Bacon's Rebellion

It’s interesting to see the line of argument developing in rural Virginia regarding the GOP’s transportation funding plan: There’s not enough money in the plan for non-metro areas. And Gov. Timothy M. Kaine is pushing the angle hard.

How can rural Virginia justify demanding more, when it already benefits disproportionately from the allocation of state highway dollars? It’s all about safety. Read this article in the Martinsville Bulletin.

Rural Virginia would get about one-fourth of the money the legislative transportation plan would yield, even though 61 percent of the state’s traffic fatalities from 2000 through 2005 occurred on rural roads, according to federal highway safety data. …

During a stopover in Stuart last week on his “listening tour” to gather input on the proposed $2.5 billion transportation bill, Kaine criticized the bill for its omission of significant help to rural areas. “What’s in this (bill) for rural Virginia?” Kaine asked, adding that the one-fourth earmarked for rural Virginia could only be spent on primary roads and interstates, under the current wording of the bill.

Of the 5,593 people killed in Virginia car crashes from 2000 through 2005, more than three-fifths — 3,398 — died on roads U.S. Department of Transportation highway accident data classifies as rural, according to a computer analysis by The Associated Press.

Crashes in rural areas are more often lethal because drivers reach greater speeds on the open roads, said Ray Pethtel, associate director of the Center for Transportation Research at Virginia Tech. Driver distractions, which cause most crashes, occur in rural areas and urban ones, Pethtel said. … “You don’t have on the rural roads the same safe design characteristics that you do on major arterials like interstates,” he said.

One of the main threads of controversy in the transportation debate right now is the propriety of devolving responsibility for building and maintaining secondary roads to local governments. Many local officials have objected to the transfer of authority, fearing that the state won’t send along the money to match. Remarkably, no one has seen fit to ask local officials in Henrico or Arlington Counties what they think of the idea. They would seem to be logical people to ask — after all, they have been handling their own roads for the past 75 years.

So, that’s what we’ve done. Bacon’s Rebellion dispatched Bob Burke to look into the experience of Arlington County and Peter Galuszka to take a look at Henrico.

Peter has filed his article about Henrico: “Doing It Their Way.” One message came through loud and clear: Henrico County officials like having control over their secondary roads. They say they can make better decisions and faster decisions, and that they can be more responsive to local constituencies than VDOT can. Henrico officials also like to set their own standards, which often exceed VDOT’s.

However, there doesn’t seem to be any way to quantify whether or not Henrico is doing a better job than VDOT would. Has the ability to align transportation and land use planning resulted in less traffic congestion? Can’t say. We asked for “levels of service” data, but Henrico hasn’t compiled it. Has local control resulted in more efficient expenditure of road dollars? Can’t say. Henrico hasn’t done the studies.

Bottom line: We can’t get answers to fundamental questions. Little wonder. No one in local government seems to be asking the questions, so no one is collecting the information. Meanwhile, lawmakers in the General Assembly — both those in favor of devolution and those opposed — are flailing in the dark. They’re basing their positions on hunch, intuition and anecdote, not hard data. We don’t have a prayer of solving our transportation problems in Virginia without the basic information we need to make informed decisions.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has introduced a new argument into the debate over the Republican transportation package: The cost of collecting the fees and taxes proposed by the General Assembly could run $80 million a year.

Reports Tom Holden with the Virginian-Pilot: “Kaine said administrative costs accompany all forms of taxation, but the unusually large number of fees associated with the transportation bill could take ’10 to 15 percent’ off the top of the roughly $800 million raised statewide.”

If the Governor’s “back of the envelope” calculations are close to correct — it will be interesting to see how vigorously the Republicans contest his numbers — the high cost of collecting the revenues constitute one more reason for killing the transportation-financing scheme.

In an address to the Hampton Roads Partnership, Kaine also said he would likely propose more than 100 amendments to fix “technical and some glaring” mistakes in the bill. According to Holden, the Governor predicted that none of the proposed changes would kill the bill.

Here’s the latest from Examiner.com: Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has vowed to block a facet of the Republican transportation plan that would impose a tax of $.25 per $100 of assessed value on commercial real estate in Northern Virginia. The tax, which has sparked heavy opposition from local governments and business interests, is a “non-starter,” the Governor says. “Apartment building owners are very concerned about that because it would mean rent increases for many Virginians. It would have a devastating effect on affordable housing.”

You gotta love that NoVa business community. Those guys have never seen a tax hike they didn’t like — unless they have to pay it. Then they suddenly become concerned about the impact of the taxes — not on them, the magnanimous souls, but on the little guy.

As far as taxes go, the tax on commercial real estate in NoVa is relatively painless. The greatest part falls upon the major commercial tenants such as the federal government and government contractors who can pass on their costs to the federal government. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. But some sliver of that tax would get passed on to apartment dwellers, and the Governor finds the prospect of higher rents to be unacceptable.

By contrast, Gov. Kaine does not find anything especially objectionable about higher motor vehicle sales taxes ($361 million in 2008), auto insurance premiums ($110 million) and auto registration fees ($108 million), all of which are included in his currently favored road-funding package.

Could someone please explain how paying higher rent is any more onerous than paying higher sales taxes, insurance premiums and auto registration fees? It all comes out of the same pocket. (As an aside: Is anyone besides me concerned about making auto insurance more unaffordable? Do we really want more people driving around without car insurance?)

The one principle that neither the NoVa business lobbyists nor Gov. Kaine seems willing to articulate is this: users should pay. Instead of taxing people for owning property, purchasing cars, registering their cars or buying auto insurance, we should require them to pay on the basis of how much they drive and when they drive.

Where are traffic jams created? Well, on the road, of course. But in this article from Reason, authors Sam Stanley and Ted Balaker say the roots of the jam reach back to the transportation planners and their fascination with models that simply don’t work. What are their solutions for getting people moving again?

Markets…in just about everything. Even parking:

Market pricing for parking. On 99 percent of our trips we park for free, thanks largely to the minimum parking requirements embedded in our zoning codes. Eliminating those requirements would allow market forces to reflect the true cost of parking. Instead of adhering to arbitrary regulations that often order more spaces than necessary, developers would have greater flexibility to build only the number of spaces that is needed. Workplaces would be more likely to adopt parking cash-out programs, which give employees who do not drive to work a share of the money that otherwise would have gone toward parking costs. Employees would be more likely to work from home.

Market pricing for parking would reduce traffic too. If drivers had to pay the full cost of parking, they might be less inclined to take certain trips, thus putting a dent in congestion. More important, when parking is scarce but free (or underpriced), drivers have an incentive to keep the spots as long as possible. When it is scarce but costs money, drivers are less likely to dally. One additional result: Other drivers have less need to circle around and around, hoping eventually to spot an empty space.

Traditional parking meters can be notoriously inconvenient, but they aren’t the only way to pay for parking. Aspen, Colorado, uses a variety of new technologies, including personal in-vehicle meters. The town determines its parking rates by zones; prices are highest in the city center and drop the further you are from the core. Motorists simply park, type in the number of their parking zone, turn on the meter, and hang it from the rearview meter. A timer deducts the prepaid amount until the driver returns. No one has to hunt for loose change.

Are there really markets in everything? Sure. We just need to look for them.