Bacon's Rebellion

Del. Wardrup Interviewed on Bearing Drift

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by

James A. Bacon
in

The blogosphere strikes again, this time with an interview on Bearing Drift of Del. Leo Wardrup, R-Virginia Beach, on how the transportation debate is shaping up in the General Assembly.

A few highlights as transcribed in Bearing Drift:

Norman Leahy: Are you part of a “Rabid anti-tax wing”?
Delegate Wardrup: I’m part of the anti-tax wing, but I wouldn’t describe myself as rabid. Those that want more taxes are rabid.

A laundry list of projects ain’t gonna happen. Not enough money to do what everyone wants to do….

We simply cannot pave our way out of the problem; we could pave the potomac and we couldn’t solve the problem up there. hot lanes, medians, beltway use would be helpful. in NOVA, if we build it, they will come….

I found this interesting, Wardrup endorsing the concept of congestion pricing:

Virginia is not the only one facing transportation crisis. We’re going to have to come to the point where we pay for operating vehicles during the peak hours…such as in London. We’re going to end up doing the same types of things, I think, eventually… in the congested areas….

And a point that I’ve been hammering on the past couple of weeks, on the press coverage of the transportation debate as a pure tax-and-spending issue:

The press doesn’t want to do their homework. “Show me the money” they say. They haven’t reported on a ton of legislation that is new and different. They just sit back and say what is being proposed in dollars and say that the House is paving the roads with school books, but what about all these increased revenues that we have accumulated from the surplus over the last two years.

And this:

I’ve been around govn’t too long. there is never enough money to meet the needs of government and the needy. Thats why we send people to make these hard decisions. But we are elected to make those decisions. Heck, raising taxes is the easy way.

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6 responses to “Del. Wardrup Interviewed on Bearing Drift”

  1. kingfish Avatar
    kingfish

    Del. Wardrup is right- he’s been around government too long

  2. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    Del. Wardrup says:

    “We simply cannot pave our way out of the problem; we could pave the potomac and we couldn’t solve the problem up there. hot lanes, medians, beltway use would be helpful. in NOVA, if we build it, they will come….”

    Del Wardrup may have been around for a long time but he still cannot say “Without Fundamental Change in settlement patterns, there is no solution…”

    EMR

  3. Rtwng Extrmst Avatar
    Rtwng Extrmst

    “rabid taxers” I like that. I’ll have to being using it.

  4. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    What I see is that he said we can’t solve the problem “up there”. What he is suggesting is triage, or as I have said, we need to have more places.

    I’m in favor of congestion pricing, too. I’m sure it is popular with certain Charlottesville residents. But I’m not blind as to what the effects will be.

    It won’t solve congestion, and just as in London, it will affect business which is likely to disappear or go elswhere. It will not preserve open space.

    It will raise taxes, but where will the money go? If congestion pricing taxes paid in NOVA go downstate to pave their way out of congestion “down there” , then NOVA residents will be very unhappy. It will amount to the same kind of ruse that the previously defeated local sales tax was.

    Try making the congestion taxes mandatory everyplace that congestion occurs, such as Warrenton and Charlottesville, and see how popular they are.

    We can’t pave our way out of congestion, can’t Metro our way out of congestion, and can’t land use our way out of congestion. All we can do is make those that benefit from it pay. That means not only the travelers who benefit by having fine homes out of town, but those who create too many destinations in dysfunctional places – downtown.

    Just as is the case with Metro, saying we can’t pave our way out misses the point. We will still be congested and Metro will still be crowded if we spend more money, but we can serve more people.

    We are basing too much of the argument on rush hour. We can’t meet rush hour demand without creating massive amounts of roads (or Metro) that are unused the rest of the day. We should base our road building efforts on the other 80% of travel – non-work travel. When the roads are insuficient to meet those needs, then it is time to build more or to build elsewhere.

    That situation currently exists in much of NOVA.

  5. Waldo Jaquith Avatar
    Waldo Jaquith

    I’m in favor of congestion pricing, too. I’m sure it is popular with certain Charlottesville residents.

    Really? Who? There hasn’t been much discussion about traffic here, since we don’t have a whole lot of it, at least compared to the more populous parts of the state. I would be curious to find out who our congestion pricing advocates are here, in part because I’d kind of like to find out more about it myself.

  6. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    Charlottesville residents love it because it won’t affect them. They advocate it for NOVA residents because it amounts to another way to shift the costs to NOVA.

    Nothing wrong with that, those that receive the benefits should pay. But if Nova was actually getting the benefits, maybe, (I know, you can’t build your way out of congestion, yadda yadda) the congestion wouldn’t be quite so bad.

    Someone was asking about the distribution formula. Anyone know how that works? Is it by area, population, congestion mitigation needs, senatorial votes?

    I think Jim is an advocate for congestion pricing. Isn’t he down there somewhere?

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