The Shape of the Future

E M Risse


 

Delusional Thinking

Politicians in Richmond are peddling the fantasy that raising taxes and building more roads will ameliorate traffic congestion. Wrong. Higher taxes will just perpetuate the Business As Usual practices that got us in the mess we're in.


 

 

All the tax "reform" programs now on the table in Virginia -- proffered by the governor, the Senate and the House of Delegates -- have one thing in common. Every one tinkers with old, tired revenue-generation vehicles. Rather than reform governance practice or revenue policy, our "leaders" aim to generate funds for the programs that have been on state, municipal and lobbyists' wish lists for decades (aka, Business As Usual).  

There is, however, an even bigger problem with the current tax "reform" proposals. While some of the schemes may be more "fair," they propose to raise money under false pretenses.

Every supporter of "revenue enhancement" claims they are supporting this or that scheme because of the need for funds to improve transportation, education, health and safety, environmental protection, economic development and, of course, transportation again.  Money for transportation is almost always the first and the last reason that is given to raise additional funds.  This is because "everyone" agrees transportation congestion is growing worse every day. 

 

How many times must it be said?

Without "Fundamental Change" in human settlement patterns, more money will not ameliorate traffic congestion.

We will leave it to others to determine how much money and what changed conditions are needed to improve education, health, security, environmental sustainability, economic prosperity and other important priorities of intelligent governance at the state and regional levels.  However, it needs to be made very clear that suggesting that more money for building more roads is the "solution" to transportation congestion perpetuates a fraud.

The primary cause of transportation congestion in the Commonwealth is dysfunctional human settlement patterns, not the lack of funds for transport facilities.

More transport facilities without a Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns will only make traffic congestion worse. In fact, as noted in our last column ("The Shape of Richmond's Future," February 16, 2004), too many road projects are a root cause of the Richmond New Urban Regions immobility as well as other dysfunctions.

 

Anyone who says they need more money to "solve" the mobility crisis is attempting to take money under false pretenses. To solve the mobility crisis, governance practitioners must put their efforts behind creating functional human settlement patterns and Balanced Communities. 

 

One might hope that the media would help citizens sort out this fraudulent delusion. No such luck.  Here is just one example. On the front page of the Metro section of The Washington Post for 21 February, Jo Becker and Michael Shear's story on the House of Delegates version of the tax plan it states: "Commuters would see far less in the way of road improvements under the House spending plan..." This suggests that "commuters" under some other plan might hope to see not just more "road improvements" but improvements in mobility that would make commuting easier. 

 

Road improvements and mobility improvements are very different animals. Road improvements spend citizens' tax dollars on roads. Improving mobility usually has little to do with laying asphalt. At best, without improvements in the settlement pattern, commuters will encounter road construction projects that slow their daily travel. When the road projects are finally completed, more housing projects generating more single-occupant vehicles will have moved to more dispersed locations. Study after study shows this process makes mobility worse after construction than before the construction started.  Sometimes projects improve flow in a specific corridor by removing a bottleneck but on a regional and subregional scale there is no improvement. Before long, the measures of congestion in the "improved" corridor grow worse unless there is a change is the settlement patterns. Based on the recent vote in Loudoun County, this problem will get worse faster in some jurisdictions. 

 

Let us get the facts straight. 

 

First, the amount of new money generated by any of the three major tax schemes on the table in Richmond is a drop in the bucket compared to "needs" given the evolving dysfunctional settlement patterns.  

 

The current VDOT Six Year Plan has many fewer projects than were on this plan just a few years ago.  The Allen/Gilmore fantasy projects were eliminated because there was never the money to pay for them.  In spite of this paring back, last week the Transportation Planning Board (TPB), an arm of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG), reported that the portion of Virginia within their jurisdiction -- not all of the Virginia portion of the National Capital Subregion by a long shot -- was $4-billion short for the next six years. That does not include most of the projects that Business As Usual road advocates want. It is a drop in the bucket of the $43.4 billion overall shortfall TPB noted in 2001.

 

Second, in the Virginia portion of the National Capital Subregion, COG numbers document that, as is the case in large New Urban Regions nationwide, the measures of congestion are growing faster than they could be addressed by any "fiscally constrained" long-range plans. 

 

Herculean efforts far beyond any revenue package now contemplated will be needed even to maintain the current level of congestion, much less to reduce it. The most optimistic analysts do not see "improvement" but rather fantasize about conditions not deteriorating as fast if we pour in mountains of money.

 

What is going on here? If citizens realized the magnitude and the cause of the traffic congestion and mobility problems, they might alter their actions which collectively cause congestion to grow. They might demand that their governance representatives tackle the Fundamental Change necessary to create functional human settlement patterns.

 

They might also toss out the office holders who support Business As Usual at the municipal and state levels. Now there is a plan to improve mobility!

 

-- March 1, 2004

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ed Risse, and his wife Linda live inside the "Clear Edge" of the "urban enclave" known as Warrenton, a municipality in the Countryside near the edge of the Washington-Baltimore "New Urban Region."

 

Mr. Risse, the principal of

SYNERGY/Planning, Inc., can be contacted at spirisse@aol.com.

 

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