Sprawl

There's a place just outside Houston where the vinyl siding and attached garages thin out and recede into grasslands.

Here in the Washington, D.C. area, our Metro system is expanding. A new Silver Line will go all the way to Dulles airport and beyond, into exurban Loudon County. The projected station stops are named for highways, not neighborhoods or landmarks: Reston Parkway, Route 28, Route 606, Route 772. Ten of the 11 new stations will be outside the Capital Beltway, almost doubling the number of metro stations outside the unofficial boundary of D.C.’s urban territory.

The owner of a patent law firm in recession-battered metro Detroit may have to leave Michigan, and it's not because of the taxes, says Andrew Basile, Jr. His firm, which employs 40 people in the city of Troy, spends "more on copiers and toner than we do on state taxes." The problem, Basile says, is that the firm can't attract talent to Michigan because of the "poor quality of place" and "car culture" that prevails in the region.

In the 1970s, engineers drew a horseshoe around Charleston, South Carolina -- the planned route for Interstate 526, also known as the Mark Clark Expressway. The highway was to extend from Mt. Pleasant in the north to James Island in the south. It was to be a traditional highway bypass, the kind that were being built across the country in those days, changing the nature of cities in profound ways.

Rep. Richard Hanna, recently named the vice chair of the Highways and Transit Subcommittee, is one of 19 freshmen Republicans on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. (Duncan Hunter is the 20th new Republican on the committee, but he’s not a freshman.) He represents New York’s 24th District, which includes Cooperstown, Utica, Norwich and the Finger Lakes. He’s a licensed pilot, an NRA member, and the founder of a crisis fund for women. We caught up with him to talk transportation and asked him some questions from our readers.

Waukesha, Wisconsin is a city whose identity has always been tied to water. In the late 1800s, the town was known for its natural springs. So fresh-tasting was the water that people traveled from around the country to share in its purported medicinal properties. Among those who sought its healing powers was first lady Mary Todd Lincoln.

If political pandering and bad economic policies have encouraged sprawl and an autocentric transportation system, better incentives can start to correct past mistakes. Here’s one place to start: the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform report, released this Wednesday.

Despite the anti-tax rhetoric of this round of elections, there's been a little flurry of support for raising the gas tax lately. Two senators just proposed bumping it by 25 cents to replenish the highway trust fund. And the co-chairs of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform included a gas tax hike in its proposal for reducing the deficit by $3.8 trillion. Their proposal [PDF] is simple.

We're keeping the news coming on the governor’s races we're following most closely. Check out our previous coverage of Wisconsin, Ohio, California, Texas, Maryland, Colorado, and Tennessee. This one could be the most important yet.