From the Archives: Higher gas prices won’t change American car culture, says transportation expert

Editor's note: One of the repercussions of Hurricane Harvey (and, to a lesser extent, Hurricane Irma) has been a spike in gasoline prices, by about 50 cents per gallon across the country (30 to 45 cents higher in the Charlottesville area). This seems like a good time to revisit the topic of fuel's price elasticity. This article from 2011 sheds light on the issue.

Higher gas prices won’t change American car culture, says transportation expert
May 25, 2011 4:42 PM MST

Higher gasoline prices will not fundamentally affect the travel habits of Americans, asserts transportation expert Alan E. Pisarski, author of the “Commuting in America” series for the National Academy of Sciences.

Pisarski spoke to the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner immediately after giving a presentation on livability and transportation issues at the Heritage Foundation in Washington on May 20.

$4 a gallon ‘sounds scary’

While four dollars a gallon “sounds scary,” Pisarski explained, that “is actually about the same as we were paying in 1980 -- even less if you take into [account] things like wealth and fuel efficiency.”

Even if gas prices move higher than that, “the benefits that people gain from the automobile are not really going to change,” he said. People will make minor accommodations to account for the higher prices, “but the fundamental change in the society will be trivial.”

As an example, Pisarski pointed out that the “last time we almost doubled the price of gasoline, in 2009, we had a three-and-a-half percent decline in travel.”

Virginia commutes

In his presentation, Pisarski had noted that Virginians commute to work outside of their home counties at a rate double that of the national average – about 52.1 percent travel outside their counties, compared to 27.4 percent nationwide. What accounts for that?

“One of the things that really matters,” he said, “is the fact that because of government, there’s a tremendous integration of activity, so people traverse long distances from their homes to their work sites. You see much more interaction between counties, in an economic sense, than you do in most other areas of the country.”

Arlington County, for instance, "exports" 80,000 workers each day and "imports" 130,000. In other words, only 33 percent of its workers stay in the county even though Arlington has 1.4 jobs per worker. In Fairfax County, to give another example, 50 percent of workers stay in the county for their jobs while 50 percent leave.

While it may seem like Northern Virginia – the suburbs around Washington, D.C. – skew the rate upward, the phenomenon is statewide. There are only two or three counties in the whole state, Pisarski explained, “that don’t send the majority of their people to another county to work.”

In fact, he added, “it’s more extensive in the rural counties” and exurban counties that are “two and three counties out from the metropolitan area,” and from those places, Virginians commute to metropolitan Richmond or metropolitan Washington.

Pisarski noted that the state that comes in second in this category is Maryland, which is also affected by the government jobs and economic activity generated by Washington, followed closely by Pennsylvania.


Livability and local budgets

Alan Pisarski

The theme of Pisarski’s presentation at the Heritage Foundation was the new emphasis on “livability” in the housing and transportation policies of the Obama administration. He said that “livability” is a “nonce word,” which has different meanings – and sometimes no meaning at all – depending upon who is using it and in what context.

“Those words come in and out of favor,” he explained, but the emphasis on livability comes from “the pressure on local governments to come up with money. This is another way for them to argue for what they see is their share, whether its of state money or federal money” to supplement their budgets to pay for community concerns, whether to solve traffic problems, improve neighborhoods, or build bike paths.

“These things” that local governments desire, Pisarski said, “are not unattractive or undesirable or even inappropriate.”

The problem, he explained, is that they do not “belong in discussions at the federal level,” because they are local concerns that should be dealt with on the local or state level.


Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on May 25, 2011. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

From the Archives: Meadowcreek Parkway and suggestions to improve transportation policy making

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on April 12, 2010. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.


Meadowcreek Parkway and suggestions to improve transportation policy making
April 12, 2010 6:10 PM MST

The Meadowcreek Parkway, which would link Rio Road in Albemarle County to the Route 250 Bypass and McIntire Road in Charlottesville, came a step closer to being built today.

Sean Tubbs of Charlottesville Tomorrow reports:

“The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has released a new draft of a key document required for the approval of an interchange to connect the Meadowcreek Parkway to the U.S. 250 bypass.

“Because several historic and cultural resources will be affected by the interchange’s construction, the project is being reviewed by the FHWA as part a review process known as Section 106.”

The Meadowcreek Parkway was first proposed more than 40 years ago and has been a subject of public controversy in Charlottesville since then. In fact, candidates’ positions on the Meadowcreek Parkway have often been key issues in City Council races over the past four decades.

The long decision making process over the Meadowcreek Parkway may be instructive for how transportation policy in Virginia is devised and implemented.

In an exclusive interview with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner last Friday, Dr. Ronald Utt of the Heritage Foundation offered some suggestions for how Virginia can improve its process of transportation policy making:

“First of all,” Utt said, “we’ve argued, both to [Governor Bob] McDonnell and to anybody who would listen over the last several years,” that Virginia should “establish a performance-based measuring system in which congestion mitigation and travel time are the measures by which you choose projects, while at the same time holding harmless the regional distribution.”

That means, Utt explained, that investments “within the Northern Virginia transportation district [for example] would then have to be ranked by their impact on traffic congestion.”

The problem, he noted, is that “right now you don’t have that. A lot of these things are political. Senior Members of Congress get to get interchanges; influential businesses get interchanges. There are no standards by which we can judge one project from the other.”

This has an impact on budgetary as well as policy decisions, Utt concluded:

“We’ve argued that in a time of fiscal stringency, when a lot of worthy projects under any circumstances are being rejected for a lack of money, then it’s all the more important to prioritize projects by some measures that people can understand and agree on. I would say congestion, travel time, and safety would be those three key criteria.”

From the Archives: Heritage Foundation's Ronald Utt discusses commercialization of highway rest areas

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on April 11, 2010. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Heritage Foundation's Ronald Utt discusses commercialization of highway rest areas
April 11, 2010 3:01 PM MST

In 2009, the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) closed down about half of the rest areas along interstate highways as a cost-cutting measure. The decision was controversial, and as a candidate for governor, Bob McDonnell made reopening the rest areas one of his most emphatic promises. As governor, McDonnell followed through and the rest areas began to be opened again last month.

