This survey is interesting, but I wonder if the feedback collected from it will be hidden from the public as well. The GNC consists of companies that have helped deceive the young public into overpaying for real estate (and driving the costs of it up for those not interested in overpaying for it.) I’d wager that many of them provide the workplaces that drive the young people away.

Maybe there will be change, but I don’t see it.

Perhaps the more noble thing to do is encourage young bright people to leave, so they don’t miss out on the great opportunities elsewhere.

Hampton Roads Buoyed by Revamped Strategy

January 5, 2012

Officials in Hampton Roads, Va., believe the tilt in defense strategy outlined Thursday calling for the military to rebalance its global posture to emphasize the Asia-Pacific and Middle East theaters is good news for the region.

“They kept talking about global presence with fewer people, which translates to me as more airplanes and ships. You can’t have a global presence without carriers and ships,” Virginia Rep. Robert Scott (D) told the Daily Press.

Craig Quigley, executive director of the Hampton Roads Military and Federal Facilities Alliance, echoed Scott, noting that the region’s concentration of Navy and Air Force facilities places it in better shape than communities with large Army or Marine installations.

“I’d much rather be in Hampton Roads right now as opposed to Fort Bragg, Fort Hood, Fort Campbell, where you have large standing forces that deploy forward,” Quigley said. “The Army and Marine Corps are going to get smaller.”

Still, because the vision the president and DOD’s senior leadership described was short on specifics, area officials said they could not carefully assess its impact on the military personnel, DOD civilian workers and contractors in southeastern Virginia, according to the story.

Street Smart By Jon Cawley

December 11, 2011

In the latest salvo against Gov. Bob McDonnell’s transportation plan that places a priority on expansion of the U.S. 460 corridor from Suffolk to Petersburg, the Sierra Club claims the project — and others statewide — serve only to benefit “private highway companies, sprawl developers and Big Coal, not the people of Virginia.”

The Sierra Club’s opposition follows that in recent weeks of the Hampton Roads Partnership, an influential group of civic and business leaders, that contends the project should not take precedent over other more pressing needs such as a third harbor crossing.

In a new report, “21st Century Green Transportation, A Vision for Virginia,” the environmental advocacy group’s Virginia chapter finds fault with the governor’s prioritization of the U.S. 460 project; the Route 29 bypass in Charlottesville; The Outer Beltway Corridor, in Northern Virginia; and the Coalfields Expressway, in Southwest part of the state.

“Continuous road building and widening only leads to sprawling development and more congestion,” according to the report. “As population and employment continue to grow in Virginia, so too will an unquenchable demand for more and more roads leaving people little choice but to drive, increasing their daily vehicle miles traveled.”
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The Sierra Club recommends:

•Focusing more on increasing “green transportation” options such as commuter rail, light rail, bus rapid transit, car and van pools and bicycle and pedestrian friendly infrastructure.

•Reforming the transportation decision making process to better involve local government and the public and increase transparency in the planning process.

•Establish performance measures that include impacts on quality of life and the environment.

•Require stronger links between transportation and land use planning.

•Take better care of existing roads and bridges by investing in maintenance before funding new construction.

The U.S. 460 project, “is a wasteful and very expensive project that is not going to return anything,” said David Dickson, of the Sierra Club, in a teleconference. “We are concerned because Hampton Roads is one of the worst congested areas in the country. That came about because of this sort of sprawl development that has made people dependent on automobiles.”

To view the full report, go to http://www.vasierraclub.org.

http://www.dailypress.com/news/traffic/dp-nws-dp-street-smart-1211-20111211,0,5312905.column

Without fanfare, the Virginia Department of Transportation has applied for, and is awaiting the U.S. Department of Transportation’s decision on, a multimillion-dollar grant and loan under a federal stimulus program to help pay for a proposed new highway to replace U.S. 460 between Petersburg and Suffolk.

The state highway agency in October submitted an application for a grant of $20 million under the federal TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) program and a loan of $200 million under TIFIA (Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act), increasing taxpayers’ share of the cost of a project that originally was intended to be completely privately financed.

The TIGER program aims to encourage innovative projects that improve the nation’s transportation infrastructure and increase economic competitiveness, livability and environmental sustainability.

The funds would support what VDOT calls the U.S. Route 460 Corridor Improvements Project, a proposal to build a 55-mile toll road parallel to U.S. 460 from Interstate 295 in Prince George County to U.S. 58 in Suffolk.

Gaining federal approval for the application won’t be easy. U.S. DOT said it received 828 applications for this round of TIGER grants, seeking a total of $14.1 billion in funds, far above the $527 million allocated for the program.

According to VDOT’s “letter of interest” filed with its application, the 460 project “is of tremendous significance to the Hampton Roads region, the Commonwealth of Virginia and the nation. It has been identified as a Corridor of Statewide Significance for the commonwealth and is the designated Priority Project of the Governor due to its ability to address significant safety concerns and stimulate meaningful short- and long-term economic growth.”

