The impact of high gasoline prices on Virginia transportation policy is prompting more than blog posts at Bacon’s Rebellion — see “Energy Independence and Sustainability,” “Straight Talk about Gasoline Prices and Transportation Policy,” “A World with One Billion Cars” and “Virginia’s Vulnerability to Oil Shocks.” There is evidence that legislators are reappraising their thinking about transportation policy.
Exhibit A: Sen. Martin E. Williams, R-Newport News, chairman of the state Senate’s Transportation Committee.
As reported by Peter Galuszka in the latest Road to Ruin article, “Gas Shock,” Williams is a self-described conservative Republican who for years supported free enterprise, property rights and the extension of development and roads into the countryside. As gasoline prices have risen, however, he has come to realize that Virginia’s transportation policy cannot continue as it has. Consequently, he has been willing to support measures linking land use and transportation that he never would have before.
“I never thought I would agree with a growth management strategy that hurts property rights but I am already there,” he says. “We just can’t accommodate growth in outer areas like we used to.”
I’m delighted to see that Williams is open to change, and I probably shouldn’t quibble. But I just have to set the record straight on one issue. I, too, support free markets and property rights, but I never equated those with the policies responsible for the pattern of scattered, disconnected, low-density development commonly referred to as “sprawl,” much less our sprawl-inducing transportation policy. To the contrary, few sectors of the U.S. economy are as heavily regulated (zoning codes, subdivision ordinances, comprehensive plans) and subsidized (road construction, the pricing of utilities and public services, mortgage financing) as real estate.
For me, “property rights” means that government should not have the right to take someone’s property, or diminish the value of someone’s property, without compensation. “However, property rights” does not entitle land speculators to make a profit, nor does it require local government to extend roads, utilities and public services to any old place that a developer decides to build a subdivision.
As Sen. Williams thinks through the implications of higher gasoline prices for transportation policy, I hope he also reconsiders what the terms “free markets” and “property rights” mean in the context of the heavily regulated, heavily subsidized real estate sector.
