“Commuter Crossroads”—More Topics
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Commuting by bus
Commuting by bicycling and walking
Commuting by rapid transit and trolley
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Commuter Crossroads main page
“Commuter Crossroads”—More Topics
Commuting by bus
Commuting by bicycling and walking
Commuting by rapid transit and trolley
Commuting by train
Commuting by car
Too Much Information
Transportation for Tomorrow
Transfers: A Help and a Hassle
Commuting Predictions for 2007
Busloads of Train Riders
Transportation Funding Is Far Behind
Predictions About Commuting in 2006
Virginia Needs to Plan Transportation Differently
Getting Around Two Small Cities: Brattleboro and Fredericksburg
How We Got Sprawl
Why Should Taxes Pay for Public Transportation?
Smart Growth May Arrive at Leeland Station
Federal Anti-Amtrak Policy Is Bad for Virginia
Community Action Gains Transportation Choices
Lack of Transport Choices Hurts the Elderly
Commuting the Last Mile
Connecting Virginia’s Separate Transportation Systems
Missed Opportunity at Main Street
The Third Choice
Cardinal Sins and Cardinal Virtues
Waving at Trains
Fredericksburg Must Get Ready for Growing Rail Service
Smart Growth Needs Smart Transit
Transit Must Overcome Barriers
Rail Passengers Envision Better Future for Virginia
Statewide Transit: New Jersey Has a
Lesson for Virginia (Sep. 16, 2001).
Take the Hurry Out of Commuting (Aug. 19, 2001).
A First-Class Railroad for the Shenandoah Valley?
Winter Weather Reveals Transport
Troubles
Passenger Trains Are Almost Unbreakable
(Jan. 7, 2001).
Virginia and North Carolina Plan Fast
Trains Between Washington and Charlotte (June 25, 2000).
Take the Train to the Plane (May 28, 2000).
Operation Lifesaver Promotes Crossing
Safety
Build ‘Interstate II’ for the 21st
Century (July 25, 1999).
Will High-Speed Rail Come to
Fredericksburg?
By Steve Dunham
This column appeared in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star on
The guy on the company bus was talking out loud to, apparently, his ex-girlfriend. The rest of us didn’t want to hear his half of the personal phone conversation, but there was no escape. After he got off, another co-worker turned to me and said, “There’s such a thing as having too much information.”
Indeed. I’ve been amazed (and a little alarmed) by the things some people say out loud in a crowd. One man sitting behind me on the train asked, “Did you think about me last night?” I hope he wasn’t talking to me! Some conversations demand a little privacy or discretion but instead become a public display. As
I was surprised by one man who walked down the train platform asking, “Do I add value?” I almost laughed out loud until I realized he was talking on a hands-free phone and possibly repeating a question from an employer who had questioned his worth. I would want to have a conversation like that face to face, with the door shut.
Last month two men on the train started discussing, out loud, a problem at one of the national laboratories, a contract that was being opened up to competition and whether and why “Jay” was going to investigate the program. Loose lips can sink ships, but I imagine they can sink companies and contracts too. Only the day before at work, we had gotten a security briefing that warned us against discussing confidential business in public places, because even isolated pieces of information can add up to a security problem. A dozen people, a lot of them government employees or government contractors, could have overheard that conversation on the train, and I’ll bet I wasn’t the only one who knew which national laboratory the two men were talking about.
On another day, one passenger informed all of us what plane he was catching, where and when, what places he would be going, and when he would be back. He was talking on the phone, but loudly enough for those around him to hear. For personal security, I wouldn’t want to announce to a group of strangers what days I would be away from home. If, furthermore, I were taking sensitive business or government information on a trip, I would not want to give strangers my itinerary.
When taking public transportation, we can mentally and emotionally isolate ourselves from the people around us. But that doesn’t give us privacy. We are more like ostriches with our heads in the sand, and although we might achieve a feeling of being alone in a crowd, the illusion ends when somebody starts talking out loud on a phone. “Hi, I’m on the train” just sounds like needless information, maybe even to the person on the receiving end of the phone call. Conflicts in personal relationships, contractual questions, problems at work and travel plans are possibly more information than you want to make public and more than others want to know. Somebody who does want to know might be up to no good.
There’s such a thing as having too much information.
By Steve Dunham
This column appeared in slightly different form in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star on
“The U.S. now has incredible economic potential and significant transportation needs,” according to Transportation for Tomorrow, a report issued in December by the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission. “We need to invest at least
The commission, established by Congress with bipartisan support, had representatives from federal and state transportation departments, academia, a private foundation and the transportation, construction and retail industries. It noted that public investment in transportation enabled the nation to become “the world’s primary economic and military superpower,” thanks to “the foresight of private and public sector leaders” who created “the Interstate highway system, the Nation’s freight rail system, and urban mass transit.”
Now America needs “a significant increase in public funding” and “additional private investment,” guided by “a system that ensures each project is designed, approved, and completed quickly,” provides “fully integrated mobility,” “dramatically reduces fatalities and injuries,” “is environmentally sensitive and safe,” “minimizes use of our scarce energy resources,” “erases wasteful delays,” “supports just-in-time delivery,” and “allows economic development and output more significant than ever seen before in history.”
The present transportation system, said the commission, is wasting our “time, money, fuel, clean air, and our competitive edge.”
The commission recommended consolidating
To pay for the investment, the commission recommended increasing the federal fuel tax and federal truck taxes, a tax on transit trips, fees, tapping customs duties and investment tax credits, plus more investment by the private sector and local and state governments while permitting states to charge tolls on Interstate highways.
The commission was not unanimous. Frank McArdle, senior advisor to the General Contractors Association of
Matt Rose, chairman and chief executive officer of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, said that expanded rail passenger service on freight railroads must be accompanied by improvements to “ensure that rail freight capacity is not reduced, but enhanced.”
Federal Transportation Secretary Mary Peters voiced several pages of disagreement with the rest of the commission: Its “energy research and investment recommendations are inappropriate”; “Federal Fuel Tax increases are not a solution”; the commission seeks an “unnecessarily large Federal role”; she is opposed to “new Federal restrictions on pricing and private investment”—and more. Her position seems to be that the nation’s present transportation system is good enough, but she appears to be at odds with business leaders.
No national transportation plan is going to please everyone, but this commission has recognized that transportation congestion and oil dependence cannot be cured within the present system and that preserving our place in the world economy requires a new, safe, environmentally friendly and efficient transportation system.
The commission’s report is available online.
By Steve Dunham
This column appeared in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star on
Many commuters who ride public transportation use more than one transit service to get to work. From the passenger’s point of view, transfers are bad: Change transit vehicles and your trip takes longer and often costs more.
Although many Virginia Railway Express, vanpool, carpool and bus commuters can walk to their jobs at the end of their ride, many others have to transfer to Washington Metro trains, local buses or even Maryland Rail Commuter, known by its acronym MARC.
The multitude of transit agencies serving the Washington area can make these transfers confusing. But a Smartrip card ($5 to own one, and then you must add value) will get you all over the metropolitan area, the two major exceptions being the commuter railroads, MARC and VRE. Even they are working to make their ticketing systems compatible with Smartrip cards. You can buy the cards at Metro Center (a hub Metro station in downtown Washington), at Arlington’s Commuter Stores, and at other outlets.
VRE also offers a Transit Link Card that gives you a month of discounted rides on the railroad and unlimited rides on Metrorail.
Scheduling a transfer as part of your commute can be easy or hard, depending on where you want to go. Reaching the Pentagon or Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport is easy: get off VRE at Alexandria or Crystal City and go to the nearby Metro station; a Metro train going your way should arrive within a few minutes.
Bus services mostly connect with Metrorail, which is presumed to run often enough that no matter when your bus arrives, there will be a train soon afterward. Transferring from a train to a bus is another story, because most bus lines run less often than the trains, and you need some planning and maybe a few lessons in the school of hard knocks to figure out a reliable connection.
Planning a new trip using local buses in the Washington area requires research. The metropolitan bus map looks like a bowl of colored spaghetti. Figuring out which buses go where and when can take some time. However, the price is right: you can ride most Metrobus routes for free using a VRE ticket.
Otherwise, the price of transfers is mostly unrelated to their value to passengers. You can ride all the way to Baltimore via MARC for free using a VRE pass (transfer at Union Station). That’s almost a hundred miles from Fredericksburg. Going to College Park, Md., will cost you a lot more even though it’s considerably closer, because you need to ride Metro rather than MARC. Basically you are purchasing individual services from separate agencies and there are few package deals.
