Harrison Rue spoke today about transportation planning in the region.

Fascinating. Saw Harrison Rue, the Executive Director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District talk today at my Albemarle County Rotary Club, which sadly does not have it’s own webpage.

He tried to compress an >120 page presentation into ~20 minutes. There was just too much information. In a nutshell, their organization is striving to bring all parties to the same table to flesh out common goals.

We need some form of mass-transit, whether it is high-speed buses with dedicated lanes, trams, light rail – something to get people out of their cars. The question is – where is the Tipping Point at which people will choose to take mass transit and leave their cars at home? He cited Orlando , which supposedly has a great system which is – get this – FREE! How is this possible? Perhaps only in the land of the Magic Kingdom ?

In front of my office on Emmet Street, between the Best Buy and Hydraulic Road, when the buses stop in the far right lane at the top and bottom of the hill, traffic gets 10x worse!