[PRCo] Fwd: The Virginia-Pilot (Wednesday, July 6, 2011): Tide will guide Norfolk's growth

[Fred Schneider]

Subject: The Virginia-Pilot (Wednesday, July 6, 2011): Tide will guide Norfolk's growth

 
 
Tide will guide Norfolk's growth 
 
The Virginian-Pilot
© July 6, 2011
 
The trains have begun rolling through downtown Norfolk. The Tide, finally, is coming in.
If all goes according to plan, light rail will begin transporting people next month on a route from Newtown Road to Norfolk's medical complex. For now, conductors are working the kinks out, practicing maneuvering a very big train down roads that seem too small to accommodate them.
 
Perhaps most importantly, Hampton Roads Transit is familiarizing the rest of us with the sight of those trains traversing downtown. It's teaching us new traffic patterns and how to accommodate a large landmark moving through the landscape.
 
It wasn't easy to get here.
 
The Tide is $100 million more expensive than planned, perhaps with fraud to thank. People may well end up in jail for their part in it. Many others lost their jobs.
Despite all that, Norfolk will be the smallest city in America with its own light rail system. It is a technical honor built of Hampton Roads' strange governmental divisions and will hold only until the system extends to other cities.
 
That is years away. In the meantime, Hampton Roads Transit has a train to run.
 
The rollout is unlikely to go smoothly or perfectly. If people, cars, trains and bicycles can all avoid running into each other, it will be a triumph. A train in a crowded downtown almost guarantees mishap, if not worse.
 
And there is more work to do before The Tide carries its first passengers on Aug. 19: Traffic signals need to be adjusted; parking lots need to be finished at Newtown Road, Military Highway and Ballentine Blvd.; operations need to be tweaked to get travel time under 25 minutes for the 7.4-mile route.
 
Those changes are the least of the ones we'll see if The Tide does what it's supposed to do: Change the city's (and the region's) development patterns. That is the transformation that will ensure light rail's success and Norfolk's future. But it will take decades.
 
Even so, there's no denying the immediate accomplishment The Tide represents: A $300 million transportation alternative at a time when there hasn't been a significant project built in a decade.
 
Despite grease on the tracks to prevent squeaky wheels, the next month will feature almost constant grumbles to accompany the trains through Norfolk: Light rail is too expensive, too massive, too convenient, too socialist, too contagious. The no-no-no crew will exploit every mishap and misstep as proof that light rail is a horrible mistake.
 
Few things in life, of course, are ever so dramatic. And The Tide isn't one of them. Light rail isn't going to be a savior, but neither is it going to be Norfolk's ruin. It will be one more way to help people move around. One more way to help guide the city's growth for the future. One more way for the city to help plan its destiny.
 
That, alone, is reason enough to cheer the train's arrival.