In cities where all public transportation is provided by one agency, transfer arrangements tend to be much better. For example, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, serving Boston and its suburbs, has a pass like the Washington area’s Smartrip card, but the system automatically calculates the single best price for your trip. Take a trolley and a bus and you pay only the higher of the two fares, not both.
At the other extreme, a few transit agencies do charge a separate fare for each vehicle you ride, unrelated to the overall distance. Fredericksburg Regional Transit discontinued free transfers earlier this year. Now you pay a new fare for each bus you ride, whether you’re going two miles or ten, but the fare is only a quarter, except for the VRE shuttles, which cost a dollar.
The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, serving the Philadelphia area, decided this year to discontinue all free transfers and got slapped down in court. School children who ride the rails and public buses to school, along with 45,000 adults, mostly of lower income, would have been affected.
The court took their side because they are dependent on public transportation. A lot of he Washington area’s riders are not, and to keep them on board, we need to make transfers easy and economical.
Integrating all transit ticketing into the Smartrip card system will help. Automatic discounts for transfers and for frequent trips can make public transportation more attractive. Metrorail fares are already based on distance. Joint rail and bus fares based on mileage, with a discount to compensate you for the nuisance of transferring, would put the price more in line with the service.
By Steve Dunham
This column appeared in slightly different form in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star on
Virginia is about to solve some of its major transportation problems. Whether you are driving, riding the train, or even walking to work, it turns out that the commuting difficulties you experience all have simple solutions.
Since all of my predictions for 2006 came true (some of you are still sitting at the Falmouth light), you will want to know what the future holds.
First, we can expect some real action from the legislature this year. For decades, the governor, the State Senate and the House of Delegates have been unable to agree as to whether the government should be involved in transportation, and if so, how. Should it be merely an election issue? Should the commonwealth be using tax dollars for roads that are little used during certain hours of the night? Do we really need to spend money on airports when other nearby states have airports that Virginians could use? (Research has shown that many people who use Virginia’s airports do not fly every day or even every week.) Couldn’t the thousands of rail passengers just shift their travel to take advantage of empty roads in the middle of the night? And why should Virginia spend money to expand transportation for the Jamestown 2007 celebration, which might be over before the legislature can even agree on a budget?
This year our elected officials will finally stop their bickering and pass the Responsible Transportation Act. Taxpayers and legislators will rejoice because it takes care of all transportation problems with no new taxes. It says that all citizens are responsible for their own transportation. If you want a longer exit lane from
If you would prefer to invest in railroads, you could buy CSX and run your own trains. Then you would face no more fare increases or service cuts. In fact, rather than spend money on passenger trains, you could ride your own freight trains to work for free.
Speaking of CSX, that leads to my next prediction: CSX will realize that if it’s bad to run trains fast in hot weather, it’s a bad idea in cold weather too. Covering all the bases, CSX will have heat restrictions if the temperature is above
Not all the rail riders’ problems are due to CSX, however, and Virginia Railway Express has a storybook solution to the issue of locomotives breaking down. VRE is organizing Commuters Against Stalled Trains. (We can be identified by the CAST tags on our bags.) When an engine breaks down, we will chant, “I think I can, I think I can.” I have “reviewed the literature,” as we researchers like to say, and this actually seems to have worked.
Finally, I have not forgotten those with the shortest commutes: those who walk to work or school. The Fredericksburg City Council will finally deal with the problem of parked cars obstructing the sidewalks. It will have parking meters installed on the sidewalks.
These “public-private partnerships,” as I refer to them, will put the responsibility for transportation back where it belongs: on the shoulders of those who choose not to stay home.
I also predict that the voters will return all the legislators to Richmond in the fall. How the lawmakers will get there is their own problem.
By Steve Dunham
This column appeared in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star on
Lots of people are riding intercity buses despite cuts in service over the past few years. But the service is so poor that I think a lot of them would ride trains instead—if trains were available where they want to go. Yet Greyhound could make its service much more palatable to attract and retain bus riders.
The Greyhound service out of Fredericksburg is skimpy: a few trips per day, north and south. That, I learned last month, is because there also is express service between Washington and Richmond, and it skips Fredericksburg.
While a new bus station is being constructed, Greyhound and Fred are operating out of a temporary station across from Carl’s on Princess Anne Street.
With Amtrak service to the Hampton Roads area cut for several weeks because of CSX trackwork, I couldn’t take the train to Williamsburg for a Saturday meeting. I didn’t think I’d be up to driving two or three hours home after the meeting, so I purchased a round-trip bus ticket. Come Saturday morning, a few other passengers were waiting with me for the bus to Richmond, and a few more waiting for a bus going north.
The Richmond bus pulled in right on time. There were a lot of empty seats, but I spotted two other people going to the Williamsburg meeting. Although this was a local bus, from Fredericksburg to Richmond it ran nonstop, and we arrived at the Richmond bus station about an hour later, on time.
This would be an easy way to go to Richmond, except that the bus station, on the Boulevard, is not near much except for the Diamond, where the Richmond Braves play, right across the street.
I and the other travelers going to Williamsburg had computer-generated tickets with dates and bus trip numbers, but here is where Greyhound becomes very unattractive: your ticket is no guarantee that you will get on the bus. An hour before the Norfolk bus was scheduled to leave, people were lining up to make sure they would get on board.
I’d encountered this problem before a few years ago when one of my sons and I got stuck in the downtown Baltimore bus station for hours because the bus filled before we could get on, and we had to get in line for the next one.
This recurring situation has, I’m sure, driven away plenty of passengers. After this trip, I would not take an intercity bus unless I were desperate. Yet the problem could be fixed: Greyhound’s computer could be used to reserve seats on the buses.
Furthermore, the bus was not particularly cheap. Last summer I took Amtrak to Williamsburg and back. The round trip from Fredericksburg was $58. My bus trip last month cost $61. With no guarantee of a seat, who with any reasonable alternative would ride the bus?
With reserved seats (and more comfortable seats) for about the same price, the train would certainly be preferable. My guess is that a lot of those people on the bus I rode would have taken the train if one had been available.
My intercity bus trips during the past few years have convinced me of two things: the people riding the bus now represent a market for better public transportation, and they are a small fraction of the potential passengers for better rail service, because the bus service is so bad that a lot of would-be passengers have stopped riding.
By Steve Dunham
This column appeared in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star on
The generations before us invested in the transportation infrastructure we enjoy now, according to Sheila Noll. It’s our turn to create a transportation system for future generations, she said. Noll is president of the Public Transportation Alliance of Hampton Roads; she was addressing the annual meeting of the Virginia Association of Railway Patrons on
At transportation town hall meetings around the Hampton Roads area, Noll said, “citizens spoke loudly and clearly” for more and better public transportation, including buses, light rail and high-speed rail. They are tired of wasted time due to clogged transportation systems, she added.
Besides highways, the area already has local buses, intercity buses, ferries and Amtrak service. Norfolk is planning a light rail line along a disused railroad right of way. Yet all of these do not add up to the capacity needed to provide mobility to residents and visitors, a situation that sounds familiar in Fredericksburg.
Dwight Farmer, a transportation planning engineer, also addressed the meeting. Farmer is executive director of transportation for the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission. Back in 1967, he said, the
The Norfolk light rail line in the same corridor is forecast to carry 30,000 riders per day, and Farmer said that it would have a significant positive impact on travel between the area’s two biggest cities. Noting that transportation forecasts always turn out low, he ominously mentioned another forecast: by 2015, the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel
Despite the problems, Farmer said, it has been a struggle to get funding for any transportation improvements.
Noll pointed out that the Hampton Roads area is the
That’s a pattern repeated around Virginia as population growth and economic growth outstrip the transportation infrastructure.
We need a long-term transportation funding source adjusted annually for inflation, said Noll.
To put transportation spending in perspective, Farmer pointed out that each of the big auto manufacturers spends more each year on advertising than the entire federal budget for public transportation. He feels that the mentality of public investment is being lost. However, he thinks that local officials—with whom he works daily—agree with the public on the need for more and better transportation.
Noll compared public opinion on transportation to a sleeping giant. We need to increase the number of voices speaking for public transportation, she said. Politicians listen, she emphasized; people need to speak. We must act as a community and each do our part for a viable multimodal transportation system, she said, noting that it’s an issue of funding and priorities.
