Bacon's Rebellion

Northern Virginia approaches a decision point on tax increases of some $300 million to $400 million to support regional transportation projects. The Northern Virginia Transportation Authority will meet Thursday to vote on each of the seven new taxes and fees in the funding package, according to the Washington Examiner (which, by the way, has done a fabulous job of covering transportation and land use issues in the Washington region).

A number of contentious issues have come up. Loudoun County is worried that a share of the bonded indebtedness taken on by the regional transportation authority might count against Loudoun’s indebtness, possibly jeopardizing its AAA bond rating. (See last week’s Examiner coverage of this topic.)

Now, it appears, objections to a five percent sales tax on automobile repairs have surfaced. The tax would raise an estimated $33 million a year. Objection No. 1: The measure would set an unfortunate precedent as a tax on services. It’s not difficult to imagine the levee breaking on that one, leading to a flood of taxes on a multitude of services for a multitude of narrow-bore needs and adding significantly to the tax burden over time. Objection No. 2: Local auto repair shops are worried that the tax will place them at a competitive disadvantage, sending consumers across county lines to shops not subject to the tax.

Objection No. 3 (this is my concern, not one mentioned in the story): Although the tax is related tangentially to car ownership, it bears only the most tenuous and indirect connection between how much a citizen pays into the transportation system and how far, and when, he drives. Its sole purpose is to raise money in the most obscure and opaque way possible so citizens don’t see or understand how much they’re being taxed. A rational transportation-funding system would make the taxes fully transparent, and would be structured to incentivize citizens to drive less.

I know this point is really subtle, because it has gone virtually unmentioned by every elected official involved in the debate, but when people drive less, there is less traffic congestion! I know that’s an awfully difficult concept for some people to wrap their arms around, but I keep thinking that if I repeat it often enough, the idea might penetrate.

As much as he is a fan of passenger rail, Kevin Page, Virginia’s director of rail transportation, is realistic: He understands that passenger rail in the Old Dominion is not everyone’s preferred mode of travel, and he knows that it can be difficult to justify economically.

Page espouses “transit sustainability.” Even if a local government or regional authority can cobble together the funds to launch passenger rail, someone needs to fund ongoing operations, he explained to me in a recent interview. Under Page’s doctrine, any mode of mass transit must be able to recover a significant proportion of its costs through passenger fares. The idea is to start with the most cost-effective method of mass transit — that which loses the least money — and test the market. Only if ridership increases does it make sense to upgrade to more expensive, higher-volume systems.

Thus, Page envisions mass transit routes starting, say, with city buses in city streets. They might be supplanted by Bus Rapid Transit, a higher-volume system that relies upon dedicated bus lanes. A BRT system, if supported by the market, might evolve to a light rail system, and then to a heavy rail system. The idea is to “get people more connected with transit” and move to more ambitious systems upgrades as the market materializes.

“Transit sustainability” is an interesting way of appraising the practicality of competing projects. It certainly makes more sense than doling out Virginia’s rail and transit dollars to whomever has the most political clout. I’m still not totally convinced, however. As I argued in “Midlothian Leviathan,” a private-sector, developer-driven approach to mass transit might make more sense.

One of the most torturous aspects of building a new road or rail line, especially in urbanized areas, is acquiring the right of way. Urban land is expensive, and the acquisition process can be lengthy when landowners resist selling. It is difficult to imagine a replay of the 1950s-era acquisition of rights of way for interstate highways, which were routed through neighborhoods of the poor and politically powerless.

That’s why it’s so urgent, when we have rights of way for potential transportation corridors, that we protect them. But it seems that rights of way for old, abandoned railroad lines around Virginia are being allowed to lapse. Indeed, it doesn’t appear that anyone in Virginia even maintains a master list of abandoned railroad lines.

That’s what I found out in an interview with Kevin Page, Virginia’s director of rail transportation, during the course of researching my recent column, “Midlothian Leviathan.” I didn’t use any material from the interview in that column, but Page made a number of observations that are worth recounting in the blog.

One of the questions I asked: Has anyone conducted a survey of deactivated or under-utilized rail lines in Virginia? Such lines, it seemed to me, could serve as potential routes for local passenger rail service. No one conducts a statewide survey, said Page, although local Metropolitan Planning Organization officials may undertake local studies of their own.

The subject is more complicated than it might seem. “Sometimes abandoned rail lines can be difficult to resurrect,” Page says. It depends on the terms of the abandonment. Sometimes the land can revert to the owner of the land before the railroad acquired it.

During a period of downsizing and restructuring a quarter century ago, freight railroad companies abandoned a lot of unprofitable routes. A handful have been converted to jogging/bicycle lanes. Many lie fallow. It would seem to be a horrendous waste to allow them to revert to former owners — or, more likely, the descendents of former owners — who can’t do anything economically useful with their fragments. Even if passenger rail doesn’t look profitable today, you never know when circumstances might change. We could well be kicking ourselves ten or twenty years from now for having let the rights of way lapse.

Peter Galuszka has tackled the issue of abuser fees for the Road to Ruin project in his article, “Abuser Fees or Abusive Fees?” While he covers some of the same ground as the Mainstream Media — primarily the fact that the fees don’t apply to out-of-state drivers — he also hones in on an aspect of the unfolding debate that continues to go under-reported: The unintended consequences.

We know the intended consequences. Abuser fees for dangerous driving is supposed to raise about $50 million for transportation funding. It is also supposed to make drivers think twice before engaging in reckless behavior, with the hoped-for benefit of reducing the number of traffic accidents. Because traffic accidents are a major contributor to traffic congestion, the abuser fees should reduce congestion.

Fortunately, it should be easy to find out if the intended consequences transpire or not. Will the incidence of speeding, DUI and other forms of reckless driving decline? Will the number of traffic accidents fall? The numbers are readily available.

But it’s the unintended consequences that concern me. Will more motorists decide to contest their tickets in traffic court? Will traffic courts get more crowded? Will more drivers fail to pay their out-sized fines? Will more Virginians be driving on suspended licenses? Will more of those drivers get arrested and thrown in jail? I suspect that those numbers may be difficult to come by.

Let’s assume that the abuser fees raise the full $50 million they are postulated to raise. How much will it cost in additional court costs and state trooper time to process an increased number of disputed tickets? How much will it cost to house people in jail when they’ve been arrested for driving on a suspended license? And, assuming that many of those people are not like Paris Hilton with rich daddies to fall back upon, who will support their families? How much money will the state spend on welfare?

Add up all those ancillary costs, and how much will abuser fees cost the state in ways that nobody’s counting? Will the sum amount to more than the $50 million raised for transportation? Will the Commonwealth, in effect, be robbing Peter to pay Paul — mugging Virginia motorists along the way? We’ll never know because no one is tracking the data.