A brief but fascinating passage appeared in a Free Lance-Star story about a legislative luncheon hosted by the Fredericksburg Chamber of Commerce. House Speaker William J. Howell “would like a thorough shake-up of the way the Virginia Department of Transportation does business,” reported Chelyen Davis. “While senators are talking about tying road planning to land use planning, Howell said he’d like to see VDOT use different measuring sticks to determine the success of a road project.
“For example, instead of measuring a project by whether it gets done on time and on budget, Howell said, he’d like to measure things like whether that road mitigates congestion“.
Now that’s breakthrough thinking! Imagine if the Kaine administration developed a methodology for ranking all highway projects, all rail projects, all demand-mangement projects (like telecommuting), and all capacity-improvement projects (like synchronized stop lights) by how much traffic mitigation they offered per dollar spent. Imagine if transportation projects were funded on a Return on Investment basis!
Do you think such a list would bear any resemblance to the top-priority projects on the books today? If we could combine this idea with the idea of connecting transportation and land use planning, we could truly revolutionize transportation policy in Virginia. (Note: This post also appears on the Road to Ruin blog.)
