The Road to Ruin

End of the Road (to Ruin blog)

2006-03-29T06:37:00.000-05:00

To our readers: We are undergoing major reorganization at the Road to Ruin project. Among the changes that will affect you, we are consolidating our efforts with the Bacon's Rebellion blog.

Our goal here always has been twofold: (1) to stimulate a lively exchange of views, and (2) to influence Virginia's political decision makers. Bacon's Rebellion has a significantly higher readership than Road to Ruin, and we are missing an opportunity to influence people by limiting our exploration of transportation and land-use issues to this blog.

We will continue posting on transportation/land use as before, but we will do it on Bacon's Rebellion. (See this morning's post "Want to Invest in Mass Transit: How About Bus Stations?")

I extend my heart-felt thanks to the hearty band of Road to Ruin participants who kept up such a lively flow of commentary on our posts - much of which was more insightful and entertaining that the post themselves. We invite you to visit Bacon's Rebellion and join the larger blogging community there.

New Transportation Thinking in Old York

2006-03-28T06:25:00.000-05:00

The ancient city of York, England, may have some lessons for congestion-plagued cities in the United States. Englishmen like their cars, but York, with its historic buildings and Medieval street layout, has limited options for expanding capacity. An academic team led by professor Mike Smith, a mathemetician at York University, is producing "mathematical models of traffic flow, working from calculations based on the width and length of road and the number of vehicles passing per minute." (See the article in the Yorkshire Post.)

These mathematical models are used to guide the city's traffic light signalling system. According to the Post, "The new system spreads the traffic load more widely across the city's road network to ease pressure on the most congested areas, and upgraded technology enables much faster communication between traffic controls."

Highway engineers from as far away as Australia, Japan and the United States have visited York to watch the traffic lights in action. Virginia has experimented with traffic light synchronization, mainly in Northern Virginia, but has hardly maximized the potential. Ironically, the Old Dominion has some of the most advanced Modeling & Simulation capabilities in the world. Surely we can apply the lessons of old York to our own congested streets and highways.

(Thanks to Jim Wamsley for forwarding this article to me.)

Metro West Approved - A Victory of Statewide Import

2006-03-28T05:09:00.000-05:00

The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors has approved a proposal by Pulte Homes to build 2,250 townhouses, condominiums and apartments near the Vienna Metro station, overriding vocal opposition by neighbors who feared an increase in localized traffic congestion. (See the WaPo account here.)

The MetroWest project will replace 65 single-family homes on 56 acres with 2,250 townhouses, condominiums and apartments, plus stores and offices. Pulte has argued that pedestrian access to the Metro station will enable many residents to ride the rails to work, alleviating some of the inevitable congestion. The developer also has committed to creating a smaller traffic footprint by organizing van pools, making Flexcar rentals available and providing a wide range of goods, services and amenities within the 13-building complex.

MetroWest presents an paradox. High density development will put more cars on the road locally. Traffic congestion undoubtedly will increase locally. But the mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly, shared ridership-friendly project will generate less automobile traffic regionally than almost any alternative. Given the fact that Northern Virginia's economy is booming and newcomers are moving to the sub-region by the tens of thousands every year, people have to live somewhere. If the housing stock isn't expanded in projects like MetroWest, it will be expanded in the non-controversial but incredibly inefficient alternative -- cul de sac subdivisions on the metropolitan periphery.

Traditional subdivision development generates far more automobile traffic than will MetroWest -- potentially twice as much for the same number of people. Had the Fairfax supervisors rejected MetroWest, they would have displaced the development and associated traffic somewhere else, presumably to a location not served by Metro and developed in a scattered, disconnected pattern that makes buses and ride sharing less feasible.

Most important of all, Pulte's MetroWest project will raise the bar for mixed use development across Fairfax County and, indeed, all of Virginia. Pulte's unprecedented plan to reduce the development's traffic "footprint" will demonstrate what can be accomplished when developers and local governments collaborate to reduce traffic congestion.

Kudos to the Fairfax County supervisors. They did the right thing.

Washington and Richmond New Urban Regions Meet in Caroline

2006-03-27T10:45:00.000-05:00

Caroline County is the new frontier for what the Washington Post calls "sprawl," what Ed Risse terms "dysfunctional human settlement patterns," and what I describe as "scattered, disconnected, low-density development." Whatever you call it, it's heading south from Washington down Interstate-95 where it is meeting north-bound "sprawl" from Richmond.

Here's the WaPo's take. The WaPo features Gail and Brent Heppner whose neighbors usually commute to jobs in the Washington New Urban Region (NUR) but shop in the Richmond NUR.

Scary quote:

"I don't know," said Brent Heppner, a Marine Corps pilot, sitting in his freshly painted, potpourri-scented living room the other day, considering his whereabouts. "Is Richmond part of Northern Virginia? Maybe the question is not what we think we are, but what do we want to be?"

If You've Got to Raise Taxes, at Least Do It Right

2006-03-27T09:58:00.000-05:00

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine made an interesting remark Saturday to a gathering in Rockingham County, according to the Daily News Record:

Kaine said his proposal will put the burden of payment on users of highways by raising auto-sales fees, car-insurance premiums, registration fees and license-reinstatement fees for what Kaine termed "abusive" drivers: motorists with poor driving records, including habitual offenders.

It is encouraging to see that the Governor believes that the burden of maintaining and building Virginia's roads (and transit projects) should fall upon those who use (and abuse) the roads -- as opposed, say, upon the non car-owning population. It's a baby step toward a rational transportation funding formula. But....

Read the rest of the commentary at Bacon's Rebellion.

Land Use and Water Quality: Studying the James River

2006-03-27T09:18:00.000-05:00

Most discussion about Virginia's dysfunctional land use patterns emphasize their negative impact on traffic congestion and housing affordability. But scattered, disconnected, low-density development also degrades the environment. Now VCU, UVa and Virginia Tech are joining forces to study the impact of land development on the James River and adjoining streams. According to a Virginia Tech press release:

To protect the river as new housing and commercial developments are constructed, the James River Association has organized this collaborative study to launch Building a Cleaner James River. The project will initiate a dialogue among local governments, universities, conservation organizations and developers to reduce water pollution impacts by encouraging environmentally friendly development practices and codes.

The universities will mobilize multi-disciplinary teams spanning environmental policy and planning, biological systems engineering, agricultural and applied economics, environmental science, fisheries and geography. The findings will be shared April 21 at a watershed-wide symposium at the Omni Charlottesville Hotel.

Elegant Degradation

2006-03-26T11:24:00.000-05:00

Former Gov. Gerald L. Baliles has introduced an interesting description to describe the decline of Virginia's transportation in the absense of the tax increases he says it needs:
"elegant degradation." As he wrote in a Daily News op-ed:

That is what happens to machines that are subject to constant repetitive stress. The machine continues to look the same while it is slowly becoming weaker and weaker. Finally, unable to withstand the stress, it breaks down. I fear that we're on the slippery slope of elegant degradation.

That's a fair description of what Virginia's transportation system faces. We just differ on appropriate remedies. Baliles wants to replace the lost buying power of the revenues made available by his 1986 transportation funding reforms -- 40 percent erosion due to inflation, plus 79 percent increase in traffic. He makes a legitimate point: Transportation revenues have lost buying power, and the system eventually will need more money.

I have argue ad nauseum, however, that there are many alternatives to building more highways that should to be explored before raising taxes. If Gov. Baliles and his allies talked about implementing some of those alternatives as a complement to higher taxes, as opposed to discrediting or ignoring them, they would have much greater credibility. But they demonstrate little interest in land use reform, mass transit reform, telecommuting and telework, intelligent information systems, or creating a fund plan with a rational nexus between those who pay and those who benefit from improvements.

A transportation policy whose sole remedy is raise taxes, build more projects just isn't credible.

Rail-to-Dulles Costs Swell, Project Faces More Cuts

2006-03-23T09:55:00.000-05:00

The lead of today's Washington Post article says it all:

The contractors on the project to extend Metrorail to Dulles International Airport are proposing to slash several key features -- including the number of rail cars and pedestrian bridges for those boarding in Tysons Corner -- to rein in a new spike in costs, a project director said yesterday.

The contractors' latest estimate for the first phase of the extension, through Tysons Corner to Reston, has risen from $1.8 billion to $2 billion. That is the absolute maximum the project's managers believe it can cost and still win approval from the federal government, which is footing half of the bill.

MetroWest One Step Closer to Approval

2006-03-23T09:46:00.000-05:00

MetroWest, a mixed-use project that would build 2,250 dwelling units and perhaps up to 6,000 residents on 56 acres near the Vienna Metro station, has received approval by the Fairfax County Planning Commission. The Board of Supervisors will hold a hearing March 27.

The MetroWest project, designed by Pulte Homes, is one of the most significant real estate developments in Virginia, representing a new model for how local governments can deal with traffic congestion. In exchange for permission to develop at greater density, Pulte has agreed to create a pedestrian- and transit-friendly community that will significantly cut local traffic congestion.

Keep your fingers crossed!

The Tradeoff in Housing and Transportation Costs

2006-03-22T14:30:00.000-05:00

As a follow up to the KSI story, it's worth noting a Brookings Institution initiative, The Affordability Index, which explores the trade-offs between housing and transportation costs. The conventional definition of "affordable" housing includes down payment, mortgage, interest, taxes and insurance. But that narrow definition omits the reality that houses in certain locations impose higher transportation costs upon their owners. While housing costs typically run around 30 percent of household income, transportation costs vary widely, from 10 percent to 25 percent.

Says the report: "Even among wealthy households, neighborhood characteristics such as density; walkability; the availability and quality of transit service; convenient access to amenities such as grocery stores, dry cleaners, day care and movie theaters; and the number of accessible jobs shape how residents get around, where they go, and how much they ultimately spend on transportation. Neighborhoods with the above characteristics are considered 'location efficient', providing convenient access to shopping, services, and jobs, and low-cost transportation alternatives to the auto."

It seems clear that KSI's marketing efforts will focus on housing + transportation costs. If so, it could represent a paradigm shift in real estate marketing and citizen's understanding of their self interest.

The Land Use Debate Shifts to Conservation Easements

2006-03-22T09:18:00.000-05:00

State and local leaders have mobilized to voice support for Virginia's conservation tax credit program, which they claim is jeopardized by state Senate legislation. The Senate proposes to cap individual credits for landowners to curb the cost of the program and halt perceived abuses. A competing House bill seeks to augment the program, according to the Charlottesville Daily Progress, by extending the duration of the tax credits, clarifying the credits’ transferability and ensuring that the credits are inheritable.

More than 150,000 acres have been put into conservation easement since the tax incentives were put into place five years ago. “This is a program that works, and we have to do everything we can to support it, sustain it and reinforce it,” said Chris Miller, president of the Piedmont Environmental Council.

House Speaker William J. Howell aligned himself with the conservationists, portraying the tax credit incentive as a "proven free-market tool against sprawl and for land conservation. "

Personally, I'm agonistic on the issue of conservation tax credits. I don't know enough about them to make an informed judgment. But I do have some concerns about the program, and I think it bears watching. As Ed Risse pointed out in one of his Bacon's Rebellion columns, the conservation credits may have an unintended consequence: Once a parcel of land is protected from development, it increases the attractiveness of neighboring parcels for development. The knowledge that the original parcel will not be developed, and that the landscape will not change, makes housing in the neighboring tract all the more desirable. Thus, in theory, conservation easements could serve to accentuate the scattered, disconnected pattern of development.

That concern is theoretical. It may not be happening in practice. If conservation easements are grouped in large, contiguous blocks, they are less likely to act as magnets for unwanted development. But I do think it is important to keep a close eye on the real-world impact that the conservation credits have on development.

KSI Announces Eight New Transit-Friendly Projects

2006-03-21T20:34:00.000-05:00

In the latest sign that the developer community is responding to Virginia's transportation "crisis" with innovative thinking, KSI Services Inc., a major Vienna-based developer of mixed-use communities, has announced plans to build eight new communities near multi-modal public transportation nodes, including rail and bus routes. The company also will offer Flexcar shared car services to homeowners. (See press release.)

"Traffic congestion is quickly becoming a major social and political issue, and there are no simple solutions to the problem," said John Chappelear, KSI's senior vice president of condominium operations. "We are offering residents an alternative to switching on the ignition and battling other drivers during the morning and afternoon rush hours, by offering homeowners easy access to public transportation."

The average motorist in the Washington metropolitan area spends 69 hours stuck in traffic congestion, while the cost of automobile ownership nationally averages nearly $7,000 per year. By creating transit-friendly communities that accommodate Flexcar, which allows people to lease automobiles on an hourly basis, KSI is positioning itself to sell real estate by reducing the cost of automobile ownership. KSI didn't state so outright in its press release, but the subtext is clear: A major selling point of KSI communities will be the ability of households to get by with fewer cars.

KSI's commuter-friendly Virginia neighborhoods will be located in Midtown Alexandria Station, West Village of Shirlington, The Residences of Lorton Station, Harbor Station, Potomac Club and Midtown Reston Town Center. Midtown Alexandria, to take one example, will be located adjacent to the Huntington Metro Station. The project consists of of 369 high-rise condominiums expected to sell from the mid-$300s.

KSI is making a bet that there is a vast untapped market for housing in dense, mixed-use developments that provide homeowners with superior transportation options and lower expenditures on automobile ownership and maintenance. Road to Ruin predicts that we will see many more projects like this: high-density development using access to mass transit, flexcars and pedestrian-friendly design to reduce automobile dependency.

The Alternatives to Tax-and-Build

2006-03-21T10:47:00.000-05:00

One of our goals in the Road to Ruin and Bacon's Rebellion has been to highlight alternative transportation strategies that don't entail spending a lot of money on mega-road and rail projects, and and raising taxes to pay for them. Over the past 10 months or so, we have explored quite a few.

In yesterday's edition of the Rebellion, I touched upon the potential to reignite mass transit ridership by giving the private sector a greater role. Municipal transit monopolies and taxicab franchises dampen the ability of the private sector to adapt to changing settlement patterns, implement new technologies and introduce innovations into the marketplace. By re-thinking the way we approach shared ridership, we could reinvigorate this alternative to One-Man-One-Car. (See "Liberate Mass Transit.")

In a similar vein, we've written about NuRide, an Internet-based service that allows commuters to identify other carpoolers traveling the same route at the same time -- a technology that offers the potential to revive the declining practice of carpooling. (See "Carpool Comeback.")

