Bacon's Rebellion

Double-digit increases in the prices of cement, asphalt and diesel fuel will cost the Virginia Department of Transportation an additional $180 million this year for maintenance and construction projects, reports the Virginian-Pilot. “The higher costs are forcing VDOT managers in Hampton Roads to switch to cheaper, less durable asphalt for some paving work planned this spring.”

Said Jeffrey C. Southard, executive vice president of the Virginia Transportation Construction Alliance: “In the last two years, we’ve seen construction costs go up unlike anything we’ve seen in the last 50 years.”

There are two possible ways to respond. The first is to continue Business As Usual, refusing to alter Virginia’s practice of adding new road capacity to meet demand and raising taxes to pay the escalating bills for raw material. The second is to seek alternatives to the tax-and-build philosophy.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said in his campaign that Virginia can’t pave its way out of traffic congestion. Now it looks like Virginia might even not be able to pave over its potholes. But the Governor is expending his political capital in support of a Business As Usual transportation policy. Go figure.

Students at the University of Virginia once upheld the tenets of the Honor Code as an absolute ideal. Lying, cheating and stealing were impermissable behaviors… no exceptions. The penalty was expulsion. But those high standards are being corroded by moral relativism, situational ethics and rank opportunism.

An introduction to a story in The University of Virginia Magazine starts this way:

Warning to hard-core U.Va. traditionalists: What follows may upset you. Simply put, the University is changing—and has been for decades. So, too, is the Honor System.

While polls find that students endorse an honor system in concept, they appear less willing to hold each other accountable, preferring to leave the heavy lifting to an increasingly skeptical faculty. Meanwhile, fueled in part by a high-profile public trial last fall, critics charge that students’ unwillingness to impose the single sanction—permanent expulsion—allows some guilty students to go unpunished. Clearly, U.Va.’s Honor System is in danger of suffering irreparable damage.

In a society that does not uphold honor and integrity as supreme ideals, lies, dishonesty and corruption are sure to follow. Nowhere is this trend more evident than in electoral politics. The disgraceful news out of Washington, D.C., speaks for itself. But Virginia is not immune. The Old Dominion has become a place where candidates for high office routinely vow not to raise taxes then turn around when they get elected and raise them…. And no one, not even the Fourth Estate, the so-called guardian of the public trust, holds them to account. We get the politics we deserve.

The following comment was deposited at the end of the “THERE IS STILL A CHANCE” post below. That post sketches out a potential shared-vehicle system to serve the National Capital Subregion. The comment was made by the well-known scholar and transportation expert “anonymous.”

“For a long time the assumption has been that offering more public transit service options would reduce traffic congestion. But despite the more than $300 billion in taxpayer money spent to expand the quantity and quality of public transit over the last four decades, its share of travel has declined. While the number of transit passenger-miles has risen slightly over this period, its share of urban travel has decreased.”

Sage sounding comments such as this are made by those who mistakenly believe that mobility and access can be provided to 21st century human settlement patterns by expanding roadways for private-vehicles. Almost all these statements are paid for directly or indirectly by those who profit from Business-As-Usual.

The sponsors of lobby groups and some “think tanks” and university “research centers” believe they would lose economic advantage from the evolution of functional human settlement patterns and efficient mobility and access systems that could effectively serve these patterns of urban land use.

What statements like this really demonstrate is the profound Geographic Illiteracy of the poster, anonymous or not. See “Geographic Illiteracy” and “The Myths That Blind Us” at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com

Here are some Antidotes for the misconceptions in this comment:

The root cause of “traffic congestion” is dysfunctional human settlement patterns. No transport system can effectively or efficiently serve scattered urban land uses in large New Urban Regions, period. See “Spinning Data, Spinning Wheels” and “Regional Rigor Mortis” at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com

The high cost of contemporary shared-vehicle systems is in large part cause by imbalanced system loading. (E.g. for METRO, most of the trains leave most of the stations, most of the time, essentially empty.) Some of this is due to inept management but most of it is due to dysfunctional human settlement patterns in the shared-vehicle station areas. See the “METRO WEST – 22 YEARS TOO LATE” post on this Blog (28 March 2006 now archived) and “It Is Time to Fundamentally Rethink METRO” at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com

The reason that ridership of shared-vehicle systems has not increased faster is that the grossly subsidized scatteration of urban development cannot be served even by heavily subsidized shared-vehicle systems.

