The Northern Virginia Transportation Authority met last night to approve the regional list of ready-to-go projects eligible for federal stimulus aid.

In total, NVTA suggested $2.4 billion in projects, broken down into three categories: Projects ready-to-go within 3 months, 6 months and 18 months. Included are $665.4 million for road projects and $1.7 billion in transit/multi-modal projects. The big ticket items (> $25 million) are as follows:

The list also includes smaller projects such as finishing the Crystal City / Potomac Yards busway and building interchanges at some additional intersections outside the Beltway. There are a lot of new bus orders and minor road widenings. Interesting to BeyondDC is the $900 million for the Silver line. Could it be that the FTA dropped its objections to the line because the writing on the wall said it would be included in the stimulus anyway? Seems possible.

Of course, just because NVTA suggests these projects doesn’t mean they’ll be funded. Those in the 18-months-away category are probably pretty unlikely to get any money, since 18 months is an awfully long time way away in this economy. But regardless, here’s your list of what Northern Virginia would do right away, if only it had the cash.

The arguments are in and they pretty much all favor rail. We won’t reiterate. But as GGW notes, some Montgomery County officials are coming out in support of the slow bus option.

That means now it is more important than ever to write-in and demand long-term thinking prevail, and light rail be chosen.

The current incarnation of the automaker bailout may have suffered a blow, but surely we’ve not heard the end of it. May as well throw out a few thoughts.

First off, it’s important to recognize why a bailout is important. BeyondDC cares absolutely nothing for any of the big three as companies. We have no qualms at all about seeing the GM “American icon” fail, on those terms. We support a bailout because one way or another the big three employ at least 1.6 million Americans, and throwing that many blue collar workers onto the streets is the last thing we need as our economy enters a serious recession.

So given that any bailout must be focused on saving jobs, not companies, bailout planners should recognize that the big three are failing because their business model is dying, and that therefore the business model needs changing. Throwing billions of dollars at this problem won’t make it go away if the dollars don’t address the root cause.

So let’s send the big three some cash, but let’s put some serious strings on it. Our knowledge of complicated economic issues is strictly amateur, but the following all seem like good ideas:

1. No more off-shoring jobs. Period.
2. 10% of each company’s factory output must be converted to things unrelated to vehicles that travel on roads within 7-8 years, and 20% within 15 years. This would diversify the product lines of the companies and help restore America’s manufacturing base. Some in the blogosphere have suggested we look to the big three to produce the next generation of transit vehicles. That’s not a bad idea, but there could be other things that need producing too. Why tie hands?
3. No golden parachutes, luxury jets, etc.
4. Drastically reduce production of environmentally destructive vehicles and increase the production of clean(er) ones. This has been part of the debate already and the costs associated with it are part of the reason the big three claim to need a bailout in the first place, but if we’re to subsidize the industry further, they damn well better be serious about it.

Ruins of a 19th Century mill in Harpers Ferry, WV. Should we rebuild?

A common misperception in this country is that our potential for hydro power – dams – is tapped out, that we’ve already got dams in all the places that can reasonably handle them, and that therefore new sources of energy will have to come from other places. No doubt that’s true, when the topic is big monster damns that power entire cities. The Grand Coulee Dam generates almost three times as much electricity as the Clavert Cliffs nuclear station, but there just aren’t many places left in the US to build Coulee-sized dams, if any at all.

But who ever said dams had to be huge? Small dams with enough generating power to stock a couple of nearby towns used to dot the landscape of the northeastern part of America. For the most part they were closed over time as bigger and bigger energy companies began to rely on a smaller number of ever-larger energy production plants. That was mid-century, but things are different now. Long gone are the days when America powered itself on domestic oil, and soon will be gone the days when America can power itself on foreign oil. We need new options, and as some Vermonters are trying to argue, why not do it on a smaller scale using proven technology that is clean, cheap and totally renewable? There are probably thousands of little rivers and streams all over America suitable for small-time dams, if not millions. Individually they could provide energy for countless smaller communities. Collectively they could make a big dent in our national energy needs. Seems like a good deal.

Of course, building a whole new generation of small-time hydro plants would be expensive and wouldn’t solve everything for everyone. But still, like nuclear power, hybrid technology and some rearranged living conditions, presumably small-time hydro can, should and will be one part of the complex menu of changes that will get civilization through the period post peak oil.

Or maybe civilization will go all Kunstler, but BDC is an optimist.

Montgomery County group Action Committee for Transit forwards us the following list of recommended improvements to Montgomery’s bus system that could be implemented immediately. The list is part of a letter sent to Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett, advocating for rail on trunk lines such as the Purple, and for use of “bus rapid transit concepts as a means of upgrading bus service” elsewhere in the county.