One of the issues raised last summer was a federal prohibition on commercial activity at interstate rest stops, which is not universal but nearly so and includes Virginia. On July 17 – just days before the rest areas were scheduled to close on July 21 -- Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA10) introduced an amendment to the transportation appropriations bill, which was killed in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on a vote of 26(Yea)-32(Nay).

After he spoke at a Cato Institute briefing on transportation issues on Capitol Hill on April 9, Dr. Ronald Utt answered a few questions about the history of this prohibition and the reasons that highway rest areas are closed to business activity.

Early History

The prohibition “literally goes back to the creation of the interstate highway system,” said Utt, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, “where you already had existing interstate routes, like Route 1 on the East Coast, that had a lot of commercial development around it that was dependent on the traffic.” There was a perception that “the creation of an alternative highway system right nearby would have threatened the business of those people if there were new commercial establishments started.”

In response, supporters of the interstate system tried to “neutralize opposition … from the existing commercial people” by deciding “that there would be no commercial activity on any of the rest stops. Nothing would be sold -- no gasoline, no food, no motels .... And that essentially bought them off.”

Utt pointed out that today, “most of those businesses that were protected have gone out of business a long time ago. Fast food restaurants didn’t exist back then but they tend to be the largest and most active opponents of commercialization of federal rest stops because they’re the ones who now own the land and the businesses at existing interchanges.”

Local Ownership

Asked whether local businesses could be given “dibs” on taking over the rest stops, Utt replied:

“Exactly. The right of first refusal could go to [anybody who] has something within, let’s say, 100 yards of an existing interchange. Whether it’s a gas station, a coffee shop, or a restaurant, the first round of bidding could be limited to them.”

Naming Rights

What about granting naming rights, where businesses could “sponsor” a rest stop?

Utt chuckled and said, “That’s a good question. I don’t know, given the state of the economy, how much people would pay for that. That’s obviously an idea.”

Then he continued with an illustration from a neighboring state.

“I’ve noticed at some of the North Carolina rest stops along I-95 that there is a certain amount of promotion by the people who provide free services or cut-rate services for those rest stops,” Utt said. “For example, in North Carolina I saw a brass plaque that’s displayed prominently that says ‘Landscape care and lawn care by such-and-such a company.’ So I’m assuming that they were either doing this for free for the exposure, or at a discount for the exposure.”

From the Archives - Examiner.com exclusive - Randal O'Toole on Virginia high-speed rail

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on April 9, 2010. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

This was my fifth article published on Examiner.com. Eventually I wrote about 500 articles that appeared on the now defunct news site over the six years between April 2010 and June 2016. This is the one-hundredth from that archive to be republished here.

Examiner.com exclusive - Randal O'Toole on Virginia high-speed rail
April 9, 2010 5:10 PM MST


According to an article in the Richmond Time-Dispatch by Eugene Trani, former president of Virginia Commonwealth University, Virginia has received more than $75 million in federal stimulus money to spend on high-speed rail between Richmond and Washington, D.C. The money will go toward improvements on 11.5 miles of track north of Fredericksburg. An additional $10 million will be used to improve a railroad bypass on the outskirts of Richmond.

The question of whether money used toward high-speed rail is well-spent was one of the topics addressed at a Cato Institute briefing on Capitol Hill on April 9, where transportation experts Randal O’Toole (a senior fellow at Cato) and Ronald Utt (a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation) spoke.

According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and other federal sources, the cost per passenger mile for air travel is 13 cents, of which one-tenth of a cent is paid through federal subsidy. For automobiles, the cost per passenger mile is 23 cents, of which one-half of a cent is paid through taxpayer subsidy. For Amtrak, the cost per passenger mile is 56 cents, of which 22 cents is subsidized by taxpayers. For transit (e.g., light rail or subways), the cost per passenger mile is 85 cents, with 61 cents coming from tax funding.

After the program ended, O’Toole answered a few questions about the prospects for high-speed rail in Virginia.

He said that what the government wants to do is “to spend a lot of money running trains a little faster than they run today. We’re not talking about bullet trains. We’re talking about running trains at a top speed of 110 miles an hour, which means an average speed of about 70 miles an hour.”

Continuing, O’Toole noted, “That’s not going to get a lot of people out of their cars, but it is going to cost taxpayers a lot of money. We’re talking about spending a lot of money to get very little benefit for anybody.”

With regard to how best to spend federal stimulus money to improve transportation in Virginia, O’Toole said:

“I think the way to spend the money would be to give loans to states and local areas that would be repaid out of user fees. Because if a transportation project can be repaid out of user fees, we know it’s worthwhile, we know that users want it. But if it requires huge subsidies that the users are never going to come close to paying for, then we shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

O’Toole, author of the 2010 book, Gridlock: Why We’re Stuck in Traffic and What to Do About It, recommended that people interested in more information about high-speed rail and related topics should visit his blog, The Anti-Planner, and the web site of the American Dream Coalition.

From the Archives: Aviation policy expert Robert Poole talks about transportation privatization

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on April 10, 2010. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016. I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Aviation policy expert Robert Poole talks about transportation privatization

A Cato Institute briefing on Capitol Hill on Friday, April 9, asked the question, “When Does Rail Transit Make Sense?” and featured policy experts Randal O’Toole and Ronald Utt. The event attracted mostly young congressional staff members but also in the audience was Robert Poole, the Reason Foundation’s director of transportation studies.

As it happened, the lead article in the commentary section of the Washington Times that day was written by Poole, in which he argued that the federal government should get out of the business of screening airport passengers. He made two primary recommendations:

“First, TSA should be divested of its airport screening duties. TSA should regulate and oversee security, but each airport should be responsible for all aspects of its security (passenger and baggage screening, perimeter security, etc). Airports would be free to hire their own security forces or contract with TSA-certified firms.

