Monthly Archives: September 2006

As Doug Koelemay observed in today’s column about the Tofflers’ new book, “Revolutionary Wealth,” different institutions evolve at different rates. If cutting-edge businesses are charging ahead at 100 miles per hour, labor unions are trotting along at 30 m.p.h. and government is trudging behind at 20 m.p.h. (Schools, political institutions and the law are even slower.)

Earlier today, the House of Delegates just mashed the accelerator. Demonstrating its seriousness about devising a comprehensive solution to Virginia’s transportation woes as opposed to papering them over with another round of taxes, House leaders unveiled a three-pronged package intended to bring Virginia land use policies into the 21st century.

These three bills would alter Virginia’s transportation debate beyond recognition. There is simply no way that the Axis of Taxes and the Mainstream Media can continue defining the debate as a simple issue of how much more money is needed and where it’s going to come from. The House is forcing the state Senate to contend with the link between land use and transportation at a more fundamental level than Virginia legislators ever had to before.

House Speaker William J. Howell summed up the philosophy behind the reforms:

Any plan to improve transportation that ignores one of the root causes of clogged roadways – namely, Virginia’s 70-plus-year-old government land use policies – is inherently inadequate, shortsighted and flawed. The Commonwealth can no longer afford to be timid or piecemeal in targeting solutions toward this aspect of the overall challenge. That is why our forward-looking legislation for the first time directly ties land use and transportation. I am firmly behind this initiative to introduce accountability and devolve management as part of a sweeping and much-needed overhaul of Virginia’s approach to land use policy.

The three initiatives include:

• Urban Transportation Service Districts. HB 5093 would allow local county governments to create “urban transportation service districts” and assume responsibility for maintaining all secondary (i.e., subdivision) roads. The state would give localities road maintenance funds equal to what VDOT would spend anyway, which localities could supplement with impact fees.
• Urban Development Areas. HB 5094 would require every county to amend its comprehensive plan to incorporate at least one “urban development area” sufficient to satisfy a full decade of projected residential growth. The goal is to require localities to plan for future development, eliminating the “haphazard ‘shotgun’ approach that has resulted in uneven sprawl and subsequent road congestion,” and to strike a better balance between settlement patterns and transportation system capacity.
• Subdivision streets. HB 5096 would end the practice of taking additional subdivision streets into the state secondary highway system, effective January 1, 2007. Currently, the state code requires VDOT to accept into the Commonwealth’s secondary system any new roads that meet state standards, with the result that Virginia has added approximately 1,500 center-lane miles to its secondary road system over the past 10 years, adding considerably to the state’s roadway maintenance budget. The thinking is to make localities responsible for maintaining the streets in subdivision developments that they approve.

These are refreshing ideas but the devil is in the details. That’s all I’ll say for now. I’ll post again in the future when I’ve had a chance to absorb these ideas and assimilate feedback. To read the Speaker’s press release with full details, click here.

Two weeks ago I wrote a column (“The Dog that Didn’t Bark“) about Philip Shucet’s rethinking of the politics of transportation. While emphasizing that he hadn’t given up his long-term goal of increasing taxes by some $1 billion a year, the former VDOT commissioner had concluded that it might make more sense for now to seek common ground with low-tax Republicans in the House of Delegates.

It turns out that Shucet’s tactical retreat was not well received by his buddies in the Axis of Taxes. Margaret Edds with the Virginian-Pilot has written a follow-up story. She writes:

Stunned longtime allies manned telephones and computers to ask, had the former commissioner gone over to the other side? The reaction, Shucet said, was a combination of irate calls and stone silence.

In a long e-mail last week, Shucet reassured associates that he was not “doing my best to become the new Benedict Arnold … I’m still the same Philip. (At least I hope so!)”

The reaction to the Shucet column is very telling. I made it plain in the second paragraph and repeatedly lower in my column that Shucet still believes that tax increases are needed. But the mere willingness to consider alternatives was enough, it seems, to label him a heretic. That goes to the difference between Shucet and so many others who lobby for higher taxes: He acknowledges that higher taxes are only a partial solution — for them it’s the only solution.