We've explored the potential for telecommuting (working from home) and telework (working outside the main office and staying connected through cell phones, BlackBerries and laptops). (See "Rush Hour Will Never Be the Same.")

We've shown how local governments can work with developers to create real estate projects with a smaller "traffic footprint" through better urban design and creative use of shared ridership. (See "Traffic Buster.")

We've shown how new zoning codes and new templates for urban design can reduce the length and number of car trips and reduce traffic on congested thoroughfares. (See "Albemarle Place," and "Street Cars and Zoning Codes.")

We've shown how it's possible, with modest investments, to significantly increase the capacity of existing thoroughfares without expensive widening projects. (See "Seeing the (Traffic) Light" and "Aroused about Roundabouts.")

We've argued in favor of congestion-pricing tolls as a way of rationing scarce peak-highway capacity and encouraging commuters to change their driving behavior, whether carpooling more, riding buses, or resorting to telecommuting and telework. (See "Congestion Pricing" and "Roads and Reason.")

There is no "silver bullet" for addressing Virginia's congestion woes. But there are many narrow-bore policies, each of which can address a piece of the problem and all of which can make a huge difference. Sadly, we have seen another session of the General Assembly come and go with none of these ideas being discussed seriously. Virginia's leaders are locked into a worldview that defines traffic congestion as a problem that can be solved only by adding more capacity.

While debate has raged over the necessity of raising taxes to pay for transportation improvements, virtually no one is questioning the idea that adding more capacity is the one and only solution. Even Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, who campaigned on the slogan that we can't pave our way out of congestion, has abandoned efforts at meaningful land use reform and become an advocate of tax-and-build.

The failure of Virginia's political leadership -- even tax-averse Republicans -- to consider other strategies is most disheartening. But we'll keep plugging away.

Bacon's Rebellion: Bringing Digital Anarchy to a PC Near You

2006-03-20T10:49:00.000-05:00

The March 20, 2006, edition of Bacon's Rebellion has been published. There are several columns of potential interest to followers of transportation and land us issues:

Liberate Mass Transit
As an alternative to funding mega-sized construction projects, Virginia should give entrepreneurs more freedom to devise creative shared-ridership solutions.
by James A. Bacon

Words Matter
There's no hope of making progress on Virginia's most intractable problems when our words only cloud understanding. Our goal in 2006 is to introduce a more robust Vocabulary.
by EM Risse

Unanswered Questions
GOP factions are grappling over how much more money to spend on transportation. But they're not addressing critical questions regarding spending priorities and the role of the private sector.
by Michael Thompson

Bottomless Pit
The Washington Metro is losing money and needs more than $1 billion in repairs. Why should anyone believe the Rail-to-Dulles project will perform any better?
by Philip Rodokanakis

Fix VDOT First
Tim Kaine wants to raise taxes by $600 per Virginia family to fund transportation -- even though the Virginia Department of Transportation is broken and leaderless.
by Paul C. Harris

The Power of the Developer Lobby

2006-03-20T09:20:00.000-05:00

Christina Nuckols with the Virginian-Pilot has a story today describing how the powerful home builder/developer lobby defeated Timothy M. Kaine's proposal to give local governments more power to deny rezoning requests when local roads are inadequate.

Writes Nuckols: "In a January blitz, more than 100 builders and real estate agents trooped into legislators' offices urging the measure's defeat. They argued that the measure would cause housing prices to skyrocket, upend the real estate market and damage the state's economy."

When the builder/real estate lobby talks, politicians listen. The industry gave $10 million last campaign season to political candidates -- including $3.2 million to Tim Kaine.

Car Culture Wars

2006-03-20T08:19:00.000-05:00

With plans for new Metrorail stops in car-oriented Tysons Corner in Fairfax County, the pressure is on for the big-lot car dealerships there to sell out and give way to transit-oriented development.

The Wash Post has a story on it, which says that Fairfax officials "envision turning Tysons' entire charmless mix of office buildings and shopping-strip retail into a thriving downtown for Northern Virginia, with high-rise housing, big city blocks and a vibrant night life."

'But few will probably be as affected as the auto dealers. There is the symbolism; one of the goals of bringing rail through Tysons to Dulles International Airport is to reduce reliance on vehicles. A row of auto dealerships doesn't exactly fit with the new ethos of a transit- and pedestrian-friendly Tysons liberated from the car culture.'

The business owners who sell their land will make some money; even more if the stick around until rail is in place.

The Valley's Bus Solution

2006-03-17T08:37:00.000-05:00

The Shenandoah Valley-Herald highlights a new bus service for people who apparently don't mind getting up before the cows to start their commutes. A new commuter bus service from Woodstock in Shenandoah County, starting at 4:20 a.m., arrives in downtown D.C. at 7 a.m. The afternoon ride home leaves around 4 and gets back home at 6:30.

All this for a fixed monthly fee of $360, and federal employees can collect a $105 Metrochek monthly subsidy to cut their out-of-pocket costs. The local Valley Commuter Assistance Program is apparently going to guarantee a certain level of income for the route operators if the number of passengers drops below a certain number.

There was a similar commuter bus that ran from Winchester last year, but it was losing money and shut down. Here's an interesting detail - the driver of that failed route is also driving the new route, but this time, he's using his own bus. Now that's an entrepreneur.

Piling On the GOP

2006-03-15T08:50:00.000-05:00

Geez, isn't there any editorial writer out there who will befriend the House GOP caucus?

The Danville paper says it hopes "the General Assembly comes to its collective senses when it returns to Richmond. Anyone who drives a car can see the problem - and should hope our political leaders will understand the best solution."

The Lynchburg News & Advance complains that for "at least the second time in the past three years, partisan ideology has trumped the voice of reason in the Virginia General Assembly."

And editorialists at the Virginian-Pilot, who advocate more transportation spending, urge voters to corner their legislators in the next two weeks and give them an earful: "If the party cannot find a way to bridge its ideological rifts, then voters need to perform a purge at the 2007 elections. “My way or the highway” works in monarchies, but not democracies... After weeks of listening to themselves talk, your representatives in Richmond need to hear from you."

Hopefully voters will speak up and legislators will talk openly and in detail about the transportation network they envision.. it's not just about the dollars.

A Pox on the House

2006-03-14T08:45:00.000-05:00

The House GOP caucus is getting a good hammering from some editorial writers, particularly at the Daily Press, which let loose this morning:

'The Republican House caucus blew it again. They went to Richmond eight weeks ago with two key chores to perform - to prepare the 2006-08 state budget and get a long-term transportation plan funding in place - and they didn't get it done.
Instead, House Republicans did what they do best: Played games. Postured. Settled scores.
So, how many times has the House bollixed the budget now? Three? Four? Five?'

Ouch. But there's more:

'Failure to pass a new budget and secure new transportation funding is failure at a fundamental level. The House Republicans bear that responsibility, and no amount of smoke will change it.'

In a way I suppose this links to yesterday's item about the apparent indifference around the state to transportation problems in the urban crescent. Daily Press editorialists argue that the GOP caucus demands party unity and damn the consequences. But the intensity of their frustration probably stems from the realization that they might not crack the House GOP. We are so far away from a decent public debate about transportation...

The Politics of Indifference

2006-03-13T06:32:00.000-05:00

Part of the reason for the current standoff over transportation funding is that many parts of the state don't have the same traffic woes that Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads face - especially NoVa - and voters there don't much care, says Steve Ginsberg of the Washington Post.

'In the land beyond the Beltway, well beyond the reaches of Metro and far past the carpool lanes, there is a whole lot of Virginia without a whole lot of traffic. Nelson County in Central Virginia, for example, got its first traffic light just a couple of weeks ago.'

So, how do you convince the rest of the state that it has a stake in the mobility of its biggest urban regions? Sen. Charles Hawkins, R-Pittsylvania, tries to make a case:

'"I understand that although my area of the world is not directly affected by what we're doing here, long term, it will be," Hawkins said. "In order for Southside and southwest Virginia to be part of the economies of this century, they have to be tied in with an efficient transportation system."'

Even if you agree with Hawkins, that still sounds like a really weak selling point for rural voters.

Now THIS is Transportation Planning

2006-03-10T07:20:00.000-05:00

House Republicans have picked out 22 transportation projects and are pledging that if their no-tax-increase approach prevails these projects will be done, says this morning's Washington Post.

'"By picking out individual projects, it takes some uncertainty out of what the path forward is," said Del. Joe T. May (R-Loudoun), one of the House members who came up with the list. May said the project designations came from lawmakers in consultation with local planners.'

The resident Wise Man of Virginia transportation planning says, bad idea:

'"Earmarking projects is an extremely poor idea, one of the worst ideas," said Philip A. Shucet, who resigned as commissioner of the Virginia Department of Transportation last summer to take a job as president of a development firm in Virginia Beach. "Once you begin doing it, it's difficult to stop, and it erodes a reasonable process."'

Don't Be Fooled By Talk of Land Use "Reform"

2006-03-09T14:05:00.000-05:00

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and the General Assembly are likely to pass legislation under the rubric of "land use reform," including bills that require more traffic-impact studies and permit counties to enable Transferable Development Rights. Undoubtedly the Axis of Taxes will trumpet these worthwhile-but-minor reforms as assurance that the billions of dollars in new transportation funding they want will be well spent. But the Smart Growth lobby is not impressed.

“Far too much emphasis has been placed on increasing transportation funding and far too little on better growth management or transportation planning reform at VDOT,” said Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth in a prepared statement with the Piedmont Environmental Council (which underwrites Road to Ruin).

Schwartz makes the following points:

The planning changes will be incremental, and the one voters care most about -- clarifying the ability of their communities to say no to development that would overwhelm their roads – apparently has been dropped from the reform package.
Transit would receive a smaller percentage of the new money than it currently does.
Much of the money is going to projects that won’t relieve congestion.
Instead, VDOT is expected to use the highway money to build projects that will further scatter development and clog roads, instead of providing people with traffic relief and more transportation choices.

Many of the major projects favored by legislators either would not address congestion or would fuel sprawl. For a list of the projects and a critique of each, click here.

Two Out of Three Not Bad?

2006-03-09T09:11:00.000-05:00

Dan Telvock with Leesburg2day.com has a lengthy story on the flap between. Gov. Tim Kaine and Del. Bob Marshall over land use legislation. All key details in Bob Burke's story yesterday are confirmed, plus Telvock talked to a couple of additional legislators.

Kaine press aide Kevin Hall said, in Telvock's paraphrase, "the governor still is pushing his controlled growth legislation and two of the three main proposals are still alive."

Two out of three sounds pretty good. Only one trouble: The one proposal that is not alive is the one that Kaine campaigned on, and that his supporters in the Smart Growth wing of the Democratic Party wanted the most.

Kaine's About Face on Land Use

2006-03-08T17:22:00.000-05:00

Road to Ruin reporter Bob Burke has been digging into Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's apparent abandonment of the land use legislation he championed during the fall gubernatorial campaign. He confirms the account provided by Del. Robert Marshall, R-Manassas, and columnist Patrick McSweeney.

Bob did get a response from Kaine spokesman Kevin Hall. Hall's response: Kaine still backs the measure but regards it as “part of a more comprehensive transportation package. ... We are probably more in a posture of [trying to] fight the battles we have a reasonable chance of winning.”

In other words, Kaine is putting all his muscle behind the $1 billion-a-year tax increase -- a tax increase he never mentioned during the campaign. Still unresolved: Whether the Governor caved into pressure from the home builder/real estate interests.

Read Bob's story here.

More Statistical Grist for the Mill

2006-03-08T10:30:00.000-05:00

Some of the most useful transportation statistics are compiled by the Division of Motor Vehicles and updated annually. I haven't taken a look at them recently, and I haven't seen the 2004 numbers reported anywhere, so I thought they'd be worth replicating here.

2001 population... 7,196,800
2002 population... 7,293,500... +1.3 %
2003 populaton... 7,386,300... +1.3 %
2004 population... 7,458,900... +1.0 %

2001 licensed drivers... 5,100,631
2002 licensed drivers... 5,128,497... +2.3 %
2003 licensed drivers... 5,257,516... +2.5 %
2004 licensed drivers... 5,313,167... +1.1 %

2001 vehicle miles driven... nmf (different methodology for calculating VMT)
2002 vehicle miles driven... 75,263 million...
2003 vehicle miles driven... 76,830 million... +2.1 %
2004 vehicle miles driven... 78,877 million... +2.7 %

In summary, the population is increasing a bit faster than one percent per year, the number of licensed drivers is increasing at the rate of nearly 2 percent per year, and the Vehicle Miles Driven is increasing at the rate of roughly 2.5 percent per year.

Population growth reflects the superior economic opportunities in Virginia (a good thing).

The increase in number of licensed drivers reflects two things: spreading affluence and the ability of more people to afford cars (a good thing), and the autocentric design of new development, which forces people -- even poor people and students -- into cars as opposed to other modes of transportation (a bad thing).

The increase in Vehicle Miles Traveled reflects the scattered, disconnected, low-density pattern of development that makes people drive greater distances to reach their destinations (a bad thing).

Lesson of the story: Virginia transportation policy needs to do more than raise taxes: It must address the autocentric design of our communities and the scattered, disconnected, low-density pattern of development.

Kaine's Credibility Problem

2006-03-07T07:02:00.000-05:00

It took Gov. Mark. R. Warner more than two years to break his promise not to raise taxes. It took Tim Kaine less than two months.

Kaine won the gubernatorial election last November partly on the basis of two critical planks in his campaign platform:

He would not raise taxes for transportation until a constitutional amendment protected the Transportation Trust Fund from budgetary raids by the General Assembly.
He would fight for legislation that would clarify the power of local governments to block certain development projects that would generate more traffic than the local transportation system could handle.

Kaine quickly did an about-face on the tax issue, recommending tax increases of nearly $1 billion annually -- increases that he never hinted at during the campaign. He wasn't breaking his promise he argued, because he would personally guarantee, through his veto power, that the legislature didn't touch the Transportation Trust Fund.

But the "trust me" gambit hasn't worked out so well for the Smart Growth activists who supported Kaine, trusting him to fight for tighter land use controls. According to correspondence from Del. Robert Marshall, R-Manassas cited earlier in this blog, Kaine abruptly withdrew his support last week for an amendment he'd asked Marshall to champion in the House.