“Second, the cost of airport security should be paid for by those who use airports: a combination of airlines and passengers. This change would cut billions from the federal budget, eliminating the large portion of airport security costs not covered by current airport or airline security taxes. It also would make the costs of airport security more visible to airlines and travelers.”

After the Cato briefing, Poole replied to a question from the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner about the future of transportation privatization.

“It’s very up in the air right now,” Poole said. With regard to surface transportation, the chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Congressman James Oberstar (D-Minn.) “wants to basically create a federal czar to have the last word, to say yes or no at the eleventh hour on any proposal for privatizing highways. That’s got the whole industry really, really nervous because nobody wants to take the risk of proposing and researching a project, then having it vetoed at the last minute after they’ve spent millions on putting their numbers together.”

In terms of airports, Poole said, “we have a little boomlet going on right now of cities that want to lease their airport under the federal airport privatization pilot program. I’m guardedly optimistic about that. Midway Airport is the most visible one but there are four others, at least, that have filed applications with the FAA.”

While none of these airports are in Virginia, there is one close by, Poole explained:

“Baltimore has talked about it but they haven’t filed. The state runs the airports in Maryland, and the governor said he would be open to an offer for BWI, which I was astonished to hear, but glad to hear. New Orleans and San Juan are two of the other leading candidates; they have applications filed. It could happen this year.”

Poole recommended that Examiner.com readers interested in transportation privatization issues should check out the Reason Foundation’s annual privatization report and Reason’s Airport Policy and Aviation Security Newsletter.

From the Archives: Former U.S. Transportation Sec’y Mary Peters: ‘not convinced’ on high-speed rail

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on March 4, 2011. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016. I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Former U.S. Transportation Sec’y Mary Peters: ‘not convinced’ on high-speed rail

On the morning of Friday, March 4, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that Governor Rick Scott (R) has the authority to cancel a high-speed rail project between Tampa and Orlando and return.

The seven Florida justices unanimously rejected a lawsuit filed by state legislators challenging Scott’s decision to return approximately $2.4 billion to the federal government that had earlier been earmarked by the Obama administration for the Tampa-Orlando rail line.

No more ‘business as usual’

Hours after the Florida announcement, the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner met with former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters and asked her about high-speed rail and what U.S. transportation priorities should be.

The government cannot “continue business as usual,” said Peters, who served as Transportation Secretary from 2006 to 2009, and previously was head of the Federal Highway Administration. “We need to look at a new paradigm of how we fund, how we operate, how we make project decisions. In the future, that has to be based on cost effectiveness.”

The government has to spend the taxpayers’ money, she said, in a way “that gives them the best possible return. We simply have not been doing that.”


Is high-speed rail cost-effective?

When asked specifically about high-speed rail – a prestige priority of President Obama and current Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood – Peters repeated her emphasis on cost-effectiveness.

“I need to be given the proof that it is indeed cost effective,” she declared.

“We have finite resources right now,” Peters explained, “not just in transportation but in the U.S. budget overall. So every dime we spend, we have to consider, is there a higher, better use of this funding that will give Americans a better return?” Can it, for instance, “reduce the deficit [or] reduce our debt?” she asked.

“I am not convinced that high speed rail is cost effective,” she said.

Leveraging federal dollars

Peters’ top priority for federal transportation policy is to “fully fund TIFIA” – the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, which, she explained, “can make loans to projects that can attract private investment and help leverage the federal dollar.”

That idea, she added, “segues into the second” priority: Federal transportation policy, she argued, “should give precedence, if you will, to those projects that can take a dollar of federal money and leverage it, perhaps with a dollar of state money and two dollars of private money, to give us more transportation solutions for the same investment.”

Finally, she made the case for consolidation of federal grantmaking programs in the transportation field.

“I would get rid of all these categories,” Peters said. “We have 108 different categories of funding right now” and they should be replaced with block grants to the states, which could make their own decisions on what to spend on transportation projects based on local conditions and circumstances.

The block grants, she said, would not give the states carte blanche, but rather would be aimed at letting them “meet the highest priorities” and would come attached with “measurements” requiring the states to “take care of their Interstate systems at this level” and “maintain their transit systems to a certain level, as well.

In her view, Peters concluded, “I would just block-grant the programs to the states [as] a step toward devolution.”

From the Archives: Former U.S. Secretary of Transportation James Burnley sees U.S. at 'crisis point for infrastructure'

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on June 25, 2010. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016. I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Former U.S. Secretary of Transportation James Burnley sees U.S. at 'crisis point for infrastructure'

Currently a partner at the law firm Venable LLP, James H. Burnley IV was not yet 40 years old when he became President Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Transportation in 1987, having previously served as deputy secretary in that department as well as in the U.S. Department of Justice as an associate deputy attorney general.

In an interview with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner at the Heritage Foundation in Washington on June 25, Burnley did not mince words in his assessment of the current state of transportation in the United States.

Time to Rethink Roles

"We’re at a crisis point on infrastructure for transportation in this country and we need to start over, rethinking the roles” of the state, federal, and local governments in devising and implementing transportation policy, he said.

Noting that the economic situation today is quite different than it was in the late 1980s, Burnley pointed out that “we had deficits” under President Reagan “but nothing on the scale we have today.”

One matter that is significantly different, he said, is that “the highway user fee trust fund idea has broken down completely. In the last few years $34.5 billion have been transferred from general revenues because we can’t pay for the existing highway programs and the transit programs that are funded, in part, from the highway trust fund.”

That’s why, he said, we have to “go back to a clean sheet of paper and rethink the federal role vis-à-vis the states and cities on transportation.”

Critical of Obama
Burnley was also critical of the Obama administration’s approach to these issues.

“I don’t think that the policies that the Obama administration seems to be intent on implementing are taking us in that direction – unfortunately,” he said. “Rather, their policies, under the so-called ‘livability doctrine’ seem to be designed to have the federal government play a much more intrusive, heavy-handed role in state and local transportation decisions. I’m sorry to see that happening.”