Dysfunctional settlement patterns mean that most citizens who need to travel have no choice but to resort to a private-vehicle. See Jim Bacon’s current column on Pod People at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com

Urban citizens of Virginia (many of them Pod People) do not love their cars any more than urban Bavarians, they just do not have the choices which citizens of most First World New Urban Regions enjoy. Again this is due to settlement patterns that prevent citizens from meeting life’s needs without resorting to any vehicle or conveniently using shared vehicles. Those who choose to drive can do so until gasoline and its substitutes become too expensive.

Jim Bacon has recently noted government actions that thwart competition in the provision of shared vehicles. Eliminating these barriers will help.

In the long run there must be New Urban Region-wide (and Urban Support Region-wide) settlement patterns that can be served by functional transport systems. The backbone of those system will be a public, shared vehicle system supported by many integrated sub-systems including ones that support private-vehicles.

Recent applications of 21st Century Shared-Vehicle Systems (CSVS21s) demonstrate that New Urban Regions with functional human settlement patterns can be served effectively and efficiently.*

How are functional human settlement patterns achieved? Fairly allocate location-variable costs of all goods and services and let the market do the rest.

How do citizens achieve the Fundamental Change in settlement patterns and the Fundamental Change in governance structure necessary to fairly allocate location-variable costs of goods and services and replace the current system of subsidies and pork barrel transport?

In a democracy with a market economy the only answer is better educated citizens who vote and buy based on their enlightened self-interest.

PROPERTY DYNAMICS coming to an Alpha Neighborhood near you soon.

*Note: CSVS21 systems are some times called Advanced Rapid Transit (ART) or Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) and, in some cases (where the system capacity matches demand) Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). Nineteenth century and early 20th century systems like “heavy rail” (aka, METRO), “light rail,” “commuter rail” and conventional “bus” have useful applications but are not as well suited to contemporary needs as contemporary systems.

On the subject of neighborhoods and connectivity… Thanks to Jeremy Hinton for pointing to the Kecoughtan Road Master Plan for revitalizing the Kecoughtan neighborhood, his old stomping grounds near downtown Hampton.

According to the analysis by Urban Design Associates, the residential component of the neighborhood is still sound. But the commercial strip along Kecoughtan Road, which once served as a major transportation artery, has fallen on hard times as retail activity moved to regional shopping venues elsewhere. The Corridor Plan envisions shrinking and repositioning the retail sector in order to build a more balanced, better connected, more pedestrian-friendly neighborhood that takes better advantage of its waterfront.

The study lists six “guiding principles” that should frame public and private investment in the corridor:

1. Redefine the Kecoughtan Road Corridor primarily as a residential boulevard and neighborhood main street which will present an appropriate front door to the neighborhoods.

2. Create memorable places and events along the length of the Corridor which help reinforce the unique identity and history of the various neighborhoods.

3. Consolidate commercial land uses to the two existing neighborhood shopping centers as much as possible while still supporting viable neighborhood-oriented business elsewhere along the Corridor.

4. Eliminate non-neighborhood-friendly commercial uses while supporting commercial businesses which are truly neighborhood-serving.

5. Ensure that new development and redevelopment preserves and enhances the essential qualities of the neighborhoods: charm, water orientation, architectural styles, and the rich history of the area.

6. Establish connections to existing and proposed open spaces, the water, schools, and other facilities (my emphasis).

Giving credit where credit is due: The Washington Post is exploring the ramifications of the Kaine administration’s decision to put the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority in charge of toll roads and Metro rail for Northern Virginia’s 23-mile high-tech corridor. Steven Ginsberg filed this story describing the board that runs the MWAA.