1. Rockville: At Church St./Hungerford Drive intersection, move stop line for cars approaching intersection on westbound Church Street to the east, beyond the driveway used by buses exiting the Metro station, so that buses leaving Metro station are not blocked by automobiles backed up at signal.
2. Rockville:Reduce period of signal cycle at Church St./Hungerford Drive intersection to one-half of current duration (so that average wait until next green light is cut in half).
3. Bethesda: Reduce period of signal cycle from 100 to 50 seconds at Woodmont/Edgemoor and Old Georgetown/Commerce intersections where buses exit Metro station.
4. Bethesda:Adjust signal synchronization so that buses leaving Bethesda Metro and turning left onto Woodmont Ave. hit green lights when turning left onto Montgomery Ave. and at subsequent signals on Montgomery Ave.
5. Medical Center: Allow left turns by buses from northbound Rockville Pike onto Cedar Lane at all hours.
6. Glenmont: Increase the duration of the green signal for buses leaving the Metro station onto Georgia Avenue.
7. Glenmont:Adjust signal synchronization so that buses leaving Metro station and turning left onto Georgia Ave. hit green lights at subsequent intersections (Georgia/Layhill, Layhill/Glenallen, and Georgia/Randolph intersections).
8. Glenmont:Increase the duration of the green signal for left turns from southbound Georgia Ave. onto Randolph Road.
9. Silver Spring: Allow westbound buses on East-West Highway to use existing right-turn lanes to bypass queuing at Jones Mill Road and 16th Street. (This is an element of the TSM alternative in the Purple Line DEIS but can be implemented independently.)
10. Montgomery College: Move bus stops at Montgomery College’s Germantown and Rockville campuses from beyond parking lots to directly in front of the academic buildings.

The First Baptist Church of Clarendon sits on valuable real estate just a couple of blocks from Clarendon Metro. In 2004 the church proposed a cool idea, to build apartments above and behind the sanctuary. Land would be used efficiently, the neighborhood would get some affordable housing, and the church would get some cash. Everybody wins. Except there were procedural problems, and the proposal got tied up in court for a few years. Now, the only thing lacking is money. Hopefully it will all be sorted out, and we’ll have a nice model of vertical mixed-use on our hands.

By the way, if the residential addition is built, it would become at least the second mixed-use church in Arlington’s Rosslyn-Ballston corridor. The other? Take a look below. It can only be described as both hilarious and awesome.

“Views at Clarendon”, the current proposal for apartments atop an existing church.

“Arlington Methodist Temple”, the church in Rosslyn with a – you’re reading this right – gas station on the ground floor. BDC likes to call it “Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration”.

LOL. From Avent, via Grist:

Given the way that president Bush has used executive orders to gut, among other things, environmental rules, it would be deliciously poetic if Barack Obama used his authority under the Clean Air Act, as clarified by the Supreme Court in Massachusetts v EPA, to enact a nationwide cap-and-trade regime. Conservatives would scream about executive overreach and industry groups would say that Obama was working to kill the economy, but I suspect the hubbub would die away pretty quickly (especially once consumers saw that energy prices didn’t immediately skyrocket). It would also allow Congress to keep its powder dry for other legislative fights.

Wiehle Avenue station in Reston, the terminus of Phase 1.

“The ideologues in the administration have given up”. So says Congressman Jim Moran, in response to the FTA’s recent approval of the Silver Line after years of bureaucratic attempts to scuttle the project. It seems the Bush administration fought the project because a) they don’t like transit, and b) they wanted to force VA to sell the Dulles toll road to private interests, to become a tolling pilot project. But with the lame-duck administration in retreat and pro-transit policies likely to take hold under the new president, the fight has gone out of the bad guys.

So what next?

The FTA approval received by the Silver Line is a bureaucratic step. For the next month it will be reviewed by FTA boss Mary Peters and the federal Office of Management and Budget. That review should be complete just before the new administration takes over. After that, the federal approval / funding grant will be forwarded to Congress for the final once-and-for-all for-really-this-time go.

Assuming all goes according to plan, construction starts in March and revenue service to Tysons Corner begins in 2013.

You know how whenever a new city proposes a light rail line and everybody says it’s a terrible idea, then the line gets built and 5 years later every corridor in town is begging to get the next extension?

This is sort of like that.

Folks who started taking transit when gas prices were up realized hey, this is convenient and saves me a bundle, and are sticking with the trains even though gas prices have, for the time being, come back down.

Notice the trend? Everybody loves the train, once they take the plunge and try one.

Many discussions about new rail lines involve the potential for Transit Oriented Development around stations. In the debate over Maryland’s Purple Line, though, talk of TOD has been largely absent. After all, the line will connect destinations that are already pretty dense, and already experiencing healthy infill development.

Turns out there is at least one new TOD likely to be built along the Purple Line, assuming the line is built as light rail along the original Georgetown branch right-of-way. The TOD, to be located just east of Connecticut Avenue, would be pretty low-density as these things go. It would be, according to developers, comparable in character to King Farm in Rockville, though much smaller.

Naturally, the same folks who oppose the Purple Line also oppose the TOD. Maureen Jais-Mick, co-chair of a group pushing for buses on Jones Bridge Road instead of trains in a rail right-of-way, says the village-like proposal will turn Chevy Chase residents into “rats in a maze”. She goes on to say “We’ve got good development going in. We’ve got good green space. Why do they want to bulldoze it?”

BeyondDC admits we’ve haven’t spent a whole lot of time at the location of this proposed development, immediately east of Connecticut Avenue, between Manor Road and Chevy Chase Lake Drive, but we did pull it up via aerial, to interesting results. Turns out to be a bunch of surface parking lots, apartment buildings, an aging strip mall, what looks like an industrial lumber distribution yard, and a high-rise office building that, if the description of a King Farm-like village is to be believed, is much taller than anything likely to be built.

Given that context, does someone want to explain to us Jais-Mick’s comments? BeyondDC must just not get it. Replace a parking lot and lumber yard with a nice walkable village? Sounds pretty good. Ought to have a nice effect on nearby residential property values, too.

Purple Line opponents want to save this? Really?

Update #1: Montgomery County blog Just Up The Pike points us towards a website for the TOD that includes a small site plan. We’re not exactly talking about the Empire State Building here.

Update #2: Ryan Avent at The Bellows takes a stab at telling us what’s really going on with neighborhood opposition.