One proposal, pushed heavily by the Obama administration, is to build and expand high-speed rail across the United States. Burnley is skeptical.

This is, he said, “an issue that ultimately will be determined by how much we as a country are willing to spend because it will never pay for itself and it requires enormous capital investments by someone.”

There are questions that have to be asked in the debate over high-speed rail, Burnley said. “Is that money available from any source, and, if so, where does it come from? The federal government? State government? Private capital, which I think is not very likely?”

Funding, he said, is “the ultimate determinative factor, which is where is the money going to come from, and is it an investment as a country that we want to make?”

High-Speed or Low-Speed?
One issue that is emerging is that federal stimulus funds claimed to be for high-speed rail are going to projects far removed from that concept.

“Part of the $8 billion in stimulus money that was set aside last year for high speed rail that’s not going to the two greenfield projects in California and in Florida has been spread out by the federal [Department of Transportation] among the states to be spent on existing railroad lines,” Burnley explained, which, outside of the Northeast Corridor – where the lines are owned by Amtrak – are owned by freight railroads.

“What we think about as the high-speed rail program” besides those greenfield projects and Acela -- “we’re talking about increasing speeds by 2, 3, 4 miles an hour, very modest increases.”

As a result, that stimulus “money is, in fact, going as direct subsidies to the freight railroads because those are the lines upon which the passenger trains run outside the Northeast Corridor,” said Burnley. “You can argue the merits of that but, factually, I think, it’s important to note that that’s what’s happened. That’s where those billions of dollars are going.”

In other words, federal money designated for “high-speed rail” is subsiding “slow rail” instead.

From the Archives: Former Virginia Secretary of Transportation Shirley Ybarra discusses rail, roads, and HOT lanes

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on June 25, 2010. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016. I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Former Virginia Secretary of Transportation Shirley Ybarra discusses rail, roads, and HOT lanes

Now a senior transportation analyst at the Reason Foundation, Shirley J. Ybarra served as Secretary of Transportation for the Commonwealth of Virginia during the administration of Governor James Gilmore. She previously served as deputy secretary under Governor George Allen.

Ybarra attended a luncheon seminar at the Heritage Foundation in Washington on June 25, where the topic was high speed rail. After the presentation ended, she spoke briefly with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner on transportation issues facing Virginia.

The biggest single issue she identified is “congestion, particularly in Northern Virginia,” adding that in “the Virginia Beach area, same issues. It’s road congestion, quite honestly.”

To address the congestion problem, Ybarra said, “we’re seeing some solutions in Northern Virginia, with the Beltway HOT lanes and,” eventually, “the I-95/395 corridor HOT lanes.” She noted that those high-occupancy toll lanes are “not just for cars; that puts bus rapid transit on those HOT lanes also.”

High-Speed Rail in Virginia?
As to whether there is a role for high-speed rail (HSR) in Virginia, Ybarra said probably not.

“I think it’s going to be difficult to find a role for high speed rail,” she said. “A project that was started when I was Secretary was something called ‘the Third Rail’ between Washington and Richmond.

“That was because they were using the freight railroad tracks and they needed sidings and a new bridge down by Fredericksburg and that would allow the passenger trains not to be delayed by the very long freight trains like the ‘Juice Train’ that goes through right at the time it’s needed for the VRE service,” that is, the Virginia Railway Express commuter line. VRE, which runs from Manassas in the west and Fredericksburg in the south to downtown Washington, pays “freight railroads for the use of the tracks,” Ybarra explained, “because it is their track.”

McDonnell Administration Efforts
Assessing the successes and failures of the administration of Governor Bob McDonnell in transportation so far, Ybarra said “they are certainly trying to continue with public-private transportation acts, or what the rest of the world calls, public-private ventures, to bring some of the capacity and the private sector into road building,” as well as in transit.

One obstacle facing the McDonnell administration is that has substantially smaller budget “available than I did so they need to bring in the private sector and I know [the governor is] pushing that.” She noted that public-private ventures in transportation were part of McDonnell’s campaign platform and that suggestions to refine that promise have come out of a recent study commissioned by the administration.

Moreover, Ybarra added, McDonnell will be “putting in a dedicated group of people” to study transportation issues, “which we were unable to do when I was there. We all just did our regular job plus that job” of looking into future solutions for transportation problems.

“I think the dedicated group of people will help” in policymaking efforts, she concluded.

From the Archives: ‘Big Roads’ author Earl Swift brings interstate story to Charlottesville

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on March 24, 2012. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016. I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

‘Big Roads’ author Earl Swift brings interstate story to Charlottesville

By coincidence, on March 24, the same day that President Barack Obama used his weekly radio-video address to urge Congress to pass a transportation bill, pointing out that “after World War II, we connected our states with a system of highways,” author Earl Swift spoke at the 2012 Virginia Festival of the Book about his history of the U.S. interstates, The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways.

In his remarks, Swift noted that “movies do a bad job of showing what American life was like before the car.” Cities were notoriously dirty at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, and one reason people pushed for greater use of automobiles was that “they were less polluting than horses.”

Tons of manure

As an illustration, Swift pointed out that in New York City in 1900, there were “2.5 million pounds of manure deposited each day” as well as 60,000 gallons of horse urine. That amounted to 400,000 tons of horse manure each year in New York alone.

In an interview with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner as he autographed copies of his book, Swift said that other cities were as bad or worse. Kansas City had a ratio of one horse for every 18 persons. Boston, he said, “stunk to high heaven and ‘had a rich equine flavor.’ That’s the way people described it back then.”

Before automobiles, Swift explained, “there was mud everywhere” and businessmen would show up for their meetings spattered with mud and excrement.

For that reason – and for many others – the “car has transformed society,” Swift told the audience of about 75 book lovers who showed up in the Charlottesville City Council Chambers on a rainy Saturday morning.