Who will have the greatest say over the building of transportation infrastructure for Virginia’s 23-mile, high-tech corridor? A group of 13 men and women described as a “select mix of locals and out-of-towners, corporate executives and former politicians, transportation experts and real estate developers. … Five members are appointed by the governor of Virginia; two by the governor of Maryland; three by the mayor of the District; and three by the U.S. president. “

Will the MWAA board be accountable to the public? Ginsberg quotes Robert Clarke Brown, an adviser to the federal Transportation Department who lives near Cleveland and was appointed by former president Bill Clinton: “We are all a politically appointed board and each of us is accountable to our appointing authority. We’re very transparent in our operations.”

I’m generating remarkably little response for my commentary on what amounts to the most important executive decision made by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine in his young administration: the decision to give the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority significant control over the Dulles Toll Road and the Rail-to-Dulles Metro extension. But readership be damned. Some things just need writing about.

In a post made yesterday, I characterized the Kaine administration’s response to Speaker William J. Howell’s criticisms of the “Dulles Toll Road Giveaway Plan” as saying, in effect, “Trust us, we know what we’re doing.” The administration’s responses to that point did not address the substance of Howell’s charges.

Today, Kevin Hall from the Governor’s press office, has responded with substantive comments. (For those who need a refresher on the Speaker’s charges, you can read the press release here, and a transcript of the press conference here.) I post Hall’s comments here verbatim, without commentary:

1. A comprehensive review of the PPTA proposals and the MWAA proposal was conducted, and the MWAA proposal presented the most value for Virginia – by far. The MWAA proposal will support $4 billion in transportation improvements in the Dulles Corridor. The MWAA proposal was the only one that guaranteed completion of the rail project to Dulles Airport and Loudoun County.

2. The agreement does not stop private sector competition. To the contrary, it specifically requires MWAA to consider private sector proposals for HOT lanes and other highway congestion management strategies. The agreement establishes rail as the first priority in the corridor, consistent with the 30-year vision of the region.

3. The agreement guarantees that the entire rail extension will be constructed, and will accelerate completion of the entire project all the way to the Airport and Loudoun County. Virginia and MWAA share the primary goal of ensuring mobility in the Dulles Corridor. And the agreement does not vest land use authority with MWAA. That authority remains solely with the localities.

4. All of the four private sector plans included cash payments for the rail project. The MWAA proposal represented by far the largest financial contribution to the Metrorail project. But I would suggest the region does not need “cash on the table”– it needs improvements on the ground. The private sector highway proposals may
very well have merit, but these will require considerable time to evaluate to determine if they meet state and federal planning criteria. On a project of this magnitude, every year of delay equates to at least $100 million in additional cost due to inflation and increasing construction costs alone.

5. On the toll issue, it is important to note that the private sector proposals also would require toll increases. I would suggest that MWAA is a known quantity in Northern Virginia, operating and rebuilding two major aiports and the Dulles Access Road, as well as providing free right-of-way for the Dulles Toll Road. They have been instrumental in numerous regional mobility initiatives since their inception nearly two decades ago – bringing the blue line to National Airport and opening the Dulles Access Road to transit providers.

6. Opportunties for additional federal most definitely were not “abandoned.” Federal funding for the 2nd phase of this project has never been guaranteed.

7. We look forward to providing additional information to the members of the General Assembly. Many of the legislators in the corridor, from both parties, wrote to endorse the proposal. All of the legislators from the corridor, as well as members of Congress from the region, joined the Governor at the press conference to announce the agreement.

8. As for Delegate Albo’s suggestion that Virginia look to a recent toll-road concession agreement in Indiana, I would merely say the MWAA agreement will result in $4 billion in transportation improvements in the Dulles Corridor. The Indiana agreement, for example, only returns 34% of the revenue to the corridor in which it is generated. Governor Kaine opposes using toll road revenues from the Dulles corridor to support projects in other parts of the Commonwealth.

