Click map for more legible image. (Image credit: Federal Highway Administration)
by James A. Bacon
The McDonnell administration has prepared legislation to reclassify state roads along the lines of the system used by the federal government, Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton told a transportation roundtable Friday sponsored by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy.
Virginia’s outdated classification of roads — primary, secondary and Interstates — does not serve the commonwealth well, Connaugton said. Some “secondary” roads in Northern Virginia carry far more traffic than many “primary” roads in other parts of the state. By contrast, the Federal Highway Administration has a well-defined set of criteria for classifying streets as principal arterials, minor arterials, collectors or local roads based on their length, traffic volume and function in the road network.
The classifications are important. For one reason, the Virginia Department of Transportation allocates money for maintenance and construction to separate funds based on road classification. As Connaughton acknowledged, if Virginia changes the road-classification system, it will have to change funding allocation formulas. For another, the McDonnell administration is inching closer to devolving responsibility for maintenance of secondary roads to local governments.
Virginia is one of only four states in the country for which the state is responsible for maintaining secondary roads. “It’s crazy that the commonwealth is paving and plowing cul de sacs in Fairfax County,” Connaughton said. Moreover, formulas for allocating maintenance funds have become severely out of whack. VDOT pays cities an average of $17,000 per lane-mile for maintaining roads within their borders, leaving only $5,000 per lane-mile on average for county roads for which the state is responsible, he added. State law requires that reimbursements to cities be adjusted annually for inflation, which drives up VDOT’s payments to the cities over time. By contrast, VDOT’s main revenue source, the gasoline tax, is not adjusted for inflation — it has remained the same since 1986.
Whit Clement, former transportation secretary in the Warner administration, warned that legislators will be concerned mainly with “where the dollars fall out.” The way to pull off reform, he advised, would be to “hold rural areas harmless” by ensuring they don’t end up with less money than before. But that would require injecting new money into the system — money the state doesn’t have.
In related discussions, roundtable members explored ideas on how to raise more money for road funding. Among the candidates: Raise the motor fuels tax, pursue more public-private partnerships and create more special tax districts. There was little discussion in this Republican-leaning roundtable about exploring ways to moderate the number of Vehicle Miles Traveled through land use reforms or strategies such as Transportation Demand Management.
Connaughton was the exception. A critical reason for devolving responsibility for secondary roads to local governments, he said, was to put accountability for transportation and land use decisions at the same level of government. He cited Fairfax County’s decision to upgrade density in Tysons Corner, which will stick the state with a $1 billion liability for improving road access to the business district. He also noted that the City of Alexandria lobbied the Pentagon to relocate 6,400 defense workers to the Mark Center office complex, which will cost the commonwealth $100 million for transportation improvements. Local officials weren’t concerned about the transportation implications of their decisions, the secretary said: They assumed the state would pick up the tab.
Connaughton did not say if the administration had yet lined up anyone to sponsor its road-reclassification bill nor did he provide details on how VDOT funding formulas might be rejiggered.
