A
Modest Plan
Here's
what Virginia's transportation system needs: more
money, a more rational pattern of land use, and a
stronger commitment to mass transit.
The
time may finally be right to do something about
transportation. Papers throughout the
Commonwealth have been filled with exposés
outlining the nature of the growing crisis along
with editorials decrying the negative implications
of complacency.
Legislative
committees, most notably the Statewide
Transportation Analysis and Recommendation Task
Force (START), continue studying the problem, with
the goal of proposing legislative solutions during
the upcoming session of the General Assembly.
The
Chamber, local governments, road builders, developers,
environmentalist and other interest groups are poised to do battle.
And, for the first time since the late 1980s,
Virginia will have a governor at the helm whose
top priority is transportation and who exhibits an
apparent willingness to spend his recently earned
political capital to address this issue.
While this represents the most hopeful climate for
meaningful change in almost 20 years, the
political landscape today is vastly different than
it was in 1986 when Gov. Gerald L. Baliles enacted
the last round of transportation reforms. For one
thing, Gov. Tim Kaine and the controlling
interests in the General Assembly now hail from
different parties. For another, both
anti-tax sentiments on the right and the
environmental movement on the left, are stronger
and better organized than they were in the late '80s. Finally, while there is considerable
agreement within the electorate that we are facing
a real and difficult transportation challenge,
there is less consensus that additional money will
solve it. Each of these factors will have to
be taken into account for significant progress to
be made.
Based on the above, I believe
it unlikely that we will see a legislative package
resembling that pushed through in the mid-1980s
during the early years of the Baliles
administration. To be politically palatable
today, lawmakers need to address not only the
issue of funding but also the demand side of the
equation. What is desirable is a moderately
large infusion of new revenue -- perhaps in the
range of $500 million to $750 million per annum —
coupled
with meaningful changes in our spending patterns
and significant efforts to curb the growth in new
traffic.
I would suggest a ten-point
plan by which this can be accomplished.
Developing the Appropriate Revenue Stream
Point 1: Moderate tax increases are
required. While nobody likes to talk about
tax increases, it is clear that they are necessary
if we are to address our transportation
challenges. User charges – particularly the
gas tax, the tax on diesel fuel and the motor
vehicle sales tax — seem particularly promising.
Such charges can generate significant sums of new
revenue while simultaneously acting as
disincentives to increased traffic
congestion.
Virginia’s gas tax has
been capped at 17.5 cents per gallon since 1986.
North Carolina, a state with a road system fairly
comparable to ours, has a gas tax of 26.6 cents
per gallon. In Pennsylvania the gas tax is a
whopping 31.1 cents per gallon. An increase
in our levy of six to seven cents per gallon seems
highly appropriate.
Our tax on diesel
fuel is currently 16 cents per gallon, while it is
20 cents per gallon in the District, 26.6 cents in
North Carolina, 22 cents in Delaware, 24.25 cents
in Maryland and 20.5 cents in West Virginia.
An increase in our levy of six to eight cents per gallon
appears reasonable.
Finally, a
1.5 percent increase in the motor vehicle sales tax should be
considered. While the motor vehicle sales
tax is in the five to six percent range in most surrounding
states, it is only 3 percent in Virginia (although most
surrounding states, unlike Virginia, allow the
value of trade-ins to be subtracted from the sales
price). An increase to 4.5 percent in this tax
should generate well over $200 million per annum.
These three modest tax increases will together
yield a revenue package in the $500 million to $750 million
range, as called for earlier, and can be
implemented without being excessively onerous on
taxpayers. This tax package, while
significant, will not come close to providing all
the transportation improvements on Virginia’s
transportation establishment’s wish list.
Quite frankly, that’s a good thing; we should
not give VDOT a blank check. Nonetheless, if
properly spent and coupled with meaningful
planning reforms, this proposed revenue stream
will enable us to maintain the high quality of
life currently enjoyed in our state.
Point 2: We must protect new revenues for
transportation. The last major tax increase
for transportation was enacted in 1986, during the
early years of the Baliles administration.
Shortly after Baliles left office, the state found
itself in a recession and state transportation
funds were raided to help balance the budget.
If we are justifying new tax increases on the
basis of our transportation crisis,
taxpayers should be confident that any monies
raised will actually be used for that purpose.