9. Virginia is a recognized national leader in public private partnerships and employs nationally renowned advisors to help evaluate complex proposals of this nature. Our record on PPTAs and the business merits of this proposal speak for themselves. Each PPTA-type proposal is different and needs to be considered on its own merits.

Now we have some substantive statements to dig into. Comments anyone?

Critics have pointed out a problem with the House of Delegates budget projections, and this time I have to agree. Scott Leake, executive director of the Senate Republican Leadership Trust, puts it this way in today’s critique of the House budget:

“The House budget depends on over a half billion dollars on increased driver fines and fees, 590.2 million to be exact, over the next four years. The Senate expects less than half that amount.

“There are serious misgivings over whether that massive amount will ever materialize. Will low income and youthful drivers be able to comply? And can fees be imposed on actions made before a law is passed? We’ll see.”

Phil Rodokanakis raised that last point in his column today (“Taxing Drivers“). House Bill 527 would increase fines on drivers based on the number of points on their Division of Motor Vehicles driving records. But that amounts to fining someone ex post facto — making someone pay penalties for driving offenses he may have committed before the law was passed! A big chunk of the House’s anticipated revenue could be subject to legal challenge.

Additionally, motorists aren’t going to twiddle their thumbs while the state slaps them with huge fines. As an anonymous Bacon’s Rebellion blogger commented, with more to lose, more motorists will hire lawyers to dispute their tickets — and some will win. The state cannot extrapolate revenue based upon previous patterns based on low fines. Another downside: state police will spend more time testifying in court, less time handing out tickets.

I have to agree with Leake on this one: The senate revenue projections look more responsible than the Houses’ on this particular issue.

Virginians are so inured to the dysfunctional layout of their physical environment — the separation of land uses; the physical disconnect between houses, offices and stores built in pods; the stringing of those pods along feeder and arterial roads — that they take it forgranted. Like the air they breathe, they cannot see it. If they cannot see it, they cannot question the absurdity of it.

I’ve written about the “disconnected” nature of contemporary development patterns in the abstract, but I’m not sure if readers understood what I was driving at. Therefore, I’ve devoted my latest e-zine column to rendering the abstract in concrete terms, illustrating with words, maps and photos how pod-style development contributes to traffic congestion in western Henrico County. Read “Pod People.”

Last Thursday, House Speaker William J. Howell blasted Gov. Timothy M. Kaine for handing over responsibility for the Dulles Toll Road and the 23-mile Rail-to-Dulles Metro extension to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.

In a press conference, the Speaker outlined his concerns in considerable detail. By abandoning a number of public-private partnership proposals, Howell charged, Kaine had forfeited half a billion dollars in up-front payments to the Commonwealth, failed to assure that commuters will receive timely relief from traffic congestion and failed to protect Dulles Toll Road Commuters from high tolls.

The Kaine administration responded by releasing a letter that Secretary of Transportation Pierce R. Homer had written Howell on Aug. 9, 2005 — half a year ago. The letter does not address the specific issues Howell raised last week. In effect, it is a non-answer.

What Homer did in the letter was defend the process for evaluating what to do with the Dulles Toll Road. The process sounds reasonable enough. The Commonwealth Transportation Board has engaged the services of the Public Resources Advisory Group, a financial advisor that does not underwrite, trade or market securities and, therefore, has no conflict of interest regarding the advice it dispenses. I would value the judgment of an independent outfit like PRAG over that of an investment banking firm hoping to make millions in underwriting fees.

Homer further stated that he would endeavor to “resolve and clarify the role and status of the Federal Aviation Administration, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, and Fairfax County.” Additionally, he said he would identify major policy issues, including: “the duration of tolling; the type of tolling in the corridor, including congestion pricing; the duration of any potential concession agreement; potential limits on toll rates and rates of return; revenue sharing among public and private partners; long-term maintenance obligations; and future land uses in the corridor.”