The legislative maneuvering isn't over yet, and Kaine may redeem himself. Further, there may be more to the story than what has been revealed so far. But Kaine had better ponder his moves carefully, or he will shed his image as a straight-shooting Mr. Clean and come across as just another pandering, backroom-dealing politician.

Update: Del. Morgan Griffith called Kaine's personal credibility into question on an unrelated effort, the nomination of former state AFL-CIO President Daniel LeBlance to Secretary of the Commonwealth. According to the Virginian-Pilot:

House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, said he did not trust Kaine’s pledge to uphold the right-to-work law. He said Kaine already has broken a campaign pledge not to seek tax increases until he won passage of a constitutional amendment that would protect transportation money from being diverted to other services.
“If he doesn’t keep one promise, how can you expect him to keep a promise to protect the right-to-work law?” Griffith said.

The Pork Ploy

2006-03-07T06:56:00.000-05:00

As the Senate and House of Delegates get down to serious negotiations over the transportation funding package, Sen. Marty Williams, R-Newport News, has detailed the amount of money that would be funneled into each VDOT district under the competing Senate and House plans. Read the details at the Bacon's Rebellion blog.

Also worth reading: Jim Bowden digs into the assumptions behind Marty Williams' numbers.

Permit Me to Introduce the Concept of Return on Investment

2006-03-06T10:06:00.000-05:00

Philip Shucet, Virginia's former VDOT commissioner, has published a column in today's Richmond Times-Dispatch making the case for more transportation spending. In a nutshell, he argues that traffic congestion carries a high price tag for Virginians: about $580 million per person in Northern Virginia, $240 in Hampton Roads, and $155 in Richmond.

"Without additional money for transportation," Shucet writes, "your tax-payer dollars will be used to maintain the system we have, while your cost of sitting in congestion goes up year after year."

I have respect for a lot of Philip's ideas for increasing the efficiency of Virginia's transportation system, which we've highlighted on this blog, but I don't think he's thought his argument through here. The Road Gang wants to raise taxes by about $1 billion per year. Based on the state's share of population and income, Richmond taxpayers would pay roughly one-eighth that amount, or $125 million. What bang for our buck do Richmonders get for that $125 million? (If you're from NoVa or Hampton Roads, plug in your own numbers.)

How much of that $1 billion in extra transportation revenue, after it gets filtered through an arcane funding formula that favors rural areas, will wind up in Richmond? What projects will it finance? And by what percentage will those projects reduce traffic congestion? Will they reduce congestion by one percent? Two percent? Ten percent? Will the congestion savings to Richmonders be $1 per person? $10 per person? $20 per person?

No one knows. No one has even made the calculation (or if they have, they've chosen not to release the results to the public).

But the numbers matter. If Richmonders spend pay $125 per person in higher taxes, congestion mitigation of $1 per person is a lousy investment, less than a one percent return -- we'd all be better off sticking the money in a money-market fund. If Richmonders get $10 in congestion mitigation, that's equivalent to what they could get from investing their money in a diversified stock and bond portfolio. If Richmonders got a $20 per person benefit, then there's an economic case to be made for raising taxes.

We don't have the faintest idea what the return on investment will be. Asserting that it makes economic sense to tax Richmonders $125 per person a year to offset traffic congestion is a pure act of faith. I'm sorry, but that's just not good enough. The private sector doesn't make billion-dollar investments on the basis of a wild stab in the dark, and either should the Commonwealth of Virginia.

The Transportation Debate Heats Up

2006-03-06T09:59:00.000-05:00

The Richmond Times-Dispatch offers three perspectives on the transportation debate in today's edition:

Gridlock!

"Transportation Challenge Carries Steep Cost..." by Philip Shucet, former VDOT Commissioner

"...Stalemate Places Drivers in Jeopardy..." by Martha Rowe Mitchell, lobbyist for AAA Mid-Atlantic

"...Fortunately, There's Time to Craft a Compromise" by Trip Pollard, with the Southern Environmental Law Center

I shall comment on these as I have time.

The Poplar Terrace Travesty

2006-03-05T12:22:00.000-05:00

I've often argued in the abstract that the solution to dysfunctional human settlement patterns is not giving local government more power, it's removing that power, especially when it trumps private property rights. Now comes a concrete example from Fairfax County to prove my point.

According to the Washington Post, Centex Homes offered to purchase the houses of residents in the Poplar Terrace neighborhood about a 10-minute walk from the Vienna Metro station. The developer has offered about $700,000 for roughly 70 single-family houses, which are aging brick ramblers worth about $400,000 on average -- a handsome premium for existing property owners.

Centex asked Fairfax County to build 30 homes-per acre -- a mix of condomiums and townhouses -- on the 40-acre site instead of the one or two per acre there now. Proposed density actually would be less than the Metro West project suggested by Pulte Homes south of the Vienna Metro station. A "residents task force" raised hell -- apparently representing someone other than the residents of Poplar Terrace -- and Centex eventually gave up.

There are two points worth making here. First, government here is the problem, not the solution. As long as property rights are respected, and in this case they would have been, neighborhoods should be allowed to evolve towards their highest and best use. The so-called "rights" of residents living nearby should not trump the rights of the landowners of the property directly affected. Furthermore, it is economic insanity for Fairfax County to thwart the natural evolution of property near Metro stations to higher and better uses.

The second point is this: Fairfax County wants to raise billions of dollars to extend Metro rail to Dulles Airport. But if the County stands in the way of re-developing the land to higher density in the immediate proximity of the Metro stations, thereby undermining the effectiveness of the Metro as a transportation solution, it forfeits any right to sympathy from anyone else in the state. If I, as a Richmond resident, saw Fairfax planning to maximize the benefit of existing and proposed Metro stations along the lines of Arlington County, I would be inclined to support the multi-billion dollar expenditure. But as long as the County persists in making self-destructive decisions like this one, I have no desire to pour my good tax money after bad.

As Mark Anstine, a broker in the Poplar Terrace deal, told the Post: "It's a travesty. Where else can you get 40 acres this close to Metro? You can't, and you will not ever again. The opportunity will be gone forever."

Another Broken Promise

2006-03-05T09:07:00.000-05:00

Normally, I save Pat McSweeney's columns for publication in Bacon's Rebellion, but his most recent report is too important and too timely to sit on. According to McSweeney, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has yanked support for a bill that embodied his winning campaign issue: giving municipalities more power to block rezoning projects that would overwhelm the surrounding transportation system. This story has gone unreported as far as I can tell (in another example of the ongoing failure of the Mainstream Media to cover land use issues).

Here is McSweeney's account of what happened:

Just last week, Kaine had another opportunity to honor his campaign promise to give localities greater authority to control growth. He was pursuing an amendment that would add his legislative proposal to a House-passed bill dealing with the use of cash proffers for road improvements.

That House bill had been reported by the Senate Local Government Committee on a unanimous vote and had strong support in the full Senate.

Kaine abruptly withdrew his support for that tactic after actively pressing forward in that direction for more than a week.

The chief patron of the House-passed bill, who agreed to let Kaine use his bill as a vehicle to keep the governor’s growth proposal alive even at great risk to his own bill, felt let down by Kaine’s change of heart. Slow growth advocates expressed great disappointment upon hearing of the governor’s reversal.

Kaine’s official explanation was that he felt that the amendment might ultimately be rejected by the House of Delegates. Slow-growth advocates were more than willing to press ahead because they consider a recorded vote in the House on this measure a victory in itself.

The real reason for Kaine’s unexpected abandonment of this central element of his growth control strategy may be his desire to appease developers...

I don't know if Kaine cut a deal with developers or not. I'm open to the possibility that there's more to the story than McSweeney reports. And I'll be the first to say that I had problems with Kaine's campaign proposal, which I thought, if handled improperly, would have make development patterns more dysfunctional, not less. But if McSweeney's report is accurate, Kaine has some 'splainin' to do. First, he broke his promise not to raise taxes until after a constitutional amendment protected transportation funds from budgetary raids. Now, he is betraying his Smart Growth supporters on their core issue.

Kaine may get away with this maneuver in the short run because Virginia's political reporters have defined the transportation debate as a budgetary issue, all but ignoring the land use dimension, and the editorial writers in the major daily newspapers (save Richmond's) are salivating for tax increases. But betraying the constituency that gave him his winning edge over Jerry Kilgore -- and there is widespread acknowledgement that tapping the Smart Growth sentiment in Northern Virginia's suburbs put him over the top -- will not help Kaine govern in the long run.

Update: James Young at the Skeptical Observor has posted correspondence from Del. Robert Marshall, R-Manassas, who carried Gov. Kaine’s legislation in the House. A Marshall letter to Chris Miller, president of the Piedmont Environmental Council, confirms the basis of McSweeney’s column and, indeed, may have been the basis for it. For some strange reason, blogger is not accept a direct link to Young's article. Cut and paste this URL to your address line: http://skepticalobservor.blogspot.com/2006/03/kaine-ably-abandons-growth-controls.html

More Tolls in Hampton Roads' Future?

2006-03-03T10:18:00.000-05:00

John M.R. Bull with the Newport News Daily News reports that a bill to establish tolls on five Hampton Roads bridges and tunnels easily cleared a House committee Thursday. The bill would create regional bridge-tunnel authority that would have the power to impose tolls with rates based on the time of day and day of the week -- presumably varying with the level of congestion.

Tolls would be imposed on five facilities: Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel, the James River Bridge, and the Downtown and Midtown tunnels. An estimated $190 million a year in toll revenues would back bonds that would pay for a series of mega-projects favored by Hampton Roads political class. The tolls likely would remain for a generation or longer, legislators said. (Yeah, just like they did for the Dulles Toll Road -- whoops, make that two generations!)

Bull reports that legislators expect the bill to pass the House, then go back to the Senate for negotiations. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine supports the idea of a regional tolling authority in the abstract, but has not yet blessed this bill.

Transportation Authority Devolving to Localities?

2006-03-03T09:22:00.000-05:00

Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does power. If the Virginia Department of Transportation can't fix Northern Virginia's transportation problems, expect municipalities in fast-growth sections of the Washington New Urban Region to fill the void. The Kaine administration, according to The Washington Post, appears to be resigning itself to the inevitable -- at least in Prince William County.

Prince William will ask voters this fall to approve road bonds for projects that include adding lanes to Routes 1 and 28 -- part of a larger plan to spend $1.6 billion in local money on transportation projects over the next 15 years. The couty would create, in effect, its own transportation division within the Public Works department. Senior Kaine administration officials appear to be OK with that.

"The growth of Prince William has outstripped the ability of the commonwealth to provide transportation infrastructure," said Virginia Transportation Secretary Pierce R. Homer, who served as a former deputy county executive in Prince William before moving to Richmond.

Said Dennis Morrison, Northern Virginia administrator for the Virginia Department of Transportation: "There just haven't been enough transportation dollars to deal with transportation in this region."

Perhaps VDOT should consider ways to devolve even more responsibility to the county. If the county assumed full responsibility for funding transportation within its borders, it would look very carefully at the transportation impact of its land use decisions. Judging by the experience in Arlington and Henrico Counties, two counties grandfathered long, long ago when VDOT consolidated control over state road programs, the idea of planning transportation and land under one roof has worked out pretty well. In my observation, both localities provide better mobility than their neighbors. I live in Henrico, and other than the royal screw-up at the Short Pump interchange, the county is pretty easy to get around.

At Last, an Editorial Writer Gets It

2006-03-03T08:44:00.000-05:00

Kudos to the anonymous editorial writer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch who penned the following (the link isn't working, so I replicate the entire editorial here):

Civic Strategies, an organization that promotes public-policy solutions to vexing societal problems, asks an interesting question about Atlanta that also pertains to Virginia:

"If, as Albert Einstein said, insanity is donig the same thing over and over while expecting different results, then Atlanta qualifies as the craziest region in the country. It keeps expanding highways, convinced that this time it will somehow solve its congestion problems, only to be puzzled when traffic gets even worse. What's weird is that leaders in Atlanta know that they old ways don't work, but yet they persists. Why"

The group proffers a couple of possible explanations: Perhaps transportation officials have given up on the hope of finding anythign that works better. Or perhaps government officials and the transportation department are too beholden to highway-construction interests. Hmmmm.
Civic Strategies notees that two years ago Atlanta-area leaders formed a Quality Growth Task Force that proposed an alternative to endless road building: "Intelligently link transportation to land use." Yet the regio persists in building "more dumb highway lanes" and giving top priority to projects that purport to ease congestion.

The result: more congestion. Why? Because "more freeways ... disperse population even farther.... [The approach] actually rewards places that don't do what the Quality Growth Task Force urged, which is to plan for fewer car trips." As one transit advocate explained: "The more congested you are, the more money you will get."

Sounds a lot like Northern Virginia, doesn't it?

Patent Office "Hoteling" Experiment a Success

2006-03-02T09:41:00.000-05:00

Once again the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star demonstrates that it's the only major daily newspaper in Virginia that recognizes that there are alternatives to the tax-and-pave transportation policy advocated by Virginia's Political Establishment. This morning, the newspaper highlights a successful experiment by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office in "hoteling," a form of telework.

"Hoteling" began in 1997 in a trial run with 18 trademark attorneys. After the SPTO outfitted them with the necessary computer and other equipment, the lawyers began working at home. Required to come into the office just once a week, they shared space there, making a reservation for a workstation in advance in much the same way a traveler books a hotel room (hence the name).

The number of attorneys has since grown to 220. By September, the number of "hoteling" attorneys could increase to 500.

Do the math: 500 attorneys driving to work only once a week. That translates into 400 people on an average day who not commuting to work. That's only a drop in the bucket for the entire Washington metro workforce but it sure beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. And if every government agency and major private employer emulated Patent & Trademark's teleworking/hoteling experience, we'd be taking hundreds of thousands of commuters off the road.

How much does it cost to do what Patent & Tradmarks has done? That's the beauty. Organizations that adopt hoteling/mobile workforce strategies save money -- big money -- by cutting their office overhead! And that's not counting savings in worker productivity.

And to think there are people out there who think that raising taxes and laying asphalt is the only way to solve Virginia's congestion crisis. Once again, I shake my head in wonder.

NO To A Gas Tax Increase, Unless....

2006-02-28T09:27:00.000-05:00

Found this poll story in the New York Times (registration required) this morning, and it's got interesting data.

