Bacon's Rebellion

A centerpiece of the Kaine administration’s transportation policy is a 2006 law that requires major rezoning projects in Virginia to undergo traffic impact analysis. The goal is to ensure that local government officials understand the level of traffic that proposed developments will dump onto local and regional road networks before granting approval.

The idea is a simple one, but, as always, the execution is easier than it looks. Assistant Secretary of Transportation Jimmy Carr oversaw the drafting of regulations late last year, and now the Virginia Department of Transportation is holding a series of workshops around the state to make sure all the stakeholders — VDOT staff, local government officials, land developers — all understand the regulations. So far, so good.

But problems are emerging, I hear from one of my correspondents, who attended a VDOT session in Chester yesterday.

On the positive side, he said, the session was well attended, and the presentation covered all major topics. People are encouraged by VDOT’s proactive outreach. And attendees received free highlighters and calculators!

On the problematic side, my source said, many questions went unanswered. For example, who is covered by the “527 regulations,” as the regulations are called? Attendees could not get clear answers. Concludes my correspondent: “Following this latest training seminar, consultants are crazy if they don’t assume every potential development will meet the 527 regs.”

Intructors frequently brushed aside hypothetical questions with a we-don’t-think-we’ll-see-that-situation-very-often, so-we’ll-just-deal-with-that-on-a-case-by-case basis response. My source’s concern: “Hear me now and believe me later, EVERY case will become a ‘case-by-case basis’”.

And a final point: Mixed use developments are becoming increasingly prevalent in Virginia, driven by the conviction that they generate far less traffic on critical collector roads and arteries than traditional development does. Says my source: “The regs — though recently updated — include outdated methodologies that will particularly impact mixed use.” He’s concerned that the impact studies will overstate the traffic impact of many mixed use projects, thus discourage use of a beneficial land use strategy.

I have no idea whether this kind of feedback filters back up to senior Kaine administration officials, or whether the top dogs get told everything is just hunky dory. But the Kainiacs cannot afford to see this signature initiative flounder. Someone needs to ride herd on the training-and-outreach process to make sure the initiative doesn’t plunge the development sector into a state of confusion.

One of the great unsung stories of The Comprehensive Transportation Funding and Reform Act of 2007 is how it will give transportation planners more tools to clean up highways clogged with too many intersections, stoplights and retail access points. This aspect of the landmark legislation got zero attention from the Mainstream Media, but it will affect the design and functioning of critical pieces of our communities.

In the first of two articles, “Fighting Corridor Torpor,” Peter Galuszka outlines the thrust of the legislation: reducing the number of intersections and access points to major highways, with the goal of allowing traffic to move more freely. The state is writing the detailed regulations, which will go into effect in early 2008.

In a second article, “Reinventing the Motor Mile,” Bob Burke takes a close-up look at U.S. 29 north of Charlottesville, where the community has taken matters into its own hands. Planners have written a draft master plan, Places29, that envisions recreating a limited-access highway through the 29 corridor with a parallel network of parallel boulevards, avenues and streets providing local access to neighborhoods and shopping centers. Development will be characterized by greater density, mixed uses and greater attention to pedestrians, bicycles and mass transit.

Some of the worst traffic congestion in Virginia is concentrated in these retail corridors. Between the powers enacted by the General Assembly and the innovative vision of Places29, there’s no excuse for communities across Virginia not to get cracking on cleaning up their congested corridors

The Virginia Port Authority has a new executive director, and judging by a recent editorial in the Virginian Pilot, he thinks outside the box. When Jerry Bridges surveys the port’s strategic options, he says that privatization should be considered.

The ports have built enormous economic value in the three decades since the Commonwealth of Virginia consolidated them, rescuing them from the mismanagement of separate municipal authorities. Under the leadership of Bobby Bray, the VPA has risen into the ranks of the largest and fastest-growing ports in the United States. VPA officials guesstimate that private bidders might pay as much as $5 billion for the facilities. As the Pilot points out: “New bidders, like investment banks and pension funds, have been pouring billions into an industry where most investment used to come from large companies already involved in the industry, a much smaller, more stingy pool.”

The Pilot raises some good questions. If the state were to privatize the ports, should it try to maximize the price? Or should it consider other goals, such as environmental protection or good labor relations? What would be done with the money — and who would decide?

Although the ports are a “state” entity, I believe that the proceeds from privatization should be used for the benefit of Hampton Roads. The ports are, after all, one of the region’s most important assets. The proceeds of privatization should be set aside in a mega-community foundation, similar to foundations in Martinsville, Danville and Petersburg endowed by the sale of their community hospitals. Revenues from a Hampton Roads foundation — potentially some $200 million a year — could be applied to regional priorities.