It sounds like Pierce was asking many of the right questions. But that half-year-old letter doesn’t provide any of the answers, and it doesn’t address key questions in Howell’s remarks. In effect, the Kaine administration is saying, “We know what we’re doing, just trust us.”

That appears to be good enough for the daily newspapers, which have dropped the issue. If Homer used a few thousand public dollars to unnecessarily charter a private airplane, go hunting in Africa or take his co-workers for a little topless-bar entertainment, the fearless Mainstream Media would be all over the story. But if the House Speaker accuses the Kaine administration of writing off a half-billion dollars in a bad business decision, the story doesn’t merit an inch of ink. Pathetic.

I suspect that Homer has reasonable answers to Howell’s questions, but we won’t know for sure until we hear them. And we probably won’t — because no one is pressing for them.

Update: The Washington Post has published an editorial that does a fairly balanced job of summarizing high-altitude issues in the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority deal.

The April 3, 2006, edition of the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine has been published. You can view it here. This week’s columns include:

Pod People
By stringing disconnected pods of development along our main roads, local planning policies force Virginians into their cars and aggravate traffic congestion.
by James A. Bacon

Getting to Yes
Some great values, respect, decisiveness and experience were on display this week.
by Doug Koelemay

Democracy as National Religion
Contemporary Americans worship democracy and majority rule. They forget that the United States also is a republic, which imposes checks and balances against the tyranny of the mob.
by Patrick McSweeney

Where Have I Heard This Before?
Tim Kaine says his $1 billion tax increase will help relieve traffic congestion. Sounds uncannily similar to claims made in 1986.
by Patrick McSweeney

Warner Watchdog
To most Virginians, Mark Warner may be out of sight and out of mind. But the Blue Dog faithfully keeps tabs on the former governor’s national ambitions.
by Steven Sisson

Do We Need It All?
Virginia’s wish list of transportation projects fund includes many that will do little to relieve traffic congestion. Virginia needs to rethink the way it sets its funding priorities.
by Geoffrey Segal

Taxing Drivers
Desperate for a new source of transportation revenues, the House has passed a bill that is clearly unconstitutional — fining drivers for offenses committed before the law was passed.
by Philip Rodokanakis

Funny Money
It’s all play money to the economic geniuses in the state Senate. The senators’ transportation- financing plan doesn’t make a lick of economic sense.
by Jim Bowden

None of Your Business
No need for Kaine and McDonnell to argue over the governor’s authority to bar discrimination by sexual orientation. A Supreme Court ruling limits government’s discretion already.
by Becky Dale

Straight Talk about Gay Rights
Nondiscrimination in the state workforce should extend to sexual orientation. The only criteria that should affect employees’ work status should be professional performance.
by Jay Gandy

Nice & Curious Questions:
Happy Trails to You:
Virginia’s Unbeaten Paths
by Edwin S. Clay III and Patricia Bangs

It is now clear that governance practitioners, land speculators, design-build investors and their agents have moved the status of mobility and access in the northern part of Virginia to the brink of chaos. When Bacon’s Rebellion and the Metro section of WaPo agree, it is time for profound concern. See today’s story “Fairfax Frets Over Tysons as Dulles Rail Evolves.”

Nineteenth century technology, ballooning costs driven by public and private actors trying to load the train with pork and a total lack of regional or subregional plans that balance human settlement patterns with mobility systems spell disaster.

There is still a chance to snatch mobility from the jaws of gridlock. Here is a slightly revised sketch plan for system changes that would provide mobility and access for the National Capital Subregion. It is based on a plan S/PI outlined for a client several years ago:

1. Extend METRO from West Falls Church to Tysons Corner. Pay a substantial part of the cost from long term leases on the air rights for station-area development at three stations over VA Route 123 and VA Route 7. (See “Blueprint for a Better Region: Putting Development in the Right Places.”)

