Tim Kaine lost my vote today.
I’d genuinely been undecided on whether to vote for Kaine or Jerry Kilgore. Kilgore has the better stance on taxes, but Kaine has — make that had — the better transportation policy. In particular, Kaine acknowledges that a root problem of traffic congestion in Virginia today is the disjunction between land use planning and transportation planning. Local governments are approving development projects without regard to the impact on regional transportation networks — only too happy to let the Virginia Department of Transportation clean up the mess they create.
Kilgore has some interesting ideas on how to approach transportation, but Kaine, I thought, had the more profound understanding of the problem. Apparently, I was wrong. According to Chris Jenkins of the Washington Post, Kaine advocates giving local governments the power to reject rezoning requests with a negative traffic impact. Sayeth the Post:
In one new ad, the announcer says, “As you inch your way home in traffic, ask yourself, ‘Is the problem that you don’t pay enough taxes, or is it runaway development?’ Then the candidate says: “We can’t tax and pave our way out of traffic.”
Kaine gets half of it right: We cannot tax and pave our way out of traffic congestion. But he gets the other half woefully wrong. The solution is not giving local governments additional power to halt development projects on the grounds that they would “overwhelm nearby roads,” as Jenkins puts it. Very rarely does a major developer try to develop a tract of land where the transportation infrastructure is obviously inadequate unless he has concrete plans for fixing the problem. No one will buy his houses otherwise. The problem tends to be with smaller projects — builders who want to add just one more subdivision to a road that’s already pushing the limit.
Giving local governments the power to reject projects on the basis of traffic impact will give them the power to reject virtually any project they don’t like. But it won’t stop growth. It will only relocate growth to more remote jurisdictions where local traffic congestions aren’t as bad … yet. While this provision may provide relief locally, it will only aggravate problems regionally. Developers will find land in ever more remote locales to build their subdivisions, and homebuyers will buy those homes for a lack of an alternative. When they commute to work, they will crowd onto the same limited number of transportation arteries. In sum, Kaine’s plan will only relocate traffic congestion. But people will be forced to driver longer distances in the bargain.
The problem isn’t growth. It’s the pattern of growth — the scattered, disconnected, low-density growth that has prevailed in Virginia over the past 50 years. Tim Kaine’s plan would do nothing to change the pattern growth. Indeed, Kaine’s proposal would make growth even more scattered and more disconnected. The proposal is a very, very bad idea — so bad that it overwhelms the positive aspects of what had been a respectable transportation plan. Unless Kaine reverses his stand I cannot vote for him.
Kilgore isn’t showing the kind of leadership I’d like to see on taxes and transportation, but at least his plank won’t make matters visibly worse. Unless he commits a serious gaffe — a possibility not to be dismissed — he’s got my vote.
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