Guest Column

Trip Pollard

A New Generation of Boondoggles

Has Virginia learned nothing? State authorities have approved three new highway projects that will cost more than $1.8 billion and provide precious little congestion relief in return.

Current debate over how to address Virginia’s significant transportation challenges tends quickly to turn into arguments over the need for more money. This debate ignores our most serious transportation problem: Despite some recent improvements, we continue to follow an outdated approach that focuses on road construction as the solution to virtually every transportation problem and ignores the link between transportation and land use.

The traditional approach has passed the point of diminishing returns. Despite spending billions of taxpayers’ dollars each year, traffic congestion is getting worse, and this approach has contributed significantly to air and water pollution, sprawl, energy dependence, and the destruction of neighborhoods, farmland, forests, and open space. The Commonwealth Transportation Board’s recent approval of three costly, destructive new highways pushed by VDOT provides fresh evidence that Virginia is on the wrong road. We need to adopt a new approach to transportation.

A New Generation of Boondoggles?

Despite abundant evidence of the shortcomings of Virginia’s transportation program, and signs of interest in transportation alternatives, the Virginia Department of Transportation and the Commonwealth Transportation Board largely continue to pursue the asphalt-centered approach of the past. Just before Thanksgiving, the CTB approved three of the most costly and destructive new highway proposals in recent years.

These highways – the Tri-County Parkway, the Southeastern Parkway, and a new Route 460 – are estimated to cost over $1.8 billion, yet they offer minimal transportation benefits, and they would cause considerable damage to communities, farmland, and the environment. The need for these boondoggles has not been shown; the flawed studies of these controversial proposals largely ignored alternatives for addressing the transportation challenges used to justify them, and largely ignored their sprawl-inducing impacts. Not surprisingly, citizens, public interest groups, and federal agencies have all expressed serious concerns about these projects.

Consider the Tri-County Parkway. Northern Virginia obviously has serious traffic problems, but this $201 million highway through Loudoun and Prince William Counties will not address these needs. It would be a segment of a proposed outer beltway around Washington that has been named one of the most wasteful and destructive projects in the entire country. VDOT’s own study shows that the Tri-County highway would at best slightly reduce overall average travel time, and it would significantly increase driving in the area (by 150,000 miles per day) and make many trips take even longer by triggering additional driving and sprawl. No serious analysis was conducted of transit, improvements to existing roads, or other steps to relieve congestion.

The highway will cause extensive damage to communities and the environment, including increasing driving in a region that already falls short of health standards for air pollution, and taking an estimated 21 residences and 42 acres of historic properties and parkland, resulting in a major four-lane highway forming the western border of the Manassas National Battlefield Park. Finally, the highway would spur additional sprawl in an area already suffering from rapid, poorly-planned growth.

Or consider the proposed Southeastern Parkway between Chesapeake and Virginia Beach. This highway is projected to cost $1 billion (or more): almost $50 million per mile.  Yet VDOT’s own study acknowledges that the highway will not have a significant impact on congestion, and that improving existing roads offers almost exactly the same benefits. The highway also would cause massive damage to communities and the environment. It would affect an estimated 22 neighborhoods and take 334 homes. It would damage or destroy up to 186 acres of forests and 277 acres of wetlands – the single greatest destruction of wetlands in Virginia in years. The impacts of the highway are staggering, and the study under-estimates these impacts, among other things by largely ignoring the new development the project would spur.

At present, the state lacks the money to build these highways. VDOT will seek private proposals to build them under the Public-Private Transportation Act. Yet the PPTA is a flawed statute in need of reform. Moreover, if the state were to enter into such an agreement, the tolls that would likely be charged to pay for the highways would further reduce the meager transportation benefits the projects offer, since people would seek other routes, and would do nothing to reduce the damage these projects would cause.

There is no justification for devoting this amount of money to projects that will yield more pavement, pollution, and sprawl while providing minimal benefits.

A Better Way to Go

There has been increasing recognition of the need to overhaul Virginia’s transportation program and of the limitations of a “pave and spend” approach. And there have been some notable improvements in recent years.  For example, VDOT’s performance has improved, with more projects being completed on time and on budget. The primary focus, however, has been on improving the efficiency of project delivery rather than on improving the quality of projects selected, and little has been done to address the role suburban sprawl plays in causing transportation problems.

Some initial steps have been taken to adopt a more balanced transportation approach and at least to acknowledge the need to better link transportation and land use planning. We must do much more, though, to develop a more sensible, sustainable transportation program, including:

• fixing our existing roads and bridges before spending billions on new highways;

• increasing funding for greater transportation choices (such as transit, freight rail, and high speed rail);

• getting more out of our existing transportation network, through steps such as incentives for ridesharing and telecommuting, and improved signalization;

• placing a priority on projects that combine or link travel modes; and

• improving the link between transportation and land use, including promoting community revitalization and promoting transit-oriented development.

The public strongly supports such an approach.  Statewide polls, as well as recent polls in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, have consistently found strong support for transportation alternatives and deep concern about threats to our communities, environment, and quality of life from highway construction and sprawl.

As the state’s recent long-range transportation plan acknowledged, “There is a strong disconnect between what individuals believe must be the future direction for transportation in Virginia and past practice, programs, and policies.” The highways the state is pursuing would deepen this disconnect. They would continue the outdated approaches of the past, contrary to the broader approach citizens, business leaders, and elected officials of both parties have recognized is needed. If these are the type of projects Virginia continues to pursue, then we should not put another penny into transportation.

We can do better than this. We must do better than this.

-- November 28, 2005