2. Build a 21st century PRT system from Dulles Airport to the Anacostia waterfront with service to Reston (three stations with station-area development on platforms with leased air-rights over the DAAR) Tysons (tie to METRO Orange Line) Massachusetts Ave Corridor, Georgetown, North of M Street Crosstown (tie to METRO Red and Green lines) Union Station(tie to METRO Red Line, AMTRAK, VRE and MARC), Capitol Hill (tie to METRO Orange and Blue Lines) and South Capital Corridor to Anacostia (tie to METRO Green Line).

3. Build out the changes called for in “It Is Time to Fundamentally Rethink METRO” on the Bacon’s Rebellion website.

The alternatives look very bleak as depicted in both Bacon’s Rebellion and WaPo. The very worst prospect for the future of mobility and access is the Python Plan by the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority. See “Reality-Based Regionalism” at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com

EMR

The proposed extension of the Washington Metro heavy rail service to Dulles Airport is the biggest infrastructure project in Virginia today. The project will cost some $4 billion, and it will impact billions more in real estate development in one of the nation’s hottest technology corridors. Multi-billions of dollars in contracts and development opportunities ride on the outcome of how the heavy rail project is built and financed.

It stands to reason that private-sector interests are lobbying heavily behind the scenes for an outcome that favors them. Indeed, private-sector lust for getting a piece of the multi-billion Metro jackpot may explain why less costly alternatives such as Bus Rapid Transit are getting no serious consideration.

House Speaker William J. Howell has leveled substantive criticisms against a decision by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to give the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority power to set tolls on the Dulles Toll Road and control many aspects of the planned Metrorail extension. Pardon my cynicism, but I find it difficult to imagine Kaine making the decision he did, or Howell making the charges he did, without a Greek chorus of private sector interests egging them on. I’m not suggesting that either man is carrying water for anyone, but I am suggesting that neither man is acting in a vacuum.

The Rail-to-Dulles story is huge. It is not merely a story about the clash of political personalities: Kaine vs. Howell. It can’t be shoe-horned into a simple political narrative such as the ongoing struggle between the Axis of Taxes and the foes of taxes. This also is a story about the power of government to commandeer billions of dollars of resources from taxpayers and to shower private-sector intersts with billions of dollars in engineering contracts, construction contracts, bond deals and development opportunities.

The public has no hope of fully understanding this story until it understands the array of special interests that have lined up behind the Governor and the Speaker. We can always hope that the Mainstream Media will do its job and dig past the dueling sound bites and press releases. But we can’t count on it. This is a job for the blogosphere.

So much for my predictions of a media firestorm. The Washington Post gave 10 paragraphs of space to a story about House Speaker William J. Howell’s criticisms of the Governor’s Rail-to-Dulles gambit — and that included three paragraphs of rebuttal. What the heck, it’s only the largest infrastructure project in the Washington New Urban Region, costing a projected $4 billion and impacting billions of dollars of future real estate development. Wouldn’t want to go overboard, would we?

Judging from the Post’s coverage, the Kaine administration’s strategy at this point is to simply ignore the Speaker’s criticisms. (See previous post, “Kaine has Stuck His Hand in the Hornet’s Nest.”) If the media ignores the criticisms and Kaine ignores them, maybe they will fade into oblivion. On the other hand, the response of Kevin Hall, the Governor’s press secretary, may simply reflect the questions posed by the reporter. If the reporter didn’t raise the Speaker’s criticisms point by point, Hall couldn’t very well answer them.

(Update: Jeff Schapiro’s article in the Times-Dispatch today noted that Kaine’s office “released an August letter to Howell from Secretary of Transportation Pierce Homer addressing concerns on which the speaker went public yesterday.” Bacon’s Rebellion has obtained a copy of that letter. You can read it here.)