'Eighty-five percent of the 1,018 adults polled opposed an increase in the federal gasoline tax, suggesting that politicians have good reason to steer away from so unpopular a measure. But 55 percent said they would support an increase in the tax, which has been 18.4 cents a gallon since 1993, if it did in fact reduce dependence on foreign oil. Fifty-nine percent were in favor if the result was less gasoline consumption and less global warming...
Twenty-four percent of those polled said they would support a higher federal gasoline tax if the new revenue was used to help fight terrorism, and 28 percent would go along with a gasoline tax increase if, as an offset, their income taxes or payroll taxes were lowered.'

What's Happening at VDOT?

2006-02-28T09:21:00.000-05:00

Bad news from VDOT... Peter Bacque with the Richmond Times-Dispatch tells us that VDOT has spent $40 million more on maintenance in the first seven months of the fiscal year than it had planned. Now the agency is trying to make up the deficit by cutting back on maintenance work and equipment purchases.

According to Whirley, VDOT has spent four percent more of its $1 billion annual maintenance budget than it had anticipated shelling out by Jan. 31.
"In December probably, we started notcing that on a statewide level our actual costs were beginning to clumb beyond our spend plan," he said. "What we're doing is what any good business would do. Monitor budget, monitor expenditure and make sure at the end of the year we bring actual expenditures in on budget."

What Bacque doesn't tell us is why VDOT is running over budget. Is this a sign that VDOT is losing budget discipline again and suffering a relapse to the bad ol' days before Eagle Eye Philip Shucet brought control over chaotic finances? Or are the cost overruns beyond VDOT's control, reflecting perhaps inflation in construction costs that exceed VDOT forecasts?

In either case, we have a problem. But we need to know what kind of problem, for the policy implications are very different for one than for the other.

The Flames of Rebellion Are Licking at Your Door

2006-02-27T10:47:00.000-05:00

The Feb. 27, 2006 edition of Bacon's Rebellion has been published. You can read it here.

Columns relating to transportation and land use include:

The Special Session Is Now
The outline of a compromise on transportation funding is coming dimly into view: Some new funds now, a full-fledged plan later (maybe).
by Doug Koelemay

Standing up for Property Rights
The House of Delegates has passed legislation that will protect property owners from unjust takings. Unfortunately, the Senate's version of the bill could do more harm than good.
by Patrick McSweeney

$650 Million in Hiding
There is a lot more new money for transportation projects than commonly realized -- if lawmakers would only count it!
by Michael Thompson

The Story Less Heard

2006-02-26T17:08:00.000-05:00

When money's not the issue, concludes Bob Lewis with the Associated Press, there's actually fairly broad agreement on transportation policy. Says Lewis:

...Shift the topic from money to administrative reforms for the state's massive highway agency and there's plenty of agreement among the Senate, the House of Delegates, both Republican-run, and Democratic Gov. Timothy M. Kaine. Bills on those issues have been overwhelmingly passed; kind words have actually
been spoken...

The systemic reforms could profoundly change the Virginia Department of Transportation, putting more of the development and, in some cases, ownership of Virginia's highway system under private control. Over time, it would trim VDOT's work force of 9,300 people and streamline its mission. ...
Two reforms that involve a greater private role are expanded use of "design-build" and "concession agreements," as they are known in industry shorthand. Under design-build, the state specifies a project and its route, such as a new four-lane bypass, then turns the design and construction over to a team of private engineering and roadbuilding firms. Traditionally, VDOT engineers or private firms do the designs, then put the specifications out for construction bids from contractors.

The Emperor Has No Clothes?

2006-02-24T08:48:00.000-05:00

The good news, says Sean Connaughton, chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, is that the General Assembly is paying closer attention to growth-management issues than at any time in recent memory.

The bad news, he adds in an op-ed piece published in the Gainesville Times, is that the raft of legislation emanating from the legislature this year doesn't add anything to what Northern Virginia localities are doing already.

All these bills sound exciting and most are on their way to being enacted. However, there is a big problem: They are of no value to Prince William County and the other jurisdictions of Northern Virginia. The local governments of this region, as well as in many other parts of the Virginia, already do everything these bills authorize or require. The only bill that would actually have had an impact was HB 1610. This bill would have specifically authorized local governments to deny or modify rezoning requests that would overwhelm the local transportation infrastructure. That bill was unceremoniously killed in subcommittee without even the benefit of a hearing or recorded vote.

Once again, Richmond has not responded to critical challenges facing much of Virginia. The current crop of legislation, despite the merits of HB 1610, is largely unhelpful.

In previous posts, I've lauded the General Assembly is for addressing land-use issues, as watered down as their measures may be. My question now, after reading Connaughton's column, is this: Do these bills represent just a first step in seriously addressing Virginia's dysfunctional land use patterns, or are they sops to create the illusion of doing something substantive?

Kaine on the Counter Attack

2006-02-23T08:41:00.000-05:00

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine told Northern Virginians at a "town hall" meeting in Woodbridge yesterday that the extra $1 billion a year he proposes to raise in taxes would, in the words of Washington Post reporter Steven Ginsburg, pay for "a revamped road and rail network, powered by a 90 percent increase in local road funds and a doubling in funding for mass transit."

The Governor repeated the usual litany of problems that all Northern Virginians are familiar with. But by promising them congestion relief without fundamental change to development patterns -- the tweaks to land use he recommends do not constitute "fundamental" change -- he is deceiving them.

First, according to VDOT calculations, pursuing Business As Usual transportation policies will require $108 billion over the next 20 years, or $5.4 billion a year. Kaine's proposals would provide less than 20 percent of that number. Raising taxes while perpetuating Business As Usual will only slow the rate at which conditions get worse! It will not make things better.

Even crueler to Northern Virginians -- I believe I'm right about this, someone please correct me if I'm wrong -- that $1 billion in new tax revenue would be distributed through the same transportation funding formula that already short-changes Northern Virginia. So, NoVa could wind up with closer to 10 percent of its Business-as-Usual needs being met under the Kaine plan. In effect, Northern Virginia will be subsidizing transportation projects in other regions of the state that aren't even a priority for those regions.

Northern Virginians are supposed to be better educated and smarter than us yokels downstate. They're supposed to be the city slickers and we're supposed to be the bumpkins. But who's fleecing whom?

Scottsville Nixes Planned Urban Development

2006-02-22T09:09:00.000-05:00

In a microcosm of the challenge the land-use reformers face in Virginia, the tiny Town of Scottsville, 600 people, in Albemarle County rejected a Planned Unit Development ordinance that would have provided more flexibility for developers.

The Daily Progress describes the ordinance this way:

The PUD ordinance, similar to Albemarle County's neighborhood model, promotes higher-density development with a mixture of residential and commercial buildings, open space and pedestrian connections. Its passage would not have required the town to approve any development, rather, it would have given developers the option of filing a rezoning request for a mixed-use development.

The Town Council rejected the proposal by three votes to two. The article didn't say so directly, but it impliedthat citizens were worried by the prospect of "dense" development that would change the charming character of their hamlet. James P. Hogan explained his stance this way: "The Town of Scottsville is literally surrounded by development. I firmly believe the future of the town as we know it, as well as the quality of life, come first and foremost."

But as Harrison Rue, executive director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, noted, "Without it, you'll see development by right, with mostly big lots and no usable open big space. That's being built all over the counties around here, and it's sure not the way to add on to a village."

Hamlets around Virginia are threatened by the tide of scattered, low-density development. No one that I've seen has yet put into effect a good way to protect them. The only "solution" is to change the market and regulatory dynamics that create sprawling development in the first place.

Us Versus Them

2006-02-22T08:12:00.000-05:00

The Daily Press covers some of the jabs back and forth in the fight over transportation funding. Democrats are trying to split the GOP between urban and rural, and it sounds like it's working:

'"The House budget is fiscally irresponsible and shortchanges a range of vital needs," said House Minority Leader Franklin P. Hall, D-Richmond. "Most distressing, the House budget cuts transportation funding in seven of the nine transportation districts."
Hall released an analysis that purported to show that Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia would get the lion's share of new transportation funding and that rural regions of the state would be shortchanged.
Republicans fired back, sometimes cantankerously.
Del. David Albo, R-Fairfax, said he was angry that rural lawmakers would be jealous of increased transportation funding for Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia.
"To have rural Virginians complain about not getting enough in the budget really sets me off," he said.
He said that Northern Virginians pay 28 percent of all income taxes the state collects and 16 percent of the sales tax. Hampton Roads residents pay a similarly disproportionate share. And they are the people who most often sit in traffic, he said.
"Not one time did anyone from rural Virginia stand up and say 'That is not fair,' " Albo said. "Now, when the time comes to help the people of Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia ... people from rural Virginia say it's not fair."'

Defining the Issue

2006-02-20T09:15:00.000-05:00

Defining the issue is the first step in winning the debate. And that's what the pro-tax camp has successfully done, with the happy complicity of the MSM. Del. Vincent Callahan, R-McLean, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, understands what's going on. Here's how Michael Hardy and Jeff Schapiro quote him today in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Unlike the Senate and the governor who have defined the transportation crisis in terms of raising taxes, the House plan specifically addresses choke points and other measures that voters can identify with.

Unfortunately for Callahan, the media also has defined the transportation "crisis" as a problem of insufficient spending and taxes, which means that the very idea of prioritizing transportation spending by addressing choke points will not get any more of a hearing than a throw-away quote buried deep in a story.

Stacking the odds against Callahan and his colleagues even more, in this particular article Hardy and Schapiro label Senate Republicans as "moderates" -- not "liberals" -- for wanting to raise taxes and pour more money into Virginia's failed transportation system. "Moderate," of course, is meant as a synonym for the political middle, or mainstream. The House by contrast is a "redoubt of conservative Republicanism," implying that they're out of the mainstream, for wanting to set spending priorities, reform VDOT, align transportation and land use planning, and not raise taxes in the face of a $1 billion surplus in the General Fund.

The failures of the media coverage of the 2006 transportation debate are scandalous.

The media refuse to examine the critical importance of land use in the transportation debate in any detail, even though Gov. Timothy M. Kaine made it a signature issue in the 2005 gubernatorial campaign, and though the House and Senate are moving closer to agreement on the issue.

The media continue to ignore the manner in which VDOT prioritizes and spends money on transportation, as if the undeniable accomplishments of former VDOT Commissioner Philip Shucet were the final word on VDOT reform. Changing the way VDOT does business is a major thrust of the House legislative package, yet the House critique has gone largely unreported.

The media continue to ignore alternative strategies for reducing and/or coping with traffic congestion. Telework, traffic-demand management, traffic light synchronization, roundabouts, ramp metering, blah, blah, woof, woof, RTR readers know the drill.

When confronting President Bush over WMD, or making an issue over Vice President Cheney's hunting accident, the MSM claims it has the responsibility to "ask the tough questions" and "speak truth to power." But here in Virginia, the same editorial pundits who support speaking truth to power to George Bush only parrot the opinions of the local political elite. Reporters conduct he said/she said reporting within the parameters of the transportation-crisis-as-spending-shortfall storyline, and the editorial writers attack those in the House who would challenge the status quo.

I don't entirely blame the Capitol press corps, which is tasked with covering dozens of issues emanating from the General Assembly. General political reporters can't become experts on every issue. But I do blame the editors and publishers of the daily newspapers who fail to mobilize the journalistic assets to properly cover the most important public policy debate in Virginia this year -- an issue that affects virtually every Virginian. The coverage has been so breath-taking superficial that the journalism profession in Virginia needs to understake some serious self-examination.

Crisis or No Crisis?

2006-02-20T07:32:00.000-05:00

The House of Delegates and the state Senate rolled out their full budget proposals yesterday, setting the table for... a big fight. Here's links to some of the coverage:
Virginian-Pilot
Washington Post
Associated Press
Here's a quote from the Post story that suggests how the GOP House wants to frame it:

'"Where does it stop? What's the crisis next year?" asked House Majority Whip M. Kirkland Cox (R-Colonial Heights). "Every time there's a perceived end-of-the-world crisis, we're going to raise taxes? Where does it stop?"'

I suppose the answer is, it stops anytime you try to drive somewhere.

Along with the budget work yesterday, somebody is doing some polling - I got called yesterday by some polling firm and quizzed for about 15 minutes on the particulars of the competing transportation budget plans. Among the questions: Did I consider the House budget a 'hidden tax plan' because it would eventually mean higher college tuitions? Do I favor a special legislative session if they can't reach agreement? Would I support legislators who backed Kaine's plan? And so on. Beats me which side wanted to know - the questions tried out sound-bite themes from both camps.

The State Senate on Land Use

2006-02-19T12:04:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Steve Haner for pointing out evidence of thinking about land use that has been taking place in the state Senate. This comes from a press release issued by Sen. Marty Williams, R-Newport News:

"There has been a growing awareness that our land use policies and our transportation planning need to go hand in hand. A number of Senate measures move in that direction. They would make local governments submit comprehensive plans, rezoning applications and subdivision plats to VDOT for review when it is anticipated they would have substantial impact on state roads. Another Senate measure requires fast-growing counties and cities to have ordinances regarding clustering of single family homes. And we will establish a joint subcommittee to study additional ways to integrate land use and transportation planning."

Further, the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance lists these Senate initiatives as of Feb. 16:

SB 373 (Houck)– Allows localities to transfer development rights from a parcel of property in one part of a locality to a parcel in another part of the locality. (Passed Senate 38-0)

SB 699 (Houck)– Requires localities to submit comprehensive plans, rezoning applications and subdivision plats to VDOT for review when it is anticipated they would have substantial impact on state roads. (Passed Senate 40-0)

SB 374 (Watkins)– Requires fast-growing counties and cities to have ordinances regarding clustering of single family homes. (Passed Senate 40-0)

SJ 88 (Quayle)– Establishes Joint Subcommittee to study integration of land use and transportation planning. (Passed Senate 38-0)It's a start. If the Joint Subcommittee could lead to a meaningful airing of ideas, we could be moving in the right direction.

The Worst of All Conceivable Solutions

2006-02-18T09:25:00.000-05:00

After studying transportation for more than a year, Virginia’s state Senate has passed one of the most atrocious pieces of legislation in recent history. The Senate transportation package, which passed 34 to 6 yesterday, did not have one redeeming virtue. Not one. It’s a transportation plan utterly so devoid of merit that only Virginia’s editorial writers could love it.

