The
Road to Righteousness
Here's
a package of four fundamental reforms based on fiscally
conservative, free-market principles that would
ameliorate Virginia's transportation crisis.
After
the response to my recent columns on transportation, I
had to check myself in the mirror to make sure I was the
same person. I’d begun wondering if I’d transmogrified into some wine-sipping, brie-tasting,
Prius-driving weenie who idealizes Portland, Ore., as
the the pinnacles of American
civilization.
Much
to my relief, my reflection shows the same irascible,
middle-aged, Middle American I always thought I was. I
drive a four-wheel-drive Jeep Cherokee and live in a
suburban subdivision in Henrico
County.
Although I do enjoy red wine and enjoy the occasional
ride on Amtrak—suspicious habits, to be sure--I still
develop apoplexy when government wastes money and
increases taxes. What my conservative critics overlook
is that I’ve consistently urged reform of Virginia’s
back-firing jalopy of a transportation system on the
basis of free
market principles—not “smart growth”
regulations.
The
critics of my columns, I’ve noticed with some
satisfaction, rarely defend the present state of
affairs. They erect a straw dog, which they label
“smart growth,” and attack its extreme forms in
places like
Portland
and
Montgomery
County, Md., where, I quite agree, government is obtrusive and the
results, particularly as measured by relief from traffic
congestion, are less than impressive. Admittedly, I
agree that the smart growth crowd is dead-on accurate
with its critique of contemporary suburbia. But I have never
advocated drawing growth boundaries around our metro
areas or loading up local governments with greater
regulatory powers.
My
critics are attacking the phantoms of their own febrile
imaginations, not my actual proposals. Ironically, by
defending Business As Usual, they have become unwitting
apologists for a pattern of growth that has flourished
in a hot house of government regulations
that differ only in degree from many of the smart-growth
remedies they abhor.
Transportation
policy in Virginia, I
submit, should be guided by two simple
principles:
How,
then, do we translate these principles into
transportation policy for Virginia?
The
first step on the path to understanding is to
acknowledge the driving force behind traffic congestion:
50 years of scattered, land-intensive development that
forces everyone over the age of 16 into automobiles and
compels them to drive ever greater distances in order to
participate in contemporary American society.
Yes,
it’s true that a growing population and spreading
prosperity that allows more people to buy cars accounts
for some of the increased traffic on Virginia roads. But
half or more of the impetus behind traffic congestion
comes from the
land-swallowing pattern of development commonly known as
suburban sprawl.
Defenders
of Business As Usual contend that this suburban pattern
of development--10-acre lots, cul de sac subdivisions,
lengthy commutes to office parks, unsightly strip
development along major thoroughfares and all the
rest—results from the marketplace delivering what
people want. I don’t buy it. People do want larger,
affordable houses with modern amenities, safe
communities and decent schools, which they find mainly
in the suburbs. But there is absolutely no logical
connection between safe streets and decent schools on
the one hand, and the scatteration of development and
the squeezing of people through a handful of
overloaded arterial roads on the other. (Actually, there
is a connection, but it is a negative one--sprawl drives
up the cost of public safety and schools, but that's a topic
for another column.)
The
changes
listed below are limited in scope. They would
not bring about a much-needed constitutional overhaul of
Virginia’s
antiquated system of state and local government,
designed as it is around long defunct, 19th-century
patterns of development in which cities were urban,
counties were rural and there was nothing in
between. In an ideal world, "local" governments
would be redrawn around the functional units of social
and economic organization—what my colleague Ed Risse
calls New Urban Regions--that encompass core cities,
suburban counties and satellite rural
counties. But until a constituency for such
revolutionary change emerges, I submit these more modest
proposals as measures that can be enacted in the current
political environment.
