Patrick McSweeney


 

A Response to Norman Leahy

Our call for an alternative transportation policy is indeed "conservative" -- organized around free markets, an aversion to subsidies and devolution of government power to the local level.


 

Norman Leahy’s criticism of A Conservative Transportation Alternative (See "You Call This Conservative?") illustrates why conservatives have squandered one political opportunity after another.  Until they demonstrate an ability to work out their differences in order to develop a constructive agenda, conservatives will continue to sit on the political sidelines.

 

After the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the regional taxes authorized by the 2007 transportation legislation, HB 3202, were invalid because they were imposed by unelected authorities, Mr. Leahy and his organization, the Virginia Institute for Public Policy, were invited to participate in developing a conservative proposal on transportation. Both declined the invitation. A Conservative Transportation Alternative was the product of that meeting.

 

The Leahy attack is noteworthy for its unsupported and often internally contradictory contentions and repeated mischaracterizations of the document. It is important to emphasize what A Conservative Transportation Alternative does not propose. It does not propose more government, as Mr. Leahy asserts.  It does not recommend giving local governments any greater zoning authority than they already exercise.

 

The report is not an attack on development, population growth or prosperity. Rather it is a set of principles to guide Virginia transportation policy, based on the principle that development should pay for itself rather than shift financial burdens to the taxpaying public.

 

The Conservative Transportation Alternative advocates more private involvement and risk-taking in transportation, not more government taxation and regulation. It advocates greater local control over transportation functions that need not be concentrated in a state agency, the Virginia Department of Transportation. Putting governmental decision-making as close to the people as possible -- in the hands of local elected officials -- is a conservative principle.

 

The paper advocates aligning land use planning and transportation planning, the lack of which has frustrated political accountability in most of Virginia's fast-growth counties. The document simply proposes that the elected governing officials who decide where development will occur also should be responsible for building and maintaining the roads that serve the development.

 

In no way does the report suggest that individuals, families and businesses should be denied the right to choose where to live and work. Rather, it argues that such choices should not be subsidized, as they are now, by the taxpaying public.

 

Mr. Leahy insists that developers be allowed to locate subdivisions far from existing development and require construction of roads to serve those subdivisions at taxpayer expense. The related questions of who should be responsible for secondary roads and who will pay for them have not been adequately addressed in Virginia. A Conservative Transportation Alternative confronts those issues head on. Mr. Leahy is content to leave the problem as it is.

 

The Commonwealth should be moving toward a system in which state taxpayers in Lee County will not be taxed to pay for roads in Fairfax County, and vice versa. Most of the thousands of miles of secondary roads added to the state highway system since 1986 are internal subdivision roads and collector roads to serve those subdivisions. It’s time to examine alternative ways to fund the maintenance of all secondary roads, as well as the construction and maintenance of new secondary roads outside of subdivisions.

 

Decentralizing governmental decisions affecting transportation would serve the interest of political accountability. It also would reflect the reality that transportation problems differ from one locality to another. If the method of funding secondary roads were to approximate the operation of the free market, we could more readily optimize our transportation system from an economic perspective.

 

Ideally, all roads and other infrastructure would be the responsibility of the private sector and subject to market discipline. Telephone, cable, satellite television, radio transmission, gas and electricity are generally provided by private entities. Why shouldn’t transportation be provided in the same manner? Over time, that may happen. In the meantime, it would appear reasonable to develop a methodology for funding roads and other transportation facilities that is as close as possible to the operation of the free market. That’s what the report advocates.

 

Mr. Leahy and the group that published A Conservative Transportation Alternative agree on the proposition that people should be able to live where they choose. But we part ways on the issue of whether people bear the fiscal consequences of exercising that choice. In effect, Mr. Leahy that taxpayers should continue to subsidize those who live in scattered, often remote, locations that are inefficiently served by existing infrastructure. That view is hardly a conservative one.

 

As the media release that accompanied A Conservative Transportation Alternative stated, people, not government, should choose what kind of transportation system they will have and are willing to pay for. One problem in our current approach to funding transportation is that the people are ignorant of the real cost of the system and its inherent subsidies. Funding through taxes has the effect of hiding costs and subsidies. It puts government officials in charge with the result that too many roads get built on the basis of political considerations.

 

By contrast, roads funded with bonds paid by tolls won’t ever materialize until private bond buyers are convinced that a sufficient number of travelers will use those roads. Even after a toll-funded road is constructed, individuals can still choose to use it or not. No one will be taxed to pay for the road. User charges reflecting the cost of construction, operation, maintenance and debt service of a highway project allow people to incorporate those costs when they decide where to live, where to locate businesses and when, whether and how to travel. That isn’t true for tax-funded highways.

 

In a revealing passage, Mr. Leahy says that “[t]olls can only be economically justified if there is sufficient traffic to generate enough money to maintain the road.” The real problem is not paying for maintenance (although VDOT neglected to anticipate future maintenance costs until just a few years ago); the problem is paying for construction and land acquisition. Project financing through bonds to be paid with user charges establishes a needed discipline that reliance on tax revenues to construct “free roads” cannot. If the users are unwilling to pay the actual cost, or if not enough travelers choose to use the toll road, why should the taxpayers subsidize the facility?

 

The Leahy commentary lists numerous reasons why tolls won’t solve our transportation problems, but he offers no alternative solution. Mr. Leahy worries that toll revenues will be diverted to transit projects, as the Kaine Administration has done by allowing the use of Dulles Toll Road revenues to construct the Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project. Mr. Leahy and his colleagues could have joined the litigation to prevent that diversion, but chose instead to sit out that controversy.

 

Mr. Leahy can’t seem to decide whether sprawl is a good thing or not. He blithely and mistakenly asserts that sprawl is caused by two factors and two factors only – a growing population and rising prosperity. This ignores the substantial body of literature clearly pointing to other factors such as competition among localities for tax base; the negative impact of Virginia’s annexation laws; the politicization of the zoning process by those who oppose new development in their neighborhoods (i.e., the NIMBY factor); the location of major projects such as airports, reservoirs and interstate highways; the attraction of lower real estate costs coupled with government subsidies for infrastructure and rural development; and flight from perceived problems in central cities. After implicitly arguing that sprawl is desirable, he mistakenly contends that the proposals in A Conservative Transportation Alternative would make problems that accompany sprawl even worse.

 

Obviously, Mr. Leahy confuses Adequate Public Facilities Ordinances, which the report does not advocate, with the merger of land use planning and transportation planning at the local level. He also ignores the decades of experience in Henrico county where land use planning and transportation planning has been effectively handled by the local governing body. Such coordination has not contributed to sprawl in surrounding counties -- but the location of Route 288 (an interstate-design highway west of Henrico County) and competition by Henrico’s neighboring counties for commercial and industrial enterprises most certainly have.

 

The signatories of A Conservative Transportation Authority invite a debate over their conclusions and recommendations, but it should be an honest debate based on what the report actually says.

 

-- April 21, 2008

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contact Information

 

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