Let’s grant the Senate the charitable assumption that the solution to solving Virginia’s broken transportation system is to indiscriminately pour more money into it. Even by that standard, the legislation is a loser. According to Virginia Department of Transportation figures – the same figures used to justify a tax increase – the state will need $108 billion in new revenue to pursue a Business As Usual transportation policy over the next 20 years. That averages out to $5.4 billion yearly. By providing less than one-fifth that amount, the legislation falls far short. The Senate proposes no other solution for covering that gap.

But that’s only the first of the legislation’s many failings. The logical way to raise revenue would be to raise the retail gasoline tax, on the grounds that raising the cost of driving would have the salutary effect of encouraging people to drive less and reduce the stress on state roads. Instead, the Senate proposes collecting $210 million by increasing the tax on real estate transactions. Why the Senate chose not to raise taxes on, say, hair stylists or the sale of cucumbers as well, I can’t begin to imagine. The Senate also would raise the motor vehicle sales tax by three quarters of a percent, which would achieve the remarkable result of increasing the cost of car ownership without encouraging anyone to drive less!

Throw in a $10 registration fee and a tiny increase on the sale of diesel fuels, and there you have it. Oh, I nearly forgot the most ludicrous proposal of all: Raising $570 million a year by imposing a 5-percent wholesale tax on gasoline. Virginia’s esteemed Senators must think voters must be pretty stupid to see that as any less onerous than a tax on retail sales. But just in case motorists do see through the subterfuge, the Senate decided to “soften the blow,” in the words of Jeff Schapiro in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, by allowing them to file their gasoline receipts twice a year for a rebate.

Here’s a piece of unsolicited advice to the genius who came up with that idea: Those who think it's too much trouble to file -- half of all Virginians, according to your estimates -- will curse you. Even those who do file their receipts will curse you -- twice a year -- for putting them through that nonsense in the first place!

But the thorough-going abdication of common sense does not stop there. Unless it plans to introduce companion legislation not mentioned in the press accounts, the Senate does absolutely nothing to address the transportation-land use connection. Gov. Timothy Kaine has advanced a proposal. So has the House. But the Senate has nothing to say on the subject.

Neither does the Senate consider any of the many alternative transportation strategies that have been articulated: telework, traffic-demand management, traffic-light synchronization, Bus Rapid Transit and many, many more. The philosophy of the Senate can be summarized thusly: Don’t reform land use. Don’t change VDOT. Don’t try anything new. Don't change anything about transportation policy except the amount of money dumped into it. Tax, tax, pave, pave. Even the Road Builders lobby would be embarrassed to advance a legislative agenda so backward!

The Senate package is, arguably, the most reactionary legislation to come down the pike since the days of Massive Resistance. Indeed, massive resistance – as in, resistance to change – is an apt description of what the Senate has wrought. If Virginia voters had any sense, they would vote 34 senators out of office in two years -- if they didn't laugh them out first.

(Note to readers: I have deleted the concluding paragraph of this post on the grounds that it did not meet the editorial standards of the Road to Ruin blog. In my zeal, I resorted to name calling of those who disagreed with me. Insults, even if obviously hyperbolic, are not arguments; they only diminish from arguments. I apologize to anyone who took offense.)

Thin Gruel

2006-02-17T15:20:00.000-05:00

Road to Ruin reporter Bob Burke has weighed in with an analysis of 2006 legislation designed to align land use and transportation planning. His conclusion: It's better than nothing, but it's only a start. As usual, Bob is the only reporter in the Commonwealth digging beneath the press-release rhetoric of Virginia's transportation debate.

I agree with Bob's analysis -- the bills coming out of the 2006 session are only a first step. But I'm an optimist, and I like to think that the glass is half full. I find tremendous significance in the fact that the General Assembly is thinking about land use at all. Clearly, there is a growing recognition in the Governor's office and both chambers of the legislature that land use is part of the transportation equation.

Here's the problem. The major players offer a remarkably consistent critique of the disjunction between transportation and land use planning. But a lot of distrust has built up over the years, and they're talking past each other. Someone needs to lock the key constituencies into a room, hire a facilitator to look for areas of agreement, and not let them out until they've hammered out some meaningful proposals. No one is going to "solve" the problem in one session, but it's not unrealistic to hope that our lawmakers can move the ball a few more yards down the field.

It will take someone with a lot of stature to pull off such a meeting. It's really a job for the Governor's office. I humbly and respectfully suggest that the Governor might more profitably spend his time trying to find common ground than devoting his energy to another round of public hearings that will add nothing new to what's already been said.

The House Seizes the Initiative on Transportation

2006-02-16T08:23:00.000-05:00

The House of Delegates looks like it has its political act together. In marked contrast to the 2004 session, in which tax-hike foes repeatedly backtracked and compromised, the House has passed its transportation package lock, stock and smoking barrel. Many measures passed unanimously, which means that even House Democrats are on board, and even the most controversial measures won approval by comfortable margins.

There will be no repeat of 2004, in which a Democratic Governor successfully triangulated between two Republican-controlled chambers of the General Assembly.

Here's an update from the House Republican Caucus:

HB 527: Passed House 82-18. Imposes civil penalties on chronic abusive drivers and dedicates from collected revenues, $35M to the Local Revenue Sharing Fund, $25M to the Transportation Partnership Opportunity Fund, and the remainder to the Local Congestion Mitigation Fund.

HB 666: Passed House 95-0. Eliminates current limitations on the use of design-build contracts by VDOT, allowing greater utilization of an innovative procurement process that provides greater efficiencies, lower costs and better results.

HB 667: Passed House 99-0. Requires the contracting out of all maintenance of the Interstate Highway System, allowing more efficient practices in maintaining Virginia’s Interstate roads at a lower cost to taxpayers.

HB 671: Passed House 95-0. Grants authority to counties, cities and towns to award design-build contracts for local transportation construction projects.

HB 673. Passed House 61-39. Provides for election of district representatives of the Commonwealth Transportation Board by the General Assembly, providing necessary oversight and responsiveness.

HB 676: Passed House 95-0. Requires the Commonwealth Transportation Commissioner to report on the actions of the Department of Transportation regarding efforts to privatize, outsource and downsize.

HB 677. Passed House 100-0. Requires an annual report from the Commonwealth Transportation Commissioner on efforts to outsource asset management and intelligent transportation systems.

HB 681: Passed House 100-0. Increases to $50 million the state match of revenue sharing grants to cities, counties and towns for the maintenance, improvement and construction of local road projects.

HB 821: Passed House 100-0. Expands the roads eligible for the Rural Rustic Roads program.

HB 1000: Passed House 99-0. Provides penalties for violators of toll payments, including linking the issuance or renewal of vehicle registration to paying off all tolls, fees and penalties.

HB 1257: Passed House 79-20. Creates the Northern Virginia Transportation Investment Fund and the Hampton Roads Transportation Fund revolving bond programs and provides new, on-going revenue streams for these regions with the worst congestion in the Commonwealth.

HB 1365: Passed House 60-38. Creates a Joint Commission on Transportation Accountability to exercise appropriate legislative oversight of state agencies with transportation responsibilities.

HB 1426. Passed House 100-0. Provides the framework for the Commonwealth to pursue innovative concession agreements with the private sector in order to expedite transportation infrastructure improvements.

HB 1506: Passed House 100-0. Expands the number of localities that may accept cash proffers to those that have experienced a population increase of more than 5%.

HB 1513: Passed House 100-0. Requires localities submit their comprehensive plans and traffic impact statements to VDOT for input and review on zoning decisions.

HB 1521: Passed House 100-0. Promotes better managed growth by requiring localities to include road and transportation improvements when preparing their comprehensive plans.

HB 1528: Passed House 100-0. Requires localities to include cost estimates of road and transportation improvements in their comprehensive plans to factor into their proffer collections.

These bills are now on their way to the state Senate for further consideration.

Driven to Despair

2006-02-16T06:26:00.000-05:00

The Metropolitan Council of Governments has done a major analysis of traffic congestion in the Metro region, says the Washington Post, and reached this conclusion: traffic is bad. Really, really bad.

'Drivers on some highways designed for mile-a-minute travel are lucky to make five miles in an hour. Freeways that were manageable three years ago, such as the Dulles Toll Road, are now bumper-to-bumper at peak times. Congestion on some highways has doubled in three years, when the last study was released.'

Doubled in three years? Maybe, just maybe, the pattern of growth has something to do with that. But it's not all bad news, says the Post:

'Sprinkled into this snapshot of a region traffic-choked at nearly every turn are a handful of success stories. An added carpool lane on Route 50 in Maryland has improved the morning rush, and revamped interchanges in Tysons Corner and Springfield have eased tie-ups on the Capital Beltway.'

No, wait, it really is that bad. Here's an over-the-top quote to prove it:

'Transportation experts said they knew the region's traffic was bad -- but not this bad.
"It's even worse than what we would have expected," said John Townsend, spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic. "This is a template to know where the problems are. For political leaders to have this report and do nothing is akin to doing nothing while Rome burns."'

Density & the Inner Suburbs

2006-02-15T07:31:00.000-05:00

The Brookings Institution has a report coming out today that describes the problems faced by older inner suburbs, says the Washington Post. The problem:

'The nation's "first suburbs," which began drawing people out of big cities in large numbers half a century ago, now have deteriorating roads, commercial strips and housing. Those problems, coupled with demographic changes, mean that the communities "are staring down a looming set of challenges that threaten their overall stability," according to the report.'

And part of the solution, says the report, is more density:

'Washington's suburbs are dealing with those issues better than most, said researchers at the Brookings Institution, citing Arlington County's policy of promoting dense development near Metro stops as a national model for how to stay vibrant.'

The Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech has its own report coming out as well, says the Post, which talks about the changes in political leanings in these areas.

'As Republicans stake claim to votes in outer suburbs, smaller metropolitan areas and rural America, these older, urbanized communities offer new opportunities to Democrats, the report says.
Fairfax County, for example, which includes communities inside the Beltway, voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, the first time it has done so in 40 years.
"The old division of city and suburbs doesn't hold up anymore," said Robert E. Lang, director of the institute. Now, "the more important divide is older and newer suburb."'

The House Transportation Package

2006-02-13T13:17:00.000-05:00

As noted in my most recent column, "Breakthrough," the press accounts of the House of Delegates transportation plan are grossly -- nay, negligently -- deficient. There are three main pieces to the plan: a financial component, a VDOT reform component and a land use component. You can disagree with many of the specifics, as I do, but you have to give the House leadership credit for thinking seriously about transportation. In my humble opinion, this package represents real progress. The House is grappling with substantive issues.

As I've argued previously on this blog, the House is playing a much stronger hand than it did in 2004. Kaine's charge that using General Funds to pay for transportation improvements amounts to "raiding the budget of William and Mary or any other college" (see "Surplus Wars" below) is transparently ludicrous -- a rhetorical device with no basis in fact whatsoever. As long as the state is running a $1 billion revenue surplus, no one's going to buy it.

The Rebellion Has Arrived

2006-02-13T11:20:00.000-05:00

The Feb. 13, 2006, edition of Bacon's Rebellion has been published. You can read it here.

Columns related to transportation and land use include:

Breakthrough
Newspapers treated the House transportation plan as a routine story about spending and taxes. It was so much more: House leaders are shifting the debate to land use and privatization.
by James A. Bacon

Another Legislative Impasse?
The usual suspects are pushing hard for another tax increase this year, but their position is weaker than it was two years ago.
by Patrick McSweeney

Thinking Outside the Box
House Republicans have released their transportation package. Unlike competing proposals, this plan would not raise taxes at a time of unprecedented budget surpluses.
by Philip Rodokanakis

Surplus Wars

2006-02-12T10:58:00.000-05:00

Gov. Tim Kaine says flat out no way is he going to go along with using general fund surpluses for transportation, as the House GOP leaders would like to do. Here's a Daily Press story on Kaine's reaction to the House GOP funding plan, which was presented Friday afternoon.

'"We will solve this problem but not by raiding the budget of William and Mary or any other college," Democrat Kaine said. "I will not let that happen."
Kaine handwrote the pledge onto his prepared text after Republicans in the House of Delegates proposed a $2 billion transportation plan Friday. It would use new debt, stiffer fines on drivers and surplus cash in the general fund. Kaine portrayed that plan as unrealistic and unfair to other state services that depended on the general fund.'

Here's the Daily Press account of the House GOP plan:

'House Republicans counter that their plan provides targeted relief by creating loan funds in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, where unchecked congestion threatens to strangle the economy.
"It seems the Senate and the governor have defined transportation crises in terms of raising taxes," said Del. Vince Callahan of Fairfax County, the House budget chief, "but not in terms of how we will specifically address choke points and other measures that voters can identify with."
The plan exploits two financial advantages that state government has going for it. First, the healthy economy has filled the budget with excess cash. Second, Virginia has a low debt capacity - in effect, there is room on the credit card.
The plan earmarks $552 million in the next fiscal year from the budget surplus, using it for one-time construction projects.'

Aroused about Roundabouts

2006-02-10T12:11:00.000-05:00

As lawmakers debate the necessity of raising taxes to the tune of $1 billion a year to fund more transportation improvements, the Road to Ruin project has been systematically exploring alternatives to Business As Usual road-building practices. In his latest article, reporter Bob Burke explores the roundabout option.

In the right locations, roundabouts, like those you may have seen in England, Australia or continental Europe, can move up to 50,000 vehicles a day through an intersection. They're cheaper to maintain than traffic signals, and they're safer. They're just beginning to catch on in Virginia, and they may have broad applicability -- especially in green-field development where they can be built from scratch.

Needless to say, roundabouts are not a single-shot solution to the Commonwealth's traffic woes. But they're part of a solution. Combine roundabouts with a dozen other solutions -- better land use planning, outsourcing maintenance, tele-work, HOT lanes and congestion pricing, traffic light sequencing, and many others we've explored in this blog -- and a tax hike may not be needed.

I can only wonder why our lawmakers aren't devoting more energy to identifying creative solutions like these than devising ways to raise our taxes.

Growth Politics Comes of Age

2006-02-09T14:02:00.000-05:00

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's election to Governor of Virginia is attracting attention as far away as Michigan. Keith Schneider, with the Michigan Land Use Institute, has written an article for local consumption about the political signficance of Kaine's victory. In "Could Smart Growth Tip the Next Presidential Election?" Schneider argues that growth issues in America's fast-growing suburbs are changing the dynamics of U.S. politics.

