Glassoul

I plotted monhtly averages from HRT website data back in Feb. Check a couple pages back.

I quickly parsed the information off the HRT website. It's not 100% accurate b/c it was from a cut paste from PDF to Excel, so there were some issues with formatting, but it's pretty close. Ignore the chart title, it's daily ridership averages per month obviously, so the trend is definately that more people wereusing it for a given month in 2012 than in 2011 (ignoring the august 2011 outlier when it opened). overall daily average is 4927

While the idea works in Europe, the company that launched the "movement" in North America (and where they've been exporting the ide, technology,and bikes), is struggling to stay afloat. http://www.cbc.ca/ne...ke-deficit.html

I'll repeat a post I made on this topic 4.5 years ago: As for the ridership numbers they're proposing? Pie in the sky. They say at a minimum 6k riders a day, I bet its 2/3 of that MINIMUM number. Sure it'll be a novelty at first for some people, but that will quickly wear-off. You will not get people standing in 85-100 degree heat and humidity for 10-15 mins on a daily basis 6 months out of the year to ride something that covers such a limited area; and having to pay something approaching $3 a round trip to boot. So I correctly predicted the ridership numbers, and that's still 2/3 of what they said would be the minimum (6k) 4.5 year ago. It's wonderful when you can look like a hero by moving the goal posts a year before startup and then exceed that number cause you've reduced it to some ridicously low figure. As for my last sentence, well.... when you subsidize the cost of a pass to the tune $10/year then that has the effect of artificially bumping your numbers up and destroying your revenue. Wonder how the taxpayers of Norfolk are going to react when they start seeing the net annual operating costs come in each year and realize increased coffee and slurpee sales tax doesn't cover the difference. Wonder whether they would want 2500 paying full fare or 4000 paying next to nothing, $10/yr is a pretty amazing deal to businesses.

It was interesting to look back at this thread over the years and all the predictions versus the eventual outcome. Even I was overly optimistic.

People wonder how the military can piss away so much money, and your example is part and parcel of a larger problem with how the US government operates. Hampton Roads is bound at the hip to the military, and at some point in the next 10-15 years defense spending is going to have to be on the chopping block. HR is not going to do well over this period.

The project blew its budget by over 40% and is 2 years behind schedule, plus Norfolk just realized it's going to cost them $10M/yr to run it. Should be happy that the stations are being built at all...

To be more correct, Amtrak isn't profitable because the government won't let it be profitable. It requires Amtrak to maintain & run certain routes at huge losses, especially the long-distance & cross country ones.

Norfolk was left in the dust before the yellow fever epidemic & the civil war. Compare Cleveland's rate of growth, for example, to Norfolk from about 1810-1850. I think Hollise provided sufficient explanation in general, but in Cleveland's case they were mid-way between the iron mines in Minnesota & the coal mines to the east. Once the Erie canal was completed linking it to the North East, its population exploded as it became a centre of steel industry and transhipment of goods.

Thank you.

The military had nothing to do with it. Hampton Roads was left in the dust to becoming a major metropolitan area long before the military setup shop. DPlease try harder.....

In the area that's been opened up for exploration it is estimated that, given current technology, Virginia has 500 million barrels and 2 trillion cubic feet of gas that are economically recoverable. This is a pretty rough estimate based on old geological surveys, as well as some minor exploration that was done in the late 60's, 70's, and early 80's by Exxon and Shell. However, to put those numbers in a bit of perspective, the GOM has approximately ~45 billion barrels and 250tcf, and the Alaskan Arctic waters have ~30 billion barrels and 150tcf. So it's a pretty modest amount by those standards. The real goal of today's signing, and Virginia is certainly a beneficiary, but the real goal was to get the Florida GOM opened up. That "little" triangle has a very high probability for pay and is already located near major infrastructure. In the future, I guarantee they'll push to have that 125 mile limit pushed closer inland, to say 50 miles. The biggest benefit to Virginia will come in the form of revenue from royalties and taxes, with Virginia having committed most of those dollars to transportation. There will be some jobs for the guys on the rigs, as well as support services, but you're talking a couple thousand at most. How that gets divided up regionally, I don't know. The only refinery in Virginia is in Yorktown and it has something like a 135,000 bpd capacity, if I remember correctly. It would benefit from closer proximity to its feedstock, provided the quality of the crude is similar to what they're already setup to upgrade. However, I wouldn't expect an expansion to occur or any new refineries to be built. Most of the North American large integrated oil companies are either shuttering production or are selling off their refining operations and getting out of that business. Crude is almost never transported by train, much cheaper to use a pipeline or ship.

