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Fix
VDOT First
Don't
entrust VDOT with more money until the state
highway department can demonstrate it can deliver
projects on budget and on time.
Virginia
is about to enter another “Legislative Battle”
and this one is aimed at the clear need to build more
roads and maintain those we have.
Billions
of dollars in transportation investments are
needed over the next several years to keep Virginia’s
economy strong and viable. Our current transportation budget is used
mostly to repair and maintain our current system. A smaller and smaller percentage of
state and local transportation budgets is used
for new transportation projects.
Transportation
ideas are surfacing from various players but they
are based on the funding side of the equation:
bonds secured by insurance premiums; a
constitutional change to protect the
Transportation Trust Fund; raising the gas tax
seen by some as a user fee; toll roads and High
Occupancy Toll lanes; improving the implementation
of the Public Private Partnership Act to bring
more private sector investment to transportation
projects; allocating federal funds to lessen the
impact of the accompanying regulations; a more
logical system of prioritizing road projects based
on state needs and not politics; and better
coordination between land use and long term
transportation plans.
New
sources of money may well be needed, but the first
obligation should be to get a real handle on the
spending side of the transportation budget.
Things are getting better under the current
Administration, but much more should be done
before huge amounts of new money are sent to our
current transportation bureaucracy.
New
figures show that 63 percent of the highway
construction projects were not completed on time
in the last fiscal year and 35 percent were over
budget. These figures from the Virginia Department
of Transportation clearly show that our road
building efforts need vast improvement.
And what is really disturbing is that in FY
2001 less than 20 percent of the highway
construction projects were on time and 49 percent
were over budget! Things
are improving but the current status of VDOT
credibility is still embarrassing.
Would
the private sector pour billions of dollars of
additional investors’ money into a system that
could only meet deadlines 36 percent of the time
and hoped to improve that completion rate to 40
percent? Of
course not, and neither should the taxpayers of
Virginia.
We
have all seen over-staffed VDOT road crews,
projects left uncompleted for weeks as VDOT crews
move between projects, and VDOT employees standing
around watching while others work.
And stories abound about the “extra”
cost of dealing with VDOT.
All this should change before billions of
new funds pour into a system already in need of
major management repair.
Management
changes at VDOT have begun under this Governor but
it is critical that future governors fully embrace
true reform at VDOT.
Two examples of management standing in the
way of “doing it better” illustrate the
problems with VDOT that need to change if limited
financial resources are to be more wisely spent.
First,
VDOT has contracted out to the private sector the
maintenance of 1,250 miles of highways and,
according to a Virginia Tech analysis, saved
between $16 and $23 million. With over 57,000 miles of state maintained
roads, why hasn’t VDOT contracted more miles for
these total asset management contracts? Florida
contracts out about 80 percent of its highway
maintenance to the private sector. If
Virginia did the same, over 45,000 miles would be under
private contract and the savings would be in the
hundreds of millions of dollars and possibly more.
Second,
the expansion of Interstate 81 through the
Shenandoah
Valley
has long been needed and the situation is critical
today. Private
companies offered to do the expansion with toll
lanes and build the new capacity years ahead of
VDOT’s schedule and saving tens of millions of
dollars. This
is a sensible way of expanding I-81, but VDOT took
years to even consider the private sector’s
approach and still no final decision has been
made. Yet,
every month that decision isn’t made, the price
will go up and the dangerous traffic on that key
highway intensifies.
For
far too long, VDOT has been the “black hole of
state government.”
Any new transportation initiative by the
Governor or the General Assembly should include
totally reforming VDOT before significant
additional money is fed into that system.
Benchmarks should be established, new
systems set up, management controls strengthened;
dead wood cut out; strong leadership brought in at
all critical levels; private sector contracts
expanded; and
a more transparent and accountable system set up
to show the taxpayers how our money is spent in
every operation. If
this is done then future investments in
transportation will be easier for the taxpayers to
consider.
--
September 20, 2004
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