DaninDC

Didn't the Turnpike pre-date the Interstate Highway System? Most early superhighways, starting with the Penna. Pike, charged tolls to cover their costs. That is, until Eisenhower decided to start federally subsidizing the American Dream in 1956.

A more-or-less opinion piece responding to the recently released results of a study on commuting patterns. Virginia's results are likely skewed a bit--the Commonwealth is just smaller than Ohio, but has 95 counties. This does not account for incorporated cities, which are not part of any county. http://www.dcist.com/archives/2006/10/17/its_the_suburbs.php It's the Suburbs, Stupid When local media, including this site, discuss our countless transportation and traffic problems, it is often to be described as D.C.-Metro or Washington-area congestion. However, statistics indicate that something along the lines of Va./Md.-Metro area congestion might be a more appropriate description. Eric Weiss, the Post's new transportation reporter, has kicked off his duties with articles exploring several recent studies on commuting trends across the region and the nation. He reported last week that the potential savings on housing prices in farther-out suburbs could be outweighed by the cost of commuting and living in a spread-out landscape that requires a car trip for the smallest errand. He followed up today, pointing out that Virginia and Maryland have, on average, the nation's greatest proportion of lengthy commutes. While the District may be the geographical center of the region, it seems that Virginia and Maryland are closer to the center of the problem. More at link above:

Yes, because suburban-style buildings won't look out of place at all....

Hell naw. Ain't no way I'm givin up my Popeye's biscuits. You're gonna have to find somethin else to take.

Ah, it's working better now.

You're probably correct. A lot of other cities still have streetcar tracks buried under the asphalt as well. It was a lot cheaper to cover the tracks than to completely remove them.

You're kidding, right?

Oh man, now I'm gonna have to go Amrap on your ass for ripping on my school. :-)

1. Ann Arbor 2. Detroit 3. St. Joseph 4. Grand Haven Agreed with ColDayMan that the small towns near the tip of the mitten are neat. I liked Petoskey, and U of M has a research station near Pellston, which is an absolutely beautiful area (even if the town consists entirely of six buildings).

Quick. Someone who went to Toledo get pissy.

I'm really tired of this juvenile bullshit. I've been working my ass off since I was ten years old, delivering newspapers. Since then, I've bussed tables, washed dishes, worked at McDonald's, cooked in a few restaurants, and even waited tables for three years part-time AFTER I had a college-degree and a full-time job. Not bad for a guy from Maple Heights who put himself through Michigan, huh? Why do you insist on the personal attacks, Amrap? I am where I am because I took risks and worked my ass off. All you want is for others to feel sorry for you because you're from Parma, while attacking anyone who did anything beyond what was expected for their caste. Well, you can just kiss my ass, because I'm actually a pretty decent person. But it's so much easier to put labels on people because of WHAT they are instead of WHO they are, isn't it?

Well, as an engineer, I know a thing or two about where my peers went to school. And it's not really debatable that Stanford and MIT conduct enormous amounts of cutting-edge research--something that directly correlates to the quality of a graduate engineering degree. If you actually read what I wrote instead of what you wanted to read, you'll see that I never called anyone at Toledo a dumbass. Lord, I love how you just LOOK to label anyone you can as an "elitist", Amrap. Parma boy--woe is you, huh?

Berkeley's public. Duke ain't.

Hmmm...methinks something is seriously amiss. UCSB, Michigan State, and Delaware are suddenly elite engineering schools, and Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT don't crack the top 20?

Timbo's didn't enter the U.S. until Wendy's bought them in the late 1990s. I recall that the University of Michigan had one of the first six U.S. Tim Horton's stores (a combo with Wendy's in the Michigan League). I believe the Detroit area had a couple stores, and Buffalo/Niagara Falls had the others at the outset. Their donuts are pretty good, but there's no way their coffee compares to the Dunk!

Forget scuttling the project--can we scuttle ODOT???

Expensive? Sure. You know damn well the value that the extra transit service adds, though, in the form of increased development and property values. I think the figure Arlington County, VA uses is a "19% annual return on investment in Metro". When was the last time any other investment produced that kind of return?

You're thinking of the study conducted by Vukan Vuchic, systems engineering professor at Penn. He predicted the downtown core would come to a grinding halt by 2020, precisely because of the lack of redundancy in the system. Is Metro taking steps to listen to their consultant? Hell no! They're excuse? Building a new subway line is "too expensive". Tell that to New York! Metro's genius solution (I'm being sarcastic, of course) is to re-route half the rush hour Blue Line trains across the Yellow Line bridge--and share trackage with both the Yellow and Green Lines in the downtown core. Can you say "clusterfuck"? It's an odd mentality here. In Ohio, it seems like no one wants transit, because it will "bring in undesirable elements." Here, everyone wants a Metro station at the front door, no matter how far out they live. All I know is if the federal government can help Maryland build an unneeded $3 billion highway that won't reduce congestion on the Beltway (as its supporters claim), they can help build another Metro line through downtown, as well as the Purple Line in Maryland. Dammit, you can't run a 21st century boomtown on a transportation system designed for a 1950s city.

I honestly don't envision very successful transit-oriented development along the Dulles Corridor. I think it's a waste of money to think that urban heavy-rail is the best choice for transit out there--especially since they're locating the line in the worst possible place (in the highway median). All this is doing is giving Maryland the stupid idea that Metro to BWI is a good idea, and potentially wasting billions of federal dollars. Quite honestly, Metro to Tysons isn't a bad idea. For trips to Dulles, though, why is "commuter rail" such a bad word? Agreed that Fairfax is facing some *serious* problems. Unfortunately, no matter how many roads you build, or buses or trains you run, the traffic isn't going to go away so long as the county remains almost exclusively automobile-oriented.

