Bacon's Rebellion

by James A. Bacon

A subcommittee of the Commonwealth Transportation Board is discussing new criteria for the distribution of state dollars for road and highway maintenance. At the urging of CTB member Sheppard Miller, a Norfolk businessman and urban at-large member, Virginia Department of Transportation staff will present data at the next subcommittee meeting showing how the state funding formula, which currently is based upon the number of lane miles in a transportation district, might change if it incorporates measures such as Vehicle Miles Traveled or indicators of economic activity.

The subcommittee, which met in Portsmouth this afternoon, is charged with examining how state maintenance dollars might be more efficiently or effectively spent. Subcommittee members raised a variety of issues but Sheppard focused like a heat-seeking missile on the funding formula and drove the conversation toward the adoption of criteria that would give measures of traffic congestion and economic impact equal weight with lane-miles.

The current system distributes funds to areas that can’t put all the money to good use and short-changes areas with major maintenance backlogs, Miller charged. He cited a road he is familiar with, Rt. 33, which runs through an unspecified rural county. The road had no cracks or potholes but VDOT repaved it anyway. “Government fixes things that don’t need fixing and doesn’t fix things that do,” he said. “From my vantage point, the system we have now is neither equitable or efficient.”

Miller reiterated his view that every district should receive enough funding to maintain a minimum of service — a safety net — no matter how low the traffic counts. After all, he explained, people need to get to work or drive to the hospital. But he objected to the gold-plating of little-traveled rural roads. He suggested adding a measure like Vehicle Miles Traveled, which reflects how many people are using the roads. That figure could be adjusted for the number of heavy trucks, which tend to inflict more damage on pavement than automobiles. Such an adjustment would benefit areas like Norfolk, which has heavy port-generated truck traffic, and the coalfields, where heavy-laden coal trucks pound the roads.

John Lawson, VDOT’s chief financial officer, noted that the Federal Highway Administration uses three criteria when allocating Interstate-maintenance funds to the states: 1/3 based on lane miles, 1/3 based on vehicle miles traveled, and 1/3 based on revenue generated by commercial vehicles. The third criteria captures an economic dimension of the highways that the other measures did not.

Gary Garczynski, a Woodbridge developer and urban at-large member, agreed that the economic dimension was critical, especially given Governor Bob McDonnell’s emphasis on jobs and economic development. He also suggested that Northern Virginia localities ought to get some credit for their large investments in mass transit, which takes traffic off the roads.

James Lee Keen, a rural at-large member from the coalfields of Southwest Virginia, gave Miller some gentle pushback, reminding the subcommittee how much the maintenance funds meant to a jurisdiction like Dickenson, a mountainous county of 18,000 people lacking a single four-lane road. “If we look today at what’s being spent on Dickenson County, I venture to say that we’re not spending the money we think,” he said. “I think it’s only a very small amount of money. But it’s very important to the quality of life of the people who live there.”

A related issue, which received only brief discussion, was the idea of abandoning transportation assets that could not longer be economically justified. Miller gave the example of a bridge in Suffolk that VDOT shut down, even though it added many miles to the commute of local residents. “Those people were disadvantaged,” he said. “But the cost to maintain it was more than the value of having it.” In the previous meeting, the subcommittee discussed stricter criteria for admitting new subdivision roads into the state system but did not return to the subject today.

Ideally, suggested Miller, subcommittee members would reach a consensus on the desired criteria based on their merits before looking at how the numbers shook out for individual localities. But he had no illusions. “Somebody’s ox is going to get gored,” he said. “We’re all going to get parochial. We’ll look at how the numbers work out and see how it affects us.”

Important update: A number of people, me included, have been laboring under an illusion about how Virginia’s maintenance funds are allocated. The issue didn’t surface to be resolved until Shep Miller brought up the subject at the regular CTB meeting two days following the subcommittee meeting described above. Connie Sorrell, VDOT’s chief of systems operations, set the record straight. Two points. First, “lane miles” are the criteria used to divvy up only maintenance funds between cities and towns. Second, the allocation of funds among counties whose roads are maintained by VDOT (which excludes Arlington and Henrico) is done on the basis of need. “Need” is determined by the condition of roads and bridges as tracked under VDOT’s asset management plan.