Gasoline prices are rising fast. Roads are jammed. Construction costs are out of sight. Incomes of working people have fallen for five straight years. Government deficits drain public spending on infrastructure. America’s population is climbing at the fastest rate in our history, and so are obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and other indicators of our behind-the-wheel way of life.
The old foundations of the economic development strategy that produced thriving suburban communities and successful American lives are crumbling. The fortunate circumstance of cheap energy, inexpensive land, rising incomes, moderate population increases, and massive government spending for roads and water systems yielded a prosperous way of life in the 20th century. But in the 21st every one of these trends has been transformed.

Schneider argues that Kaine's winning margin came from appealing to sprawl-related quality-of-life issues "in the fast-growing, conservative counties of northern Virginia, particularly Loudon County." (Nobody outside Virginia ever spells "Loudoun" correctly.)

I think that Schneider exaggerates the extent to which "sprawl" was a central issue in Virginia's 2005 gubernatorial campaign, but find his perspective to be intriguing nontheless. Especially cogent are his thoughts on rethinking the meaning of "economic development":

Conventional views about the benefits of a business-at-any-cost economic strategy are colliding with the reality of ugly sprawl, congestion, cracked roads, obsolete schools, fiscal deficits, escalating energy prices, and rising civic discontent about how communities grow. Advocates now have the best opportunity in a generation to make the case that Smart Growth’s proven economic principles and popular cultural values represent a national economic development strategy that has real merit.

Trouble All Over

2006-02-09T08:08:00.000-05:00

Lots in this morning's papers, including:

The Senate Finance Committee is facing industry opposition to its transportation funding plan, says The Free Lance-Star. Senators who back the package are pushing back.

'..Sen. Charles Hawkins, R-Pittsylvania, said it will be impossible to fix the state's transportation problems without providing a reliable funding stream to do so.
"When I go to a restaurant and I order a meal, no, I don't want to pay for it. But I've got to pay for it if I want the meal," Hawkins said. "Worst-case scenario, we put a Band-Aid on transportation, declare victory and go home. A Band-Aid does not fix this. We need long-term funding."'

Gov. Tim Kaine turns columnist for a Times Community paper and hits on a theme that got him elected:

'Our current system, in which local governments make land use decisions, and the state follows behind with transportation planning and funding creates a situation where the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. And every Virginian is paying the price for that failed arrangement, in terms of longer delays and growing frustration.'

And The Washington Post lets the chronically divided GOP know that it's time to put up:

'Republicans may prefer user fees, tolls and a collection of the state's most obscure taxes, or any combination thereof, to pay for the improvements that Virginians demand. But squirming uncomfortably is not an option. Del. L. Scott Lingamfelter, a Prince William Republican, acknowledged that the other day, telling The Post that Republicans planned (at last) to offer a "very robust" plan.
We're waiting.'

Kaine's Long Hard Road

2006-02-08T17:28:00.000-05:00

A House of Delegates committee today shot down one of Gov. Tim Kaine's key legislative proposals, which would have let localities reject development projects if the road network couldn't handle it. The Counties, Cities and Towns Committee defeated that bill by a 9-2 vote, says washingtonpost.com.

Meanwhile, the House Rules Committee today also tabled a resolution backed by Shenandoah Valley legislators that would have pushed VDOT away from the $13 billion STAR Solutions proposal for expanding Interstate 81 to a more modest approach.

Where's the House leadership headed with all this? If the road/development lobby shoots them down at the committee level, they're going to have a harder time selling their funding plan, whatever that might be..

"Journey Through Hallowed Ground" Halted in its Tracks in Loudoun

2006-02-08T08:31:00.000-05:00

The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors has refused to endorse "The Journey Through Hallowed Ground," an initiative to designate the U.S. 15 corridor between Charlottesville to Gettysburg, Pa., as a national scenic byway and national heritage area.

The Journey doesn't require the board's approval to proceed with the application, but the County's support would have strengthened its case. Most other communities along the route have endorsed the proposal.

The Journey initiative has gotten embroiled in the volatile politics of growth in Loudoun, reports the Loudoun Times-Mirror: "Fears that federal designations would limit the board's ability to widen or make safer heavily trafficked U.S. 15 fueled the resolution's failure."

U.S. 15 truly is one of Virginia's -- and the nation's -- most scenic byways. It's a sad commentary that sprawling, leap-frogging growth from Metropolitan Washington is threatening this historic and cultural treasure located an hour's drive from the urban core. It's not as if there were a shortage of land in metro Washington. There's only an unwillingness of local governments to approve in-fill development and re-development at higher densities and in configurations that would be readily supported in the marketplace.

There have been limited moves to approve higher densities in recent years. They just appear to be too little and too late to save U.S. 15.

Transportation Debate Shifts to Land Use Reform

2006-02-07T17:16:00.000-05:00

Rebounding from his defeat Tuesday, when the House of Delegates rejected his $1 billion-a-year proposal to fund transportation improvements, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine pushed the case this morning for connecting land use and transportation planning.

Addressing a rally of some 200 environmentalists and conservationists near the state Capitol building, he said, "I’ve held town hall meetings across the Commonwealth to talk about transportation, and the people of Virginia are sending a very clear message to their legislators: Don’t come home empty-handed on this issue.”

The rally was organized to show support for three measures designed to blunt the impact of new development on Virginia's overloaded transportation system.

-- Require traffic impact studies for comprehensive plans and new development proposals;

-- Clarify existing law to permit localities can turn down rezoning proposals that increase development on a parcel if the roads can’t handle it; and,

-- Allow counties to adopt policies to transfer development rights from one part of their community to another.

“These bills represent first steps and common sense solutions for our growth and traffic problems,” said Christopher Miller, President of the Piedmont Environmental Council.

“We are encouraged by bi-partisan leadership seeking to improve land use and transportation planning. We need a comprehensive state, local and private sector partnership to design communities to minimize traffic, to provide more transportation choices, and to use land use planning solutions to reduce transportation infrastructure needs,” noted Stewart Schwartz, Executive Director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth.

2004 Redux?

2006-02-07T09:25:00.000-05:00

With the House of Delegate's rejection of Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's tax plan, the looming conflict between high-tax and low-tax partisans in the General Assembly is shaping up much the same as it did two years ago. But I argue in a post over on the Bacon's Rebellion blog that the correlation of forces are quite different. Don't expect a repeat of 2004.

Tysons Corner: No Place Like Home

2006-02-07T06:21:00.000-05:00

Fairfax County leaders are pushing a policy of high-density residential growth near its Metrorail stops, including the planned Metro stations in Tysons Corner, says the WashPost. But that doesn't mean the private sector wants to go along - the developer of a major project there has a different vision for Tysons.

'The plan approved three years ago called for Lerner Enterprises to build 540 condominiums, but the company now says it will build as few as 300 pricier ones...."The county obviously does not welcome this [change], but our ability to force them to do something they don't want to do is very limited," said Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D).
At stake at Tysons is Fairfax's fundamental philosophy about growth in a county that has more than 1 million people, thousands of available jobs and little housing left... The problem is that developers are not necessarily as keen as county planners on the notion of building large amounts of housing at Tysons, particularly for employees unable to afford $1.5 million condominiums.'

So, if we give the market its way and let Tysons become a home to the very wealthy, that puts the rabble out in the countryside, where housing costs less. But then they'll still need to get to and from their jobs in the urban core, where, like it or not, most of the jobs still are and will be in the near future.

Unless we push those jobs out to the edges of the urban region, right? So we either force the private sector to do our bidding at Tysons, or in Loudoun (and beyond). Which is cheaper?

House Committee Kills Kaine Plans

2006-02-06T15:45:00.000-05:00

Ok, no surprise here, but it's a step toward setting the stage for the bigger fight. The House Finance Committee today rejected a couple of key funding proposals backed by Gov. Tim Kaine - the increase of the sales tax on on automobiles, and doubling the tax on auto insurance premiums. Here's the Washington Post story on the committee's actions.

Now comes whatever strategy the House GOP has for transportation funding, which is expected this week. One challenge they face is that the Senate and Kaine have set the bar for funding at roughly $4 billion over four years. Think the House can come up with that total? If they don't, they will be asked to explain why they don't need to. That's the downside of letting the other guys go first.

'In defeating the bills, delegates cited the state's healthy surplus and their concern that the plan simply tossed money at a transportation system that needed fundamental reform.
"We don't have a revenue problem in Virginia," said Del. Jeffrey M. Frederick (R-Prince William), an anti-tax legislator, who has submitted bills that would tweak zoning laws that he said would better help localities plan for transportation projects. "We have a transportation problem."'

Halfway Through the Session and Little to Show for It

2006-02-06T08:29:00.000-05:00

If the 2006 session of the General Assembly was supposed to be the "transportation" session, there's nothing much to show for it, observes Bob Gibson, columnist with the Charlottesville Daily Progress. Says Gibson: "If anyone has seen a big solution running around Richmond, he hasen’t caught it, bottled it and sold it yet."

In marked contrast to Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, who heard demands for congestion relief during his transportation listening tour late last year, GOP legislators aren't feeling much pressure to raise taxes, as Gov. Kaine and some state senators have proposed.

The boys and girls of winter, as Richmond scribe Jeff E. Schapiro likes to call state legislators, are not hearing thousands of folks back home saying, Tax us, please, so we can beat this sprawl, y’all."

"We’re not hearing much of anything about transportation" from the home folks, one GOP legislator said.

Transfer of Development Rights

2006-02-06T08:20:00.000-05:00

The Virginia Senate last month unanimously approved legislation allowing localities to establish 'transfer of development rights' (TDR) programs, and the Virginian-Pilot likes it.

'Cities would designate areas where growth would be discouraged, and areas where it would be encouraged, and landowners would then be free to move the rights to build houses from place to place.
It would give cities far greater control over how much gets built where — allowing them to concentrate houses around light-rail stations, for example — instead of working through the sometimes cumbersome current process. It also allows cities to protect land that needs protection, like between a naval air base and a practice field, without making victims of the landowners or costing taxpayers an arm and a leg to buy property rights.'

Meanwhile, Arlington County this month is looking at creating a TDR program as part of its zoning ordinance, empowered by legislation the General Assembly passed last year. That enabling legislation expires in 2008, though.

Spread of the "Urban Village" Concept

2006-02-06T07:07:00.000-05:00

Frederick County's planning officials are exploring the idea of including small, urbanized islands of development, or urban villages, in the county's master plan, according to an article in the Winchester Star (requires registration). The article does not explain exactly what would constitute an urban village, but seems to suggest they would be areas where the County would concentrate infrastructure development and allow a mix of residential and commercial development.

The idea makes sense. Increasingly, residents of "rural" counties demand "urban" services: water, sewer, neighborhood schools, and fire, police and rescue services. Those services are expensive to provide in a scattered, disconnected, low-density pattern of development. Planners in Frederick County and elsewhere are seeing the wisdom of concentrating development so that the services can be provided more economically.

It is also notable that planners are seeing the value in "mixed use" development. It makes no sense to rigidly segregate commercial and residential uses in an intimate, village atmosphere. Anyone who has visited a French or English "village" can see how mixed uses can co-exist in a harmonious, pedestrian-friendly environment.

Let's Make A Deal

2006-02-04T06:41:00.000-05:00

Gov. Tim Kaine took kind of a victory lap through Loudoun County yesterday, giving a speech to the county's chamber of commerce just a few days after Democrat Mark Herring won a special state senate election there on the same growth/transportation themes that served Kaine so well in November.

The WaPost covers Kaine's speech, in which he does a bit of posturing by pressing the House GOP to come up with some financing plans and threatening to call a special session if some deal isn't worked out. The article says Kaine is kinda ticked.

'"It's 'Wait and see what we come up with,' " Kaine said, a hint of frustration evident yesterday, noting that he has taken pains to welcome ideas. But he said he would turn to other options quickly -- including harsher rhetoric and a session extension -- if the House fails to act soon.'

House leaders say they'll reveal their funding strategies next week. Bill Howell and company are probably on some kind of 'listening tour' now.

House GOP Wants a Different VDOT

2006-02-03T07:45:00.000-05:00

Republican leaders in the House of Delegates outlined their plans to 'reform' how the state's transportation decisions are handled, and their ideas include changes at VDOT and for the Commonwealth Transportation Board.Says The Free Lance-Star this morning:

'The bills they listed yesterday include provisions to contract out all maintenance work to private companies; increase local authority and responsibility for local roads; give the General Assembly the power to appoint some of the members of the Commonwealth Transportation Board (all members of the CTB are currently gubernatorial appointments); and create a commission that would have oversight of transportation agencies, especially when the legislature is not in session.

'Del. Leo Wardrup, R-Virginia Beach, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, said the Virginia Department of Transportation is "absolutely impervious to human intervention."

'The bills include one that would encourage private companies to construct roads in exchange for "concession agreements" such as tolls. Another bill would increase the amount allotted to "revenue sharing agreements" with localities, in which localities pay for part of the cost of a road project to help build it faster. The Republicans also want regular reports from the state's transportation commissioner on the efforts of VDOT to privatize, outsource or downsize projects.'

Speaker of the House Bill Howell and others say the financing details will come out later.

'"We believe that the transportation problems in Virginia are much larger than just dollars and cents," said Del. Cliff Athey, R-Front Royal.'

Subdivision Politics

2006-02-02T09:55:00.000-05:00

The election earlier this week of Democrat Mark Herring to the state Senate, an office previously held by a Republican, is a sure sign that something's brewing in Loudoun County.

Loudoun is the spear-head -- the pointy end of the spearhead - of growth in Virginia, and what happens there holds lessons for other fast-growing regions of the state. In a profile of Andrea McGimsey, who runs the Campaign for Loudoun's Future, Road to Ruin reporter Bob Burke takes a look at grass roots activism and the backlash against untrammeled growth in the county.

McGimsey, a former AOL employee combines old-fashioned, face-to-face retail politics with sophisticated interactive media tools. Read the article.

Jack Herrity

2006-02-01T12:53:00.000-05:00

The former Fairfax County supervisor who helped shape much of that county's growth in the 1970s has died, at 75, reports the Wash Post.

'Herrity was known for his influence on transportation in the county. As chairman of the board from 1976 to 1988, he was involved in the developmental stages of the Fairfax County Parkway, Interstate 66 inside the Beltway and the Dulles Access Road.
In 1980, Herrity was named Washingtonian of the Year by Washingtonian magazine.'