No mountains or rivers

Swift came to the idea of writing The Big Roads, he said, while watching a weather report on television.

The meteorologist, he recalled in an interview, “was standing in front of a map of the lower 48. As I watched, I realized that it featured no topography. It had been stripped of topography altogether. In place of mountains and rivers were the outlines of the states, a scattering of cities, and most prominently, interstate highways. The country had been reduced to a grid. I realized at the same time that that’s pretty much the way I had come to see the place, and this was a bit of revelation.”

Over the weeks that followed that morning, Swift said he had “a number of ‘mini-epiphanies’” that he came to see as related. For instance, he was able to find fresh asparagus, clementines, and strawberries in the supermarket at the same time of year, even though these fruits and vegetables have widely varied growing seasons.

“I realized that this was a relatively recent phenomenon,” he said -- a result of improved road transportation that could bring produce from farm to market quickly.

“One thing led to another,” he explained. “The effects of the roads, I guess, became more apparent to me than the roads themselves.”

Unique highway system

While other countries – even large ones like Canada, Russia, and China – have extensive road networks, Swift said, “no other region of the world has a system so damn big that required so much effort to build and that requires so much dedication to keep operational.”

While the legend is that President Dwight Eisenhower was inspired to build the interstate highway system after seeing the Autobahn in Germany during World War II, in fact the system's basic features were already in place, in terms of planning and legislation, long before Eisenhower was elected in 1952. What’s more, there was a cross-pollination of road-building techniques between the United States and Germany.

“It’s really a chicken-egg question as to which came first” with regard to the Autobahn or the interstate system, Swift explained, “because the superhighway network we have definitely was inspired by the success of the Autobahns but the Autobahns were built with the help of insights gained in tours of American engineering facilities. There’s a lot of shared parentage there.”

Swift traveled extensively around the country in the four years it took him to research and write his book. He naturally has thoughts about the best and worst stretches of interstate highways.

Good, bad, and ugly

I-77 and I-64 through Virginia and West Virginia, he said, are both “awfully pretty.”

Stretches of I-70 through Glenwood Canyon in Colorado and all through eastern Utah, he said, are “just phenomenal, while “I-80 across Utah and Nevada is beautiful in kind of a desolate, forbidding way” as is I-80 in Wyoming.

“There are lots of reasons to dislike stretches of highway,” he pointed out. I-35 between Fort Worth and Austin is “just trashy. It’s just ugly.” The Indiana Toll Road is an embarrassing eyesore.”

In addition, “pretty much all the interstates in Illinois are terribly maintained and just beat the crap out of you as you drive. The Long Island Expressway is the most harrowing three miles of road in America. Some people might like driving the Beltway but I-495 around D.C. is never pleasant. It’s a great highway but the people on it are nuts [and] it’s always crowded.”

Despite that, Swift has some grudging admiration for the Capital Beltway, one of the busiest roads in Virginia and Maryland.

“The Beltway was almost too easy to build,” he said. Building it “forced very few people out of their homes.”

One reason was foresight. “They bought it early enough,” he explained. “They bought the right-of-way way early,” about 1950. (The first stretch of the Beltway opened in 1961 and the road was completed in 1964.) As a result, “it predated the spread of D.C. into an ever-widening stain on the landscape.”

In addition to The Big Roads, the Norfolk-based Swift is author of Journey on the James: Three Weeks Through the Heart of Virginia, The Tangierman's Lament: and Other Tales of Virginia, and Where They Lay: Searching for America's Lost Soldiers. He has written for the Virginian-Pilot and other newspapers, as well as for Parade magazine, notably a 2009 feature on America’s decaying highway infrastructure.

Water Taxis and Eliminating Government's Transit Monopolies

Yesterday's Washington Post includes a front-page a Metro section story with the headline, "Water taxis in Washington could be viable, study finds."

The article begins:

A water taxi that would ferry commuters across the region’s rivers is economically viable given the area’s burgeoning population and the proliferation of jobs along the water, according to a consultant’s study.

The year-long study found that at least four of two dozen possible routes across the Potomac, Anacostia and Occoquan rivers have enough demand to support a daily water taxi service that would be operated by a public entity or as part of a public-private partnership.

Well, well, well -- it's about time.

On April 21, 1995, the Arlington Journal published an article I wrote about meeting mass-transit needs through creative, free-market solutions that included this paragraph:

■ Restore the Potomac's status as a highway. The cities of Washington and Alexandria lie where they are because the Potomac River was once a major transporter of goods and people. A water-taxi service between Old Town Alexandria and Georgetown, with stops at the Washington Marina and in Arlington, could make the Potomac once again a significant people mover.

Why did it take so long for local governments to pay a high-priced consulting firm to come to the same conclusion that I did -- for no charge -- 18 years ago?

The piece also included suggestions for permitting private jitney services and for instituting sliding-scale highway tolls based on passenger occupancy.  (Something like that latter idea has been adopted on the interstates in Northern Virginia and the Maryland suburbs.)

From the archives, here is the full text of "End the government monopoly on mass transit service":

- - -

Some local government officials are moving in the right direction as they discuss the future of Metrobus service (“N.Va. systems threaten transit giant,” April 11), but most see too wary to step toward creativity and market-based decision making.

These local government officials deserve credit for their willingness to consider privatization of Metrobus routes as a means to make the system more cost-effective. Unfortunately, it seems that to them “privatization” is still limited to a county- or city-owned bus system to replace Metro or – at best – a government-granted monopoly to a private company within a single jurisdiction.

Why not consider more and varied alternatives that, when used together, will have the ultimate effect of reducing costs, improving efficiency, increasing mass-transit usage, and alleviating pollution.

Here are some examples:

■ Legalize jitney service. Jitneys are vehicles smaller than buses, such as vans, that operate independently (like taxis) but on a predetermined route (like buses). The operators set their own fares, which they can base on distance traveled or on other factors. Different jitneys can compete for the same passengers along the same routes, or a fleet of jitneys can divide up territory. Jitneys could operate within and across jurisdictions, feeding into Metrorail or connecting Tysons Corner to Silver Spring.

