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In
discussing sprawl and its consequences, we should
distinguish sprawl from growth in general. Whether
sprawl occurs or not, Virginia will continue to
experience growth and land development unless the
economy collapses or the population stops
increasing. Over the long term, neither of those
circumstances is likely.
Land
development is necessary to accommodate anticipated
economic and population expansion. The Metropolitan
Washington Council of Governments forecasts
approximately 1.6 million new jobs in the region and
a shortage of about 92,000 new housing units in
2030.
Housing
supply has consistently lagged behind job growth in
the Washington, D.C. region. One contributing factor
is tighter land use regulation by suburban counties.
This has not only slowed housing development in
those counties, but also driven up land costs. Those
working in the region are being pushed farther and
farther into more remote counties where land costs
are lower and land use less regulated.
Regardless
of the pattern of development, there are unavoidable
costs associated with growth. If we can identify
those costs and assure a means of covering them, the
debate over sprawl takes a different direction.
The
most visible problem associated with metropolitan
growth is traffic congestion. Automobiles are the
leading source of air pollution in these regions.
The cost of constructing new transportation
facilities and maintaining the expanded network far
exceeds available and foreseeable revenues.
This
is where the private sector can contribute
significantly. Improvement will come not simply by
giving private companies greater flexibility in
designing, constructing, operating and maintaining
transportation facilities, but by giving individuals
in the region the broadest array of potential
choices about where they reside, work, attend school
or open businesses and by allowing markets to set
prices for those specific choices.
The
manner in which we finance transportation facilities
largely determines whether we achieve true
efficiency. The present tax-funded approach is
highly inefficient in large part because the
allocation of those tax funds is highly politicized.
For example, Northern Virginia taxpayers pay an
enormous transportation subsidy to taxpayers in
other regions. Less than half of the
transportation-earmarked taxes collected in Northern
Virginia find their way back to that region.
If
Virginians want true efficiency, an assured source
of revenue for roads and public transit is not the
answer. It will lead to rigidity. The policy debate
over congestion has proceeded in precisely the wrong
direction. Rather than looking for more tax
revenues, we should be dismantling the current
funding arrangement and demanding that Congress do
the same.
The
only way to achieve a more efficient transportation
system over the long term is to price transportation
the way telecommunications and energy are priced.
The old model may have worked tolerably well in a
simpler time, but it is ill-suited to the
ever-changing and increasingly complex mobility
challenges we confront in metropolitan areas.
For
decades, we have built government roads to
accommodate scattered development. More people drive
more vehicles on more trips over longer distances
than last year. Without a radical change, we can
expect that to worsen in the future.
Congestion
of these roads is an example of the tragedy of the
commons. Because everyone can use a road without a
user charge, no one takes the cost of the road into
account in deciding where to live, work or engage in
any other activity requiring travel. Pricing of
transportation that reflects its true value would
contribute more to rational patterns of development
than any set of government land use policies and
regulations devised ever could.
--
January 3, 2005
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