Gov. Kaine is correct in suggesting that
taxes should not be raised without safeguards to
protect them from other uses. We made the
mistake of not adequately protecting such funds in
1986 and the Commonwealth paid a price. This
mistake should not be repeated.
Point
3: The State’s Transportation Trust Fund
formula must be revised. Raising and
protecting the revenue needed will be of little
use unless the funds are spent in an appropriate
manner. The 1986 Special Session on
Transportation created the Virginia Transportation
Trust Fund (TTF) for transportation capital
improvements. As outlined on the Secretary
of Transportation web site: “The law
divides the TTF investments according to a
formula: highways (78.7%), mass transit (14.7%),
ports (4.2%), and airports (2.4%).” Much
has changed since 1986 and no one believes that
these are the appropriate allocations to build the
type of transportation system needed by the
Commonwealth in the 21st century.
Clearly, a
higher percentage of trust fund revenues should to
be allocated for public transit, particularly if
we want to promote the development of high speed
passenger rail within the Commonwealth. In
any case, the General Assembly needs to carefully
evaluate and revise this formula to ensure that
our spending patterns reflect the new
transportation priorities of our State.
Spending our Limited Transportation Funds
Wisely
Point 4: We must get
serious about planning in Virginia. We need
to think through what we want the Commonwealth and
its major metropolitan areas to be like in another
25 years and then use our transportation
improvements, along with effectively coordinated
land use and economic development planning
efforts, as tools to achieve our desired visions.
Until we know what we want to be when we grow up,
we cannot possibility know what sort of
transportation system we will need to get us
there.
Do we really want to
kill off the Chesapeake Bay and allow our
“Golden Crescent” to become little more than
one continuous blackened maze of asphalt,
subdivisions, office parks and shopping malls?
Of course not, but that is what our business-as-usual approach will yield. We need to
think about the type of state we want to leave
to our grandchildren and withhold support from
transportation improvements that do not help us
achieve our desired vision.
Planning
District Commissions and associated MPOs of our
state should be charged with the development of
detailed regional vision statements. These
statements should define not simply what they want
their Regions to be like 25 years from now, but
also how they plan on achieving their ideal.
What sort of transportation system would be
required? How should land uses be configured? What magnitude of economic development will
be needed?
Most importantly, how will local
transportation, land use, and economic development
planning efforts be coordinated across
jurisdictional lines to ensure that they are not
working at cross purposes?
Once these
vision statements have been completed and vetted
with our citizenry, the state should consolidate
them into a statewide plan to guide our future
growth and development and the spending of our
limited capital improvement dollars. Our
Commonwealth’s future is too important to leave
to chance!
Point 5: There must
be more accountability and coordination as major
land use decisions are being made. There are
countless examples throughout the Commonwealth
where local land use decisions have been made
without adequately thinking about their
transportation implications and associated costs. In 1998, for example, Fredericksburg
approved a 550-acre development along I-95.
Approximately two years after approving the
project, a consultant’s study put the price tag
for needed road improvements at a whopping $500
million. (See: Virginia Business, October 2002, p.
7.)
Land use decisions, like this one,
are a local prerogative. Nonetheless, it is
imperative that they not be made until local
officials have an adequate understanding of the
potential fiscal implication of their decisions.
It is also imperative that VDOT and surrounding
localities that might be affected by such
decisions have a voice in the process. Regional
Impact Statements have been used in other states
as a means of promoting additional analysis and
dialog on such massive projects. Virginia
should consider implementing this approach.
Point 6: VDOT should be empowered and
required to utilize its subdivision street
approval process to encourage smart growth.
To be accepted into the state system, subdivision
streets must meet minimum criteria as outlined in
VDOT’s “Subdivision Street Requirements”.
These requirements ensure that such streets are
well engineered for both safety and durability.
According to VDOT’s web site, about 200 new lane
miles of subdivision street are added to the
state’s system annually. The annual cost
to maintain a lane mile of a local street is
around $8,243 dollars and this figure is projected
to increase by about 4 percent per year. Assuming a
continuation of current trends, we can expect
+/-2,000 new lane miles of subdivision street to be
added to the state’s system over the next decade
and that approximately $120 million will be spent
on the maintenance of such.