By Steve Dunham
This column appeared in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star on
Innovative relief is in sight for the Falmouth intersection, Virginia Railway Express
Are you tired of sitting in traffic at the Falmouth intersection? That will be a thing of the past (2005). No, traffic is not going to start moving. In fact, the gridlock will be worse than ever. Your car will be going nowhere for hours, but that doesn’t mean you have to just sit there. Shuttle buses will take you downtown to shop and to enjoy events such as the Christmas open house, which will be on Labor Day weekend this year. By the time you return to your car, the light at the Falmouth intersection will be turning green. After moving ahead a few car lengths, you can take a bus back downtown for the Veterans’ Day observance (the Christmas sales will be interrupted for
Next, there’s good news for those of you who buy VRE
More good news for VRE riders: I have deciphered the delay announcements. VRE uses an “additive delay” system, in which you are supposed to add up all the announcements, and that will give you the actual length of the delay. For example, on
But what about getting to the station or anywhere else in this area if you have to use
Now that you know the shape of things to come (as
By Steve Dunham
This column appeared in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star on
Transportation in Virginia needs to address the needs of all its citizens, giving them transportation choices rather than making driving the standard for everyone and expecting the millions who don’t fit this model to find some workaround. This view of transportation has gone about as far as it can go, and it’s way past time for a new transportation model that addresses the needs of the very young, the very old, the disabled and the poor, not to mention people who would prefer healthful, environmentally friendly alternatives such as walking and bicycling. On
First, create statewide transportation systems besides highways and freight railroads. Transportation needs do not end at county and city lines, and neither do the roads. Neither should passenger trains, bicycling routes, or walking trails.
Bike routes and trails and sidewalks have a significant role to play in local travel. The people of Charlottesville know that safe walking and bicycling routes are not just for recreation but are used by adults, children and senior citizens to go places. Under our present system, many people who want to go somewhere are expected to find a ride. What could be a three-mile bicycle ride turns into
We also are more than ready for a statewide passenger rail system. The Trans-Dominion Express, with four trains a day serving Bristol, Roanoke, Lynchburg, Charlottesville, Washington and Richmond, was partly funded almost six years ago but has yet to leave the station. It would provide transportation choices to millions of Virginians. Fund it fully and make it happen. Something else to begin in 2006—before the Jamestown 2007 celebration—is additional passenger train service to and from Richmond, Newport News, Norfolk and Virginia Beach. The present Amtrak service is infrequent and expensive ($40 or $50 for a round trip from Fredericksburg to Richmond, for example). Four more trains a day on the lines from Richmond to Newport News, Washington and Virginia Beach (which has no passenger trains even though it is the largest city in Virginia) plus the Trans-Dominion Express make 16 trains a day. This is less than Virginia Railway Express runs. It is not going to break the bank, but it is going to make a huge difference in how it is possible to get around our commonwealth.
Second, make the roads safe for safe travelers. Stop licensing drivers who speed, tailgate, run red lights and park on the sidewalk; make those people afraid to drive that way and make the rest of us safe.
Third, make the existing local public transportation systems more than a workaround for people who don’t drive. The Washington Metro is an exception and a model: it is the preferred way for many people to get around the Washington, D.C., area. We don’t need rail rapid transit everywhere, but we do need more than infrequent local buses that merely accommodate those who have no other way to get around.
We can afford this. I can afford this. A few years ago I calculated that paying the Fredericksburg gas tax to support VRE was costing me 50 cents a month. Maybe it’s a dollar now. Make it $10 or $20 and give me ways to get around Virginia seven days a week that don’t involve a traffic nightmare. I’ll gladly pay it and I’ll probably get half of it back by not driving so much.
OK, I’ve had my say. How about you? Whether you want to see a different model for transportation in Virginia or are happy with things as they are, you can express your views to the next governor by email at transportation@govelect.virginia.gov.
By Steve Dunham
This column appeared in slightly different form in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star on
 |
| A passenger and Rosie the Calf outside the Brattleboro station. |
You can walk out of the Econo Lodge and into a shopping center next door, or you can cross the street to an outlet center. And you can walk into town. There are sidewalks the whole way—about a mile. That’s Brattleboro, Vt., a city about the size of Fredericksburg but without the suburbs.
My wife and I arrived by train for our son John’s college graduation from Marlboro College, about
Brattleboro, like Fredericksburg, lies next to a river
Compared to Fredericksburg, Brattleboro doesn’t have as many tourist attractions, though it does attract visitors. The scenery is pleasant (there’s a waterfall downtown), and there’s some local history to learn about. The intercity bus station is miles from town, out near an exit from Interstate 5 north of the city. There’s one Amtrak train a day to
But it’s somewhat easier to get around Brattleboro. There seem to be sidewalks everywhere. Although our hotel was next to an exit on the Interstate, we walked to stores, walked to church, even walked the mile to the train station with one suitcase apiece (it was all downhill). The Walk signs are accompanied by a chirping bird sound, which at first I didn’t connect with the traffic signals. The novelty of a bird sound for crossing the street wore off pretty quickly. Downtown Fredericksburg is not too bad to walk around, but generally we are inviting more traffic and congestion by making many places hard to get to without driving.
One place in Brattleboro that had poor access was the train station. The upstairs level of the two-story building fronts on the main street, but it’s now the city museum. To walk to the actual station you must cross a busy street twice, the second time without benefit of a crosswalk or traffic light. Pedestrians clearly were not considered when the railroad part of the building was cut back to the lower level. The Fredericksburg train station is a lot easier to walk to than the one in Brattleboro, though you still have to contend with traffic lights where pedestrians are not part of the equation, and often with motor vehicles parked on the sidewalk. (Unfortunately, Brattleboro, like Fredericksburg, sometimes has sidewalks blocked by parked vehicles. I saw one blind man tapping his way along using his cane. He encountered a van on the sidewalk and found his way around it, but it made me sad to see what we have taken away from some people to make driving and parking more convenient.)
 |
| Rosie the Calf. |
But the Brattleboro station has a surprising quantity of amenities for a stop that has two trains a day. There was a waiting room and a clean restroom, plus plastic chairs outside and an entrance graced by a local folk sculpture, Rosie the Calf. The station host (there were no ticket sales) kept the waiting passengers informed as to the progress of Amtrak’s southbound Vermonter
This is one area where Fredericksburg should imitate Brattleboro. Far more people spend a lot more time at the Fredericksburg station, sometimes waiting hours for a late Amtrak train. VRE riders or their families sometimes wait there for an hour or more. With hundreds of daily passengers, plus people meeting the trains, Fredericksburg too should have a waiting room and a restroom, as well as a human being to assist people and provide information, instead of loud but indistinct announcements
By Steve Dunham
This column appeared in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star on
How did we end up with a highway-dependent development pattern that gobbles open land, neglects downtowns and fills roads to the saturation point? It was encouraged by government policy throughout the past
From early in the
The funding mechanism, moreover, took money out of the cities and spent it in the countryside. Although organizations such as the American Automobile Association and the National Coalition of Highway Users (companies profiting from the highway industry, not a group of ordinary drivers) opposed requiring motorists to pay any of the costs of road improvements, a significant portion of highway construction was funded by gasoline taxes. However, it taxed urban and rural drivers at equal rates while directing the money primarily to construction outside the cities. The relatively few miles of new highway built within cities often resulted in bulldozed neighborhoods and a flow of traffic that municipalities could not easily absorb, coupled with a demand for parking that took more land off the tax rolls to accommodate auto travel in town. The costs within cities and towns tended to be paid out of general tax revenues rather than any tax related to auto use.
How these policies worked out in practice is shown in three case studies. The author examines in detail how federal highway building affected Denver, CO; Middlebury, VT; and Smyrna, TN. Denver lost business to the hinterlands due to federally subsidized highway and airport construction and saw a marked decline in its downtown. Middlebury, a town of modest size, not only lost business and residents to the surrounding county but could not get state aid for state roads that passed through the town, because matching the federal Interstate Highway grants consumed Vermont’s highway budget; in fact, Vermont could not match all the grants available and so got fewer highways built than it was entitled to. Smyrna, a rural hamlet, got money from Washington in the form of two (and then a third) Interstates, plus a military base. The government-provided infrastructure attracted Nissan and other manufacturers and brought rapid growth and prosperity.
In the 1960s, the wind changed a little bit as urban and some suburban residents began resisting further highway construction, and mass transit, neglected for years as a formerly profitable private enterprise now unable to compete with free roads, began receiving government assistance for construction and operation. States had to choose the smarter policy over the cheaper policy, however, because the federal government continued to pay 90% of the cost of Interstate Highway construction but only 80% for rapid transit.