A memorable fellow. In the early 1970s I remember him campaigning door-to-door for the Board of Supervisors and sitting with my parents at the kitchen table of our new house in what was then edge of suburban development, just west of Fairfax City. He was a serious political force. Wonder what he thought of how Fairfax turned out...

Anti-Growth Backlash in Loudoun

2006-02-01T09:05:00.000-05:00

Wake up call for the GOP: Democrat Mark R. Herring just picked up a state Senate seat in a special election against Mick Staton, Jr., in a formerly Republican seat. Herring, according to today's Washington Post, "spoke to the frustration of many residents over unchecked growth and traffic."

Staton, who ran as a fiscal and social conservative, won only 38 percent of the vote.

Smart growth advocates did not hesitate to declare victory along with Herring. "Virginia’s voters have made it clear that they want something done about poorly planned growth because they know it makes their commutes longer and longer,” said Stewart Schwartz, Executive Director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth in a prepared statement released yesterday.

“Both candidates must now address these growth issues, Herring as Senator and Staton as Supervisor,” said Andrea McGimsey of Campaign for Loudoun’s Future. “Voters do not have a partisan approach on growth issues, they want all of their officials to look at the big picture and work with them to make wise decisions about where and how the region grows.”

“We are encouraged by the bi-partisan leadership at the state level in support of connecting transportation and land use planning," said Christopher Miller, President, Piedmont Environmental Council. "Senator-elect Herring understands local problems and will help deliver the needed tools for addressing growth.”

Will the political dynamics in Loudoun carry over to other localities? Perhaps not. Growth-related stresses in Loudoun, one of the fastest-growing counties in the country, are the worst in Virginia. But the magnitude of the political reversal there suggests that Republicans had better come up with better ideas for coping with growth than they have so far or they will continue to lose ground in Virginia's high-growth counties.

Telework: The Other Fuel

2006-01-31T20:47:00.000-05:00

The Telework Exchange, an online community dedicated to eliminating telework gridlock, has released its "A Barrel Saved is a Barrel Earned" study which quantifies America's fuel conservation opportunity. By teleworking just two days per week, the U.S. government and white collar workforce could conserve 11.67 billion gallons of gasoline per year. That represents an associated annual fuel conservation equivalent to more than 27 percent of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Says Stephen W.T. O'Keeffe, executive director of the Alexandria-based exchange: "The best way to reduce gasoline consumption and dependence is to drive less. ... The 'other' fuel for our economy, telework, is a largely untapped resource. It requires no new research and development. The remedy to America's gasoline addiction is right on our doorstep." Click here for study details.

Correction for Mike Thompson's Column

2006-01-31T09:48:00.000-05:00

Bacon's Rebellion published an early edition of Mike Thompson's column, "How to Fund Transportation Without Really Trying" based on a preliminary draft, and Road to Ruin linked to it. The early version omitted several important changes made by the author. We have since replaced it with the proper version. We apologize both to Mike and to our readers for the error.

New Kent County Zones Out

2006-01-31T08:18:00.000-05:00

A proposed overhaul of zoning laws in New Kent County has been shelved for now after protests from a number of county residents. 'A number' is what you say when you don't actually know the number, but think it was more than one and less than 100 percent.

The Times-Dispatch covered it here . If you're interested, you can find the draft zoning ordinance at this page and download a PDF of the overview.

I don't know the details of this county but it sure sounds like a familiar story. Residents quoted in the article blame outsiders and newcomers.

'Douglas Harwood, who owns and harvests timberland in New Kent, said he is troubled by rules that seem to cater to the tastes of newcomers moving into upscale residential developments.
"They have decided that New Kent County is no longer going to be New Kent County. It's going to be Williamsburg," Harwood said. "Everything is being done for the people that are coming from outside."
David Adams, who fears the new rules would make his Providence Forge convenience store and gas station illegal, agrees.
"It seems like this whole document is geared toward protecting people who aren't here yet," Adams said. "But those of us who are here are going to have to bear the burden of protecting them."'

This is some lame reporting here, since I seriously doubt the zoning ordinance would force this fellow to close his store, and the reporter could have found out.
But it'll be interesting to see if proponents of this zoning-law change try to bring it back.

Method to Our Madness

2006-01-30T11:18:00.000-05:00

You might think that the Road to Ruin is just a random bunch of blog postings by Bob Burke and Jim Bacon, but you're be sorely mistaken. Believe it or not, there are reasons for the topics we choose to focus on.

I have laid out our framework for analysis in the Road to Ruin's "Transportation Primer." Here, we lay out the four major themes that animate Bob Burke's reporting and my opinion pieces:

Advocates of a transportation tax increase are exagerrating the severity of the transportation crisis in an effort to stampede lawmakers into a tax increase.
Virginia cannot build its way out of traffic congestion -- adopting more rational human settlement patterns is essential.
Even in the absence of land use reform, there are alternative strategies for coping with congestion that don't entail tax increases.
Giving politicians more money to "solve" Virginia's transportation problems is like giving booze to a drunk to "solve" his hangover.

Each section contains links to key articles and columns we have written.

The Thinking Man's Insurrection

2006-01-30T10:13:00.000-05:00

No need for riots in the steet or hurling molotov cocktails. The thinking man's insurrection has arrived. Just sink into that ergonomically incorrect chair in front of your PC and peruse the Jan. 30, 2006, edition of Bacon's Rebellion here. Our columnists clearly had transportation -- and transportation-related tax hikes -- on their mind.

Columns include:

The Waste in Maintenance
If the General Assembly doesn't tackle the $200 million-a-year waste in road maintenance, lawmakers can't even pretend to be serious about curtailing state spending.
by James A. Bacon

Transportation Hold 'em
Most of the cards on the General Assembly's transportation table are lying face up. But it's still too early to know who's got the winning hand.
by Doug Koelemay

Kaine's Plan Doesn't Cut It
Tim Kaine's transportation plan will cost more money - and it won't work.
by Patrick McSweeney

Not Again (Sigh)
Once again, the General Assembly is talking about taxes for transportation. You'd never know that a global revolution in highway privatization and financing has taken place.
by Geoffrey Segal

How to Fund Transportation without Really Trying
These six strategies will stretch Virginia transportation dollars by billions of dollars -- and put off the need for tax increases for years.
by Michael Thompson

House GOP's Plan: Make Them Pay

2006-01-28T06:47:00.000-05:00

GOP leaders in the House of Delegates have laid out some proposals - here's the WaPost take on it:

'The Republicans' bills would allow more local governments to receive payments from developers to ease the impact of building. Localities would be required to review the potential cost of new roads in their long-range planning. Lawmakers said that would lay the foundation for increasing the amount of money local governments could expect from developers.'

Would someone please defend this idea. The strategy of dumping the costs for infrastructure improvements on homebuilders reeks of shirked responsibility. Is that what frustrated suburbanites are telling their legislators? 'It's not my fault that traffic is bad, it's those new people.'

Homebuilders lobbyist Mike Toalson's quote at the end of the story is entertaining: ""We are concerned that some of these measures might result in higher housing costs," he said." I believe he meant to say, '...these measures might result in lower profits,' but no matter. How does making this industry and its customers pay more change the pattern and density of development?

Sidewalks to Nowhere

2006-01-27T08:34:00.000-05:00

One of the bizarre phenomena I've observed about life in suburban Henrico County is the episodic nature of the sidewalks. You see short lengths of sidewalk -- the equivalent of two or three city blocks -- running along roads with high-speed traffic. These sidewalks proceed for a distance, then end. They don't connect to anything. Naturally, with all the fast traffic whizzing by, and the fact that they don't go anywhere, and the fact that the distances between destinations are so far apart, no one actually uses them.

Aggregate all of Virginia's suburban sidealks to nowhere, link them end to end, and they'd probably stretch from the Fairfax County Courthouse to the Mississippi and back. (I made up that factoid, but you get the idea.) Yet, to borrow a rustic metaphor, all that sidewalk is more useless than teats on a boar hog.

It appears that the residents of Fairfax County have made much the same observation. The Washington Examiner runs a brief story about a report filed by the Fairfax County Pedestrian Task Force. The report recommends some $60 million in pedestrian improvements over the next decade. Says the Examiner:

"Included in the report are recommendations to repair specific areas, such as a 2.5-mile stretch of walkway along Route 1 between Alexandria and Fort Belvoir and a 2.5-mile trail along Route 7 between Alexandria and Falls Church. Other improvements include a countywide plan to complete walkways that now end abruptly and improve bus stop safety and access." (My emphasis.)

That's why I keep hammering home the importance of pedesrian-friendly urban design. If you wonder why suburbanites seem to addicted to driving their cars everywhere, just read this anecdote the Examiner tells fo Fairfax Supervisor Sharon Bulova:

"I remember a time when my car was in the shop and I thought, 'Well, I'm just a mile away from the government center, I can just walk up the road,' " Bulova ... said of her short journey along Lee Highway.

"It was quite a walk, and you go through brush and brambles and down into a gully, and you can see where people have tried to make their way," she said. "This is a main road ... and we shouldn't have difficulty for pedestrians getting back and forth."

Loudoun's Extreme Makeover

2006-01-26T08:21:00.000-05:00

Back again to Loudoun County with a Weldon Cooper Center report estimating population there grew 49 percent since the 2000 census. The Washington Post has the story, about growth in Loudoun and other counties (here's the chart.) In fact Northern Virginia's growth accounted for 60 percent of the state's overall increase of about 500,000 people.

It's worth looking at the chart to see the raw numbers, and get a sense of how much faster Loudoun is growing than other parts of the state - Hampton Roads' growth, for example, looks tame by comparison.

It wouldn't be surprising if the county matched this rate of growth when the 2010 census comes along. There's really nothing like it.

'In the past 15 years, the county has doubled the number of schools and more than tripled the number of students, to about 47,000 this year. Six more schools are scheduled to open for the 2007-08 school year.
Scott York, chairman of Loudoun's Board of Supervisors, cautioned that the surge in population means that county leaders need to rethink whether they want to continue on the same path.
"What it means is that our roads are going to get further clogged, we'll continue building schools, and it will mean higher taxes," he said. "That's why we need a change of attitude from board members and need to start doing more with smart-growth policies as opposed to no-developer-left-behind policies."'

Abusing the "Abuser Fee" at the Daily Press

2006-01-25T11:08:00.000-05:00

In the same editorial noted in the post below, The Daily Press in Newport News took a dislike to one of the few positive proposals on transportation reform to emerge from the House of Delegates: to charge "abuser fees" to help pay for roads. (Click here and scroll down to "Some Ideas to Be Resisted.") Says the Daily Press:

The legislation - embraced by [Gov. Tim] Kaine, too - also implies that Virginia will begin doing what it does not do now: enforce traffic laws. It's a hit-or-miss
proposition these days, and mostly miss.
But let's say battalions of ticket-issuing gendarmes descend on the commonwealth's highways, blue flashing lights and all, in search of "abusers." What will happen? Likely, drivers will amend their behavior - which is the only beneficial prospect in this.
When that occurs, what happens to the revenue stream? It peters out, that's what. Until, of course, legislators broaden the definition of abuse. See how this works?

You can usually count on the Daily Press to totally miss the point. Yes, abuser fees may raise a small amount of money to fund more road improvement projects. But the real benefit is to change motorist behavior. The worst traffic congestion on the Interstates is caused by wrecks -- wrecks often caused by speeding or reckless drivers. The way to reduce the most painful incidents of traffic congestion is to reduce the incidence of wrecks.

Of course, that opens up an entire range of policy options that appear to be anathema to the Daily Press editorial writers and their colleagues in Norfolk, Roanoke, Washington and elsewhere: One way to ameliorate traffic congestion is to create incentives for people to change their behavior. Congestion pricing is one such solution. Paying for road maintenance through a user fee like a gas tax, as opposed to revenue sources that have no connection with Vehicle Miles Driven, is another. And, of course, altering land use patterns -- an option that the Daily Press never acknowledged until it was legitimized by Tim Kaine -- is yet another.

Daily Press Nails the House GOP

2006-01-25T09:17:00.000-05:00

The Daily Press has an editorial today that works through the strategies http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif for transportation funding being floated in Richmond, and includes this shot at the anti-tax House, which seems to me to have some traction:

'The worst proposal of all, however, is another cooked up in the House, and that's to rob the state general fund. House members apparently believe that the average voter does not understand how Virginia organizes its finances (general fund revenue for education and public safety; other specific taxes dedicated for transportation), and, so, why not exploit that condition?
What the House wants to do, basically, is grab the money that was raised by the 2004 tax increase - money meant to straighten out the state's finances and ensure a sufficient flow of revenue to education, public safety and other vital state responsibilities - and simply redirect it toward transportation.
This is the same money, of course, that many House "conservatives" said over and over that Virginia didn't need, but now they find they do need it, only for a different purpose: to have something to throw at transportation.'

In Loudoun, Less is More

2006-01-25T09:05:00.000-05:00

Speaking of property rights - here are some residents in Loudoun who would like the board of supervisors go with a lower-density zoning in the the western parts of the county. This story doesn't say much but it's evident that many in Loudoun, including the more developed eastern part of the county, think adding thousands of households in the west will make traffic in the east even worse. After all, none of those potential new residents would be commuting to West Virginia..

The current zoning permits one house per three acres - the proposed new zoning would reduce that density... by a lot. Densities would be 20 acres and 40 acres for a house, with rezoning options as low as 7.5 acres and 15 acres.

Lock Box Skeptics Emerge

2006-01-23T08:22:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post writes this morning about resistance to Gov. Tim Kaine's goal of locking up the transportation trust so others can't dip into its reserves, as they have five times in the past.

'Sen. John H. Chichester (R-Northumberland), who backs a plan that would raise more than $1 billion a year in new revenue, has argued that the money should remain available for the next emergency, or at least be accompanied by a similar measure regarding the state's general fund, the main source of funding for other services, such as education.
"If you're going to lock one, you ought to lock the other," Chichester said. "A constitutional lock on either, however, I perceive as a cluttering of the constitution."
Chichester also said a lock has the potential of tying legislators' hands in years to come.'

Tying their hands is the idea, isn't it? But this is starting to sound like a proposal that will fade to nothing.

