Bacon's Rebellion

A private-sector plan to add four HOT lanes to the Virginia portion of the I-495 Beltway has become so expensive, reports Eric Weiss with the Washington Post, that it may require up to $100 million in public money to make it work. Turns out that the projected cost of the improvements has increased 30 percent since the Fluor/Transurban partnership originally proposed it.

That’s a big blow to the Kaine administration, which had pinned its hopes on private-sector investment to upgrade the major transportation corridors in Northern Virginia. Secretary of Transportation Pierce Homer says still backs the project: “We are fully committed to building and funding the HOT lanes through a combination of state, federal and private resources. We’ll find a way to make this project work. It’s too important to the region to do anything less. We have an opportunity to obtain a billion-dollar facility with a fraction of that put in by the public sector.”

I was a big fan of the project — when it wasn’t asking for public dollars. Now I’m dubious. If the original financing doesn’t work, Fluor/Transurban needs to hike its tolls for accessing the HOT lanes. If travelers aren’t willing to pay higher tolls, then that should tell us something. Maybe it means that, as much as Northern Virginians want relief from traffic congestion, they don’t want it so bad that they’re willing to pay for it themselves. Maybe it means that we’re witnessing another demonstration of Bastiat’s dictum: Government is a device to enable everyone to live at the expense of everyone else.

(Hat tip to Larry Gross for pointing me to this article.)

A Virginia Department of Transportation study counted 4.4 million trucks traveling through the Shenandoah Valley each year. In 2004, Norfolk Southern estimated that an expenditure of $875 million could take 500,000 trucks off Interstate 81 each year, but it can’t justify making the entire investment itself. “The capital investment will be greater than the benefits we would receive from it,” said railroad spokesman Robin Chapman. “We could not justify that spending on our own.”

Now, according to the Associated Press, the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation is working with Norfolk Southern to examine the feasibility of state involvement in upgrading Norfolk Southern’s track. The study will look at rail improvements not just in Virginia but in an arc from Harrisburg, Pa., to Knoxville, Tenn.

Makes sense — certainly a lot more sense than the multi-billion dollar boondoggles proposed for upgrading I-81. If rail is the more cost-effective alternative, we need to consider it. On the other hand, if Norfolk Southern can’t justify investing in its own railroad track, I question whether the Commonwealth is justified subsidizing the project any more than any other transportation project.

Update: Be sure to read the informative commentary by “Anon 10:50” in the comments section, outlining the analysis of Norfolk Southern CEO Wick Moorman. Intermodal traffic is increasingly profitable for the railroad company but there are special challenges serving the I-81 corridor in Virginia.

On the campaign trail, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine popularized the disconnect between transportation and land use planning. As I chronicled in “Seventy-five Years” in a previous edition of Bacon’s Rebellion, that disconnect did not occur overnight — it stemmed from the inability of Virginia’s governance system to adapt to changing human settlement patterns over the past few decades.

Although Kaine’s big idea was never cast into law — he would have given local governments more authority to deny rezoning requests where development would overwhelm local road networks — Republican lawmakers picked up the transportation/land use theme. In the short, tumultuous September session on transportation, the House Republican Caucus outlined new roles for local government, the private sector and the Virginia Department of Transportation in building and maintaining state roads.

The House legislative package represented the most radical re-thinking of transportation in Virginia since 1932, when the current system was put into place. Although these bills, too, failed to make it into law, the ideas behind them are very much alive. Indeed, there is widespread recognition among key players in the transportation debate that the House raised legitimate issues, even if the details of its legislation need work.

This edition of Bacon’s Rebellion focuses on one of the centerpiece House initiatives: devolving responsibility for secondary roads from VDOT to local government. While everyone agrees that VDOT should build and maintain primary roads and Interstates, most of the people I interviewed agreed that it often makes sense to turn authority for secondary roads over to local governments, particularly the fast-growth counties. The trick, as I explain in “The Devolution Solution,” is devising a funding formula that assures counties that they won’t be left holding the fiscal bag.

The transportation/land use disconnect manifests itself in at least two ways in the treatment of secondary roads. The incentives of the current system are all wrong. Local governments approve hundreds of miles of subdivision roads every year, knowing that VDOT will get stuck with the cost of maintaining them — about $1.5 million more each year… year after year. Likewise, local officials ignore the issue of subdivision connectivity, approving cul-de-sac subdivions that dump traffic onto collector roads and contribute nothing to an interconnected road network. If the collector roads get congested, who cares, that’s the state’s problem.