Island Queen ferry docked in Bayfield, Wisconsin

■ Restore the Potomac's status as a highway. The cities of Washington and Alexandria lie where they are because the Potomac River was once a major transporter of goods and people. A water-taxi service between Old Town Alexandria and Georgetown, with stops at the Washington Marina and in Arlington, could make the Potomac once again a significant people mover.

■ Turn Interstates 66 and 395 into toll roads, with tolls based on the number of passengers. For instance, instead of the dreaded high-occupancy vehicle lanes, we could charge vehicles a toll based on a sliding scale, such as $2 for lone drivers, $1.50 for two-passenger cars, $1 for three passengers, 75 cents for four passengers, and no charge for more than four. Such a scheme would persuade some people to take Metrorail, some to take the bus, some to car pool, and some to bear the economic price of the toll, depending on their preferences.

■ End the government mass-transit monopoly. These three examples only touch the surface of creative, market-based solutions that are there for us to consider and to use. The best way to encourage more use of mass transit, however, is to make more types of mass transit available, and to give commuters and travelers more choices than they have today. Allowing private services to compete with Metro on the same routes will be a good first step.

After all, we would never think it proper to grant Giant a monopoly in Fairfax County and Safeway a monopoly in Arlington County, and not let them compete against each other – or against 7-Eleven. If consumers can pick a grocery story, why not let them pick a type of mass transit? And why not let entrepreneurs give them what they want?

Richard E. Sincere Jr. of Arlington chairs the Libertarian Party of Virginia.

Karl Rove and James Burnley Will Speak in Charlottesville

*** Annual Ronald Reagan Dinner Returns to Charlottesville

*** Bush White House Advisor Karl Rove and Reagan Cabinet Secretary James Burnley Will Headline Event 

(CHARLOTTESVILLE, February 21, 2013) --- Fox News contributor Karl Rove and former U.S Secretary of Transportation James H. Burnley IV will be the featured speakers at the 2013 Ronald Reagan Dinner sponsored by the Charlottesville Republican Committee.

The Reagan Dinner will be held on Sunday, April 7, at the Omni Hotel in downtown Charlottesville.

 “A longtime Charlottesville tradition, the Reagan Dinner has been 'on hiatus' since 2003,” said Charlottesville Republican Committee chairman Charles “Buddy” Weber. “That year's dinner speaker was former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, and it took place on the same night that the Iraq War began. With that kind of 'shock and awe,' we needed a break, but now we're back.”

Karl Rove, who served as Deputy White House Chief of Staff and as a Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush, is well-known as columnist for the Wall Street Journal and as a political strategist.

“I am looking forward to speaking in Charlottesville, a region that offers opportunities for growth and revitalization for the local Republican Party. It will be my pleasure to meet party activists and offer my thoughts on the future of the conservative movement," Mr. Rove said.

James H. Burnley IV

James Burnley was President Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Transportation, serving from 1987 through 1989. He is currently an attorney with the Washington law firm, Venable LLP, sits on the board of FreedomWorks, and is a past chairman of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

 “It will be a great pleasure to return to Charlottesville” said Burnley. “My family has deep roots in the community – Burnley-Moran School is named for my great-great aunt, and I spent summers in the area as a child when my great-uncle owned the Hardware Store on the downtown mall. I look forward to reminiscing about my years in President Reagan's cabinet and discussing the transportation issues we face in the 21st century.”

Weber added: “The Ronald Reagan Dinner is our local committee's primary fundraising event of the year. It not only provides an opportunity for Charlottesville Republicans to come together for an evening of fun and conviviality, it raises the seed money for our candidates for City Council, the General Assembly, and other local offices. We welcome the participation of Karl Rove and James Burnley in this year's festivities.”

 The 2013 Ronald Reagan Dinner will include a cocktail reception, a VIP reception for major sponsors, and a silent auction featuring items donated by Republican leaders and celebrities from across the United States. So far House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval, Fox News host Sean Hannity, Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, and former Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton have contributed autographed items for the silent auction.

Tickets for the Charlottesville Republican Party's 2013 Ronald Reagan Dinner are $75 each, with discounts for packages of two and tables of eight. Seating is limited but requests for invitations may be sent by email to rsvp.2013ReaganDinner@gmail.com or by postal mail to P.O. Box 6936, Charlottesville, VA 22906.

 Contributions to the Charlottesville Republican Party are not tax-deductible.

(Crossposted from the Charlottesville Republicans Blog.)

My New Gig on Examiner.com

My posts here have been sporadic lately, owing in part to my paying closer attention to a new writing gig I began about two weeks ago.

I really fell into it at random. Somehow I found myself on the page of the Charlottesville Events Examiner and I noticed a button marked "write for us." Curious, I clicked on it, and within minutes I had filled out an application to fill the vacancy for the "Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner."

The instructions indicated that it could take as long as two weeks to process the application, so I left it there expecting to hear back sometime in the future. Yet within 24 hours I had received an email saying that my application had been accepted, but in order to confirm my interest in being a writer for Examiner.com, I had to post something within a day.

I scrambled to put something together, wondering what would fit Examiner.com's rather specific guidelines for good article writing. I finally settled on repurposing a blog post I had written in February about "affordable housing." That became "Concerns about the affordability of ‘affordable housing’ in Charlottesville," the first of my (so far) 17 articles on politics and policy on Examiner.com.

In my next piece, I drew upon video I took at a Students for Individual Liberty event at the University of Virginia, at which Adam Kissel of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education answered a question I posed about the case before the U.S. Supreme Court called Christian Legal Society v. Martinez.  Both FIRE and Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty filed friend-of-the-court briefs in that case.  The Court heard oral arguments in CLS v. Martinez on Monday, April 19.  My Examiner.com piece was called "Will the U.S. Supreme Court uphold freedom of expressive association?"

