by James A. Bacon
In 2012 the General Assembly passed a bill sponsored by Del. James L. LeMunyon, R-Chantilly, that called for rating significant transportation projects on their ability to reduce congestion. The idea promptly disappeared into the labyrinth of Virginia’s transportation bureaucracy. At the time, the issue seemed academic — the commonwealth was fast running out of money to build new transportation projects anyway. But, then, in 2013, the legislature approved a funding package that would generate roughly $800 million yearly more money for roads and transit.
The little-noted bill suddenly became more relevant than LeMunyon had imagined it would. When drafting the legislation, the delegate said in an address to the American Dream Coalition annual conference three weeks ago, “We had no idea that there would be a major funding bill.” But the timing couldn’t have been more fortuitous. It gave the state a year’s head start in the laborious, three-year task of developing metrics and conducting analysis for projects that soon will be flowing through the pipeline.
The job of developing a system for rating transportation projects passed into the hands of a study team of the Virginia Department of Transportation and the Department of Rail and Public Transit. With a $3 million budget, the group hired AECOM, a transportation consulting firm, to begin developing a methodology for calculating congestion ratings. The Texas Transportation Institute, known for its national Urban Mobility Report, was enlisted to provide peer review.
After two years, the study is still underway. The goal is to have 25 to 30 major highway, transit and technology projects rated by December 2014 to guide the distribution of construction dollars in 2015. Bacon’s Rebellion caught up with Kanathur Srikanth, the transportation planning director assigned to the study, to find out more.
The idea of rating projects by congestion mitigation is far more complex than it might appear at first glance. How do you measure highway congestion, asks Skrikanth. By comparing the number of vehicles on the road to the design capacity? By the speed they are traveling? By the length of delays? By the duration of the congestion?
There’s a whole different set of questions for measuring transit congestion, Srikanth says. Do you measure the number of rail cars, or the number of people in the cars? Will adding more rail cars reduce congestion on roadways — or will it just reduce crowding on rail cars. “Is crowding inside rail cars a measure of congestion — or comfort?” Then there’s the issue of comparing apples and apples when rating highway and transit projects.
The study team also has to answer the question of what constitutes a “significant” project. Should road ratings be limited to Interstate highways? Should significance be determined by the number of travelers on the road or by the duration of the congestion on the road? The definition matters. The study group has resources to study only 25 to 30 projects next year.
It’s a lot to figure out, and the study team has made an effort to consult widely with transportation stakeholders, especially the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) and the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority (NVTA). At present, the study team is soliciting the CTB’s input on which principles it should use for determining which projects to select, says Srikanth. Does the transportation policy-making body want to look at projects with the biggest impact, say, or projects that potentially can be funded and built the most quickly.
Nothing in the legislation prioritizes projects on the basis of their congestion-mitigation ratings. The NVTA must include the rating in its decision-making process but is free to consider safety, economic development, environmental impact and other factors when allocating Northern Virginia transportation dollars. The CTB is free to consider or ignore the rating when allocating state dollars.
To outsiders the project may seem to be moving at a snail’s pace. It takes three years to produce tangible results? Really? But Srikanth says the study group is actually expediting the study. “We’re trying to do [the first round of project ratings] in 15 months. It’s been hectic.” Once a consensus has been developed on the methodology, the process should move more rapidly when updating or rating future projects. No one wants to rush through the methodology, discover big flaws and then start the process over, he says. “We want to think this thing through.”
Bacon’s bottom line: I’m really hoping that the Bi-County Parkway will be one of the projects that warrants a congestion rating. The controversy might be settled a year from now but an analysis of the Charlottesville Bypass would be in order as well. There’s nothing to stop state officials from pushing through projects with low ratings but the ratings will bias the outcome in favor of projects that offer more bang for the taxpayer’s buck.