The issue of who builds and maintains Virginia’s secondary roads is only one piece of the transportation puzzle, but an important one. Devolution won’t cure our traffic woes — but it will limit the introduction of low-density cul de sacs into the state system, and it will improve the connectivity of new subdivisions. It makes no sense to pump more money into a transportation system as badly broken as Virginia’s is. Reform first, money second.

Trade associations and lobbying groups have been strangely slow to adapt to the blogging revolution. Policy Soup, the first-rate policy blog maintained by the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce, is one of the few I can think of. But now comes Growth is Good, published by the Richmond Home Builders Association.

Tyler Craddock, who runs the blog, is off to a promising start with a series of punchy posts relating to growth, development, land use and, of course, affordable housing. Let’s hope he can keep up the quality commentary.

The October 23, 2006, edition of Bacon’s Rebellion is now online. Don’t miss a single issue — subscribe here for free.

This week’s columns include:

The Devolution Solution
Any meaningful transportation reform would make fast-growth counties responsible for their secondary roads. The trick is coaxing them into going along.
by James A. Bacon

Catching Crayfish Craig
Understanding how Virginia grew a Nobel Price winner can inform everything from budget discussions to economic development strategies.
by Doug Koelemay

Big (Gray, Brown) Sky Country
Afflicted by global climate change and energy-inefficient human settlement patterns, my home state of Montana is on an unsustainable growth path.
by EM Risse

New Ideas, New Leaders
Transportation, education and the environment… We can solve these problems without throwing money at them. It just takes fresh ideas and bold leaders willing to implement them.
by Michael Thompson

Conservative Dilemma
Some choice. Conservatives in the 10th district can vote for Frank Wolf, a 26-year incumbent who has drifted leftward in recent years, or a former Clinton-era bureaucrat.
by Phil Rodokanakis

My Votes in the First District
I know you’ve been waiting breathlessly to hear how I’ll be voting in November. The suspense is over at last.
by James Atticus Bowden

When Journalists Attack
As the 2006 political season comes to a head, journalists are becoming more hostile to bloggers who invade their space.
by Conaway Haskins

Lighting a Fire Under the Mule
Barnie Day planned to deliver this speech to a Sorenson Institute event earlier this month, but the program changed. Rather than waste a perfectly good speech, he shared it with Bacon’s Rebellion.
by Barnie Day

Nice & Curious Questions
Left Out, or What Happened to Zachary Taylor?
by Edwin S. Clay III and Patricia Bangs

As Virginians, we approach the debate over transportation, land use and taxes with tunnel vision. We are captive to the way we’ve always done things, mentally shackled by our institutions of governance and business groups with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. I’ve always found remarkable the lack of interest — even in a supposedly cosmopolitan, world-class technology center like Northern Virginia — in how mobility and access are provided in other countries.

The antidote for parochialism is at hand in the form of a book, “Street Smart: Competition, Entrepreneurship, and the Future of Roads,” edited by Gabriel Roth, a scholar with the Independent Institute. This timely book deals with transportation issues both at the level of abstract economic theory and practical, real-world application.

Roth, a Maryland resident, sets the tone for the book in his introductory essay:

Road systems exhibit the usual “command economy” characteristics of congestion, queuing, deteriorating, and waste. …

A major cause of the inefficiency is the political control of road systems, which enables road users to shift the costs they impose to other road users, and even to other taxpayers. Farmers in Kansas, for example, pay to rebuild the Wilson Bridge over the Potomac to relieve congestion in Washington, D.C. Those who underpay are thus encouraged to increase their road usage at the expense of others, illustrating Bastiat’s insight that government is seen as a device to enable everyone to live at everyone else’s expense.”

Bastiat’s dictum certainly applies to Virginia, where the politically powerful influence the construction of transportation projects, from Richmond’s 288 bypass to the Rail-to-Dulles project through Tysons Corner, subsidizing sprawl and enriching speculators who own property along the improvements. The alternative, as Roth and other authors elaborate, is “de-socializing the roads” — shifting to a system in which road networks are commercialized, i.e., made self-financing, relying for revenue from road users and/or affected property owners, and in which pricing plays a much larger role than it does today.

“Street Smart” has chapters on Singapore’s experience with congestion tolls, HOT lanes in California, the rise and fall of non-government roads in Great Britain, America’s toll road heritage, Swedish private road associations and the commercialization of roads in New Zealand. Other chapters discuss strategems for moving towards the private provision of roads.