Let me note, parenthetically but with some pride, that GLIL's brief was cited favorably by William McGurn in Monday's Wall Street Journal.  McGurn writes:

That public/private distinction helps explain why CLS has also found allies in the libertarian Cato Institute and Gays & Lesbians for Individual Liberty. In their own brief, this latter group stresses that it was the ability of gay Americans to form gay associations—whose membership rules they defined for themselves—that gave them a collective voice in the face of an often hostile majority.

Presumably Gays & Lesbians for Individual Liberty do not share the CLS view of human sexuality. But they understand exactly where Dean Martinez's logic is taking us.

"[U]nder Hastings' forced membership policy, only majority viewpoints (or those viewpoints too banal to interest the majority) are actually assured a voice in Hastings' forum," argues their brief. "That is a patently unreasonable way to 'promote a diversity of viewpoints.'"

Exactly. Traditionally the American contribution to diversity has been the encouragement of thriving—and competing—private institutions and associations. Unfortunately, on American campuses today we see the opposite: an expanding government role in everything from research to how schools are accredited and how student loans are administered. One unintended consequence is that our culture wars are going to escalate as our courts are forced to take up a great many more cases like Hastings.

This is a digression; I hope to write more about CLS v. Martinez before the Supreme Court issues its ruling in June.

My next Examiner.com also recycled something I had written earlier, with a local and current hook: "Is 'income inequality' a serious problem?" With this article, I first experimented with searching the AP archives and using an AP photograph, which I could never do on this blog because that would be stealing, but which I can do on Examiner.com because the parent web site has permission -- actually, pays for a license -- to use AP photos. That's why the article has a shot of Alan Greenspan testifying before Congress.

With my fourth article, "Five reasons to be a libertarian," I began another experiment: carrying with me an audio recorder and asking people to talk into it in response to questions I ask them. In this case, I asked five members of the Jefferson Area Libertarians to explain what it means to be a libertarian.

The next four Examiner.com articles were the result of my attending a Cato Institute briefing on transportation issues in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill.  I was able to speak briefly with Cato's Randal O'Toole, the Heritage Foundation's Ronald Utt, and the Reason Foundation's Robert Poole.  The articles drawn from those interviews are:

Examiner.com exclusive - Randal O'Toole on Virginia high-speed rail
Aviation policy expert Robert Poole talks about transportation privatization
Heritage Foundation's Ronald Utt discusses commercialization of highway rest areas
Meadowcreek Parkway and suggestions to improve transportation policy making

My first candidate interview, with Fifth Congressional District GOP candidate Ken Boyd, appeared on April 12. Subsequently, I published interviews with Third District Libertarian candidate James Quigley, who will be facing Bobby Scott in November, and Eighth District Republican candidate Matthew Berry, who will face Jim Moran in the fall should he win the June 8 primary.

Other articles include a truncated version of my review of Fiddler on the Roof at the National Theatre, called "Reevaluating 'Fiddler on the Roof' from an economic perspective," and a report on the Tax Day Tea Party in Charlottesville.

I also interviewed John Taylor of the Virginia Institute for Public Policy about Thomas Jefferson's birthday, historian Jennifer Burns about Ayn Rand, and the Cato Institute's Brink Lindsey about "liberaltarianism."

What comes next?  I'm not sure, but I have several interviews "in the can" that require transcribing and transforming into article format.  My aim is to have at least six Examiner.com articles a week.  (Did I mention that Examiner.com offers financial incentives for posting good articles?)  Within two weeks, I have already made the "top five" of Charlottesville Examiners, with double and triple the average page hits in the "Charlottesville" and "Politics" categories -- even based on statistics since the beginning of the year.  Somehow the Charlottesville Pet News Examiner keeps beating me out for first place.

I guess I just have to be more dogged in my approach.

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Choo-Choo Chugs Along

My post on October 2 about how Charlottesville-based travelers to Washington, D.C., have been flim-flammed by promoters of a new Amtrak train to the Nation's Capital has resulted in an invitation to be on the radio.

On Wednesday, October 28, from 12:05 to 1:00 p.m., I will be a guest on The Schilling Show on WINA-AM (1070 on the dial) in Charlottesville, to discuss passenger rail. John Pfaltz will also be on the show, to offer an alternate point of view.

I explained to the show's host, Rob Schilling, that I am not an expert on transportation policy and that I do not pretend to be such. But I'm willing to make my case that, as an individual, it is less expensive for me to travel to Washington by driving my own car than it is to purchase a round-trip ticket on Amtrak, the heavily-subsidized, federally-owned and -operated passenger rail company.

I may point out how British railroads improved markedly after Tony Blair's Labour government privatized them in the 1990s.

The show invites callers to ask questions and express their own points of view. I hope readers will take the opportunity to do that. Let Rob know you heard about the show on this blog, too!

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Charlottesville's Choo-Choo Flim-Flam

Charlottesville is agog with the news that a new passenger train rides through town on its way to Washington and New York. Rachana Dixit has the story in the Daily Progress:

A new, daily Amtrak train that will stop in Charlottesville before going to Washington and the Northeast received much fanfare on Wednesday as it rolled into the city’s West Main Street station.

“We’re really pushing rail and public transportation because it’s the wave of the future,” Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said during the train’s whistle-stop tour.

The new train was due to arrive at the station at 2:15 p.m., and it pulled in at roughly 2:24 p.m.

Beginning in Lynchburg, the train officially starts its service today and will add 14 more trips per week in Charlottesville. It came to Charlottesville on Wednesday from Culpeper and then headed to Lynchburg after Kaine — who received a rail hat that said “Chief Engineer,” a train whistle and bandana — hopped on.

Some area residents have advocated for more passenger rail service along the U.S. 29 corridor, most notably Meredith Richards, a former councilor and the chairwoman of CvilleRail and the Piedmont Rail Coalition.