Unfortunately, it appears that a good deal of the first two subcommittee meetings was wasted as Miller pursued his line of thinking based upon a misunderstanding. Why did not someone set him straight?

This article was written thanks to a sponsorship of the Piedmont Environmental Council.

by James A. Bacon

Tolls on Interstate 95? They could be in our future. The Federal Highway Administration yesterday granted the Virginia Department of Transportation preliminary approval to a request by Governor Bob McDonnell to toll the Interstate, subject to certain “important steps” that VDOT must take before full approval is granted, according to a press release issued by the governor’s office.

It was not clear from the press release where the McDonnell administration will place the tolls or what rates would be charged. In a May 2010 Washington Post article, written when Virginia submitted the request, Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton said he was contemplating tolls of $2 to $4 at a location near the North Carolina border with the goal of capturing primarily inter-state traffic. But the Times-Dispatch says today that state officials will look at other locations because the feds “want tolls to be collected in the areas where the money will be spent.”

In yesterday’s press release, VDOT estimated that tolls could generate $50 million annually. The revenues could be applied to widening the highway between I-295 north of Richmond and the North Carolina border, enhancing Intelligent Transportation Systems, installing over-height detectors on bridges, widening shoulders, installing guardrails, and improving pavement on more than 700 lane-miles within the corridor.

McDonnell described the heavily traveled highway corridor as having “deficient pavements and structures, congestion, higher crash density and safety concerns.” The entire I-95 corridor averages a level of service of ‘D’ and some more urban portions are ‘F’ during peak periods.

I have to say, this announcement took me by surprise. I had no inkling of it. The conservative radio talk shows will probably have a field day with it. But I have no objection in principle to tolling I-95, with the provisos, which the McDonnell administration apparently intends to abide by, that (1) the funds will be restricted to making improvements within the corridor, and (2) the money will be spent in the areas in which they are collected. The guiding principle is that the user/beneficiary of the project pays. Thus, if a priority project is widening I-95 between Hanover County and Petersburg, motorists in the Richmond metropolitan region are the ones who should pay the tolls — not motorists in Northern Virginia or Emporia.

I have to agree with the Federal Highway Administration on this one: Charging $2 to $4 at a single location near the North Carolina border was a terrible idea. The whole purpose was to soak inter-state travelers while exempting drivers in the Richmond-Petersburg area who use the Interstate every day. Such a strategy would invite a retaliatory response from North Carolina. It would set a horrific precedent that could be replicated nationally.

It’s too early to say whether the tolls, even as provisionally approved, are a good idea. I’d like to see the McDonnell administration’s cost-benefit study — assuming there is one. Politically, imposing a toll on a road where there was none will be wildly unpopular. People want the improvements — but they want “someone else” to pay for them. But in the abstract an Interstate corridor as important as I-95 should have an ongoing source of revenue to pay for maintenance and upgrades, much as is done in the case of the Powhite Parkway/Downtown Expressway here in the Richmond region. Of course, the devil is in the details.

(Note: It appears that Peter beat me to the punch on this topic. We were drafting posts simultaneously. He published his first.)

Update: In the post below, Peter contends that the toll amounts to a tax. I think it’s too early to say. It all depends on how the money is spent. It is useful to distinguish between “taxes” and “user fees.” With user fees, people pay for a good or service they receive from the government, such as access to roads and highways. If the tolls exceed the sum needed to pay for maintaining and upgrading the roads and if the surplus is diverted to another use — think Dulles Toll Road and Rail-to-Dulles — then it would constitute a tax. We’ll have to see where McDonnell wants to put the I-95 tolls and how he proposes to spend the money. On the other hand, from the standpoint of political perceptions, the tolls inevitably will be considered a tax because they will be imposed on roads that people had previously ridden upon toll-free.