■ 22 February 2012 | 12:00 AM
The Tide's amazing ride
My wife and I recently made our first round trip on The Tide. What a great ride. I don't understand why Virginia Beach will not step up to the plate and have The Tide run all the way to the beach.
I'm 66 years old and would love to ride The Tide to the beach before I die. I sure hope it will happen.
John T. Bynum Jr.
Chesapeake
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I'm 30 Years Old ...
And would love for our elected officials in Virginia Beach to find ways to NOT waste our tax dollars before I die.
saturation
Like it or not, Hampton Roads has a population of about 1.7 million, the 36th-largest metropolitan area in the United States.
Look around you. What is being built these days are high-density communities because there isn't much more room to spread out.
As the area's population keeps increasing, development has reached a point of saturation - and traffic saturation will be soon to follow.
That means gridlock.
The real question is this: How are all of these people going to get around?
Can we really keep expanding the major traffic arteries, financed by tolls?
We must plan smarter in terms of moving mass amounts of people around more efficiently.
You have to plan for the future. LRT is planning for the future.
A Different Question...
Another possibility is to encourage the population to STOP increasing.
When I was a kid, most of Virginia Beach and nearly all of Chesapeake and Suffolk were farm land. Norfolk had its downtown center, but many of the "suburban" spaces within city limits were still wild enough that you could almost feed yourself over the summer on foods taken from the environment by hand.
I don't pine for bygone days, and it is true that old people in my youth told me not to swim in the rivers because I would get "fever."
Still, it seems to me that the constant, unrelenting "development" of our area has not necessarily been a great improvement.
Drop a person from space into any neighborhood in Norfolk or Chesapeake, and that person will find it little different from a neighborhood outside of Atlanta, or Houston, or San Francisco.
I don't criticize developers, and I'm not against progress, but it seems to me that the assumptions underlying social policy and urban planning are out of whack.
Thus, the question I pose is: How do we take good care of the people who live here now WITHOUT encouraging more expansion in the number of residents?
We can't
you posed the question:
"How do we take good care of the people who live here now WITHOUT encouraging more expansion in the number of residents?"
Taking good care of the people who live here, and advancing our quality of life, will only encourage more people to live here.
So, the simple answer to your question is:
We can't.
"NO" is Too Easy
It's easy to be negative, but isn't the puzzle much more interesting than a flat "no"?
If you are correct that every improvement in quality of life invites destruction of quality of life, then what's the point of living?
I think there's a puzzle here that CAN be solved.
Creative and sustainable use of zoning laws are one approach. Virginia Beach, for example, used to have a "green line." On one side of the line urban/suburban development was permitted; on the other it was not.
Because of urban planning and economic development philosophies which became politically correct over time, the "green line" in Virginia Beach is no longer a significant reality.
Even within the city limits of Norfolk we could set aside tracts of land which are not to be developed into residential or commercial spaces. This by itself would limit population growth.
The thing CAN be done. There is no intellectual reason why any urban planning philosophy MUST accept perpetual population growth as a means to drive economic development.
Look around?
Given that Chesapeake, Virginia Beach, and Suffolk (on the southside) are all suburban and rural, your claim that we are saturated and "high-density" is flawed.
Our traffic problem is due to the primary destinations (mainly the military bases, shipyards, and various supporting facilities). With everyone living so spread out and aiming for the same destinations in a criss-cross pattern, there is no real "flow" to the traffic patterns (other than entering and leaving the bases). Light Rail will not fix that (though, extending it to NOB would at least make it more useful).
The biggest problem with light rail is the same problem that mass transit programs have in every other major city in the country: in order to attract riders, you have to keep the costs well below what the cost should be to enable it to be sustainable without draining tax dollars. If the real price was charged to riders, you'd see the ridership drop to next to nothing. The only way this program stays afloat is by using more and more tax dollars.
do yourself a favor
Define, in your head, what you think is the difference between an urban area and suburban/rural area(which you think Virginia beach to be).
Then look at the numbers(they're sortable by column)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population
Pay close attention to the land area and population density columns in addition to the total population column.
You may be in for a surprise.
Oh, we are urban ...
You mean because VB is the 231st most dense city in the country? Or because it is the second least density city in Virginia (behind Chesapeake)?
The fact that it is a "city" doesn't change the fact that it is not urban. Here is a list of some select cities that are more dense than Virginia Beach:
Fargo, ND
New Haven, CT
Las Vegas, NV
Tempe, AZ
Akron, OH
Elgin, IL
Lincoln, NE
Raleigh, NC
Cary, NC
Green Bay, WI
And every other major city in VA with the exception of Chesapeake and Suffolk (which doesn't make this list, but is on par with Chesapeake).
So, you can dilute yourself into believing Virginia Beach is an urban area, but that either means you haven't seen an urban area, or you have not ventured out of the Town Center or Oceanfront areas much.
here's anotherr link
this one has pictures too!
"Below is a list of urban areas in the United States as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau
# 27 Virginia Beach, VA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_areas
need more proof professor?
step 1...step 2
step 1) open mouth
step 2) insert foot
"So, you can dilute yourself into believing Virginia Beach is an urban area, but that either means you haven't seen an urban area, or you have not ventured out of the Town Center or Oceanfront areas much."
Aren't the Town Center and the Oceanfront URBAN AREAS where they want to link the LRT?
Congratulations, you have completed the 2 step process.