"I
drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol" --
Stephen Wright
Just
about everyone in Virginia agrees that
transportation should be a priority for our state
government. With traffic in our state stuck in
permanent gridlock, you would imagine that our
gubernatorial candidates have given this problem
some serious thought and are proposing new,
enlightened ideas to get us moving again.
Unfortunately,
that is not the case!
Jerry
Kilgore, the Republican candidate, has come up
with a plan he calls “Transportation for the
21st Century: Keeping People and Commerce
Moving.” Kilgore’s plan calls for some common
sense, long overdue ideas, such as protecting the
Transportation Trust Fund so that greedy
politicians can no longer raid it to fund their
pet projects.
It
also promotes Public-Private Partnerships as a
means to build new roads faster and more
economically and prioritizing the use of
technology in developing The Virginia Intelligent
Transportation System.
Unfortunately,
Kilgore's plan also contains two terrible proposals.
The
plan proposes legislation to collect “Abuser
Fees” from traffic offenders. This resurrects a
bill proposed by Del. Dave Albo, R-Fairfax, and
Del. Tom Rust, R-Herndon, in 2005. This bill was a
bad idea when it was first proposed -- see “Why
Not a Ticket for Tax Abuse?” -- and it still
is.
Kilgore
also proposes creating Regional Transportation
Authorities to be empowered with real decision-
making powers. The idea of local bodies
implementing solutions to address local traffic
bottlenecks makes sense. On the other hand,
creating these authorities will only add several
layers to an already bloated bureaucracy.
Kilgore
further compounds the problem by proposing to give
to these authorities the power to issue bonds and
hold taxpayer referenda to fund new roads, bridge,
and mass transit projects. In other words, they
will be vested with separate taxing
authorities.
The idea of entrusting
unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats with
taxing authority goes against everything this
country stands for. This argument was settled when
Americans revolted against “taxation without
representation.”
Tim
Kaine, the Democrat candidate, provides an
unusually long and wordy proposal on his website
regarding Transportation. The bulk of this
writing, however, makes empty statements, such as
“Tim Kaine is a proven leader on transportation
with a record of getting results.”
We
also get this profound declaration: “The first
step is to acknowledge that our transportation
system is in crisis” – well, duh!
One
of Kaine's solutions is based on encouraging local
public transit. We are told that public transit
systems take Virginians on a half a million trips
every day. This number sounds impressive, but it
is grossly misleading because it is presented
devoid of any other comparisons.
The
2000 census for all commuter trips across the
Commonwealth puts Virginia’s share of public
transportation at 3.6 percent (including the use
of taxicabs). In contrast, commuting trips taken
by car account for 89.8 percent (including car
pools).
Until
this week, no one really understood what Kaine
meant by saying that he would encourage local
public transit. At the candidates’ debate
sponsored by the Fairfax Chamber of Commerce
earlier this week, we got a glimpse of what we can
expect under a Kaine administration.
This
is what Kaine had to say on mass transit
financing: "A couple of things on mass
transit. I believe the state funding formulas are
such that they should be adjusted so that public
and mass transit options receive the same subsidy
percentages as road projects."
If
you thought that insufficient funds are presently
dedicated to highway construction, under a Kaine
administration, even less money will be made
available for this purpose. So even though less
than about 4 percent of all commuters are using
any form of mass transit, Tim Kaine is prepared to
more than triple the money available for mass
transit at the expense of highway construction.
According
to Del. Tim Hugo, R-Centreville, the current
breakdown from the Transportation Trust fund is as
follows: 14.7 percent of the revenues get set
aside for mass transit while 78.7 percent get set
aside for highway construction. Under a Kaine
administration, both mass transit and highway
construction would equally receive 46.7 percent.
If
we are stuck in gridlock now, wait and see what
happens under a Kaine administration! We will
end-up reminiscing about the good-old days when
traffic on our highways moved at less than 35 mph.
Some
Kainiacs hurried to damage control mode by
claiming that Kaine really meant to change a
provision in state law which gives local
governments incentives to widen roads rather than
to invest in mass transit. But what these prolific
apologizers miss is that the Transportation Trust
Fund is like a fixed pie—you cut a bigger slice
for mass transit, there is less left for highway
construction.
No
one doubts that our transportation arteries are
clogged. Unfortunately, our candidates can only
come up with proposals that compare to putting
commuters on a high-cholesterol diet.
--
September 19, 2005
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