Among the key figures in the Axis of Taxes, Shucet is the only one, to my knowledge, who has made a meaningful effort to articulate remedies other than tax-and-build. (See his penetrating Oct. 20, 2005 letter to the Senate leadership.) Sadly, Shucet’s associates seem interested mainly in his endorsement of higher taxes, not his recommendations for reform.

Also, Edds served up this juicy nugget:

After heavy courting from Democrats and some from moderate Republicans, he’s decided against running for the General Assembly himself anytime soon.

His parents, ages 88 and 96, have just moved in with the family. He’s able to be home regularly at night for the first time in years. “I did give it more than scant consideration, and it’s just not something I see myself doing,” he said.

I can’t blame him one bit.

The latest blogs to be added to the Bacon’s Rebellion blog roll:

Barticles, an exceptionally erudite blog maintained by Richmond Times-Dispatch columnist Barton Hinkle.

Coalition for Hanover’s Future, blog maintained by a coalition of citizens representing several organizations dedicated to protecting and preserving the land, history, and environment of Hanover County.

Southwest by Southeast, the blogged musings of a Southwest Virginia conservative living in Southeastern Virginia.

The House of Delegates has unveiled a dramatic package of land use reforms, and I’ve been so busy publishing the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine this morning that I haven’t had time to get to it. I will endeavor to do so this afternoon. In the meantime, I would plug a worthy legislative package submitted by Del. Chris Saxman, R-Staunton.

Saxman’s bills would encourage the U.S. Department of Transportation to establish a congestion-pricing demonstration project in Virginia. He would offset the congestion tolls by eliminating the gasoline tax in the transportation corridor covered by the tolls for the length of the project, and he would require a referendum within 12 to 18 months to allow citizens to scrap the tolls or make them permanent.

Unlike other tolls, and I cannot emphasize this enough, the primary purpose of congestion pricing is not to raise more money, although it would do that. The purpose is (a) to encourage motorists to use other transportation modes, shift their travel times or telecommute, thus reducing demand, and (b) to allow freeways to operate at optimal traffic levels thus increasing rush-hour capacity.

Embracing congestion-pricing tolls for all congested thoroughfares is the quickest, most cost-efficient thing that Virginia can do to ameliorate traffic congestion. The impact would be felt within a matter of months after implementation, as compared to the years or decades it would take for new road construction to take effect — assuming that new road construction is really the answer at all.

Indeed, I would argue that congestion tolls are the holy grail of the Axis of Taxes: a reliable and sustainable transportation funding source. The beauty of congestion pricing tolls is that they automatically adjust in response to market demand: If congestion gets worse, the tolls go up, and so do revenues for new transportation improvements. If congestion diminishes, the tolls go down. Of course, you can’t say that about new taxes passed by the General Assembly. Taxes only go up.

Finally, I would suggest that congestion pricing is an indispensable complement to land use reform. By increasing the cost of driving long distances on gridlocked arteries, congestion tolls would encourage people to move to well-integrated communities where they can live, work, shop, play and worship without hitting the highways. Shifting market demand would encourage developers to build those kind of communities, and developers would pressure local governments to approve them. Virginia doesn’t need to resort to social engineering to achieve more efficient settlement patterns.

I explore those issues in “The Swedish Solution.” For you policy wonks who want to deep-dive into the details, read “A Congestion Pricing Primer.” The Department of Transportation provides cogent answers to my questions about the economics of congestion pricing and the availability of federal funds for a demonstration project in Virginia.

The Sept. 25, 2006, edition of Bacon’s Rebellion has been published. You can view it here. Not only can you read this week’s punditry and profundity, you can peruse our archives. Why not subscribe, and get the e-zine sent directly to your in-box?