One such priority is building a “third crossing” across the James River, deemed critical to accommodate surging truck traffic from the booming port terminals and also for evacuating the population in the event of a major hurricane. It would be poetic justice if a foundation endowed through the privatization of the ports used a portion of its income to support bonds that paid for building the third crossing.

The state doesn’t have the money to pay for the project, and the funds raised through a cluster of regional taxes enabled by the General Assembly won’t pay for it either. Tolls would cover only a fraction of the cost. Privatizing the ports may be a way to cut the Gordion knot and get the project funded.

Charlottesville area officials are studying the option of eliminating fares for the municipal bus system in the hopes of stimulating ridership, according to the Daily Progress. A recent study by the Washington state transportation system said that a free system could increase ridership by 30 percent. On the other hand, Charlottesville and Albemarle County would lose $485,000 in revenue, or 10 percent of the operating budget for the Charlottesville Transit Service.

Said David Slutzky, a member of the Albemarle Board of Supervisors and chairman of the Metropolitan Planning Organization which is considering the idea: “We don’t make people pay to take roads here, so why should they pay to get off the roads?”

My gut reaction to this idea is, are they crazy? According to Bacon’s principles of transportation economics, every mode of transportation should pay its own way. People who drive on roads pay for the vast majority of the cost to build and maintain those roads, mainly through tolls and state and federal gasoline taxes. The object of public policy should be to get them to pay 100 percent of the cost — not as we have done in Virginia this past year to sever the connection between driving and road funding.

Likewise, transit systems should pay their own way as well. If the Charlottesville bus system collects only 10 percent of the revenue it takes to operate, what does that tell us about the bus system? Either that the costs are scandalously high, operations are scandalously inefficient, or demand is scandalously low.

According to the Charlottesville Transit Service website, the system provided a little more than one million passenger trips last year. That translates into about $4.60 per passenger trip. I’m no expert in transit economics, but that doesn’t strike me as excessively high. The unwillingness of the population to pay a nominal fare, I suspect, stems from a lack of demand for the service. The transit service, I would hypothesize, does not provide the flexibility of routes and times, or the reliability, that people require.

Flipping the problem around, though, I can see what Slutzky & Company are driving at. That one million passengers translates into roughly 2,750 passengers per day, which translates into 2,750 car trips eliminated. The bus service does get cars off the road.

Does the elimination of those trips mitigate enough congestion to warrant the expenditure of more than $4 million a year in public dollars? Let’s do some calculations. As of the 2000 Census, there were about 50,000 households in Charlottesville and Albemarle County. The average household generates about 10 trips per day, implying 500,000 trips. Thus, the transit system eliminates one out of roughly 180 trips.

Would the expenditure of nearly $500,000 dollars a year for fare-free bus travel, resulting in the elimination of roughly 800 more car trips per day, be a good investment? I can’t say because I don’t know what the alternative investments are, nor how much congestion they might relieve. But that’s one question the Charlottesville MPO should ask itself rather than studying the free-fare option in isolation.

An even better question the MPO should ask is this: Instead of operating a transit system at a cost to taxpayers of $4 million to $5 million a year, should the region shut down the transit service and allow free market competition for shared ridership services?

I hate to say I told you so, but… I told you so.

According to a USA Today analysis of the latest federal highway data, despite the addition of one million drivers to the nation’s roads and streets since 2005, vehicle miles driven in February declined 1.9 percent year over year in February 2006 before rebounding slightly for a 0.3 percent year-over-year gain in March. That’s the sharpest cutback in 26 years, and a marked contrast to the 2.7 percent average annual increase between 1985 and 2005.

Even if total vehicle miles driven managed to squeeze out incremental gains last year, the VHD per motorist declined.

USA Today cited several economic and demographic factors:

• Gas prices. Seven of 10 Americans are combining trips and taking other steps to reduce driving.

• Public transportation. More people took public transit last year than at any time in 49 years. “We’re seeing suburban locations create new transit systems,” says William Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association. “They’re expanding into areas that never thought they needed transit because they could do everything by car.”

• Demographics. Two generations ago, a significant percentage of women did not drive. As they women took to the roads over the past few decades, the percentage of the population with a drivers license increased steadily. Today, most women drive. The surge in women drivers has leveled off. Meanwhile, the population is aging, and old people drive less.

• Urban revitalization. Many Americans, particularly young, upwardly mobile singles, are moving back into the city, where there are more transportation options and distances between destinations are shorter than in the suburbs.

I cited three of these four factors (I didn’t pay sufficient attention to mass transit) a couple of years ago when I critiqued the assumptions of the VTrans2025 report written by the Warner administration, which projected relentless traffic increases over the next 20 years and a $108 billion shortfall in transportation funding to meet the demand. The increases in VMD of the past 25 years are economically and demographically unsustainable, and we should not be basing public policy on outmoded assumptions.

(Hat tip to Larry Gross for pointing out this story.)