Restructure
transportation funding. Most
state funding for the Virginia Department of
Transportation comes from a 17.5 cent-per gallon levy on
the gasoline tax. Of all state taxes, this is the least
objectionable because there is a rational nexus between
what a citizen pays and the benefit he receives in the
form of road maintenance and new road construction. The
gasoline tax acts, in effect, as a user fee.
I
have no problem with the gasoline tax--but I have a very
big problem with the half-cent sales tax that
supplements it. There's no
connection between the payment of the sales tax on the
purchase of, say, a pair of shoes or a DVD player and
the transportation projects the tax is used to
underwrite. Under the sales tax, Virginians who drive
asphalt-pounding
Hummers 30,000 miles a year and those who telecommute,
walk or ride the bus to work are taxed alike.
The virtuous are punished while the profligate escape the consequences of their
choices.
As
a matter of fairness and economic rationality, the
people who use Virginia's roads are the ones who should
pay for it. The easiest, least intrusive way to
accomplish that goal is to fund transportation projects
by means of the gasoline tax.
If Virginia eliminated
the sales tax and raised the gasoline tax so as to raise
a comparable amount of revenue, a very important thing
would happen. By making driving more expensive, the
higher price of gasoline would alter the decision-making
calculus of citizens.
Whether to buy a house with a 20-minute ride to work or
a 40-minute commute. Whether to buy a second car or to take the
METRO to work every day. Whether to carpool with a buddy or drive alone.
Whether to put up with the daily grind or start a home
business and skip the commute altogether. Although many people
would suck up the increase cost of gasoline and change
none of their driving habits, some would make decisions that allow them to drive
less, thus easing the strain on the
transportation system for everyone.
Legislators
ought to take an additional step: Hike the
gasoline tax another few pennies per gallon to raise
funds needed to mitigate the environmental impact of
automobile combustion. It is not a matter of serious dispute that
auto emissions contributes to low-atmosphere
ozone, which harms human health, and the formation of nitrogen-based compounds, which settle in the Chesapeake
Bay and feed oxygen-
depleting algae blooms. Motorists,
not the public at large, should be required to pay the
cost of addressing this damage.
Finally,
any additional funding for road-and-highway projects
should be raised through the gasoline tax. If the cost
to motorists doubles, so be it. People need to pay for
the benefits they receive. To subsidize
excessive driving through the sales tax or other levies is the functional equivalent of welfare
for soccer moms.
Reform
property taxes. Virginia localities tax both land
and buildings with deleterious consequences. Landowners
who improve their properties, an economically desirable
activity, are punished with higher taxes.
Landowners who hold their land off the market,
speculating on future price increases, suffer little in
the way of carrying costs. That's one of the reasons
that suburbs experience a Swiss Cheese pattern of
development: Buildings alternate in leap-frog fashion
past vacant or underutilized lots as developers seek willing sellers. The Virginia
Department of Transportation, then, must
dedicate scarce resources to expand the capacity of
roads running farther into the urban periphery than
otherwise would be necessary.
Virginia
needs to shift its local tax base to system that taxes
only the land, not the improvements. The carrying costs
of vacant or underutilized property would soar, giving
speculators an incentive either to develop the land or
sell it to someone else who will develop it. Government
and taxpayers benefit because the resulting in-fill and
redevelopment requires only a fraction of the new
investment in roads, utilities and public facilities.
Reform
zoning codes. Contemporary zoning codes exist to
accommodate the movement of automobiles, not
pedestrians. Any entrepreneur seeking to develop a tract
of land according to the mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly
design principles of the New Urbanism movement would
find himself thwarted by rules regarding building
setbacks, parking spaces, street widths, density
restrictions and a thicket of other regulations. In most
counties, anyone wishing to undertake pedestrian-friendly
development must petition for a special use permit,
requiring months if not years of public hearings, often
over the objections of local citizens. The risk of
rejection means that only a handful of deep-pocketed
developers can play the game. Smaller builders just
default to the prevailing zoning code and build whatever
dreck the county allows them to.