Today’s columns include:

The Swedish Solution
If congestion pricing works in Sweden, why not in Virginia? Tolls that vary by congestion levels could dampen demand for added roadway capacity while raising new revenue.
by James A. Bacon

A Congestion Pricing Primer
Answers? You want answers? I asked the U.S. Department of Transportation about its congestion-pricing policies. The answers were so good I had to reproduce them whole.
by James A. Bacon

Future Still Shocking
In our age of accelerating change, some institutions adapt more quickly than others. Insights from the Tofflers’ new book help explain the challenges facing Virginia.
by Doug Koelemay

Jackpot Winner
Americans are like the overweight Lotto winner who squanders his winnings. The discovery of oil deep in the Gulf of Mexico will do little to halt the coming energy crash.
by EM Risse

A New Transportation Equation
Virginia once led the nation in seeking private- sector solutions for transportation problems. We will have a chance in few days to burnish our tarnished capitalistic credentials.
by Geoffrey Segal

Pouring Water on Sand
Virginia legislators propose increasing subsidies for the Washington Metro — an unaccountable organization plagued by operational blunders and financial mismanagement.
by Phil Rodokanakis

No Regional Goverment!
If you like the idea of taxation without representation… if you’re looking to enrich your cronies without public oversight… you’ll love the idea of regional government.
by James Atticus Bowden

Who’s Watching the Richmond Media?
Part I: Community weeklies diverge on news council idea.
by Conaway Haskins

Who’s Watching the Richmond Media?
Part II: Blogs to the Rescue?
by Conaway Haskins

The Five-Legged Dog
Asserting that Rail to Dulles is an effective solution to Northern Virginia’s transportation problems does not make it so. The project is broken, and it’s time to re-think mobility solutions for the Dulles corridor.
by William Vincent

The Bridal Path to Nowhere
How Virginia can beat its traffic woes: Stop wasting money on dumb projects, establish performance measures and don’t give municipalities more power over land use!
by Ron Utt

Nice & Curious Questions
A Heartbeat Away: Vice Presidents from Virginia
by Edwin S. Clay III and Patricia Bangs

What the legislators are missing, or not, is this paragraph in bills for Hampton Roads Regional Governments:

“To the extent funds are made available to the Authority to do so, to employ employees, agents, advisors, and consultants, including WITHOUT LIMITATION, attorneys, financial advisors, engineers, and technical advisors, and, the provision of any other law to the contrary notwithstanding, to determine their duties and compensation.”

Don’t give that power to a council of city and county officials and some reps from the General Assembly.

Of course, this is precisely what the politicians want.

You can take Del. Leo Waldrup’s Bridge and Tunnel Authority and strip out this paragraph. Have the Bridge and Tunnel Authority collect money and decide what big projects to do, but give the executive function to adminster, manageand oversight to VDOT and the Governor.

I spoke to a very Conservative delegate this weekend. The delegate didn’t get the idea that the authority needed to be limited. Maybe I didn’t say it clearly enough.

It looks bad. Republicans are going to create a new level of unelected, unaccountable government for Hampton Roads. They may not do in the House Finance Committee, but they will roll in the Conference because they don’t understand what they are doing, or cynically, they understand exactly what they are doing.

The voters be damned. Our votes in ’98 and ’02 (and some in 05 against Kilgore’s Regional Governments) were meaningless when they come between politicians and much more power.

Sen. John Chichester, R-Northumberland, has been eerily quiet the past few months. While the House of Delegates has unveiled one new transportation initiative after another, the powerful chairman of the Senate finance committee has said very little. But in a column published today in the Free Lance-Star, he has finally laid out his thinking.

The bottom line: Nothing’s changed. His top priority is creating “a reliable and sustainable funding source ” for transportation — in other words, raising taxes. He comes across as a philosophical fossil, his views etched in stone, impermeable to new thinking.

While Chichester does give lip service to the goal of “squeez[ing] as much as we can out of every transportation dollar,” his heart isn’t in it. He writes:

During its 2006 session, the General Assembly made progress on the reform front. We passed laws that better connect land-use and transportation planning; laws that require performance measures to be used to reduce traffic congestion and improve traffic safety; and laws that promote private investment through partnering opportunities. We do not need more legislation to do what has already been done.

