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May
10, 2006
Dear
Speaker Howell:
You
may recall a visit almost two years ago in our
office with former Fairfax Board Chairman Jack
Herrity to discuss the transportation issues you
and the Senate conferees are now focusing on.
Based
on what I learned from Jack, and following this
topic around the country with members of the
American Dream Coalition, I have some concrete
suggestions as to what needs to be accomplished in
this Session.
1.
Stop playing politics with transportation --
professionalize the issue. Virginia needs a
constitutional amendment to make sure money raised
for transportation is spent, and well-spent, and
not diverted either to other uses, or
geographically. Up to now, it’s apparent that
politics has dominated the process.
A
number of recent examples make this clear. As you
may be aware, in the Washington, D.C., area, the
Council of Governments official 25-year
Metropolitan Planning Organization Constrained
Long Range plan, which includes Northern Virginia,
allocates $57 billion of the $93 billion
available, to transit. This is 60% of the budget
to a mode which today serves only 4% of the actual
demand, a percentage with is scheduled to decline
to 2.5% in 2030. Of this, heavy rail is projected
to decline from 2.5% to 1.8%.
This
gross misallocation is also reflected in VDOT’s
six-year plan for Northern Virginia. Again, more
than half of VDOT’s total budget is devoted to
Dulles Rail, a mode which will satisfy less than
½ of 1% of current demand, and less than that for
future demand. And now light rail has now surfaced
along Columbia Pike, a project whose economics are
similarly dismal.
Why
is this happening? Perhaps the conferees could
request full disclosure of the Kaine
administration. Governor Kaine’s father in law
has received six-figure lobbying fees to promote
Dulles Rail, despite the fact he is not a
registered lobbyist. The same situation applies to
John Milliken, former transportation secretary,
transition advisor to ex-governor Warner, and
Democratic party power broker and lobbyist, again
not properly registered. Isn’t the public
entitled to know what is going on behind the
scenes with these mega-projects? Why has this
project, the largest in Virginia’s long history,
not been referred to the voters for their
approval? There are many new approaches that work
better, none of which have been seriously examined
due to insider politics .
We
know that the Kaine administration seems to have a
mostly political orientation. As a test, I put
together a group to raise $1 billion to add 122
lane-miles of time-of-day tolled capacity to solve
bottlenecks of Northern Virginia’s most
congested highways -- Route 28, I-66, and the
Dulles Corridor/Connector.... Despite the fact
this proposal would have involved NO public money,
and would solve problems that have festered and
grown worse over decades, the proposal was
returned as not of interest. Yet we have no
“official” solution to these bottlenecks,
because of lack of leadership from the top. This
is politics, not congestion relief.
In
other words, here is $1 billion in private money
for NEW capacity (not selling/leasing existing
state assets) which solves real problems and would
not impact the State’s budget. Yet Richmond is
not interested.
2.
Don’t give WMATA a dedicated source of money,
nor the ability to have local governments raise
taxes to this end without ballot approval.
WMATA is both a sacred cow and a white elephant.
There is no excuse for its operating at chronic
annual operating deficits. If it were run as
efficiently as London’s system, with slightly
higher fares and outsourcing of most of its
functions, it would make money every year and not
need operating subsidies. The State has no
business getting into local transit operation.
For
years Arlington and Fairfax Counties have ignored
their need to modernize their road system, and
sent a few dollars into the WMATA black hole
instead. The result is arterial congestion in
these counties that is the worst in the U.S.
(overall, third worst). Don’t encourage
continuation of these bad habits. The voters will
figure this out eventually and elect leaders like
Sean Connaughton in Prince William, who tells his
constituency what their bond dollars will be
buying, and gets routine approval from the voters.
And who doesn’t buy into the WMATA Kool-Aid that
rail will make congestion vanish. It won’t.
3.
Insist on a ranking of all projected state highway
projects. The Department of Transportation
should give you a list of rank-ordered proposed
improvements listed by cost-effectiveness:
congestion relief (translated into dollars and
hours) divided by cost. The projects that rank
above a threshold (say 10%) deserve to happen. How
they are financed is another matter. Some can be
done entirely privately, like the Dulles to DC
loop proposal (referred to above). Some can be
left to the counties (like Prince William). Some
must be entirely state projects. Obviously the
federal contribution and earmarks play a part in
the funding mix.
Any
normal business would demand this level of
analysis before considering a capital expenditure.
Please make sure transportation is run on a
business like basis.
Don’t
approve any budget deal that doesn’t force the
State to do its homework. This process played out
in Washington State, with good results, pressured
by a group like ours; consult www.letsgetwashingtonmoving.com.
Believe
it or not, VDOT, along with most state DOTs, does
not make congestion relief a top priority. This
must change.
4.
For new transportation projects, make users pay
to the extent technology allows. For privately
financed projects for NEW CAPACITY ONLY, this is
automatic. (But don’t sell state existing state
assets). For others, probably the best was is a
local option gas tax. Someday we will be able to
meter highway use with a Geographical Positioning
System device, but this is ten years in the
future.
To
sum up, I hope the House leadership insists on the
above revisions to Business as Usual. Don’t just
hand out money expecting it to be well spent. It
won’t be.
With
best personal regards.
Yours
very truly,
Christopher
W. Walker
For
the Dulles Corridor User’s Group
The
Dulles Corridor User’s Group represents 2,000
registered members who live and work in the Dulles
Corridor, Virginia’s most successful and
productive business center. We are opposed to
mortgaging the Dulles Toll Road and imposing a
layer of extra taxes on the Corridor to support
the redevelopment of Tyson’s Corner and the
construction and operation of heavy rail to Dulles
Airport. We believe in market approaches instead,
such as congestion-managed lanes which guarantee
free flow of traffic. We believe that without
relief of surface congestion, no transportation
expenditure makes sense. We note that the adopted
COG 25 year constrained plan calls for continued
worsening of congestion, due to misallocation of
available funds. This is unacceptable.
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