Why
should localities allow only one set of urban design
principles? Localities should have the right to enact
alternative zoning codes, like Albemarle County's, based on New Urbanism design principles, as long as
they've been carefully reviewed and vetted. New Urbanism
zoning codes would provide developers more creative
latitude, providing consumers with a wider range of
choices about the kinds of communities where they live
and work.
A
free market would support a variety of
development types--not the strip mall/cul de sac
monoculture of contemporary suburbia. A significant percentage
of the population would choose to live in pea-pod
subdivisions and 10-acre farmettes, but a large
segment would prefer the small-town feel of grid streets,
people-
friendly streetscapes and a
finely grained mix of offices, shops, apartments and
single family dwellings that make walking a viable
option for many trips.
By
itself, New Urbanism development is not a cure-all.
Plopping a large New Urbanism project in the wrong
location can throw the regional transportation system out
of whack. But placed in the right location, development
inspired by New Urbanism places less strain on the transportation system
than a comparable amount of square footage of Business
As Usual development. Coupled with property tax reform and
the higher price of gasoline, zoning reform could be the
engine of urban and suburban redevelopment in areas
already served by roads and utilities.
Alter
the state
transportation formula. Traditionally, VDOT funding
for road projects has largely followed development. When local
projects generate traffic and congestion, VDOT widens roads,
adds extra lanes, installs turning lanes, or
occasionally, builds entire new freeways to keep the
traffic moving. The system is reactive. VDOT has no
influence over where development occurs. Its job is to
clean up the mess.
VDOT
needs a different set of
funding guidelines. Although the allocation of funds
between regional districts need not change, the formula for
distributing funds within those districts does. The idea would be to reward communities for
pursuing traffic-mitigation policies. Cities and
counties that showed the greatest progress in limiting
the growth in traffic, as
measured by an objective yardstick such as total vehicle
miles driven, would receive more money.
Localities would be free to pursue a wide
range of strategies, such as discouraging scattered
development, promoting pedestrian friendly streetscapes,
promoting mass transit, stimulating carpooling or
launching tele-work programs. No one would be forced to
do anything--localities would be free to do nothing at all. But the rewards would
flow to local governments that collaborated with one
another, partnered with the private sector, or devised
innovative solutions to manage traffic congestion.
No
one of these four proposals will have a decisive impact on
traffic congestion. But the combination could be
powerful. Higher gasoline taxes would prompt individual Virginians
to re-evaluate their profligate driving habits. A
revamped property tax would encourage in-fill
development and dampen speculation on the metropolitan
periphery. More flexible zoning codes would make it
easier for developers to build new neighborhoods focused
on people not cars. And overhauling VDOT's funding
formula would incentivize localities to take into
account the impact of their land use decisions on the
transportation system.
The
common theme of all four proposals is to create
incentives--not government dictates--that encourage
people to engage in economically rational behavior that
benefits the common good. These proposals don't create
layers of bureaucracy and red tape. And rather than
restrict consumer options, these proposals would offer a
greater diversity of community designs to choose from.
Politically,
the proposals work as a package: There's something in it
for everybody. Environmentalists
ought to like the package because it
dampens the out-of-control growth of automobile traffic
and establishes the principle that motorists should help
pay for mitigating the pollution they create.
The anti-tax crowd ought to like it because it does not
rely solely upon the failed tax-and-build policies of
the past. Local governments ought to like
it because it gives them more policy options than they
have now. Even the tax-and-spend constituencies ought to
like it because it provides a rationale for raising more
transportation dollars through the gasoline tax.
What's
the flaw? I can't see any--other than the fact that we
must rely upon our elected officials to act boldly. If Virginia's politicians are beholden to the
special interests committed to the tax-and-build status quo, there is
little chance that these ideas will see the light of
day. But if our legislators truly believe in the free-market
principles that they profess, Virginia could lead the
other 49 states down the road to transportation righteousness.
--
January 4, 2005
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