Virginia Beach Never Wanted Light Rail to Begin With!

So now we hear that because of the corruption in Hampton Roads Transit that Virginia Beach is leery of any type of partnership. The local newspaper, the Virginia Pilot, did not use the word "corruption", but how else would you describe it when taxpayer money is not accounted for. Top officials in Norfolk knew about the cost overruns, but have kept silent. One would leave with the impression that the only reason to withhold the information were hopes that taxpayers would continue to support the light rail project if they thought that costs were low.

There are a few things to consider when you look at light rail for Southeastern Virginia. The light rail project will do little to ease traffic congestion concerns. Citizens that are not in any hurry to get anywhere and tourists may use it as it is a novelty because it is there, but there is no reason to believe that this will be any more effective than the Detroit People Mover. The Detroit People Mover was built in a city that is also heavily dependent on the automobile with a lousy Interstate system, just like Hampton Roads, that lacks any true expressways and is contingent on a series of individual highways that just happen to cross each other, just like this region does.

On top of all of this, the People Mover was designed to handle 15 million riders a year, but only serves 2 million. If you want to talk about the size of the metro, Detroit is a larger metropolitan area between 4 million to 6 million residents, depending on which metric you use. The population density is three times that of this region, and this is considering that the physical size of the metropolitan area there is larger. But you would think that with three times the density that the People Mover would have been the foundation to a larger system, and that is with a system that has been in operation since 1987. One has to begin asking questions when they consider the similarities.

After 23 years they only have one line. Detroit was built around the automobile just like Los Angeles was, and has lousy public transportation as a result. They are just now considering building another line, the Woodward Avenue Light Rail system to connect to the People Mover. Detroit is yet another study in a patchwork of interconnecting public transportation systems that serves to illustrate the divide between the city and suburbia. The city has its own bus system and the suburbs have their own bus system. Some of the routes on the bus service provided by the city run 24 hours a day.

The problem in all of this, is that density in Detroit is even less than it was when the People Mover was initially built. Large swaths of the city are uninhabited and could be used for farmland, due to decades of urban decay. The People Mover did not do anything to spur urban growth because it was built downtown where the infrastructure was already in place. Other attempts to revitalize the city have often failed, including the addition of casinos and the Renaissance Center, a project of 7 interconnected skyscrapers downtown. While thousands were employed to assist with the construction of the center and much has occurred in the Center itself it was not enough to revitalize the downtown area.

Detroit already had plenty of skyscrapers at the time that the Renaissance Center was built. At the end of the day, large construction projects and a monorail were not enough to bring people to Detroit. Both projects, the tallest skyscrapers in the city and the only elevated train in the city serve as reminders of the potential of the city. Hampton Roads does not have the density, nor the inertia, to support a light rail project in Norfolk let alone the region. The line is not elevated where it should be, which was a very dumb idea to begin with seeing how traffic that is already at a crawl will move even slower through the city.

Cities that have benefited from light rail have not been revolutionized because of it, but in spite of it. These cities were already burgeoning financial centers and had diversified economies at the time that light rail was built. Light rail helped tie up the loose ends of city neighborhoods that were spread apart and otherwise alienated from each other, but that is about it. Take a look at Atlanta, whose system has been in place since 1979. They only have 4 lines, but the suburbs fight them tooth and nail over expansion 31 years after the fact.

Why would anyone think that Virginia Beach would go quietly into the night? If history is to tell us anything citizens will be fighting expansion of The Tide 30 years from now. The only difference between Virginia Beach and these other suburban areas is that the suburban areas were known as suburbs, and Virginia Beach wants to be known as a city. But in reality, Virginia Beach is an aggregation of various suburban type projects; subdivisions, strip malls, a single story shopping mall, the same type of lifestyle center that just happens to be called "Downtown" that suburbs have, and various other bright ideas that would only flourish in a suburban setting.

Virginia Beach would develop their own line that would serve Virginia Beach before tying into a different light rail system. Virginia Beach also lacks the density to make the line feasible. The only cities with a lower population density are Chesapeake and Suffolk. Norfolk has two and one half times the density of Virginia Beach, and the system might work there. If Virginia Beach had the density of Norfolk, millions would live in the city. People quickly forget that Los Angeles and Virginia Beach are technically the same size and you could get eight times as many people in this town than there are now.

Which brings me back to my initial question; why would anyone believe that Virginia Beach would ever get on board with The Tide? If development does occur along the right of way will any of us be able to afford it? Would you pay $1,500 a month to live next to the light rail, or shop in exclusive shops where a t-shirt will run $200? As attractive and beautiful as the line would be I cannot see where anything that comes out of it, in the terms of development, will benefit those struggling to get by in this region. The only thing that will happen is that high rises are built around it, and everyone knows that the poor can no longer afford to live in high rises in this country anymore. Most of our poor have moved out to suburbia as rents have escalated and they are being pushed out because of gentrification. Light rail goes against everything that Virginia Beach stands for and would bring about a lifestyle change that is the reason why residents left Norfolk many years ago ...