The
state’s continually escalating maintenance costs
are problematic, but even more problematic is the
manner by which many of these new subdivisions are
being developed. All too often they are
sited in leap-frog type development patterns. Moreover, they are often located great distances
from job opportunities, tend to be built at
extremely low densities, and are usually totally
automobile dependent. Because of these
facts, many of these new subdivisions place great
pressure on the highly expensive arterial road
networks into which they feed. Local
governments around the state are approving these
poorly conceived subdivisions and state taxpayers
are unwittingly forced to pay the price.
The state should establish a reasonable cap on the
number of new lane miles accepted into the state
system annually and develop a rating system by
which to determine those subdivisions to be
accepted. Points in this rating system
should be given to subdivisions that are:
reasonably dense, contiguous with existing
development, close to job opportunities, well
serviced by existing infrastructure,
developed according to sound urban design
principles, and/or developed within reasonable
proximity to transit.
No single
subdivision is likely to receive points in all
these categories, but those receiving the highest
overall ratings will be the least likely to
excessively overburden our transportation
arteries. The proposed rating system should
be phased in over a period of 3-5 years to give
localities and developers sufficient time to
adjust. Moreover, it should be accompanied
by enabling legislation allowing localities to
phase their growth.
Point 7: We
must recognize that we can not pave our way out of
this crisis. While additional lane miles of
highways are desperately needed, we need to be
very careful about massive highway construction
programs which tend to be not only prohibitively
expensive but also counterproductive. All
too often such projects stimulate additional
sprawl and worsen already bad traffic situations.
John Seabrook demonstrated the futility of this
approach several years ago in an article he
published in the New Yorker. As he pointed
out: “In the 23 American Cities that added the
most new roads per person in the 1990s, traffic
congestion rose by more than 70 percent.”
Clearly we need to build the roadways that are
necessary for us to achieve our vision of what we
want Virginia to become, but we must also be
careful not to destroy the quality of life enjoyed
by the Commonwealth’s citizens in the
process.
Point 8: Rail must play an
increasingly important role in Virginia’s
transportation future. High speed passenger
rail from Washington, D.C., through Richmond, and
on to Tidewater and points south, is an idea whose
time has come. Similarly, the Richmond and
Hampton Roads metro areas are approaching the size
necessary to justify consideration of light rail
systems. While no panacea, rail can play an
important role in relieving traffic congestion and
in so doing offer important environmental
benefits. A significant increase in public
transit spending will be necessary if we are to
achieve our rail potential.
Point
9: Existing public transportation systems
must be enhanced and expanded. Where
densities allow, we must make public
transportation a truly viable alternative to the
automobile. When one looks at some of the
first-rate public transportation systems elsewhere
in North America, you can not help but realize
just how far we have to go in Virginia. You
also realize the potential that public
transportation has for helping the Commonwealth
achieve a more environmentally sustainable future,
while helping our elderly, disabled, and
lower-income citizens meet their transportation
needs in the process.
Point 10:
We must not lose sight of the transport- ation needs
within rural Virginia. In thinking of the
transportation challenges facing the Commonwealth,
we tend to think mostly of our urban challenges.
What comes to mind immediately are the traffic
jams of Northern Virginia and Tidewater, along
with the difficulties being experienced by the
transit dependent populations within our older
central city neighborhoods. While of a
different nature, for those experiencing them, the
transportation problems of rural Virginia are no
less severe.
They tend to be related to two
issues: accessibility and safety.
Because of the isolation of many of our rural
communities, it is difficult for them to both
attract and retain sufficient employment
opportunities for their residents. As a
result of the limited employment opportunities
within their own communities, many rural residents
must commute great distances for employment, often
over poorly designed and highly dangerous
roadways. These transportation challenges,
too, must be addressed.
Conclusion
Virginia faces major
transportation challenges and for the first time
in almost 20 years seems poised to address
them. The political dance will start in
mid-January. At this point it is impossible
to tell whether
it will be our newly elected Democratic Governor
or our Republican-dominated legislature that will
lead the dance. Ideally, they will choreograph
their moves with the type of holistic approach
outlined above. To the extent that they do,
the attractiveness of our state and the quality of
life to be enjoyed by future generations of
Virginians will be enhanced.
But, to the
extent that they step on each others toes and fail
to act, our state will pay the price in the form
of increased traffic congestion, longer commute
times, unaddressed safety issues, a less-than-optimal economy, and a spoiled environment. In any
case, this is a dance well worth watching by all
of us wallflowers, as it will determine the very
future of our Commonwealth.
--
January 16, 2006
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