Nevertheless, it was a turning point. Washington, DC, rejected an inner beltway and began instead to build the Washington Metro—for all its difficulties, still one of the best rail transit systems in the country. Denver managed a downtown renaissance and, in the 1990s, started a light rail system that is still expanding. Dozens of other cities have built new transit lines in the past few decades.
However, highways still get the bulk of the money, and highway expansion, accompanied by continued sprawl, remains the order of the day.
By Steve Dunham
This column appeared in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star on
Should local, state and federal taxes pay for public transportation? This question is a hot issue right now. Stafford and Spotsylvania counties have been considering how much
Affecting all three issues—and many other budget issues around the state and across the nation—is the question of how much tax money (if any) should go toward public transportation. It’s interesting that it should still be an issue, because transportation has been funded by the government since the early years of this nation, and historically since nations started building roads and canals to facilitate commerce. America’s railroads, canals, and highway network were built with government assistance, and the airlines depended on government money to get started and keep going. Every mode of transportation benefits from some kind of taxpayer funding.
One reason it’s still an issue is something called “user fees”: taxes that are supposed to pay for transportation by charging those who use it. The security fee imposed on airline tickets is one of these. The White House wants to more than double these charges, increasing the amount collected from
What drivers do pay is a gas tax. The federal gas tax goes into the Highway Trust Fund to build more highways, although states have the option of using the money toward rapid transit or commuter rail (but not intercity rail). The Bush Administration wants to offer states a 50% federal share of funding for intercity rail service, but continue to offer 80% or more for highway construction. This approach is likely—but not guaranteed—to steer states away from rail and toward more highways.
This federal budgetary influence is compounded by a lack of transportation choices, because every purchase of gasoline is treated as a de facto vote for more highways. The “user fee” in the form of the gas tax appears to be based on the assumption that we have chosen to drive rather than use some other means of transportation and that we would like more highways built. In fact, plenty of travelers are driving because their only other choice is to stay home.
Not all drivers want more highways. In the Shenandoah Valley, the state is considering making
Elsewhere, people who live far from an Interstate highway pay a gas tax to build highways they don’t often use. Furthermore, a huge proportion of roads are not federally funded at all. The money comes from state general funds, local property taxes and income and other taxes.
Gas taxes don’t cover all the costs of building roads, and they usually contribute nothing to the other costs of highway travel, such as lower air quality (which we are experiencing in the Fredericksburg area), traffic and removal of land from tax rolls (highways and parking are property gobblers). When we drive, there are many costs we don’t pay directly.
For several decades rail passenger service, especially mass transit, has been getting a bigger share of our tax dollars spent of transportation, though the amount is still dwarfed by what goes to roads.
The reason is that it is in public demand. It facilitates commerce, mitigates traffic and air pollution and gives people a transportation choice. Rail riders, like drivers and airline passengers (and many of us are all three), do not pay the full costs of our transportation.
It’s because of the economy. Airports and highways are frightfully expensive to build and maintain. Just think “Mixing Bowl.” Rail operations are expensive too. But mobility and access are key to the nation’s economy, and they have been since the days of the National Road, the Erie Canal, and the transcontinental railroad. If we want to travel, whether it’s downtown, into Washington or across the country, it’s going to cost us.
By Steve Dunham
This column appeared in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star on
Imagine getting off the Virginia Railway Express train and walking home from the station, stopping on the way to pick up dinner. Kids are bicycling home from the playground. Neighbors are jogging past, and as the sun gets low, a few history buffs are taking a last look at a Civil War historic site. And you’re not in Fredericksburg. You’re in Stafford at the next expansion of the Leeland Station development.
It will be a village with shops, restaurants, professional offices, apartments and town houses, besides typical suburban homes with lawns, if the property owner’s vision is fulfilled. Ted Smart, manager of Maryland Development Company, wants to “take advantage of the transportation” that’s there—VRE—and “put growth where it’s supposed to go.”
The company already has the right to build another
The proposal has been endorsed by the Smart Growth Alliance, which does not bestow its approval without knowing the facts. Its project recognition jury examined Maryland Development Company’s responses to a
What about the rest of the company’s property? If all the homes that Maryland Development is authorized to build are concentrated in a village, building still more homes—an extension of the village—on the remaining land will require zoning changes. But a revised Stafford development plan and any zoning decisions based on it appear to be years away. Smart, however, is confident that if he can go ahead with the first village, the county and its people will like what they see and grant permission for the rest of the property to be developed in a similar fashion. “We’re willing to take that risk,” he said.
Not only would the development buck the trend of sprawl in the Fredericksburg area, but Smart calculates that mixed-use development would give the county a net tax gain—after the cost of providing services to the new community—of
VRE was designed mostly on a park-and-ride model. With few exceptions the stations have little access except by car. Accommodating growing ridership means adding parking spaces. Fredericksburg, Quantico and Manassas are notable in that a sizable percentage of local residents can walk to the station. Transit-oriented development at the other stations would move VRE closer to the pattern of many other commuter railroads: in many towns a sizable percentage of the passengers walk to the station. This would help VRE grow at lower cost, providing more transportation without an equal increase in parking.
To take the next step, Maryland Development Company needs a text amendment to Stafford’s building code to allow the homes to be concentrated in a smaller area, with private parking and commercial space. Smart emphasized that what his company is asking of the county is “stricter criteria.” He hopes to get the planning commission to review the amendment in time for the supervisors to approve it in June.
Most current development that requires travel by road to go almost anywhere, creating an endless multiplication of traffic and lessened mobility for anyone who doesn’t drive. The proposed village at Leeland Station would take growth in a different direction. It looks like a smart idea to me.
By Steve Dunham
This column appeared in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star on
Two weeks ago, the Bush Administration proposed eliminating Amtrak’s operating funds except for trains on the Northeast Corridor between Washington and Boston. This latest effort to eliminate or drastically reduce federal spending on passenger trains reflects an attitude that Amtrak has “unsustainably large operating losses,” in the words of Kenneth Mead, the federal Department of Transportation’s inspector general, in a
This sort of talk suggests that operating passenger trains around the country (with generally sparse service outside the Northeast) is costing the taxpayers dearly. Just how big is this financial burden?
In fiscal year 2005, Amtrak is getting
After two years at the helm, Gunn stated that even
Gunn is an experienced, no-nonsense railroader who has been putting Amtrak’s operations and finances in order. But he cannot feed five thousand people with a few loaves and fishes, nor move
Eliminating Amtrak operating funds outside the Northeast would certainly drive away David Gunn, the most capable manager Amtrak has ever had. It would also be a slap in the face to the states that Bush says should be paying for train service. The Commonwealth of Virginia appropriated
States would not only see their investments lost, they would have to start paying for Amtrak stations that also host commuter services but would now be abandoned by Amtrak: Chicago,
Eliminating money for Amtrak operations in Virginia and the rest of the South—and the Midwest, the Southwest, and the Northwest—would not just be pound foolish, it is not even penny wise, because what we spend on Amtrak is not one cent out of the federal tax dollar. It is not even close. It is not even
A few weeks ago I wrote to
Amtrak doesn’t need
Instead of cutting an Amtrak budget that would barely fund the Pentagon for one day, let this be the last time any politician mentions the high cost of Amtrak. Let this be the resurrection of good, frequent passenger train service throughout the United States. Give Amtrak the money while it has a leader like David Gunn to spend it wisely. A billion or two per year is not a burden on America. It’s the present federal transportation policy that is unsustainable.
By Steve Dunham
This column appeared in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star on
How does a small city establish safe walking and biking routes, expand public transportation, and get people of all ages informed and involved? In Charlottesville, it’s happening with community action, thanks to the Alliance for Community Choice in Transportation, a grassroots volunteer group founded in 2001.
Its first project was Safe Routes to School, organizing opportunities for children to walk or bike instead of riding in a car or bus
“Much of the small town civility that Charlottesville once knew seems endangered today, as traffic congestion grows and more of us find ourselves in a hurry,” according to the group’s September newsletter. Pedestrian Safety Month was one response by the alliance. During September, volunteers handed out flyers to educate the public about pedestrians’ and drivers’ responsibilities and carried placards in crosswalks to remind drivers to yield to pedestrians. The city police agreed to enforce the pedestrian safety laws at crosswalks and intersections.
