Transportation

Urban planners in Virginia are trying to make bicycling safer, but they’re hampered by a lack of statistics about who’s riding where.

Alec Gosse rides his bike to work at a Charlottesville company that analyzes data, and this year he was working on a PhD in environmental engineering. Those interests led him to try and solve a problem daunting city planners.

“There was no data for how many bikes were using various roads in the city.  It just didn’t exist.”

Without that information, they didn’t know where to make road improvements for cyclists.

A state advocacy organization says last year's transportation compromise reached between Virginia lawmakers is already falling apart—and if it isn't addressed soon, the state, and especially lower- to middle-income families will be negatively impacted. While the Commonwealth Institute offers no one "magic bullet" to resolve this challenge, its President, Michael Cassidy, says there are some options that lawmakers need to put back on the table. 

Blacksburg Transit is joining a handful of locales in Virginia that have an App for youR smart phone that let’s you plan your bus trip.  Officials say it will save money, energy, and riders’ patience. 

For mass transit riders, there’s nothing more frustrating than watching the bus pull away while you decide weather to break into a sprint to catch it. Tim Witten is the Intelligent Transportation Systems Manager for Blacksburg Transit.

Every year V-DOT brings before the public a six year improvement program that includes new projects along with those that have been on the shelf for years, or even decades. But, this year's prioritizing may come undone. 

By the end of this summer, the U.S. Trust Fund that pays a significant share of highway construction and repairs will be insolvent, and authorization for transportation programs will expire soon after that.  New legislation unveiled by the U.S. Transportation Department includes a provision to lift a decades-old ban ...and allow all states to implement tolls on federal interstate highways across the U.S. –while also requiring electronic transponders.  But, the new federal tolling proposal is already coming under fire.