On Transportation, Bob McDonnell turns Virginia “back toward the 1950s”

The always on-point David Alpert GreaterGreaterWashington nails Bob McDonnell, and deservedly so, for escalating his ongoing war on smart growth/transit-oriented development. What McDonnell’s doing here is almost the exact definition of “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” aka “insanity.”  It’s also a guaranteed way not only to keep us addicted to dirty, expensive fossil fuels, but actually to increase that dependency when we should be moving in the exact opposite direction. Here’s an excerpt from Alpert’s article, but definitely read the entire thing:

…[Virginia’s] making a U-turn as the Commonwealth Transportation Board threw out the new standards at a meeting last week.

This step is just one of many from Virginia statewide agencies in recent days that decisively push toward a 1950s view of growth, one which neglects established communities and crumbling infrastructure in favor of brand-new sprawl in the farmlands which ultimately creates even more traffic.

State officials are giving the thumbs down to Metro, light rail and bus transit in favor of highway lane expansion, skipping small but significant improvements that help neighborhoods or key growth areas like Tysons Corner to instead spend billions on megaprojects that drive the region farther apart, and lose focus on key repair needs while weakening the street connectivity standards.

If you live in Virginia, please speak up at a hearing tonight at VDOT’s (non-Metro-accessible) Northern Virginia office in Fairfax, or send in written comments.

I’m tempted to go, except that, appropriately enough, I have no desire to battle the insane traffic to get to this meeting. And if you think it’s bad now, just imagine how awful it will be if sprawl-crazy, anti-smart-growth, ignorant ideologues and corporate tools like Bob McDonnell and Bob Chase’s Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance get their way. Ugh.