Another of the alliance’s ideas is a streetcar line—a real electric trolley running on rails in West Main Street. It could provide additional transit capacity, encourage the downtown area’s economic vitality, and draw outside tourists to the city. Recognizing that a trolley line would represent a major civic investment, the Alliance for Community Choice in Transportation is doing some serious work. Earlier this year, with a grant from the Blue Moon Fund, the alliance took
The alliance has a close relationship with Charlottesville Transit Service, working as partners with the service at public events such as the bike rodeo and making recommendations to improve the bus service.
Working with public, civic and volunteer organizations, the Alliance for Community Choice in Transportation has become a clearinghouse for information on transportation choices. Through its Community Resource Center, the alliance provides “answers, solutions and options,” said Anderson. The alliance sees itself in an educational resource role, she said, and it offers assistance and transportation information by phone, via its website, and with an impressive achievement, the Charlottesville Area Regional Mobility Map. Sponsored by and distributed through area businesses, this is a first-rate job. It shows all the bus routes, bike lanes, preferred bike routes and walking trails in Charlottesville. The phone numbers, websites and general operating hours are listed for every bus service in the area, along with information about parks, recreation, safety and how long it takes to make typical walking, biking and bus trips in the area. The sponsoring businesses have advertisements in the border and are indicated by numbers on the map. I’ve been to Charlottesville by train and by car, and I had some trouble finding my way around. With this map in hand, I wouldn’t hesitate to go there and walk around town, ride the local buses and patronize the sponsoring businesses—and thank them for this wonderful package of information.
We could use a map like that for Fredericksburg, with one addition: show where there are sidewalks, where there aren’t and where there are hazards to walking, like the Blue and Gray Parkway or the vehicles that routinely block the sidewalks on Lafayette Boulevard—both are obstacles to anyone visiting and exploring the battlefield on foot.
Community action has achieved a lot in Charlottesville, and it could do a lot in Fredericksburg. “Everything we do relies strongly on volunteers,” said Anderson. “We’re a small organization, but we get a lot done.”
For more information, contact the Alliance for Community Choice in Transportation by phone at
By Steve Dunham
This column appeared in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star on
Have you thought about how you will get around after you retire? Most Fredericksburg-area residents already cannot get very far without a car. If you live in the sprawl of Spotsylvania, Stafford and other nearby counties, as so many of us do, just getting to Fredericksburg and back without a car is an achievement.
Sometimes I get off the train in Fredericksburg and have no ride home and no car available. Riding the Fred bus halfway and walking the rest, I can get home in an hour and a half. Going nine miles without a car is an accomplishment. For almost all of the hike, there are no sidewalks. Walking on the shoulder of
I may not be able to travel those nine miles without a car if I live to be 80, and chances are good that I won’t be driving then either. One in five Americans
So what choices do older Americans have? “Over half of non-drivers
In some areas, though, the elderly have a lot more mobility. Where public transportation is available, they use it. If there are safe places to walk or ride a bike, they will walk and, yes, ride a bike. In the Netherlands, where bicycles are a popular means of transportation, nearly half of all trips made by people
More public transportation and safe places to walk and bike would contribute to health and mobility for a lot of people, not just those of retirement age. There are plenty of people under 65 whose health, driving ability, and lack of a car keep them from driving.
And then there’s personal preference. Where they have transportation choices, a lot of people use them. Just look at how many commuters in this area take public transportation to work if it is available. Many—I assume most—of them could drive, but when they have a choice, they choose not to.
I don’t buy the story about America’s love affair with the automobile. Yes, there are people who love cars, and there are people who love trains. But most of the people riding Virginia Railway Express are not using it because they love trains, and most of the people on
With government transportation spending vastly favoring highways over anything else, and with development patterns, noticeably in the Fredericksburg area, generally discouraging travel except by car, Americans aren’t having a love affair with cars. It’s a shotgun marriage.
So where will you and I be in 10, 20 or
By Steve Dunham
This column appeared in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star in slightly different form on
In commuting, sometimes the last mile is the hardest. For some Fredericksburg-area commuters, the last mile got a little harder starting
Ever since my employer moved miles away from any rail station (the company used to be an 8-minute walk from the Crystal City station), traveling the last
Other commuters traveling to work or school in the Alexandria area also found their choices slashed. VRE needed to balance its budget and decided to stop paying for bus connections (Metro doesn’t charge VRE for passengers who transfer to its buses). As a result, traveling by public transportation in Virginia just got slower and more expensive. For an area with few transportation choices, severe traffic congestion and deteriorating air quality, that’s bad news.
The good news is that we do have bus connections. Our transportation system was planned so that drivers could get almost anywhere. Everything else—public transportation, places to bike, places to walk—is mostly piecemeal, and the pieces are not necessarily designed to connect with one another.
Hank Dittmar, president of Reconnecting America, discussed this problem at the Transportation Connectivity Symposium in Farmington on
In Washington, reconnecting transportation with a “last mile” project would probably mean putting the bus terminal next door to Union Station instead of several blocks away. In Alexandria, it could mean routing all bus lines through King Street station (served by Amtrak, VRE, and Metrorail); most buses go there already.
These places already have some kind of connectivity, but it often involves transfers that require time and money to travel a short distance, whereas more intermodal hubs would make public transportation faster, simpler, and cheaper.
The more transfers you have to make, the slower your average speed, and if the transfers cost money, your cost per mile is probably going up too. Public transportation is already attracting a lot of riders, but as we build a transportation system for the future, we need to create one that rewards travelers who choose alternatives to driving. That means making it easy for them to travel the last mile.
By Steve Dunham
This column appeared in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star in slightly different form on
Virginia has highways, passenger trains, rapid transit, bus lines, freight railroads, airports, ports and biking and hiking trails. Most were designed without considering all the others. Sometimes they cooperate. Often they compete. Never are they all designed together as an integrated transportation system.
In Fredericksburg, for example, we have Fred, with its central transfer point at the Greyhound station—a reasonably convenient connection that I have used a few times. Two Fred routes also serve the railroad station downtown, but the first Fred bus arrives downtown after the last Virginia Railway Express train has left. You can use Fred to get to and from some Amtrak trains, but in the evening the trains keep arriving after the last Fred bus has gone, except for the weekend-only (but not in summer) Fred Express.
The National Coach Lines buses stop at the commuter parking lot on
Walking or biking to VRE is possible, but few safe walking or biking routes go very far from the stations. Within the city, walking is possible to most of the Fred routes; outside the city, Fred generally deposits you in an area without sidewalks. Walk or bike to the commuter parking lot to board a bus? You weren’t part of the equation when the system was designed.
What about the
Clearly, the designers of all these systems gave at least some thought to the others, but each system was planned individually, with some connections at some points, not to give people the widest range of transportation choices.
But is there a better way? That was the question at the Transportation Connectivity Symposium, sponsored by the Virginia Rail Policy Institute and held on June 4 in Farmington, outside Charlottesville.
The keynote speaker, Hank Dittmar, who is president and chief executive officer of Reconnecting America, argued that the United States has concentrated on expanding single-mode networks, with stove-piped planning, funding, and delivery of service. Transportation policy, he said, focuses on “projects, not performance.” He also maintained that emphasis on “mobility” is misplaced. Transportation, he said, is about “access for people and goods.” If you walk to an automated teller machine, that may serve the same purpose as a trip to a bank, he pointed out. What our transportation system needs to do, he said, is provide access to markets, jobs, recreation, and other things.
Throughout the symposium, dozens of speakers and panelists talked about identifying obstacles to connectivity and finding solutions. Access to the Jamestown 2007 events was noted as a problem with a looming deadline, and in other areas, transportation funding is scarce even for maintenance, much less improved connectivity. But there were reasons for hope, too, and I plan to discuss some of them in future columns.
By Steve Dunham
This column appeared in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star on
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| Photo courtesy of Mike Testerman, |
Main Street Station in Richmond reopened
Initially the station will be served by a pair of trains in each direction (north and south), with a third southbound train on weekdays. The station is on the route of Amtrak’s trains to and from Williamsburg and Newport News. Further work on the station and tracks south of it will allow the Amtrak trains that terminate in Richmond, the daily train to and from Charlotte, and the Florida trains to use the station. All of these except the Florida trains also stop in Fredericksburg.