For transportation junkies, the book offers stimulating reading. My main disappointment is the neglect of land use issues. Transportation networks are embedded, and inseparable from, human settlement patterns. To a large degree, human settlement patterns define the demand for transportation capacity. The lack of discussion on this critical relationship represents a serious void. Still, there is more than enough good material here to justify the $29.95 price tag.

Now comes word that construction of the Rail-to-Dulles project will be delayed a year. Fairfax County officials are blaming the Kaine administration, citing the five months it took to study the option of running the heavy rail line underneath Tysons Corner. Writes Lisa Rein with the Washington Post:

Exploring the tunnel no doubt cost planners and engineers valuable time, county supervisors agreed. But they also blamed the delays on what they called the state’s sluggish management.

“The tunnel was a valiant effort,” said Fairfax Supervisor T. Dana Kauffman (D-Lee). “But the state is visibly trying to blame someone other than itself for its delays in setting the terms and conditions of the project.” …

[Fairfax board chairman Gerald E.] Connolly and other supervisors also attributed the delays to a change in leadership at the Federal Transit Administration, where the top job was vacant for several months this year. They also said it took the state longer than expected to put in place a system to oversee the preliminary engineering.

Unstated in the article is a discussion of how much the delay will cost, given inflation in the construction industry. The commonly cited price tag of $4 billion for the project is based on estimates originally made in 2002. Another year’s delay could conceivably bump the project cost up to $5 billion. It’s not clear where that money would come from.

From the Va4Marriage:

Harrisonburg Man Fired for Supporting Marriage Amendment

RICHMOND – A Harrisonburg man was fired from his job last week apparently for displaying a sign in his personal vehicle that showed his support for Virginia’s Constitutional Amendment defining marriage.

“It appears that Mr. Padilla’s civil rights have been violated in an egregious act of viewpoint discrimination and violation of his right to free speech,” said Victoria Cobb, spokesperson for va4marriage.org. “It is abundantly clear that those who seek to impose same-sex marriage on society are not at all interested in tolerance of other viewpoints. And they are willing to go so far as to destroy a man’s family and take his livelihood to get their way. I believe that when they hear this story, the people of Virginia will be appalled.”

Luis Padilla, an employee of Cargill, a large employer in the Harrisonburg area, was fired from his job last week for displaying a sign on his personal vehicle. The sign read, “Please, vote for Marriage on Nov. 7.”

Upon receiving an initial warning from his employer about the sign, Mr. Padilla removed the sign from his personal vehicle, replacing it only after driving his vehicle off company property. Mr. Padilla’s boss had led him to believe that this would be an acceptable course of action. When he returned to work the next day, Mr. Padilla was careful to park his vehicle outside the company parking lot so as to minimize the “offense” the sign allegedly caused to co-workers.

Despite these efforts to comply with his superiors’ demands, company officials terminated Mr. Padilla’s employment, citing concerns about harassment as the basis for their actions. Rita Dunaway, senior Legal Advisor for the Valley Family Forum, a local grassroots chapter of The Family Foundation of Virginia, sent a letter to Cargill urging his immediate reinstatement.

Yesterday, Cargill responded with a letter rejecting that plea. In their letter, Cargill stated, “Cargill is not required to allow Mr. Padilla to impose his beliefs on his co-workers.”

“It is appalling that a company like Cargill that claims to value diversity would terminate an employee for merely expressing an opinion about the Marriage Amendment,” said Mrs. Dunaway. “Companies that truly value diversity encourage, rather than punish, the benign, respectful type of private expression for which Mr. Padilla was fired. There is simply no way that this sign could have been considered harassment.”

“The action taken by Cargill against Mr. Padilla, the father of two young children, is a tragic example of political correctness run amuck,” according to Valley Family Forum Director Dean Welty. “This action exposes the hypocrisy of people who claim to stand for ‘tolerance’ but who instead do all they can to silence all opposing views. In this case, those who accuse Mr. Padilla of ‘harassment’ have themselves become the ‘harassers’.”

“va4marriage.org and The Family Foundation are currently talking with attorneys to determine what legal options are available to Mr. Padilla,” added Cobb. “We hope this action won’t be necessary and that Cargill will do the right thing by reinstating Mr. Padilla immediately and taking aggressive steps to ensure that this kind of employee harassment and intimidation does not occur again.””

So much for free speech and tolerance from Liberals. Another reason to vote for Marriage in Virginia. Send a message to those who would silence any dissent from Political Correctness.

