do what I need to do at home. Nobody even knows that I’m working from home unless they actually check whether I’m in the office.
I guess it does depend on your employer–”high tech” companies are probably much more likely to allow you to work from home than are other companies.