Main Street Station has been nicely renovated; it’s a Richmond landmark dating to 1901, beautiful to look at except that
Passenger trains once served both Main Street Station and Broad Street Station. Although Main Street and Broad Street are only three blocks apart, the stations bearing their names are at opposite ends of downtown Richmond. In 1975, Amtrak closed both stations and moved to a station on Staples Mill Road in Henrico County. This station, called “Richmond,” is about five miles from downtown. It remains in use. The Broad Street Station now houses the Science Museum of Virginia. Main Street Station housed a shopping mall and later some state offices, but often it was vacant and quietly decaying. It’s nice to have it back.
It’s a big step forward to have a train station serving downtown Richmond, making it much more accessible as a destination by rail. For business and government travelers from Washington, Baltimore and points in the Northeast, the direct service to Main Street may now look a lot more attractive than a flight to the airport in Sandston, east of the city.
What Main Street Station doesn’t offer yet, however, is attractive rail travel for shorter trips from Ashland and Fredericksburg. First of all, the fares may be competitive with flying, but they aren’t competitive with short-distance driving. A one-way ticket from Fredericksburg to Richmond is about $25, approximately
Between Richmond and Ashland, the one-way fare is $16, almost a dollar a mile. Amtrak is offering a ten-ride ticket, valid for
A few weeks ago I helped host an information display at the Ashland library’s Train Day. I heard from people who had been hoping that once Main Street Station opens, they could use the train to commute to work in Richmond. The multiple-ride fares are not prohibitive, but an Amtrak schedule change this year reduced the time you could spend in Richmond. Now the first train doesn’t get to Richmond till after 10:30, and the last one north leaves before 4:00, effectively ruling out commuting anyway.
I realize that Amtrak is an intercity carrier, not a commuter railroad, and the company wouldn’t want to fill seats with short-distance travelers buying cheap tickets if they were displacing more lucrative fares between, say, Richmond and New York. However, I often see trains 76 and 77, which operate between Washington and Newport News, going by with quite a few empty seats—unlike last year, when those trains operated all the way to Boston. Amtrak could use its online Rail Sale to offer a few seats per train at cheap prices, as it does with other trains when they have unsold seats. If I could get a $20 round trip by train to Richmond, I would go there for the day with my wife. Selling just a few seats cheaply would fill some empty ones, not cut into Amtrak’s longer-distance business.
Better yet would be for the Commonwealth of Virginia to fund one Virginia Railway Express train between Fredericksburg and Richmond. If it were scheduled around working hours at the state offices, just one train could serve a lot of the working population. It would give a lot of people a commuting alternative to driving and ease the rush-hour traffic and parking crunch in Richmond. Ironically, a reduction in parking space for state workers was one cause of delay in reopening Main Street Station. Now that the station will be open, how about giving those workers not just a place to park, but a better way to get to work?
By Steve Dunham
This column appeared in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star on
For most trips—to work, to shopping, to church, for recreation—people in the Fredericksburg area have two choices: drive or stay home. This is especially true in the suburban and rural areas of the surrounding counties.
Most roads have been built without sidewalks, most traffic lights leave pedestrians out of the equation and most stores, at least in the suburbs, are accessible only by road. Even neighboring stores often have curbs, fences or other barriers that prevent people from walking from one place to another.
For a few trips, some people have transportation alternatives such as Fred, Virginia Railway Express, bicycling and walking. But even the VRE stations in Stafford have been designed in a way that discourages people from arriving by bicycle or on foot.
Our local transportation alternatives are not likely to make much of a dent in traffic, except on I 95, which might be at a standstill more often if the parallel VRE service were not carrying such a large volume of north-south passengers. What our transportation alternatives are doing is—sometimes—to give people a third choice other than driving or staying home.
We have an opportunity, and I would say an obligation, to give people more transportation choices. Let’s first of all recognize that a lot of people don’t have two choices: they are too young, too old, too poor or too sick to drive. To these people—and there are many of them—and to the thousands of other people who would not add traffic to the road if they had an option—we owe a third choice.
Look at the traffic congestion in the Central Park shopping center, for example. It has become notorious. The area was designed in a way that discourages people from walking there even if they live nearby, and it discourages people from arriving by bicycle. Furthermore, it is so spread out, with acres of parking lots separating many stores, that it encourages people to drive from one place to another even within the shopping center. The Fred bus service to Central Park runs at most once an hour, and not at all on summer weekends.
This shopping center may never be able to overcome its highway orientation, but we could make it an easier place to get to: First, build a pedestrian and bicycle bridge over
Another choice that should be expanded is Virginia Railway Express. It is already strained by the number of people wanting to ride, and that’s just with a weekday rush-hour service. Despite the limited choices of departure and arrival times, every day you can see people taking the train to National Airport, the museums in Washington, and even (with a change of trains at Washington) Baltimore-Washington International Airport. With hourly service to Washington and Richmond seven days a week, we would find people riding the train to a lot more places, including Fredericksburg.
The people of this area deserve a third choice for their other trips too. When a new retail, office, or housing development is proposed, our local governments should be asking, “What will you do to encourage people to get to and from your development without driving?” Will there be pedestrian and bicycle access to nearby housing, retail, and employment centers? Will there be transit access?
We also need to remedy the way that transportation alternatives have been designed out of our present system. If every traffic light had a button that would trigger an exclusive pedestrian light, people could get around the Fredericksburg area much more safely. If no pedestrians are waiting to cross, traffic won’t be delayed. People who do want to cross will not have to compete with turning traffic.
There are countless trips that are overdue for a third choice. The improvements will cost money, yes. The system we have now cost a lot of money to build, and we are still paying in other ways. When people have more choices for every trip—drive, stay home, walk, bicycle, take a bus, or take a train—the Fredericksburg area will be growing into a place that is more attractive to live, shop, and work. That will be good for the economy, good for the people who visit, and good for the people who live here.
By Steve Dunham
This column appeared in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star on
Amtrak’s Cardinal flies through Virginia Railway Express territory, and far beyond, six times a week. Two rides on the Cardinal this year and two last year gave me a look at the train and how it serves the transportation market—sometimes poorly, sometimes well.
The Cardinal operates between Washington and Chicago via Manassas, Charlottesville, Charleston, Cincinnati and Indianapolis; it is named for the state bird of all six states through which the train runs. The Cardinal departs and arrives Washington on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Yes, the train runs only three days a week. VRE passengers with ten-trip or monthly tickets can ride the train anywhere between Washington and Manassas. As such, the Cardinal provides a modest supplement to the VRE service. Its main role in Virginia, however, is to serve the towns and cities farther from Washington: Culpeper, Charlottesville, Staunton, Clifton Forge.
The Cardinal’s main sin is that it doesn’t run every day. Beyond Charlottesville and all the way to Chicago, it is the only train on the route. This means that travelers to and from Charleston, Cincinnati and Indianapolis and the towns along the way have very slim choices about when to depart and when to return.
The Cardinal’s other big sin is that it is often late—very late. When my son James and I rode the Cardinal to Chicago this winter, we passed the eastbound Cardinal somewhere in West Virginia, and I estimated that the train was four hours late. “How does a train become four hours late unless there is a derailment or a detour somewhere?” I wondered. We soon found out. We lost hours switching cars (mostly waiting to switch cars) at Indianapolis, and in northern Indiana, the CSX signals were out of order, and we had to proceed at
The Cardinal, I’ve heard, is a political train—a bone tossed to the politicians of West Virginia and other states so that their constituents have some train service. The pols, it seems, don’t have enough clout, or don’t care enough, to get some good train service for their people—like a train that runs every day and on time.
The Cardinal may be infrequent and often late, but for all that, it does carry a good number of passengers. I’ve been on board when it was sold out. On my trips this winter, there were a lot of people in coach, and the sleeping car was sold out. Maybe if you live in Clifton
The Cardinal does have its virtues, especially the scenery. It crosses the Blue Ridge from the Piedmont to the Shenandoah Valley. On any Sunday afternoon, you’ll see people boarding the Cardinal in Charlottesville for a ride over the mountains to Staunton and back. It follows the New River Gorge in West Virginia—a place of amazing beauty, where a historical society runs special trains just for people to see the gorge.
The train also makes connections at the ends of the trip for points beyond. On the days I rode, a lot of the Hoosiers and Ohioans and Kentuckians and West Virginians were traveling not just to Chicago or Washington but to Minneapolis or St. Louis or Philadelphia or New York.
The Cardinal may be at risk because it’s hopelessly uneconomic. No matter how many people ride, it can’t pay for big-city stations that don’t even have a train every day. I think the answer—economically and to provide real transportation service to a lot more people—is to run the train every day and on time.