Update: The Daily News Record has published a story this morning confirming the broad outlines of the Va4Marriage account. But there’s more detail about Cargill’s reasoning. Said a Cargill spokesman: “When ordered to do something relatively simple — remove from his truck two signs that other employees could have reasonably construed as a show of hostility and intolerance toward homosexuals — Mr. Padilla decided to ignore the warning and disobey the order. By refusing to obey the order, he demonstrated that he could not be trusted to enforce and promote our employment policies because his personal beliefs mattered more to him.”

— Jim Bacon

By the way, see what kind of Web page you land on when you type “VA4Marriage.com” into the address line of your browser. It’s not the same as when you type “VA4Marriage.org.” Cute.

Ken Vigil, York County Citizens for Historical Holidays, had this open letter in the Yorktown Crier/Poquoson Post (Oct. 18, 2006):

Dear York County Citizen, Please contact your York County School Board District representative and ask for a ‘No’ vote and a simple, fair fix to the change to the policy on Religious Instruction and Released Time – on October 23rd. This change in policy may make the problem worse.

The Problem. Last December several York County schools were culturally cleansed of every mention of Christmas – both traditional religious and secular content – as effectively as the Communists did in the old Soviet Union. Concerned parents spoke up at the March 20-06 School Board meeting. They asked the Board to adopt the Virginia Department of Education guidelines on holidays to educate children about the official Federal and Virginia holiday of “Christmas.” The School Superintendent made an effort to fix the problem.

Unfortunately, the new policy presented in September is worse than the problem. Students and staff can be forced to participate in activities contrary to their religious belief if there are “clear issues of compelling public interest.” This is against the Virginia Department of Education guidelines (paragraph 25).

York County assumes a new role to advance the politically correct and undefined “students’ knowledge and appreciation of religious diversity.” These loaded words poorly replaced an earlier draft that spoke instead of “the role that religion has played in the social, cultural, and historical development of civilization.” A lawyer from Newport News told the School Board to take out the word “traditional” in the phrase “traditional use of prayers, religious music, or religious objects or symbols in any secular program.” The proposed changes ruin a perfectly good policy on Religious Instruction and Released Time, and they seed controversy for the future.

The problem isn’t religion in schools. No parent asked for religion to be taught in public schools. No one asked for religious observances in school. No one asked for special treatment of Christianity. The problem is not educating the children about one official holiday – Christmas.

There is a K-3 Standard of Learning for school counselors that requires Virginia’s students to “Understand that Americans are one people of many diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds and national origins who are united as Americans by common customs and traditions.” Teaching about our heritage and traditions is educationally crucial!

A Solution. Please ask the School Board to NOT change the policy on Religious Instruction. Please ask for the simple addition, “York Schools will follow the Virginia Department of Education guidelines for all official Virginia holidays.”

I have deleted the contact info for the School Board. The School Board meeting is on October 23rd. We’ll see what they decide.

The WaPo profiles author Karrie Jacobs, a New York freelance writer who drove her VW convertible around the country in search of a dwelling she could afford — and wanted to live in. Jacobs, a founding editor of Dwell magazine, has just published a book based on her journeys, “The Perfect $100,000 House: A Trip Across America and Back in Pursuit of a Place to Call Home.”

Jacobs found that the vast majority of home builders are building big houses, not affordable ones, and most stick with traditional designs — nothing she’d be interested in buying. But she did find a few examples she found inspiring. One New Urbanist community outside Denver features a profusion of modernistic designs and colors. The houses were affordable when built, although the project has proven so successful that prices have soared past $500,000.

In Houston, Jacobs found an update of the old shotgun shanty, built on a quarter-acre lot for $150,000. The architect, Brett Zamore, is trying to turn his “Shot-Trot” design into a kit, which Jacobs figures will turn him into “the Starbucks of housing.”

The WaPo writer, Linda Hales, gives the impression that the creation of affordable housing is primarily an architectural issue — it’s not clear whether that’s her bias or Karrie Jacobs’. In reality, affordability is more a land use issue than an architectural one. Even so, the article is worth a quick read.

(Hat tip to Bob Burke for pointing me to the article.)

What do Virginians think about taxes and transportation? It depends on who you ask — and who’s doing the asking.

The Washington Post thinks Northern Virginians want to raise taxes: “A large majority of Northern Virginia residents want the state to spend more money to fix the region’s roads and rails, and more than three-quarters say they wanted the opportunity to raise local taxes to do it, a new Washington Post poll shows.” Michael Shear reports:

The survey finds deep resentment among the region’s voters toward their government in Richmond, particularly the General Assembly. Only 9 percent of likely Northern Virginia voters polled said they were “very satisfied” that the government is working for the best interests of their part of the commonwealth. Forty-eight percent of those voters said they were dissatisfied, compared with 37 percent in other parts of the state.

