The Senate’s START group on transportation has gotten more attention, but the smaller and less ambitious House Transportation Subcommittee No. 4 met for the final time yesterday, and Delegate Leo Wardrup (who chaired the sub and the full committee) used the “other business” section to send up a few signals on his priorities for the coming session.

He started by downplaying some of the talk about 2006 being “the” transportation session and said while he is chairman transportation will remain a major topic every session. Then he starting ticking off items he expected to see introduced. He did not explicitly say they are House Republican priorities or consensus items. He also didn’t say it was a complete listing.

1) Additional fund for local revenue sharing programs, as mentioned in the Athey release a couple of days ago.

2) Some changes in the composition of the Commonwealth Transportation Board. He didn’t say they would be legislative appointments, but I kinda doubt they want to give that power to, say, the roadbuilders or even the Piedmont Environmental Council. I expect some effort to require legislative appointments along with the gubernatorial seats, and it has some legs in the Senate, too.

3) Making it easier to use design-build, increased maintenance outsourcing (the word mandatory slipped his lips) and continued revisions and tweaks to the Public Private Transportation Act.

4) Vague references to new revenue, and/or the dedication of existing revenues. The only thing he mentioned specifically is the return of the “abuser” bill that imposes added civil fines on driving infractions and directs the money to the transportation funds.

5) An even more cryptic reference to some additional form of legislative oversight of the transportation effort in Virginia.

One popular fix with many legislators — at least at election time — got another dose of cold reality. Delegates William Fralin (Roanoke) and Tom Rust (Fairfax) reported that their working group on the funding formula would be recommending no changes. Only about one in five transportation dollars goes through the traditional highway formulas anyway. “We’re not going to reformulate our way out of the transportation problems,” Fralin said.

Gee, we’re not going to tax our way out, pave our way out, reformulate our way out. Despite all the utopian dreams we’re not going to railroad, broadband, bus or land use plan our way out, either. We need a new anti-whatever catch phrase by session.