And even the way it is now, even if it runs late, you might find a trip on the Cardinal an enjoyable way to travel. The schedule and fares (and sometimes Rail Sale reduced fares) are on the Amtrak website at www.amtrak.com.
By Steve Dunham
This column appeared in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star on
“Do people who wave at trains/ Wave at the driver, or at the train itself?” asked Roger McGough in his poem “Waving at Trains.” “Or, do people who wave at trains/ Wave at the passengers? Those hurtling strangers,/ The unidentifiable flying faces?”
In the winter, riding Virginia Railway Express, I don’t see many people waving, but much of my ride is in the dark, and fewer people are outside in the cold weather. A certain group is out before sunrise every morning, though: the Marines at Quantico. One morning, a few of them turned from their work and waved at the train as it went by. This got me thinking about waving at trains.
After some reflection, I decided that people are waving at other people, not at the train itself. When a freight train goes by, we’ll wave at the engine but not the freight cars. When Amtrak’s Auto Train goes by, we wave at the passenger cars but not the string of auto carriers. Waving is a greeting to the people on board.
Usually the engineer will wave back. When I was a kid, that gave me a little thrill. “I have many happy memories of running down to the road to wave to the trains,” said Meredith (Linman) Rolfe. Along with a childhood photo of her, her words are engraved on a historical marker along the Northwestern Pacific line in California.
“I seem to be the last grown-up waving at trains,” wrote another Californian, Miv Schaaf, in her article “Days of Little Red Wagons,” published in North Coast Journal. No,
It’s a part of our culture. Waving at trains was featured in a novel, The Trains, by Robert Aickman, and it inspired the name of a punk band, Waving at Trains; one of the band members used to be an engineer.
A real-life waving experience inspired Alejandro Escovedo’s song “Wave”: Escovedo’s father, at the age of 12, left his grandparents’ home in Mexico to look for his parents in the United States. “When my dad was leaving, he looked out the window, and his grandparents, who had been taking care of him, were waving and smiling at the train,” Escovedo explained to Michael Corcoran of the
I think that Escovedo’s story explains something more about waving. We’re not just waving at McGough’s “hurtling strangers.” We’re waving to somebody, even if we don’t know who it is. It might be a friend or a future friend. The wave is a gratuitous greeting to anyone who will accept it.
“They must think we like being waved
“And yes I think I’m
By Steve Dunham
This column originally appeared in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star on
The growing number of rail passengers using the Fredericksburg station is straining capacity, but there’s more to come. Even as Virginia Railway Express barely keeps up with the increase in riders, working to provide parking spaces and seats for all its passengers, Amtrak is carrying more passengers to and from the area and is likely to carry even more in the next year.
Only a dozen years ago, Fredericksburg was a flag stop for Amtrak. Trains stopped here only if someone was visible waiting on the platform or if someone on board had a ticket to Fredericksburg. Otherwise the train could roll on through. All the same, in those days before VRE, Amtrak was carrying commuters to northern Virginia and Washington.
Now Fredericksburg is a regular stop for Amtrak, and passengers—sometimes crowds of them—get on and off every train. A year from now, we can expect to see Amtrak once again carrying Fredericksburg-area commuters on a route that has no commuter trains: to Richmond. The Amtrak “Richmond” station on Staples Mill Road is actually in Henrico County, miles from downtown. However, work on reopening Main Street Station is nearing completion, with service tentatively scheduled to begin in October 2003. This historic station is within walking distance of the state house, downtown offices, the canal walk, and restaurants. It will make Richmond an easier place to reach by rail, and Amtrak is sure to attract riders, including commuters, from this area.
Furthermore, the Southeast high-speed rail project is inching forward, as Virginia, North Carolina, and other states work to establish
These added train services will give area residents more transportation choices, and a lot more of them will choose the train. Access to the train station promises to be a problem, however.
Station development is all about mobility, according to Pat McCrory, mayor of Charlotte, who spoke at the Rail-Volution conference in Washington, D.C., in October. Charlotte is creating a light-rail transit system and is confronting the question of how to provide smooth, convenient access to and from the system. This does not necessarily mean lots of parking. In fact, of the
To avoid that situation, Charlotte’s designs for new streets emphasize sidewalks, bike lanes, and connecting streets. McCrory sees the standard city grid pattern as helping people choose a convenient route, whereas isolated subdivisions discourage walking and cycling because the street pattern forces people onto roundabout routes. Charlotte is permitting no new cul-de-sacs.
Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania and Stafford could do a lot more to encourage walking, bicycling, and transit use, but we need more parking too. Many rail travelers live 5 or
Our region needs to decide where and how to add parking and how to give people attractive alternatives for reaching the rail stations. To avoid paving many more acres, this may mean parking garages at the stations; attractive, safe walking and cycling routes; and frequent local transit service, such as Fred buses running every ten minutes instead of every hour or two. These alternatives will give people improved commuting choices whether they work in Washington or in downtown Fredericksburg.
By Steve Dunham
This column originally appeared in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star on
“You can’t have smart growth if you have dumb transportation,” said
Transit-oriented development—planned growth that emphasizes mass transit as a transport option—is sorely lacking in the Fredericksburg area. One reason is that there is no local transit service worth building around. Yes, we have the Fred bus service, but most routes run every two hours and not at all on weekends: better than walking, but not frequent enough to be an attractive alternative to driving. Virginia Railway Express offers a good choice for weekday rush-hour trips to northern Virginia and Washington, and has indeed sparked housing construction near stations such as Woodbridge and Lorton. However, VRE does not serve the Fredericksburg area as a destination, and that makes the equation more difficult.
Much of the area lacks access by public transportation. People do take Amtrak, Fred and Greyhound to Fredericksburg, and the railroad station is well located for visitors. But if people take the train to Stafford, where would they go after arriving at Leeland Road or Brooke? The VRE service at these stations is designed for people driving to and from the station, not to serve the community as a point of departure and arrival.
Arrington explained part of the solution: we not only need transit-oriented development, we need development-oriented transit. But instead of smart transit, he said, we sometimes have dumb transit. As examples, he mentioned parking that separates a station from the community or a lack of pedestrian access. The stations at Brooke and Leeland Road are examples of the latter: there are homes within walking distance of the stations, but the roads have no sidewalks. They are designed only for drivers. That’s dumb transportation; an extra yard of concrete at the side of the road would create a second transportation choice, and an extra yard of asphalt for a bike lane would create a third. They would not serve a lot of people, but they would be easy and cheap and would slightly reduce traffic, pollution and the need for parking.
What would smart growth look like in the Fredericksburg area? The Smart Growth Network states principles for development: create a range of housing opportunities and choices; create walkable neighborhoods; encourage community and stakeholder collaboration; foster distinctive, attractive places with a strong sense of place; make development decisions predictable, fair and cost effective; mix land uses; preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty and critical environmental areas; provide a variety of transportation choices; strengthen and direct development towards existing communities; and take advantage of compact building design.
Picture a shopping center that is not an island in a parking lot. It has parking, but on one side only. The other side faces a town square, with office buildings, government buildings, a library, an churches and hundreds of homes within half a mile. On the fringe, but within walking distance of everything, is the VRE station, with parking beyond it. Lots of the residents can get to work, church, the library, the park, and the train station without getting into a car. Instead of development that makes people’s choices for them, the development gives them choices. That’s what smart growth might look like in our area.
“Smart growth links transportation planning with land use,” said Emil Frankel, the
A lot of development prompts a NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) reaction, and rightly so. But the area will continue to grow; it would be impractical to say no to all development. The answer is to say no to dumb growth and yes to smart growth and smart transit.
“The San Francisco Organizing Project, an umbrella organization for 40 church congregations and community groups, is dispatching activists to hearings on affordable housing to counter NIMBY with YIMBY, or ‘Yes In My Back Yard,’” notes the Smart Growth Network. Give people another highway and a huge parking lot in their backyard and a lot of them will say no. Give them a neighborhood they can live in and work in, and a lot of them will say, “Yes in my backyard.”
This column appeared in the Fredericksburg, Va., Free Lance–Star on
Insufficient parking, uncoordinated schedules, and lack of signs and shelters are among the barriers to increased use of public transportation, according to the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the Metropolitan (New York) Transportation Authority. In a report called “Right of Passage,” the committee has identified barriers to public transportation use. Many of the committee’s findings and recommendations apply to Virginia.
“A majority of commuter rail users cannot get to their local train stations without driving,” states the report, noting a serious barrier to commuter rail station access. “… However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to satisfy parking demand by constructing new parking spaces,” and “feeder buses, bicycles, and carpooling can only go so far in addressing this problem.”