In any case, here’s how Chris L. Jenkins with the Post characterized the Kaine response:

Kaine’s press secretary said the deal has the support of GOP lawmakers in Congress and the House of Delegates whose constituents use the toll road, including Sen. John W. Warner and Reps. Frank R. Wolf and Thomas M. Davis III, as well as Fairfax Dels. Thomas Davis Rust and Vincent F. Callahan Jr. Kevin Hall, the press secretary, said Howell was flouting the support from powerful members of his own party.

“I would suggest that the speaker’s antics today were rash and irresponsible,” Hall said. He rejected Howell’s contention that the governor’s office had not adequately vetted other proposals. “This is a proposal that is supported . . . by the region’s congressional delegation, General Assembly delegation and business community,” he said. “The proposal will allow the faster and cheaper completion of the entire project.”

Supporters of the deal say it would remove much of the uncertainty surrounding the nearly $4 billion project to build a rail line through Tysons Corner, Reston and the
airport and into Loudoun County because the airports authority would assume responsibility for the state and federal portion of the cost.

This story is big, very big. It may well reach media-frenzy status. On March 27, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine signed a memorandum of understanding handing over responsibility for the Dulles Toll Road and the Rail-to-Dulles Metro extension to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. The import of that decision eluded me at the time, and I let it pass without comment. Truth be told, I have no idea whether the decision was sound or unsound. The issues are incredibly complex, and they need to be aired thoroughly before anyone rushes to judgment.

But I will say this: House Speaker William J. Howell and Del. David B. Albo, R-Springfield, today made some troubling criticisms of the deal. Today’s press conference did not consist of the kind of rhetorical mud wrestling we’ve seen so much of during the General Assembly session. The delegates leveled substantive charges.

I list the charges here not to endorse them but simply to emphasize the immensely serious nature of a deal with a multi-billion impact on Northern Virginia commuters:

• The Administration failed to comprehensively analyze the long-term value of the Dulles Toll Road.
• The Administration cut off the PPTA process and stopped private-sector competition that would have ensured top value to the state for the long-term rights to Dulles Toll Road revenues.
• The agreement does not assure commuters will receive timely relief from traffic congestion.
• The agreement forfeits entirely a half billion dollars or more in up-front cash payment to the Commonwealth.
• The agreement fails to protect Dulles Toll Road commuters from high tolls.
• Opportunities to receive additional federal funding were abandoned by the Administration.
• The Administration failed to consult with the General Assembly before giving away the Dulles Toll Road, a state asset worth billions.

Because the Speaker does not post his press releases online, I will load them on Bacon’s Rebellion and make them accessible as soon as possible. They are worth close reading. I await a detailed response from the Governor’s Office.

Key Documents:

Gov. Kaine’s March 27, 2006, press release

Speaker Howell’s March 30, 2006, press release

Remarks by Speaker Howell, Del. Albo, March 30, 2006

Washington Post article, “Opposition Building Over Toll Road Deal,” March 30, 2006.

The Michigan legislature is giving serious attention to Rapid Transit, not only as a transportation alternative but as a strategy for urban renewal. In the state that once was synonymous with the automobile, that’s a big deal. Argues Keith Schneider with the Michigan Land Use Institute:

Since 1981, when San Diego built the new light rail line that started its remarkable downtown resurgence, 39 cities have opened new street car, light rail, and commuter rail systems in the United States. Each time, jobs, housing, businesses, and economic opportunity blossomed along their routes.

In Virginia, the solution to financing light rail may be Community Development Authorities (CDAs) and Tax Increment Financing. A CDA would encompass the property around a proposed transit stop. The authority would issue bonds, which would defray the cost of building the rail line, erecting the station, if any, and making other improvements within the authority boundaries. The bonds would be repaid by added taxes levied on the property owners covered by the authority. Presumably, landowners would be willing to pay the taxes because the transit and other improvements would increase the value of their property.

A string of CDAs could be constructed along the light rail route, raising large sums for the project – conceivably enough, when combined with fares and federal funds, to pay for all ofit.