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Virginia Beach Light Rail and Transit


vdogg

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"A majority of City Council members have said they favor holding a referendum on light rail. In 1999, Beach voters rejected light rail 56 to 44 percent."

Sorry, but if this is true then we're just as far away as we were in 1999. I have zero confidence now that they'll actually see this through to fruition. The VBTA will swamp the poll and we'll be right back where we started because the council is too chicken to actually take a stand on something that is important to the city. This is why we have elected representatives in this country. We elect people to make the tough choices based on the facts at hand. If we're just gonna put all the important stuff to a referendum then why not just cut out the middle man? We don't even need a city council if that's the case, we can just vote on everything ourselves.

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"A majority of City Council members have said they favor holding a referendum on light rail. In 1999, Beach voters rejected light rail 56 to 44 percent."

Sorry, but if this is true then we're just as far away as we were in 1999. I have zero confidence now that they'll actually see this through to fruition. The VBTA will swamp the poll and we'll be right back where we started because the council is too chicken to actually take a stand on something that is important to the city. This is why we have elected representatives in this country. We elect people to make the tough choices based on the facts at hand. If we're just gonna put all the important stuff to a referendum then why not just cut out the middle man? We don't even need a city council if that's the case, we can just vote on everything ourselves.

Vdogg- You are absolutely right about why we elect officials. A lot has changed in the last 10 years; it happened fast, and the future is going to come at us even faster. Hampton Roads is not a sleepy (little "t") tidewater any more. We can no longer rely on old models of transportation; we need to think ahead. And, we have a long-range transit vision with a plan to get there. Everyone has until March 13 to make comments: http://hrpartnership.blogspot.com/2009/02/...lan-public.html. I encourage everyone to take the time to review the plan, make comments (positive or negative, but constructive), and let's work together on this.

post-17757-1236437588_thumb.jpg

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"A majority of City Council members have said they favor holding a referendum on light rail. In 1999, Beach voters rejected light rail 56 to 44 percent."

Sorry, but if this is true then we're just as far away as we were in 1999. I have zero confidence now that they'll actually see this through to fruition. The VBTA will swamp the poll and we'll be right back where we started because the council is too chicken to actually take a stand on something that is important to the city. This is why we have elected representatives in this country. We elect people to make the tough choices based on the facts at hand. If we're just gonna put all the important stuff to a referendum then why not just cut out the middle man? We don't even need a city council if that's the case, we can just vote on everything ourselves.

There are a million reasons why this should not go to referendum...

We are a representative democracy, which means we choose elected officials to make very specific decisions for us that we do not have the ability to make on our own. Very few of us are transportation planners, or economic forecasters, or even have access to the expert knowledge/advice about this project. Our city/regional planners have masters degrees with specific knowledge in urban/regional/transportation planning...and understand both the congestion and development trends both now....AND IN THE FUTURE. We rely on our elected officials to spend there 40+ hours per week to become as knowledgable as possible on the specifics and then to make the best decision that we ourselves do not spend all day long preparing for.

Furthermore, I do not believe that Sessoms has come this far only to send this to referendum. He knows the economic benefits LRT will bring. He's prolly playing it safe for now and waiting till the time is right to execute his authory.

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Virginia Beach Signs Agreement with Norfolk Southern To Acquire Railroad Right-of-Way

Mayor William D. Sessoms Jr. announced today that the City of Virginia Beach has signed an agreement with Norfolk Southern Corp. to acquire the railroad right-of-way that runs through the city. The right-of-way is being studied as a possible route for light rail from Norfolk to the Virginia Beach resort.

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I officially hate most VB NIMBYs, the VP for reporting that god-awful $7.2 million assessment number, and the VBTA. The sky is falling the sky is falling the sky is falling. This is where Sessoms over Obendorf is going to be a huge advantage. There's your referendum folks, the last election. They lost!

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I officially hate most VB NIMBYs, the VP for reporting that god-awful $7.2 million assessment number, and the VBTA. The sky is falling the sky is falling the sky is falling. This is where Sessoms over Obendorf is going to be a huge advantage. There's your referendum folks, the last election. They lost!

Lol. Yeah, this comment cracks me up:

Submitted by veryold on Wed, 03/11/2009 at 6:53 pm. Sessoms never really wanted to be Mayor and could care less about being re-elected. He's just a hired (by the developers) hand that's there to do their dirty work. That includes lying about the referendum, that they know would fail. He doesn't want to be re-elected. All the players are in place. Every project (and more) that you've heard of will be quickly approved. Laskin Road, Dome site, hotel at Conference Center, light rail, development of the trailer park site on VB Blvd, more money for Towne Center and on and on. Just less than 1 BILLION dollars (at least 300 million for this stupid tonka toy train) will be the total tab. All the money will be borrowed. This crew will cut and run leaving another council to deal with the debt.....this was always obvious.

Suckers....