At the same time, those likely voters living in the Washington suburbs gave extremely high marks to Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D), despite his having so far failed to make good on his campaign promise to help solve the region’s transportation problems. Almost 80 percent of Northern Virginians approve of the job he is doing as governor, the poll found.

In the poll, 55 percent of the region’s likely voters blamed lawmakers, especially Republicans, for the failed special session last month. Only 11 percent blamed Kaine.

According to Garren Shipley with the Northern Virginia Daily, another recent poll by SurveyUSA found that 87 percent of voters think it is “very” or “somewhat” important to spend more money on the state’s road system. But 65 percent opposed raising license fees for cars, 83 percent opposed raising the gas tax, and 70 percent opposed raising the sales tax on cars and trucks. On the other hand, 58 percent supported taking money from the general fund — just as House Republicans proposed. Does someone smell a disconnect?

Why the huge disparity? Part of the reason is that the Washington Post surveyed Northern Virginia voters, while SurveyUSA polled Virginia voters generally. Northern Virginia voters appear to be more receptive to tax increases than downstaters.

But there may well have been a difference in the questions asked. People tend to be receptive to the idea of tax increases in the abstract, thinking that someone else will pay them. The more specific you get, the more likely people are to oppose them. The Post apparently did not ask citizens what they thought of specific taxes; SurveyUSA did. Additionally, SurveyUSA asked about an alternative funding mechanism for roads — tapping the General Fund surplus. People liked that idea. The Washington Post apparently did not remind Northern Virginians that the state has been running chronic budget surpluses nor that the General Fund alternative was even on the table.

Then, of course, there were the questions that neither poll asked:

– “Should VDOT be reformed before taxes are raised — to ensure that new revenues are not wasted?”

– “Should land use reform be part of any funding package — to ensure that new revenues are not wasted?”

– “Should new revenues for transportation be based on the principle that that those who drive the most should pay the most?”

– “Should any revenue-raising scheme, besides paying for new roads, be structured to encourage drivers to adopt alternative modes of transportation?”

– “Should new construction be paid for with tolls?”

Questions devoid of context or alternatives can lead people to any conclusion you want. If the pollster has unconscious biases, he will skew the findings. If the pollster has overt biases, the results are worthless. I could construct a poll showing that Virginians think the King of Siam would make a better governor than Tim Kaine. But it would be an artificial construct, not a reflection of reality.

Because the Washington Post and SurveyUSA polls reflect the mental constructs of those who fashioned the questions, they aren’t terribly meaningful in plumbing public sentiment.

My wife and I took our annual tour last weekend through the beautiful Virginia countryside to partake of fall foliage, lovely vistas, wine tasting, fine dining and the Commonwealth’s rich historical heritage. It just so happens that the area we love the most — the rolling hills between Charlottesville and the Potomac River — overlaps with the Virginia portion of the Journey Through Hallowed Ground.

Among the friends we visited was Cate Magennis Wyatt, who, as coincidence would have it, is the driving force behind Journey Through Hallowed Ground. Her immediate goal is to win federal designation as a National Heritage Area for the historical swath between Charlottesville and Gettysburg, Pa. Longer term, she wants to preserve historical sites as well as the unique landscapes and lifestyles of the region by building tourism and agriculture.

Wyatt, a former real estate portfolio manager and developer, is a capitalist. She is building a preservation program based on respect for property rights and market principles. The National Heritage Area designation, she says, will prohibit the acquisition of land through condemnation. Further, no federal funds from the NHA legislation will be used to purchase land. The proper way to preserve the region’s history and character, Wyatt insists, is (a) to build awareness of the region’s rich heritage, (b) to raise private funds to buy irreplaceable properties, and (c) to find economic models for agriculture and tourism that will make the property more valuable in its current uses than it would be if carved up for subdivisions and shopping centers.

Wyatt outlines some of her views in an op-ed piece in the Loudoun Times-Mirror. But that column barely scratches the surface of her fertile thinking. Some of her ideas are still in the formulation stage, so it is premature to discuss them. Suffice it to say that if a mere fraction of them come to fruition, Journey Through Hallowed Ground will become a textbook study in historical conservation.