Fredericksburg has problems with all of these. Despite repeated expansion, the Virginia Railway Express parking lots are close to overflowing. The only possible feeder buses, Fred, don’t arrive at the station till after the last VRE train has departed, and most Fred routes run every two hours. There are bike racks at the station, but no bike lanes on major roads leading to the station, such as Lafayette Boulevard and Tidewater Trail. Carpoolers face the same parking shortage as other drivers. There still are no pedestrian lights at the major intersections near the station, and from some corners the traffic lights are not even visible to pedestrians. Although VRE plans to add 300 parking spaces at Fredericksburg, the growing number of riders could quickly exceed capacity again.
To alleviate the parking crunch, the Citizens Advisory Committee recommended increased use of “kiss and ride”: dropping passengers off at the station. This is common at Fredericksburg, but the station lacks some features that, according to the committee, make kiss-and-ride more attractive: one- and two-hour parking spaces, a curb area distinct from the parking lot and away from the station, and a covered walkway leading directly to the station platforms. There are a few short-term parking spaces on Princess Anne and Caroline streets, but most kiss-and-ride activity is mixed in with the handicapped parking by the station. A separate area, maybe across Princess Anne Street, reached by a covered walkway might work well. The platform already reaches across Princess Anne Street and could connect directly to a kiss-and-ride area there (and could reach across Charles Street too).
Because of infrequent Fred service, at Fredericksburg intermodal transfers are next to impossible, but they are commonplace in northern Virginia and Washington, where Metrorail runs often enough that transfers to and from VRE are fairly convenient, and the stations are adjacent at most transfer points. For a hefty monthly surcharge, VRE riders can purchase a ticket that is also good on Metrorail. However, as on Staten Island (a major area of the New York study), “buses and rail are, for the most part, not coordinated for key transfers. This means that riders often face unnecessarily long waits if they wish to use these two modes in tandem.” VRE tickets are good on Metro and Dash buses, a great benefit for those of us who work miles from VRE or Metrorail. Finding a convenient transfer schedule for many bus routes, though, requires luck or planning.
For VRE riders, intermodal transfers mean interagency transfers. Like the New York City “region’s public transportation system,” which “suffers from the fact that it crosses three state borders,” VRE intersects systems operated by Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. The biggest obstacles to interagency transfers, according to the New York committee, are separate fares and a lack of signs and shelters. Though completing a trip via Metrorail can be expensive, VRE passengers pay no extra fare to ride the Maryland Rail Commuter trains and most buses.
Signs and shelters are less consistent. Generally, the signs are adequate, but at Crystal City finding VRE or Metro (not to mention several bus stops) means negotiating the labyrinth of “underground” shops. Dash bus signs are usually informative enough; Metrobus signs sometimes are years out of date. Shelters are provided on rail and bus platforms at all major transfer points; at Union Station, you don’t even have to go outside to transfer to Metrorail.
Like the New York City area, VRE suffers from a lack of parking and from limited options for expanding parking. When it comes to intermodal transfers, we’re about as well off in the Washington metropolitan area but starving for alternatives in the outlying suburbs. We could learn some lessons from the Citizens Advisory Committee in New York and improve feeder bus, bicycle, pedestrian, and kiss-and-ride access at Fredericksburg. As the committee’s report indicates, these will probably remain minority choices for access to the train station—but they could be more attractive choices.
This column appeared in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star on
Rail service in Virginia should concentrate on what passenger trains do best: providing an attractive transportation alternative to move large numbers of people among major centers of population, employment, and recreation, say the Virginia Association of Railway Patrons in a statement presented to Virginia’s Department of Transportation and Department of Rail and Public Transportation.
Virginia saw some major improvements in rail passenger network in the 1990s, notably the commencement of Virginia Railway Express service, Metro expansion, and increased Amtrak service to Richmond and Tidewater, yet many important markets remain unserved or underserved. The passenger group points out that rail passenger service in Virginia should be
Highways are so heavily subsidized that rail passengers, who are expected to pay 50% to 100% of the cost of their travel, often face an economic obstacle in choosing to travel by rail. This places a particular burden on low-income travelers and families. To encourage rail travel, which is environmentally and socially friendly, government subsidies should create a price structure that favors the use of public transportation rather than discourages it.
No other mode of transportation in Virginia depends on local funds for its existence the way passenger trains do. Virginia Railway Express service, which accounts for most of the passenger trains in Virginia, ends at the borders of participating counties. There are no reliable funding sources to establish and operate trains in areas that are unserved or underserved. Passenger trains in Virginia need a consistent source of funding to allow quality service at levels and prices that are competitive with other government-subsidized modes.
As a benefit to its citizens and to attract business and tourism, Virginia needs to better integrate their rail passenger service with the larger interstate net of all transportation modes. Rail passenger service in Virginia must connect reasonably and reliably with long-distance, local, and international services. Trains that serve airports must run frequently enough to get air travelers to and from flights throughout the day, seven days a week.
The statement cites the need for intermodal integration at National Airport, Richmond’s main bus terminal, Williamsburg–Newport News International Airport, and Richmond International Airport and with the future Metro Purple Line.
It also details needed improvements in fare structures, convenience, integration with other interstate transportation systems, compatibility with improved freight service, and compatibility with development into Federal Railroad Administration Tier III high-speed (over 125 mph) passenger service.
The need for a much expanded rail passenger network in the Virginias is clear, and now is the time to create it.
The “Statement on Future Rail Passenger Service in the Virginias” is now on the Virginia Railway Patrons’ website. The organization welcomes comments and will revise and improve the statement as needed.
This column appeared in the Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star
Creating a statewide transit network is the number-one lesson Virginia could learn from a little state to the northeast. New Jersey Transit provides the example to follow, with commuter rail, rapid transit, and bus service provided through one statewide organization. Virginia’s parochial system relies heavily on cities and counties to decide what level of service to provide, or whether to provide any service at all. This contrasts with the ubiquitous highway network throughout Virginia, a network based on the assumption that everyone can drive, can afford to drive, wants to drive, and should drive—a faulty assumption.
In contrast, New Jersey provides some level of transit service to virtually every corner of the state, and hardly any large city is without intercity rail, commuter rail, or rapid transit service—or all three.
Granted, New Jersey is a much smaller state, but the service area of New Jersey Transit—about 170 miles from one end of New Jersey to the other—dwarfs any system in Virginia. New Jersey is, on the whole, more densely populated, but not compared to the Tidewater area, which has only two daily Amtrak trains on the north side of Hampton Roads, nothing on the south side, and no local rail service on either side.
What Virginia
has is a piecemeal response to heavy transportation demand. Much of the state’s
rail passenger service is provided by Amtrak as part of its national system.
The result is fairly good interstate service to and from some places in
Virginia: a few trains from Newport News and Richmond to New York and New
England; overnight service to Florida and Atlanta; daily service to Charlotte,
N.C.; and less-than-daily service from Alexandria, Manassas and Charlottesville
to Chicago. Amtrak has chosen not to run trains to
Virginia Railway Express provides weekday commuter
service on the Manassas and Fredericksburg lines with some support from the
Commonwealth, but does not reach markets such as Milford, Bealeton or Haymarket
because their counties have chosen not to participate. Imagine if Route 3
stopped at the Spotsylvania County line because the supervisors had made a “no new taxes” pledge.
Transportation makes the economy go.
Transportation—roads, canals and, yes, railroads—has required government
support throughout America’s history, and the situation is the same today.
Transportation is not merely local—it connects local places with more distant
ones—and is too important to be funded (or, unfortunately, neglected) at a
local level only.
Virginia has taken a few steps in the right direction. Last year, the Commonwealth
appropriated funds toward restoring twice-daily passenger train service from Bristol, Roanoke, and Lynchburg to Richmond and Washington.
This “TransDominion Express” would fill a large gap in Virginia’s
rail passenger network.
Possible state funding of express VRE trains (extended to
Richmond) is another step.
Restoration of Main Street Station in Richmond is one more step, making it possible to take a train to Richmond and not just to a station in Henrico County five miles outside the city.
Participation with other states (notably North Carolina) in the Southeast High Speed Rail project
may eventually bring really fast trains (more than 100 miles per hour) to Virginia.
The Dulles Corridor Rail Project and other Metro
extensions are positive steps too.
The problem is that these good things are piecemeal. They
won’t bring passenger trains back to Virginia’s largest city, Virginia Beach. They won&