That’s it. Nothing more needs to be done. The House has introduced far-reaching VDOT reform proposals and is preparing to roll out a sweeping land use reform package early next week, but Chichester has written them off as inconsequential. He doesn’t simply disagree with the House recommendations, he acts as if they do not exist.

Furthermore, Chichester doesn’t see much good coming from privatization initiatives. He totally mischaracterizes the thrust of the House platform:

Those same people say the solution is simple — just attract more private capital to our transportation system. If that means selling a road that already has been paid for by taxpayers to a private entity so taxpayers have the pleasure of paying a second time, I call that double taxation. Some prefer to call it private enterprise.

That’s a straw man. The House privatization initiative does not call for selling roads. It calls for creating a “a detailed Action Plan to increase the role of the private sector in the development of transportation projects in Virginia as well as the use of public-private partnerships.” That doesn’t preclude selling existing roads but the obvious thrust is to aggressively identify opportunities to invest in new construction.

Chichester goes on: “Those same people say we can solve all of our problems by outsourcing more to the private sector. That’s well and good, but it ignores the reality that we already outsource more than 70 percent of road maintenance and more than 90 percent of new construction.”

Balderdash, no one says that privatization can “solve all our problems.” Privatization advocates say that outsourcing is only one piece of a comprehensive solution. Furthermore, Chichester fails to draw a distinction between “outsourcing” as currently practiced — hiring private contractors to handle piece-meal jobs — and the kind of outsourcing that reform advocates call for. With genuine outsourcing, VDOT would contract with private companies to manage maintenance for defined stretches of roadway over several years. VDOT would set performance standards and the contractor would accept the financial risk for failing to meet those standards.

As in the past, Chichester has provided no indication that he understands the connection between land use and transportation — that scattered, disconnected, low density development generates longer and more frequent automobile trips than do more efficient patterns of urban design. He never mentions telework or telecommuting. He never mentions congestion pricing. He never mentions Intelligent Transportation Systems. He never mentions Transportation Demand Management.

It is scary: The most powerful man in the state senate embodies a transportation philosophy that seems frozen in the amber of the 1970s: Tax, spend, build — and trust the politicians to get it all right.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has stated that, while he also wants to raise taxes, he is willing to work with the House to find common ground. Unfortunately, Chichester has made it very clear that he sees no common ground. We can only hope that Senate Democrats and a handful of low-tax Republicans will craft a Senate majority willing to follow the Governor’s lead in working with the House.

Last night I watched “The New World,” about the founding of the Jamestown colony. Although the movie focused mainly upon the interaction of the English and the Indians, the movie played out upon a backdrop of the Chesapeake Bay and James River. The pacing of the movie was insufferably slow, but the photography was stunning. The Bay, its tributaries and their wetlands are as beautiful as any place on earth. I find it heartening to see that the Virginia Tidewater still has spots of wilderness, that we have not totally destroyed our natural inheritance.

Which brings me to the news of the day…. Four hundreds years later, give or take a few months, the governors of Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, the mayor of Washington, D.C., the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have proclaimed that they have “stopped the bleeding” in the Chesapeake Bay. But they acknowledged that much remains to be done to fully restore the Bay to health. Reports Scott Harper with the Virginian-Pilot:

It was Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s first meeting with the Chesapeake Bay Executive Council, and the freshman Democrat used the occasion to urge a faster cleanup pace but also to keep some perspective.

Kaine said the vaunted cleanup of North America’s largest estuary has shown “steady improvement,” despite frustrations that it has taken more than 20 years and billions of dollars to reach this break-even point.

If we can say that we’ve halted the downward spiral of the Bay’s ecology, that’s progress indeed. But it will take billions more and decades more to restore it to the pristine condition of 1607. If you watch the movie, you will know that the effort is worthwhile.

(As an aside, “The New World” provides a vivid depiction of indian culture that is refreshingly free of Politically Correct claptrap in which the English settlers are the bad guys and the Indians are the noble savages. The movie portrays, correctly in my book, the interaction of two mutually uncomprehending civilizations.)

