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Once
in office,
Gov. Tim Kaine wasted no time proposing a big
increase in transportation spending financed by a
package of regressive taxes falling
disproportionately on those with modest incomes.
Shortly afterward, the governor's echo chamber in
the Senate offered a similar plan with a slightly
different set of regressive taxes.
The
House of Delegates, by contrast, proposed to spend
half the Senate's amount without a tax increase.
With ordinary folks already burdened by high
energy prices, the Senate's warm embrace of
trickle-up economics seems oddly out of place.
Because
none of these plans offers motorists any assurance
their tax dollars will be well-spent and
congestion relieved, one can only hope that the
governor's half-baked schemes are never enacted.
Instead, our elected representatives should take a
look at the innovations adopted in some other
states and use that information to develop a plan
that improves mobility in a cost-effective way.
Where
Virginia once led the nation in transportation
innovations widely copied by others, the past
several years have seen an absence of any
leadership, a diversion of state fuel-tax revenues
to non-transportation purposes, and a failed
effort to address perceived funding shortfalls by
increasing regional tax burdens on individuals. As
a consequence of this floundering, traffic
congestion has worsened.
According
to the Texas Transportation Institute's most
recent annual urban-mobility report (2003) on the
Travel Time Index for 85 U.S metropolitan areas,
the D.C.-Virginia-Maryland region is ranked fourth
worst in the nation with a TTI of 1.51, compared
with 1.44 in 2000. (A TTI of 1.51 means rush-hour
traffic times are 51 percent longer than
off-peak.)
Over
the same period, Virginia Beach's TTI has gone
from 1.16 to 1.21 and now ranks 39th worst in the
nation versus 48th in 2000. Richmond, too, is
working its way "up" to poorer
performance, rising from 75th worst in 2000 to
69th in the most recent period.
To
reverse this deterioration in the quality of
travel in the state, Kaine and members of the
General Assembly need to focus on three
deficiencies in the state's transportation policy.
First,
stop wasting money!
While
much of America learned of the tremendous waste in
the federal highway program when the media outed
Alaska's infamous "Bridge to Nowhere,"
that focus diverted attention from the other 6,300
pork-barrel earmarks in the legislation. Indeed,
Virginians had the misfortune of getting 152
federal earmarks, including the Bridle Path to
Nowhere (Jefferson National Forest), the Water
Mill to Nowhere (Abingdon), and the Train Station
to Nowhere (Bristol and Fries)--all of which will
misuse many millions of dollars of the state's
five-year federal allotment.
Of
course, the state government gets its own little
pot of money--called the "enhancement
program"--to build more of the same. VDOT's
Web site reveals that its own "Nowhere
Collection" includes the Crab Orchard Museum,
the Coal Heritage Museum, the La Crosse Hotel, and
the Colonial Theater, to name four of the 108
projects taking money from transportation needs.
Second,
establish a meaningful performance-based
measurement system.
VDOT
became one of the nation's most innovative DOTs in
1995 when it enacted the Public-Private
Partnership Transportation Act to encourage
private-sector investors and builders to propose
transportation projects and provide the funding to
complete them. Thanks to the PPTA, one project has
been built and a couple more will soon get under
way.
But
that was VDOT's last hurrah, and in recent years
the state has lagged others, most notably in its
failure to adopt quantitative performance measures
and cost/benefit analyses to guide its operations
and require accountability. Instead, Virginia has
a confused and contradictory system that places
little value on congestion mitigation while
pursuing intangible goals like economic
development (exemplified by the new $50 million
interchange for the Stafford airport!), and
greater "transportation choices," as if
VDOT were running a multimodal affirmative-action
program based upon a No Trolley Left Behind
approach to investment.
While
the state- and federally funded High Knob Horse
Trail will be fun for those who can afford to own
a horse, it has nothing to do with transportation,
congestion relief, or improved safety.
Third,
don't give municipalities any more power in
land-use regulation.
Although
Virginia's counties whine about how little power
they have to guide growth and development, in fact
they have considerable control over growth through
the authority to zone and rezone and to charge
proffers. In recent years, these powers have been
exercised in abusive and counter-productive
schemes that worsen traffic congestion and
undermine housing affordability as pervasive
shortages of available land lead to escalating
prices for new and existing homes.
Indeed,
in a process not unlike the state government's
growing fondness for regressive taxes, these
rezonings have made Virginia much more
accommodative to the well-to-do as substantial
tracts of land in Loudoun, Stafford, Prince
William, Fauquier, and Spotsylvania have been
down-zoned to discourage the construction of
housing affordable to the average family.
At
the same time, public officials and zoning boards
have become increasingly hostile to higher-density
development that would shorten commutes and
economize on transportation infrastructure. A
consequence of these coercive rationing and
relocation schemes is that moderate-income
families are forced farther away from their jobs,
and are compelled to trade long commutes for a
decent home of their own. But the cost they bear
in these commutes is shared by all of us. Where in
a rational world these involuntary exiles would
have had 20- to 30-mile commutes from Loudoun or
Prince William, and could have chosen to be
clustered in communities with higher densities,
they are instead forced to the region's distant
fringes.
While
Gov. Kaine's transportation ideas have yet to
evolve to a plan that would benefit ordinary
Virginians, he deserves praise for recognizing
that past neglect by the state of its
responsibility is a big part of the problem.
Having
met with Virginia's "professional
citizens" on his postelection listening tour,
it's now time to look for guidance and ideas in
states that have already developed sophisticated
policies to reduce congestion and enhance safety.
This
column was published originally in the August 4,
2006, edition of the Free Lance-Star.
--
September 25, 2006
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