The new train, which makes no economic sense (I'll get to that momentarily), is subsidized by Virginia taxpayers to the tune of at least $10.9 million over the next three years (Daily Progress figure) or perhaps $17 million (WSET).

The estimated number of new passenger trips per year ranges from 50,000 to 59,000, which means that each trip is underwritten by taxpayers for between $96 to $113 (using the higher subsidy amount).

The aim of the new service is to entice people away from driving to Washington on Route 29. For an individual, however, it is cheaper to travel by car than by train, even with the subsidy.

I calculate that it costs me, driving my 1999 Saturn, about $20.00 in gasoline (and I'm being generous: that's assuming gas is $2.50 per gallon, when it actually is less than that along the Route 29 corridor, at least until you reach the Beltway). It costs me between $1.00 and $8.00 to park in Ballston. Even if I park in the nearest commercial parking garage near my downtown DC office, the maximum charge for 24 hours is $22.00.

That means that the most I would pay to drive myself to downtown DC is $42.00, roundtrip, including parking. Since I nearly always park in Ballston, however, it is more realistic to calculate my cost to be $28.00 (if I spend all day in DC).

According to the Amtrak web site, the one-way fare on the new train is $29. Roundtrip fare is $58.

That means I save between $16 and $30 by driving myself.

If I were to travel with a friend or colleague and split the costs, we together save between $32 and $60.

For every person traveling together on that Charlottesville-DC trip, choosing Amtrak increases the cost by 100 percent while choosing a private automobile reduces it by 50 percent (up to the point every passenger seat in the car is filled).

I enjoy riding on a train as much as anyone. It is my preferred mode of transportation between Washington and New York. (There's no way you'll find me driving on the streets of Manhattan.) I once even took the Acela from New York to DC. Someone else was paying for it, of course.

Enjoying railroad travel should not, however, blind us to the fact that passenger rail, because it is not economically viable in an open market -- that is, in the absence of government subsidies -- exists only because of a transfer of wealth from the poor (who, by and large, do not travel by train) and the rich (who like to travel by train because it is the chic thing to do, and they can pretend to be environmentally conscious while doing it).

Looking at the numbers, however, why would any rational person choose to take the train rather than drive between Charlottesville and DC? Besides saving money, you would have more flexibility in terms of choosing when to depart and arrive, and if you have a change of plans -- or if your DC-area business is in Tyson's Corner rather than Capitol Hill -- you are better able to adapt to your travel needs and desires. What's more, if I drive myself, I can talk on the phone or listen to NPR without worrying about bothering other passengers.

This is a bad deal. Anyone who thinks otherwise has been bamboozled. (To be fair, people with large disposable incomes and who care little about their travel budgets might rationally choose the Amtrak option. The rest of us would not.)

And watch out: They're going to foist this boondoggle on Richmond and Roanoke, too. (No word about Elm Grove.)






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Ferry Godmothers

On page 40 of the 1994 book, Virginia Trivia, by Ernie & Jill Couch, we find this Q&A:

Q: What is the last pole-powered ferry in Virginia?
A: Hatton Ferry, on the James River.

What was true in 1994 is still true in 2009.

As a matter of fact, I wrote about the Hatton Ferry just a few weeks ago, when it was announced by the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) that it would stop using taxpayer dollars to subsidize the ferry's operations.

The title of my blogpost that day explains my viewpoint:

VDOT Should Not Be Running Quaint Tourist Attractions

As if to justify my denotation of the Hatton Ferry as a "quaint tourist attraction," it seems that travel writers are in agreement. The ferry is suggested as an off-the-beaten-path thing to see in Lonely Planet Virginia & the Capital Region, Moon Virginia: Including Washington, D.C., Gourmet Getaways: 50 Top Spots to Cook and Learn, Journey on the James: Three Weeks Through the Heart of Virginia, Whitewater!: The Thrill and Skill of Running the World's Great Rivers, The Unofficial Guide to the Mid-Atlantic with Kids, Fodor's Virginia and Maryland, Escape Plans: Quick Getaways Within Easy Reach of Washington, Frommer's Virginia, and The James River Guide, as well as the aforementioned Virginia Trivia.

When I wrote about the Hatton Ferry in May, I noted that members of the local Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society were mourning its demise and engaging in special-pleading, asking VDOT to reverse its decision. I argued:

If the Hatton Ferry really has value, then the historical society will be able to arrange to buy it and run it privately. It should not be the responsibility of the government, and thus a burden to taxpayers.

Well, it seems my advice has been followed. Brandon Shulleeta reports in today's Daily Progress:

Local community leaders have been hitting the pavement to raise money to keep the Hatton Ferry running, and they already have enough to operate the ferry this year.

“We’re pleased with both the size and the number of contributions,” said E Marshall Pryor III, director of Old Dominion National Bank in Scottsville.

Pryor, who is heading the fundraising effort, said that there have been more than 75 donors and that enough money has also been collected to pay for about 20 percent to 25 percent of the projected cost to operate the ferry in 2010.

The ferry's operation will be returned to the private sector, where it has always belonged:

[Albemarle Supervisor Lindsay] Dorrier, who estimates that it will cost about $21,000 per year to operate the ferry, said the long-term goal is to hand over financial responsibilities to a nonprofit organization. Pryor said some groups are entertaining the idea of taking over the Hatton Ferry.

Let me parse that a bit: "some groups" are interested in taking over the ferry.

That means that, not only is government support and subsidy not necessary to keep the ferry running, there is competition among private organizations to lay claim to it.

Good old private enterprise. Good old private philanthropy. Good old community initiative. It's the American way.

The Daily Progress even points to the way that readers can help keep the Hatton Ferry in motion:

Anyone wishing to contribute may send a tax-deductible donation to the Hatton Ferry Fund, c/o Old Dominion National Bank, P.O. Box 321, Scottsville, VA 24590.

It looks like VDOT won't have to continue running a quaint tourist attraction, after all. Let's hope the Hatton Ferry's poles stay in private hands from this point forward.

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