Sell Traffic Congestion

Norfolk? No, Va Beach Web site

If Norfolk real estate agents want to sell more homes, they should advertise them on the entrance to the Mid and Downtown Tunnels between 5pm and 7pm.

Or maybe they should hand out flyers to cars and trucks waiting in lines that stretch two miles or more down Hampton Boulevard traveling home to Chesapeake, Portsmouth or Suffolk.

Perhaps the city of Norfolk could concoct another slogan.

It could go like this.

Why wait in line when you could be in the comfort of your home within ten minutes.

Save money. Buy a home. Rent an apartment.

In Norfolk, the cultural, financial and commercial center of Tidewater, Virginia, where the living is easy and life is leisurely (at least for some).

Of course, Norfolk would have to reform its educational system, plagued by a cacophony of cultural, economic and social issues which no one wants to tackle, hire more cops to patrol beats on the streets and give the disenfranchised more of a stake in city government.

Two more things, just for the record.

First.

Stop charging for parking, or at least charge a reasonable fee, and stop treating parking as a cash cow. Yes, I realize the city has to pay the debt service on the bonds issued for parking garages.

So maybe a little less cozying with developers who want parking garages would be the best tactic, though I believe city officials – which includes City Council – are addicted to parking garages.

But wasn’t a cap on parking spaces one of the reasons why Norfolk was given money for light rail? 

Norfolk

Yet, once again, city officials are discussing possibly another parking garage to cohabitate with a possible hotel and conference center on Main Street.

In reality, parking fees is a tax on visitors, workers and companies.

Second.
Protest as much as you can, Norfolk does suffer from the perception that its streets are crime ridden, prostitutes and pimps are everywhere and crime is endemic but about to reach an epidemic.

Which is really nonsense.

Virginia Beach’s crime rate is just as bad or worst than Norfolk’s rate, though you wouldn’t think that the dark side exists in Virginia Beach.

It does.

Compare the web sites of the cities.

Virginia Beach’s web site posts photos of beautiful people, some on the beach, some in offices, playing, working, living, and the background is a photo of the wind blowing the grass on the beach, with a clear blue sky, the ocean and sunlight.

The images strike someone as “this is the place to visit.”

By contrast, Norfolk’s web site is less visual, reflecting more urbanity, and the photographs seem to diminish beside the sidebars. Maybe it’s the size of the images rather than the images that seem to convey something else.

And where are the pretty people enjoying life in Norfolk?

Compare the two and decide.

Perception is a bitter reality sometimes.

Between 50,000 and 60,000 people, if my numbers are correct, travel to and from Norfolk and their homes in Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, outlying Portsmouth neighborhoods and Suffolk.

Transportation isn’t the region’s problem.

How we use land is the problem.

Traffic bottlenecks and congestion are symptomatic of how the region’s cities grow within a vacuum.

Chesapeake City Council’s decision to approve another 100-home subdivision (just an example) ignores the ramifications of those people who might travel to work in Norfolk.

Such is regionalism.