I find it funny how this guys nightmare is my dream :lol:. I can only wish that all these things would happen but fortunately for him, and unfortunately for me, I think it will take a long time to see all that come to fruition.

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I missed that, wish i would have seen it. Nice to know that city is planning on borrowing $1 billion, since the city pays for EVERY development in the area...it's simple education, open your eyes! Go Tide Go!

What exactly are you referring to? Are you being serious or is this just rhetoric exaggeration?

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I've said it a thousand times, the editorial page is the only decent part of the Pilot newspaper. Well written. On the other hand, how does a guy like Deizel get elected? "Wait-and-see approach"? Show some balls, dude. Do what you were elected to do: LEAD!

Edited by Sky06
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I've said it a thousand times, the editorial page is the only decent part of the Pilot newspaper. Well written. On the other hand, how does a guy like Deizel get elected? "Wait-and-see approach"? Show some balls, dude. Do what you were elected to do: LEAD!

Diezel got elected because Joe Flores was in as a splitter. Diezel won on a plurality.

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  • 2 weeks later...

E MAIL FROM VA BEACH READS.....

"Thank you for your continued interest in the planning effort for the former Norfolk/Southern ROW in Virginia Beach. To give you an update, HRT is currently in negotiation with the selected consulting firm to conduct the EIS and Alternatives Analysis. They anticipate being able to award the contract on April 23rd. That step will take approximately 12-18 months to complete.

It's a long way down the road, and there are many unanswered questions at this time, but a "Best Case" scenario for a construction start date would likely be 5-6 years.

I hope this helps and please let me know if you have any additional questions."

So I guess this means we are looking around 2014-2015 ("BEST CASE") before this thing STARTS construction meaning we are looking about 2017-2018 ("BEST CASE") before 10 miles of light rail from NEWTOWN to the BEACH is completed. Man i was looking forward to it being done by 2013.. I don't see why it would take 4-5 years after the EIS is done unless it will take them that long to lobby for funding. Oh well I guess it's not too bad. He could have said they were paving it for BRT or something!! ha So by 2018 we will have a 17 mile light rail line from DN to the Oceanfront. At that rate HR will have a wonderful transit system by 2085. Hopefully I'm one of those people that live until there 120. :rolleyes:

Edited by varider
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yeah, that is one of my fears with that area with transit...I am hoping that when it opens up in Norfolk, that it makes it more of a priority to build and expand.

It is as if no one (sorry, dont mean to generalize, but you guys get the picture) gets out of Hampton Roads to see how light rail works and the benefits of it.

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The majority of the problem is not the lack of interest to get the thing built. What prevents this from being built quickly is the government red tape. For this to be built they will of course be seeking federal money. Well there is a lot of red tape involved. You have to do the EIS, then the FTA has to sign off on that. If that is a go, then you have to get federal approval to start preliminary design. At which time you also have to do ridership estimates. These get sent to the FTA then the government looks at these and decides whether it looks valid or not. More than likely they come back and say we need the numbers to look a little more realistic, (the government is very conservative with ridership estimates). Then once that's figured out the project goes before the government and it recieves a rating as to whether it is strong, medium, or lightly rated. Only projects that are medium to highly rated get the go ahead to proceed with engineering and final design, and only if they are budgeted for in the governments transportation budget. Then, if you make it through all of that, and believe me I have let out many many other steps that have to be completed before that, you get the go ahead to proceed with construction which in itself will take 2+ years. When you seek government money you have to cut through the red tape, and then you're never guarenteed the money because you are competing with every other metro area that is looking for their piece of the pie. The only way to get this thing built faster is to go it alone and built it with local revenue (taxes, fees, etc.) which will never happen, people can't barely live with the taxes now, not to mention the economy (despite some cheery projections by idiots) will be down for a while. All this to say, this is a normal time frame for a system to be built. People just have to understand that it takes time. If we hadn't of had a referendum in Va. Beach, and the original taxing plan had past we would already have a system finished in place from Downtown to Va. Beach. But, alas, that didn't happen, so norfolk went it alone and slugged through the red tape. Now it's Va. beach's turn.

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I don't understand why these things can't be built simultaneously? Why can't we have a golden age of rail infrastructure in this nation?

The thing I dont understand is how European countries are so ahead of us in rail. I was watching CNN and they said trains in America will have a tough time reaching max speeds of 150 in our lifetime. Thats crazy. But as far as Light Rail in Hampton Roads my ESTIMATES/WISHES for completion are-

Newtown to Oceanfront: 2016

EVMS to ODU: 2017

EVMS to MIDTOWN Ptown: 2026

Harbor Park to NC: 2030

and I'm not going further than that..

If I was Mayor of Hampton Roads, Va I would fight for higher taxes specifically for transportation so we could build all of these lines simultaneously. The current system (Prelim. Planning, EIS, Lobby, Wait In line, ect.) will take a century to build light rail all over HR.

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