By the way, if you’re looking for a fun weekend retreat, consider Virginia’s northern piedmont. You can order the Journey Through Hallowed Ground travel guide here.

This issue will bear watching: Sen. Kenneth W. Stolle, R-Virginia Beach has scolded the chief justice of the Virginia Supreme Court for overstepping his authority in seeking to reform the state’s mental-health laws. Covering a Senate subcommittee hearing yesterday, Bill McElway with the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports:

Stolle wondered aloud if the Supreme Court has become an activist body. He warned Lucyk that the high court’s role is one of administering the courts and deciding the law, not legislative priorities and spending recommendations.

“The more you talk, the more concerned I become,” Stolle said when Lucyk gently tried to rebuff any suggestion that the mental-health-reform commission intends to overstep the legislature’s role.

The unusual flare-up came just days after Chief Justice Leroy R. Hassell Sr. told several dozen people involved in mental-health issues to work over the coming year to revamp mental-health laws in Virginia. …

Stolle, chairman of the Senate Courts of Justice Committee, said, “I don’t think it’s appropriate if judges don’t like what we are doing with mental health, to tell us how we should deal with mental health. “I think they ought to inform us on how mental-health issues impact the courts. And not to tell us how to do our job.”

Sen. Janet Howell, D-Fairfax, defended the chief justice. Virginia is in a crisis, she said. Overcrowded jails have become warehouses for the mentally ill, state funds are lacking to properly care for them, and cases are spilling into the courts. If the reform effort comes down to money, Stolle responded, that is the bailiwick of the legislature, not the courts.

For once I find myself agreeing with Stolle. If state mental health policies break the law, the state Supreme Court should say so. But it’s up to the Governor and the General Assembly, not the judges, to figure out how to fix them.

The case seemed so compelling: Dr. Christopher S. Walsh, operator of a cancer-treatment clinic in rural Westmoreland County, pleaded with a legislative/citizen commission to require insurance companies to cover a novel radiation therapy known as solid compensator Intensity Modulated Radiation Treatment. He lined up expert witnesses to testify on his behalf and cancer survivors to tell how the treatment saved them.

But Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, which dropped its coverage of the treatment earlier this year, claims that the advantages of the expensive procedure have not been clinically proven. “If IMRT eventually is not found to be the safest and most effective . . . we would be forced to pay for treatment that may not be safe and effective,” said Dr. Mae Ellen Terrebonne, vice president medical director for Anthem in Virginia.

According to Lawrence Latane with the Richmond Times-Dispatch, a report by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission calculated that a full battery of treatments would cost about $16,500. That one set of procedures would be expensive enough to raise median monthly medical premiums by $1 per month if mandated by the state.

At one time, Virginia had more medical mandates than any almost every other state in the country — and it may still. The result was fantastic coverage for those who could afford the insurance — and no coverage at all for those who couldn’t. Small businesses who can’t afford to self-insure and exempt themselves from the mandates have little flexibility in the kind of insurance policies they offer. Mandates make it impossible, for instance, to offer bare-bones coverage that protects against catastrophic illnesses and allows patients the benefits of negotiated rates on routine expenses — which is certainly preferable to no coverage at all for those one million Virginians who lack it.

The decision of which procedures get covered should be left to the medical experts and the actuaries who design insurance policies for different market segments — not to the political process, where decisions can be manipulated by heart-wrenching anecdotes.

The Washington region is third only to New York and Chicago for the percentage of workers with “extreme commutes,” defined as 60 minutes or more each way, according to “Commuting in America III,” published by the Transportation Research Board. (For a snappy summary of the findings, read the coverage in the Washington Post.)

The study offers an abundance of data about commuting trends. (Read a digest of cool commuter facts here.) Work travel constitutes only 16 percent of total travel. (Ever notice how congested it’s getting on Saturdays?) … Because most immigrants are working age, they’re more like to drive to work. Hispanic immigrants also are more likely to carpool…. Commuting from suburb to suburb now accounts for 46 percent of all commuting…. Driving alone continues to increase, while walking to work is declining precipitously…. Average commute times have increased from 21.7 minutes in 1980 to 25.5 minutes in 2000….

Of particular interest to me is the “extreme commuting” number. Here are the rankings for major Virginia metro areas:

3. Washington, 12.83 percent of commuters
33. Hampton Roads, 4.89 percent of commuters
38. Richmond, 4.46 percent of commuters

Of the 12 counties with the highest percentage of long commutes in the country, the Washington area has three: Prince William, Va., and Prince George’s and Montgomery in Maryland.