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine voiced strong support for the application of information technology to solve Virginia’s transportation problems. Meeting with Northern Virginia congressmen and business leaders yesterday, he said, “We’re all committed to the notion that part of the answer to some our transportation challenges is going to be more effective use of technology.” Reports Leesburg Today:

“We shared with the executives the things that we already do with nearly a thousand sensors in the statewide system, significant traffic cameras, and how that information is available in the public,” Kaine said, mentioning the commonwealth’s 511 traffic information system. …

But the thing that these executives really put on the table was a strong marker [of what’s to come]: “Be committed to giving consumers the most information possible about traffic, alternate routes, traffic conditions, the length of time a particular trip is taking today so you can see if it’s too long and you can decide to go another way,” Kaine said, adding that the current information could be integrated and expanded to provide consumers a better package.

The kind of data that Kaine is talking about can be downloaded real-time to websites and cell phones. It won’t be long before it is integrated with navigation systems in peoples’ automobiles. As Virginia starts experimenting with congestion pricing (make sure to read next Monday’s edition of the e-zine), which uses variable tolls to encourage motorists to time-shift their commutes or take alternate transportation modes, it will be indispensable to have robust tools that tell drivers where the problems are.

I know that Kaine remains committed to raising taxes for transportation, but he deserves credit for working diligently also to make the existing system work more efficiently.

The House of Delegates leadership has announced a legislative package that would dedicate $50 million a year in state funds over 10 years in order to qualify for matching federal funds to upgrade METRO service to Northern Virginia.

According to a press release from the Speaker of the House, the package would dedicate the first $20 million annually of the existing tax on automobile insurance premiums to Metro, and increase the portion of recordation tax receipts directed to localities by an additional $60 million, which would mean an additional $30 million for Northern Virginia.

The funding, says the press release “will support the Metro’s 10-Year Capital Improvement Program, developed to adequately recapitalize the system and keep its assets in a state of good repair.” Legislators provided only the barest of details of what METRO improvements they have in mind.

“These funds will help preserve and expand the commuting options for the citizens of eastern Prince William,” said [Del. Jeffrey M. Frederick, R-Woodbridge]. “Hopefully, as Metro does more to eliminate waste and make their operations more efficient, this investment, combined with the federal match, will help bring Metro into the 21st Century and begin the process of expanding the system to Woodbridge and points south.”

The METRO website says that its $12.2 billion, 10-year capital improvement plan would replace depreciated assets, increase the length of trains from four/six cars to eight, and add 114 miles of rail in multiple projects.

It was big headlines in the Mainstream Media when a coalition of twenty-some Northern Virginia business groups endorsed more taxes for transportation, but no news at all when 19 environmental/ conservation organizations sent an open letter to state lawmakers outlining their consensus position.

Because you didn’t see them anywhere else, I’m summarizing the key recommendations here:

• Reduce travel demand. Existing transportation plans are unaffordable even with additional funding, and should be reevaluated with an eye to reducing travel demand. No more open-ended commitment to endlessly expand capacity.
• Volatile energy prices are combining with a changing real estate market to change the type of transportation investments needed Translation: Developers are designing more pedestrian- and transit-friendly communities. State and local government is behind the curve.
• Performance standards at the state, regional and local levels should include goals to reduce per capita Vehicle Miles Traveled; increase market share for transit, carpooling, biking and walking; and increase the share of jobs and residences within walking distance. Transportation funding should be tied to meeting these goals.
• Evaluate alternatives. A full range of alternatives should be fairly and transparently evaluated for transportation projects, rather than zeroing in on a pre-selected approach.
• Public-private partnerships must maintain public oversight, make the planning process transparent, ensure that the private sector really invests new money, and funds transit alternatives where congestion pricing is utilized.
• Change allocation formulas. More investment for transit, freight rail, pedestrian and bicycle needs. More money for local streets. Less money for mega projects.
• Improve street connectivity. Better connectivity of streets accepted into the VDOT system would reduce the burden on the few large arterials the state can afford to build.

