To the long winding road
You left me standing here
- Paul McCartney

METRO has some of the smartest customers of any transit agency in the country. As a result, it should come as no surprise that after years of failing to heed their concerns over spotty bus service, at least some of those riders figured out a unique way to strike back

The fliers look official enough. They are 8 1/2 by 11 inches, have an official-looking Metro “M” logo and the number for a customer call center.

And they come with a sweet promise: Customers who call the transit agency to report a late bus will be rewarded with a free pass “good for ONE WHOLE WEEK of unlimited rides.”
……

“Standing out in all sorts of weather waiting for a late bus is no fun,” the flier states. “You rely on Metro to get you to work, to school, shopping, appointments — safely and ON TIME.

“We know that this route is chronically slow, and we need your help.”

I have felt those riders pain.

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Last week, the Washington Post confirmed the obvious . . . . that drivers in Northern Virginia and the D.C. Metro area generally, have one of the worst commutes in the nation.

Washington area workers are more likely to travel to jobs outside their home counties than commuters in any other region in the nation, according to a new study.

A higher percentage of Virginia residents live and work in different counties than commuters in any other state; Marylanders ranked second, according to “Commuting in America III,” a national report on commuting patterns and trends published yesterday by the Transportation Research Board.

The Washington region is second only to New York for the percentage of workers with “extreme commutes,” which the study defined as 90 minutes or more each way. Of the 12 counties with the highest percentage of long commutes, the region had three: Prince William, Prince George’s and Montgomery.

While traffic hasn’t really emerged as a major issue in the high profile Allen Webb campaign (they’ve decided to take the low road and focus on Senator Allen’s apparent penchant for racial slurs and Jim Webb’s fondness for pedophilia) it has emerged as an issue in our local congressional campaigns and will almost certainly be the leading issue in next years state elections.

As a resident and commuter in this area for almost 10 years, I have very definite opinions on the subject, having made the commute into D.C. from the McLean/Tyson’s Corner area in nearly every way possible.

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Last July 17, in one of the House of Representatives leadership’s less prescient moments, that body approved arguably the largest earmark of modern times — $1.5 billion to the management-challenged Metro transit system. This stand-alone package (HR 3496) authored by Representative Tom Davis and supported by Representative Frank Wolf, two Virginia Republicans, has a special gift for the unwary taxpayer. In Heritage’s Ron Utt’s words:

As troubling as this inequitable transfer would be, Mr. Davis’s proposal also requires that, as a condition of Metro receiving the $1.5 billion federal bailout, all communities in its service area establish a “dedicated funding source” (a euphemism for a tax increase) to match the federal subsidy.

The danger is that this succubus could be attached to a genuinely urgent Senate vehicle and slide through to the president’s desk where veto pens may still be on order, if not under construction. Mr. Davis has no shame about standing behind this measure, and, consistently, voted for greater transparency on earmarks last Thursday. Mr. Wolf, on the other hand, appparently believes that the less sunshine the better on such dark matters and voted the other way on sunshine.

Some old-line Virginia Republicans, even if not entirely comfortable with these raids on the U. S. Treasury in behalf of local outstretched hands, nonetheless object to such public scrutiny of Republican spending during an election year. What they entirely miss is that this kind of egregious spending jeopardizes the House Republican majority nationally even if such Congressional largesse may go down relatively smoothly in northern Virginia.

From Leesburg Today:

Loudoun County lost its only seat on the Commonwealth Transportation Board after Gov. Timothy Kaine (D) replaced Leesburg attorney Robert Sevila with E. Dana Dickens III, of Suffolk, as one of two at-large urban representatives on the board.

 

In addition, Kaine appointed Fauquier resident Peter B. Schwartz, who is a member of the Piedmont Environmental Council’s board of directors, as the at-large rural representative to the CTB, replacing Hunter R. Watson, of Farmville.

 

Schwartz represents the second appointment by Kaine of PEC-affiliated campaign contributors to state-level positions. [Snip]

 

Schwartz, who ran unsuccessfully to unseat Del. Clifford “Clay” Athey Jr. (R-18) in 2001, contributed nearly $50,000 to Kaine’s lieutenant governor and gubernatorial campaigns and inaugurations from 2001 to 2006.

Call it a convergence of political cronyism and anti-growth ideology. I guess the idea is to preserve Western Loudoun county as an artificial “nature preserve” for the super affluent at taxpayers’ expense.

In the mean time, the growing middle class exurbs in Eastern Loudoun will subsidize the rest of the state while the county’s own ballooning transportation needs go unmet by Richmond.