MLB won't work in HR for a variety of reasons. Population: With 1.7 million people, HR would be tied for smallest market team in MLB with Milwaukee, and significantly smaller than all existing NL/AL East teams. Corporate support. HR doesn't have it. Yes, there are a few companies around that can pony up the money, but you need 55-60 that can do it year end and year out. I don't see it. MLB logistics: There's 16 NL teams and 14 AL teams, with the AL only having 4 teams in the West division. The next expansion in MLB has to be an AL franchise and preferably in the west. If HR were to be awarded a team, they would have to compete in the AL East against the Yankees and Red Sox. HR cannot be consistently competitive with $120-200M+/year payrolls (see Tampa Bay, Baltimore, and Toronto). If fans don't feel like their team have a legitimate shot at winning, they won't turn up at the ballpark or watch on TV. Second, it would cause a reshuffle of the AL where it would be difficult to get consensus (Toronto would be the likely beneficiary of a move to the Central, but there would likely be push back from KC or Minnesota on moving to the AL West). So HR's best shot for a MLB franchise was the Expos, because it was a NL East team looking to relocate. However, even then they would have been a small fish in a big pond, competing against NY, Atlanta, and Philly. I'd love nothing more than for MLB to succeed in HR, but the economics aren't there to support it, especially compared to what other cities can offer. I see a team in San Antonio, Portland, or Sacramento before HR. It's interesting for me, because where I live it's the opposite. We have more than enough corporate support, but not enough people in the city.. yet.

The next MLB team will be in the American League and out west. Hampton Roads cannot support an MLB team. It's too small in both population & corporate support.

The NHL has to sell out every one of it's games. They don't have a big TV contract, so gate receipts account for >50% of revenue. There's a lot of teams struggling there right now. NBA would be a better fit for Hampton Roads, but the same is true for them as well, though for different reasons. As one prominent sports columnist put it, it's the No Benjamins Association.

Clearly, you've never read the comments on Youtube.

How is coming in over budget by 45% good news? Gee sir, the infection is going to cost your leg, but the good news is I just saved a ton of money on my car insurance!

Those concerns might justified over the long-term, but HRT doesn't need an operations guy at the helm right now. They need someone with significant PM experience, and based on the resume you posted it sounds like Shucet will be a step in the right direction. I'm sure there's a wealth of managers there that know how to run a city bus schedule. Let them take care of that piece, and he take care of getting LRT completed without any additional slippage and cost overruns.

What is unfortunate is that no other heavy industrial company could be found to take it over, especially given its proximity to transportation and overall condition. If the US is to ever rebalance the economy, it needs to start producing stuff again. The green energy bit is total fluff and marketing.

and the next one after that, and the next one, and the next one and t...

The exterior image above is wrong.

Get rid of the President, institute some transparency and better cost controls, promise to do better, yadda yadda. This is the easy part of the sell. The hard part will come 2 years from now...

For the same reasons I said 3 or 4 years ago on this forum. A: The project was low-balled from the get-go. B: No expertise Let's say folks on this forum were a consortium of somewhat successful but small time home restoration and apartment conversion companies. If I were a responsible investor, would I suddenly give you $130M to build a 34 story residential building? You neither have the expertise, experience, or systems in place to carry out such a significant undertaking within budget and on time. Even if you hire a couple of folks to lead the project, your entire way of doing business is not geared towards a project of that scale. You will have to contract out almost most of the work, including the project development and oversight. Things like project business controls, engineering controls/TQA, execution, and procurement, are all for the most part a foreign language to you. Same goes for HRT. Nothing is in place to manage a project of this scale. Since you have no experience in running a large scale project or managing large numbers of contractors, you are going to be eaten alive.

I think your understanding of "rat" in this context needs clarification. Anyway, leadership starts at the top. It's not just the $$$ & executive bathroom that come with accepting the top job at an organization. You also are implicitly accepting responsibility for the both successes AND failures of that organization. And it absolutely is the responsibility of the HRT President to communicate cost overruns in a public and forthright manner. If I were the city council of VB, his dismissal represents only one of a number of important changes I would require from HRT before agreeing to an extension.

Well, instead of giving "money", how about the city give "tax breaks" to the affected building/business owners who use it to lower rents during the period of disruption.