You don’t have to agree with every one of these proposals to acknowledge the vitality of thinking that is taking place. Between the market-oriented House of Delegates and the “smart growth” prescriptions of the environmental/conservation community, virtually every core assumption about transportation policy in Virginia is being called into question. Yet, judging by the news and editorial coverage of the Mainstream Media, you’d never know an intellectual revolution was occurring.

When will those guys open their eyes?

The High School student from Waynesboro could make a t-shirt with these images of Confederate veterans and the Battle Flag.

It would be interesting to see if this is provocative speech.

Tolerance means tolerating things you don’t like seeing or hearing. It means controlling yourself. If schools can’t teach that individual self-control, then what do they teach – Nannyism?

My 4th grade teacher of Virginia history, Mrs. Scharf from NYC, didn’t have problems teaching about the complexity of issues in Virginia during the late Unpleasantness. Of course, that was in the 50s, when schooling was about education more than indoctrination.

Speaking of white elephants (see previous post about U.S. 460), the Virginia Department of Transportation has nixed the idea advanced by STAR Solutions to build an an eight-lane, border-to-border upgrade for Interstate 81 that included truck-only tolls and lanes. Instead, writes Ray Reed with the Roanoke Times:

Transportation planners said Virginia needs to move faster on I-81 by making safety improvements such as more truck-climbing lanes and longer ramps at a few interchanges.

Rail upgrades are part of the planners’ picture, too, with a study led by Norfolk Southern Corp. that could lead to government transportation dollars being used to upgrade tracks on NS’ north-south lines.

The quick fixes don’t change the need to add lanes to I-81, the transportation planners said. The highway is sure to be heavily congested by 2035, with double today’s cars and triple the number of trucks.

Three conglomerates who want to build a new, improved U.S. 460 between Petersburg and Suffolk have submitted cost estimates ranging from $1 billion to $1.5 billion — two to three times what the Virginia Department of Transportation thought it would cost. And all three companies want public money to help defray the costs, Malcolm T. Kerley, chief engineer for VDOT, told the Commonwealth Transportation board yesterday.

Writes Bill Geroux with the Times-Dispatch: “Among the questions Kerley did not answer yesterday was how much of the financial risk the companies had volunteered to bear in case the highway ran far over budget or attracted too few paying customers.

Bottom line: The project cannot pay for itself. It is not economical. One must question whether it should be built.

This is hard news in many ways. It undercuts the hopes of those (like myself) who hoped that toll-financed projects could pay for many of the transportation projects on the drawing boards.

But the news also undercuts those who would pay for such projects through taxes. The beauty of soliciting private bids is that it forces people to take a hard look at the economics of a project. In the case of U.S. 460, either the design is too expensive, or the demand for the improvements is too meager, or insufficient economic value is being created in property aligning the route. If the project can’t pay for itself… if the private sector isn’t willing to assume the risk of failure… maybe the project shouldn’t be built!

Indeed, when the private-sector proposals come in at two or three times VDOT estimates, it calls into question the cost estimates of a lot of other mega-projects. Like the $4 billion price tag on building the Rail to Dulles project — championed by Bechtel, the guys who brought the Big Dig to Boston. Is anyone believing that forecast? How much risk is Bechtel willing to assume on that project?

(The good news: It sounds like the transportation board was asking good questions: Who would assume the risk if the project tanked? Very, very good.)

Sixteen-year-old Steven McDonaldson, who attends Waynesboro High School, has been twice expelled from class and lectured by the principal — for wearing a t-shirt bearing the Confederate battle flag. As the News Virginian reports:

The school dress code prohibits clothes that “reflect adversely upon persons because of their race, sex, color, creed, national origin, or ancestry,” and administrators have deemed the controversial Civil War battle flag to fall into that category.

This is not a case, as in South Carolina or Georgia, where controversies erupted over the state-sanctioned display of the flag on state property. This is a case of an individual wearing a t-shirt in school. Leave the kid alone. He wasn’t misbehaving in any way. Isn’t it time we all stopped hyper-ventilating over this sort of thing?