To bolster its application, VDOT included letters of support from several of the counties where the new highway would be built, including Prince George, Isle of Wight and Southampton, as well as the Crater Planning District Commission and the Virginia Port Authority. Those letters also emphasized the project’s economic-development potential.

Prince George County Administrator Percy C. Ashcraft’s letter, authorized by the Board of Supervisors, noted that the county’s support is “conditional” based on a relocation of the proposed interchange with I-295 in New Bohemia.

“The board believes the proposed U.S. Route 460 should intersect into Interstate 95 or Interstate 295, but that connection should occur somewhere south of the proposed connection at the current U.S. Route 460 and Interstate 295 junction,” Ashcraft wrote. “The board does not believe the businesses, residents and existing traffic patterns of the historic New Bohemia area should be disrupted by this project.”

Nevertheless, the board “at a more general level is supportive of the main objectives of the project,” Ashcraft wrote. “This project signifies enormous opportunity and benefits to the region in the form of economic development, job creation and livability improvements.”

However, not everyone is so supportive of the project, and even some groups that do support it in general are less than convinced it deserves the high priority that Gov. Bob McDonnell’s administration is giving it.

For example, the Hampton Roads Partnership economic-development organization wrote a letter in late October to state Secretary of Transportation Sean T. Connaughton asking the administration to consider giving a higher priority to the Patriots Crossing bridge-tunnel project connecting South Hampton Roads with the Middle Peninsula.

The letter signed by Deborah M. DiCroce, the partnership’s board chair, argued that “if the Route 460 Corridor is completed before projects to relieve congestion on I-664 and I-64 in Southside Hampton Roads, it will not be able to achieve its goals in easing traffic congestion and stimulating job growth.”

Instead, DiCroce wrote, the partnership recommended that the 460 project “be deferred for future construction at a time when related projects in Hampton Roads will guarantee its success, and … that public funds, including Virginia Port Authority funds, for the Route 460 Corridor Improvements project be reallocated to the Patriots Crossing project.”

Connaughton was not available for comment last week. In November, he told the Daily Press of Newport News that funding issues would prevent VDOT from accepting the partnership’s request.

“We have a certain amount of money available to advance projects now,” he told the newspaper. “Those funds will advance the Mid-Town Tunnel (renovation and expansion project) as well as U.S. 460. We simply do not have funds to move forward on Patriots Crossing now.”

According to the Daily Press, “Connaughton suggested if funds already allocated for Route 460 are not spent within a year, that money could be diverted to other statewide projects.”

Meanwhile, the Southern Environmental Law Center has sent a letter of its own to U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray H. LaHood opposing the 460 replacement project in its entirety.

In a Nov. 30 letter, Trip Pollard, the director of the Charlottesville-based center’s Land and Community Program, described the proposal as “an unnecessary, costly, and destructive project that fails to satisfy the TIGER III selection criteria. As VDOT’s own studies show, the existing Route 460 is relatively uncongested, and building the proposed new highway offers little benefit to traffic flows.”

Whatever the pros and cons of the project may be, the application for federal funds appears to be another step away from the original plan to build the new road without using any taxpayer money.

The federal funds, if approved, would be added to $500 million in direct taxpayer subsidies that VDOT has agreed to provide. In addition, the Virginia Port Authority has agreed to contribute up to $250 million out of the Transportation Trust Fund money it receives annually.

Including that amount, the total of $750 million in state funding would represent about half of VDOT’s current estimate of the overall cost of the project, a number that itself has changed repeatedly over the years.

In 2005, when VDOT was considering a variety of plans for 460 ranging from improving part or all of the existing road to building a completely new highway, it gave a range of cost estimates from $470 million to $798 million.

By late 2008, the cost estimate for its preferred option of building a new road had ballooned to somewhere between $2.1 billion and $2.6 billion. Last March, in a “letter of intent” sent to the U.S. DOT giving notice of its plan to seek a TIFIA loan of $650 million, VDOT estimated the project cost at $2.2 billion.

In its recent “pre-application” for the federal funds, VDOT estimated the cost at $1.9 billion. But by the time the agency filed its final application in late October, it had lowered its estimate to $1.5 billion “due to ongoing analysis and refinements relating to utilities relocation, right of way acquisition and interchange structures.”

VDOT should get a clearer idea of the price in February, when detailed financial proposals for the project are scheduled to be filed by the three companies that received approval last year to submit plans. The agency will review any detailed proposals it receives and make a recommendation in March to state Transportation Commissioner Gregory A. Whirley.

If one of the three proposals is accepted, signing of a contract would follow in May. Transportation officials have said they expect construction to take about five years.
The U.S. Transportation Department is expected to announce its decisions on the TIGER applications sometime this month. Interested citizens can comment by writing to Secretary Ray H. LaHood, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Ave. SE, Washington, DC 20590.

- Michael Buettner may be reached at 804-722-5155 or mbuettner@progress-index.com.

Read more: http://progress-index.com/news/taxpayers-share-of-460-project-costs-could-rise-again-1.1243646#ixzz1gKl0RSW4