Virginia to Review Rival Bid For Tysons Rail Extension By Alec MacGillis Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, August 1, 2006; Page B01 Virginia officials are considering a proposal from contractors allied with a major Tysons Corner landowner to take over construction of at least half of the Metrorail extension to Dulles International Airport, a prospect that threatens to further delay the project. The state has a no-bid "public-private partnership" with a Bechtel Corp. and Washington Group International Inc. consortium, which has done extensive work over the past two years in preparing to build the 23-mile line from West Falls Church. But the state revealed yesterday that as part of its consideration of switching to a tunnel instead of an elevated track for the Tysons part of the line, it is now weighing a proposal by a group linked with WestGroup, a major Tysons landowner and tunnel supporter. The revelation of the competing proposal injected additional uncertainty into the $4 billion project, which is hung up on the question of whether the four-mile Tysons portion of the line should be built above or below ground. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) is planning to announce that decision by the end of this month. At stake, say tunnel supporters, is Fairfax County's vision of transforming Tysons into a vibrant, walkable downtown, which they say would be hard to achieve with an elevated track. Tunnel backers, including Tysons landowners and Fairfax officials, have been urging the state to rethink its deal with the Bechtel group, which has criticized a tunnel as too costly. By re-bidding the whole project, tunnel supporters say, the state could get an affordable price for a line with a tunnel. But going with the rival proposal probably would mean a time-consuming process to end the existing partnership and to re-bid the project. The state is facing warnings from the project's top federal backer, Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), that the tunnel option threatens to imperil $900 million in federal funding and delay the extension, which was to be done by 2015. Yesterday, the Federal Transit Administration offered its own words of caution. In a public statement, the agency said it is "important to note that should [Virginia] choose to make significant changes to its original plan, including building a tunnel, [the agency] will need to make new, additional examinations" of the project. The revelation of the rival proposal came in a briefing yesterday by the head of a panel of engineers that studied the tunnel question at the state's request. The panel has concluded that a tunnel would be preferable and would cost about $250 million more than an elevated route -- less than the Bechtel group estimated. The panel's chairman, Potomac engineer Robert S. O'Neil, said the panel's tunnel estimate was based on a proposal submitted to the state three weeks ago by a group consisting of WestGroup, Bethesda-based Clark Construction Group LLC, Lane Construction Corp. of Meriden, Conn., and Dragados, a Spanish company that specializes in the large-bore tunneling being considered for Tysons. Dragados has previously proposed to build the tunnel, but this was its first offer -- together with other contractors -- to take over the whole first phase of the line instead of acting as a subcontractor to Bechtel. The group said it could build the first phase for $2 billion, a price the engineering panel revised upward to $2.5 billion. Based on that price, the panel concluded that a tunnel was worth it, because it would cause less disruption during construction and offer countless "intangible benefits" over the long term, O'Neil said. The reviews necessary for switching to a tunnel could be done within a year, he said. It is possible that the state could decide on a tunnel but retain the Bechtel group, with it subcontracting to a tunnel builder like Dragados. Deputy Transportation Secretary Scott Kasprowicz yesterday declined to say how seriously the state is considering re-bidding the project or how long that would take. There is some historic irony in WestGroup's involvement with the rival contractor group. The landowner initially was part of the partnership with Bechtel, before dropping out two years ago amid concerns about the propriety of having a major Tysons landowner directly involved in the project. WestGroup spokesman Mark Lowham played down the company's role in the rival team's new offer, saying WestGroup had been in talks with the contractors but was not an official part of the team. "We understand that other contractors have taken a look at [the project] and are pleased, because it's in everyone's best interest to take a second look," he said.

Dammit. I've been hurting over this the past two days. Tangherlini would have been great for Metro--especially since he, unlike his predecessor, takes the subway to work (egads!).

I can speak to Baltimore. Every time I go up there for a project, it's like, "Where are all the people at?" Even near the much bally-hooed Inner Harbor, that place is dead as a doornail on a typical weekday.

I agree with your assessment, but the Ren Cen did create an oversupply of space, in a submarket that is only now starting to recover, some 30 years later. The going rate of Class "A" space in Cleveland tells me the market is still very soft and vulnerable--much too fragile to embark upon a high-risk project. Cleveland needs more bread-and-butter to take up some of the vacant land, and help boost property values, which would lead to increased development. For me, if I had to choose between emulating a low-rise city like Paris, or a city with a lot of very tall buildings like Atlanta, it's a no-brainer to choose the former.

No, common sense says that right now, the market only supports a surface parking lot on the west side of Public Square. I understand the desire to have a "landmark" building on Public Square--but how in the hell do you determine that only a 500'+ building is sufficient? Seems pretty arbitrary, if you ask me. Back in the 1970s, Henry Ford II built the Renaissance Center in Detroit, hoping to "inspire" other investors to build in the city. What it did was become a vacuum, sucking what little street life there was into the new complex--it completely killed the real estate market by creating a vast oversupply in a concentrated location. Building more high-rises in Cleveland is going to sap activity off the street and depress real estate values. If you wait for someone to fill that quadrant with a 500'+ building, expect to see an empty lot there for quite some time to come. Also keep in mind that whatever gets built on the west side of the Square also needs to transition architecturally to the Warehouse District. Cleveland would be better off with "dingy-little" 10-12 story buildings that can be more easily absorbed into the market, and would generate street traffic over a greater geographic area than would a single skyscraper.

And what does that matter? Postcard shot? Ego trip? Building a new skyscraper would probably be a bad idea at this point. The market isn't exactly robust when Class "A" space is leasing for only $16/sf. Oversupplying space, as a 500' building would, is only going to depress local real estate values further, and thus make future construction cost-prohibitive. From the land of dingy little buildings that lease for $40+/sf, DaninDC