Patrick McSweeney


 

The Burgers and Fries Diet

 

Virginia's transportation system suffers from hardening of the arteries. Our lawmakers' answer: Big Macs and extra large French fries.


 

Virginia, and much of the United States, is suffering from a transportation ailment that resembles hardening of the arteries in the human body. Yet the solution proposed by many business leaders, several leading politicians and most editorial pages— increasing gasoline and/or sales taxes—is akin to adding even more fat to our diet.

 

Anyone with eyes to see should know that the additional funding needed to implement existing transportation plans over the next 20 years can’t possibly be generated by a tax increase. The tab for Hampton Roads alone is estimated at $31 billion. So why do we continue on the same old course?

 

Instead of searching for new sources of public funds for transportation, we should be considering radically different ways of moving people and goods. In fact, we should be looking at ways to minimize the need to travel. Unfortunately, our leaders are doing neither in any serious way.

 

Let me underscore a stark reality: The existing transportation system in Virginia is grossly inefficient. Even if the Virginia Department of Transportation and its private contractors could build highway projects on time and on budget, our transportation system would still not be any more efficient. The inefficiency is inherent in the system.

 

One reason for this endemic inefficiency is that transportation decisions are reached more on the basis of political considerations than on rational planning and sound economics. When the statewide fund for transportation is distributed, the formula is molded in politics. When projects are prioritized, the considerations are overwhelmingly political. “Balanced transportation” has come to mean that government provides massive funding to every transportation mode that masters the art of lobbying, even though this approach is utterly irrational.

 

The Commonwealth can’t even fund its existing highway plans. Does it make any sense to find new sources of funding for highways and at the same time to begin pouring more taxpayer dollars into rail projects? The powerful highway lobby will fight tooth and nail to see that more, not less, public money is spent on roads even if rational transportation planning clearly dictates moving away from building roads to enhancing our rail system. Clearly, we can’t afford to do both.

 

Don’t expect politicians to make rational determinations about what resources should be committed to the various modes and which mode is likely to make the most efficient use of those resources. Only markets are likely to produce rational decisions about resource allocation.

 

Were we to find enough money to construct all of the planned highways and bridges in Northern Virginia and to fund the pie-in-the-sky public transit budget of METRO, that region’s transportation problems would not be solved. The complex mobility needs of Northern Virginia residents, businesses, schools and government agencies, as well as the needs of those traveling in and through the region, can’t be satisfied by more government roads, rail cars and buses.

 

The private enterprise system is far better suited to meeting the complex mobility needs of Virginians than the current governmental approach. That doesn’t mean that politicians will embrace that option. They rather enjoy ribbon-cutting ceremonies for new public projects and the sense of power that comes from appropriating billions of taxpayer dollars for transportation. Some politicians sincerely believe that government alone can solve transportation problems.

 

The question remains: How much longer can we afford the old government approach?

 

-- January 17, 2005

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contact Information

 

McSweeney & Crump

11 South Twelfth Street
Richmond, VA 23219
(804) 783-6802

pmcsweeney@

   mcbump.com