'Property Rights' in James City County

2006-01-23T08:04:00.000-05:00

With residential growth apparently becoming a pressing issue in James City County, leaders there are looking for ways to protect the county's rural open space. Which has some landowners worried that they're going to lose out. The Daily Press has a story, which has this quote:

'"Once they tell you what you can and can't do with your land, that's very frightening. We've got the land, and that's all we've got."'

The speaker is a woman named Pam Moore; her family owns a few hundred acres it currently rents to a hunt club. But the government already tells her what she can and can't do with her land.

Tim Kaine's Tax Increase - Another Broken Promise?

2006-01-23T07:27:00.000-05:00

Over on the Bacon's Rebellion blog, I note that Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's proposal for $1 billion in new transportation taxes is inconsistent with his campaign rhetoric. I raise the question of whether he had hidden his intention to raise taxes from the voters. Read the post here.

Tim Kaine's Transportation Plan

2006-01-21T09:28:00.000-05:00

Read Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's address to the General Assembly in which he lays out his legislative package for transportation, along with other initiatives. There are some good nuggets buried in there -- particularly, developing " measurable goals for our transportation investments so that voters can hold all of us accountable for the performance of our transportation network" -- but, overall, a cynic might describe the package as mo' money, mo' regulation.

Not THE Gas Tax, But A Gas Tax Increase

2006-01-20T13:58:00.000-05:00

The Senate unveiled its "Driving Virginia's Future" transportation funding plan that aims at raising $1 billion a year in new revenue by raising the sales tax on wholesale gas purchases and when you buy a new car.

Says the Post:

'Under the Senate plan, entitled "Driving Virginia's Future," the purchase of a car would become more expensive. Instead of the 3 percent "titling tax" that buyers currently pay, the Senate plan would impose the state's 5 percent sales tax. When fully phased in after four years, taxes on a $20,000 car would increase from $600 to $1,000.

The plan would also increase taxes on gasoline by gradually imposing the state's 5 percent sales tax on the purchase of gas by stations at the wholesale level. Stations would likely pass along those taxes in the form of higher prices at the pump, senators said. By 2010, they said, the average driver could pay $65 more each year for gas.'

State Sen. Charles R. Hawkins, R-Pittsylvania, spoke with his usual understated humility.

'"This is nothing short of a remake of our transportation system," Hawkins told reporters at a news conference attended by a dozen Democratic and Republican senators.'

We await the reax from anti-tax legislators in the House...

Kaine to Support Transportation Tax Increase

2006-01-20T08:55:00.000-05:00

Jeff Schapiro and Tyler Whitley with the Richmond Times-Dispatch are reporting that Gov. Timothy M. Kaine will propose increasing the sales tax on motor vehicles and other measures that will raise nearly $1 billion a year in new transportation revenue. "Capitol sources yesterday said Kaine ... favors pushing the tax on motor-vehicle sales from 3 percent to 5 percent, putting it in line with the state's nickel-on-the-dollar sales levy."

It will be interesting to see how the political dynamics play out. Kaine also wants two other things: (1) constitutional protections for the Transportation Trust Fund, to ensure that the money isn't diverted to other purposes, and (2) more power for local governments to block rezoning requests that would stress local transportation systems.

Both of those measures will encounter significant resistance in the General Assembly. The only way he can get them through is by using the tax increase as leverage: "Take the whole package, or you get nothing at all." It will be interesting to see how he positions his proposal in his announcement later today.

The Northern Virginia Plan

2006-01-20T08:16:00.000-05:00

I guess it's either this or secession. Some Northern Virginia Republicans are proposing legislation that would raise about $300 million a year through fee and tax increases, with the money going to Northern Virginia's transportion needs. This morning's Washington Post outlines some details:

'The legislation includes increased fees on truck and trailer registrations and car rentals; higher penalties for chronically bad drivers; an additional 20-cent fee for every $100 of the sale price of a property; and an extra $5 tax on hotel and motel rooms. The bill also would ensure that the sales tax collected on motor vehicle parts would be dedicated to transportation...
"The key here is that money doesn't have to go through Richmond," said Del. David B. Albo, one of the three legislators who have developed the plan. "I want to make sure that money raised in Northern Virginia goes directly to that turn lane that needs to be put in or that secondary road that needs to be widened."'

Can or will the General Assembly go along with regional plans and a statewide funding plan?

'"I would suspect that we would pass out one set of plans, but not both," said Del. Vincent F. Callahan Jr. (R-Fairfax), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, who added that he would consider supporting the regional sales tax increase to help match the federal money for Metro.'

More Details on the Coalfields Expressway Plan

2006-01-20T08:14:00.000-05:00

The Richmond Times-Dispatch has scrounged up details on the revised plan for building the proposed 51-mile Coalfield Expressway in Virginia's far Southwest. The new plan would save "as much as half" the project's estimated $2.3 billion cost by mining coal along its route. But the coal companies want to change the route's alignment to a corridor that would access more recoverable coal.

I've argued that the SW Virginia could do more to improve its accessibility to the outside world by wiring the region's small towns -- the route would run through Grundy, Clintwood and Pound -- with wireless broadband infrastructure. But if local citizens are determined to build the darn road, any proposal that would cut the cost in half needs to be seriously considered.

Of course, changing the route would render useless the $32 million spent so far on engineering work for the old route. What a waste.

Don't Look to the House for Transportation Reform

2006-01-19T08:49:00.000-05:00

I presume that Del. Leo . Wardrup, R-Virginia, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, fancies himself a fiscal conservative. Like other members of the Republican Caucus, he doesn't want to raise taxes -- not even to fund transportation improvements. But, judging by brief remarks quoted in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star, the reluctance to raise taxes does not translate into a reluctance to pump more money into a dysfunctional transportation system.

Wadrup's idea is simply to re-channel revenue streams from the General Fund to the Transportation Trust Fund. According to the article, "Wardrup would increase the amount of sales tax put toward transportation, dedicate part of the deeds and recordation tax to transportation, and dedicate all insurance license tax revenues to transportation."

(Speaker William J. Howell told the Free Lance-Star that Wardrup's funding plan was his alone, not necessarily shared by the House Republican Caucus.)

Wardrup's idea of reforming the transportation system would be to "allow the legislature, rather than the governor, to appoint some members of the Commonwealth Transportation Board; create a commission to oversee agencies with transportation authority; and let local governments award contracts for local roads."

Increase the legislature's powers of patronage over the CTB at the expense of the governor? Create another layer of bureaucracy to diffuse responsibility and decision making? Wow, that will rock the system. Folks, this is nothing more than Business As Usual dressed up to look like something different.

The article mentioned nothing about land-use reform, privatization, congestion pricing, telework, asset-management systems, bus rapid transit or the dozens of other ideas, both good and bad, that have bandied about. It's possible that Wardrup is thinking about these things, but if so, his thinking hasn't congealed into the kind of concrete proposals that reporters write about.

Senate Gets Funding Plan Ready

2006-01-19T08:16:00.000-05:00

A Washington Post story this morning says Senate leaders are looking at a package of fee and tax increases that could eventually produce $1 billion a year in extra revenue for transportation.

'Sources familiar with the Senate proposal said it is likely to include several of the following: increases to the sales or income tax, higher taxes on the sale of cars, a new sales tax on gasoline, higher auto registration fees and tolls.'

The Senate's START panel worked up some numbers on how much could be raised using those fees/taxes - the link to the START group's final recommendations is on this page at the bottom.

Gov. Tim Kaine's plan is expected to come out tomorrow; and then we wait to see what the House of Delegates wants to do. This will be interesting..

New Study: Put Housing Near Transit

2006-01-18T10:33:00.000-05:00

The D.C. Examiner writes today about results of an ongoing study on how the Washington, D.C. region should plan its land use and transportation.

'The study found that plans based around jobs and transit would decrease travel time in the region by 10 percent due to shorter trips and more transit use, said Ron Kirby, a regional transportation planner.If the additional people follow current trends, traffic and housing situations would get worse, Kirby said.'

The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments is the group responsible for the study; here's a link to the study's web page.

It's the Location, Stupid

2006-01-17T09:34:00.000-05:00

Bob Burke explores the relationship between the "Smart Growth" and "New Urbanism" movements in a new article, "It's the Location, Stupid." The two groups would seem to be natural allies. Both favor mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly development in higher densities than is typically found in suburban development. But the Smart Growthers don't hesitate to criticize specific New Urbanist projects deemed to be in the "wrong" locations.

Read Burke's article here.

Tim Kaine's Transportation Agenda

2006-01-17T07:02:00.000-05:00

There were no big surprises in Gov. Tim Kaine's remarks about transportation in his first speech as governor to the General Assembly last night. Read his speech here.

I suspect that Kaine will find broad support for his fiscal reforms: setting up a "lockbox" to prevent legislators from raiding the Transportation Trust Fund to pay for General Fund programs. His proposal to link land-use and transportation planning will be more contentious. The idea of requiring developers to submit traffic impact statements along with the rezoning requests is a good one.

Kaine's proposal to give local governments more power to curtail rezoning requests on the grounds that the development would stress the local transportation grid, however, will encounter resistance. Home builders and developers will argue, with some reason, that it will only aggravate the mismatch between supply of and demand for housing.

The biggest news is this: The Governor also plans to submit a "long-term transportation investment plan" to address Virginia's long-term transportation needs. In putting together that plan, he says Virginians need to address several questions:

Should drivers who abuse our roads, and endanger our families, bear a higher burden through fees?

Should heavier vehicles that cause increased wear and tear on the roads be charged more in maintenance costs?

How much should we rely on funding sources like HOT lanes and tolls?

Should localities have more options to fund critical regional projects?

What is the appropriate role of responsible debt and financing?

Are the dedicated state revenue streams that support our maintenance, construction and public transportation needs sufficient?

And most importantly, what is the price of doing nothing?

Peasants with Pitchforks and a Very Serious Attitude

2006-01-16T14:32:00.000-05:00

The Jan. 16, 2006, edition of Bacon's Rebellion is now online. You can view it here.

As usual, we have a number of columns that should appeal to readers interested in transportation and land use issues:

Building Not the Only Solution
State-funded highway and rail projects are not the only ways to address traffic congestion in Virginia. It's time to tap the creativity of the private sector.
by Patrick McSweeney

Three Big Ideas
What's not to like? These three transportation solutions are inexpensive, could be implemented quickly and could make a big dent on traffic congestion.
by William Vincent

A Modest Plan
Here's what Virginia's transportation system needs: more money, a more rational pattern of land use, and a stronger commitment to mass transit.
by Gary Johnson

Creative Thinking, or Wishful Thinking, for the Coalfield Expressway?

2006-01-16T13:11:00.000-05:00

I've noted more than once on this blog that I regard the proposed $2.3 billion Coalfield Expressway in far Southwestern Virginia as a boondoggle that will swallow the region's political capital for years to come and deliver little in the way of economic development. But I will give credit to SW Virginians for doing some creative thinking on how to get the unfunded project off the ground.

News comes from The Bristol Herald-Courier that Alpha Natural Resources, one of the largest coal operators in Central Appalachia, and the Pioneer Group have replaced Kellogg Brown & Root, the construction-engineering firm that has been involved in the project so far. According to reporter Kathy Still, Alpha and Pioneer will "harvest coal along the highway's sometimes rugged route and leave behind land more easily graded into a roadbed. The work could lower the cost of the project significantly, officials said."

I don't know how much coal Alpha-Pioneer expects to recover, but it won't be much. If a Virginia coal seam hasn't been mined out by now, it's because the seam is thin or otherwise difficult to extract coal from. Moreover, coal seams aren't necessarily located at elevations that will coincide with the optimal placement of the highway.

But, hey, it's an idea. Anything that could reduce the cost of the project is worth looking into -- as long as it doesn't run up the design fees any more than the $30 million already sunk into the project.

Saving Goochland County

2006-01-16T08:21:00.000-05:00

The Times-Dispatch this morning writes an advance story about a meeting to discuss some zoning changes intended to help Goochland County protect its "rural character."

'Tomorrow night, a 250-page set of proposed zoning changes will be discussed at a joint meeting of the county's Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors. Thursday night, the Planning Commission is scheduled to vote on the changes.
The changes include provisions that promote growth in nine designated "village centers" and encourage open space everywhere else.
County officials see these provisions as tools to manage growth. But many residents are concerned that the changes could cost them money.'

We're talking here about those residents who plan to sell land to pay for sending children to college, or for their own retirement. But those land values will be subsidized by new roads built and maintained with public dollars.

Bridge Commission Under Fire

2006-01-16T07:50:00.000-05:00

One could easily put this Daily Press article in the 'no good deed goes unpunished' file. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel Commission - which has made a plan to deal with future traffic demand and is actually setting money aside to pay for improvements - is getting some heat from General Assembly members.

Who presumably don't like how they look by comparison. This is Virginia, where nobody does the right thing without facing the consequences:

'The commission is at such a risk for either a hostile takeover or the death of its bid for new tunnels that it sent two representatives to Richmond to lobby against any changes.
They got an earful from Del. Leo Wardrup, R-Virginia Beach.
"I told them, 'Read my lips: If you try to build that tunnel without coming back here for approval, you do so at your own peril.' "'

Clearly, the better option is to turn the bridge and the commission's cash assets over to the GA, which will then fairly distribute them based on legitimate need, looking first to the mobility of widows and orphans, who no doubt would rather have a Third Crossing...

Tim Kaine's Magic Wand

2006-01-14T15:39:00.000-05:00

He doesn't have one of course, but he'll need one. Maybe the past few weeks he's spent touring the state on his 'town hall' meetings without talking much himself left kind of a vacuum for editorialists and assorted reporters to write a nearly endless string of transportation-is-his-top-priority stories. If he'd given us some specifics earlier to chew on (and chew up, probably) maybe he wouldn't be facing such high expectations.

The Virginian-Pilot is all over this today, with an editorial proclaiming that 'for good or ill, Tim Kaine will be Virginia's next transportation governor.' Maybe so, but he's not emperor. For good or ill, the outcome of this session should be laid in large part at the feet of Virginia's voters, who have installed a bloc of anti-tax legislators who may simply not give in this year. Give the people what they want, right?

The Pilot also has a good story by Christina Nuckols about Kaine's big-picture approach to leadership and his easygoing style. It also touches on some of Kaine's ideas, including:

'Kaine said he is committed to finding ways to coordinate land use planning with road-building.
“If absence of transportation is a sufficient reason to turn down a rezoning, then you’re going to have people around at the table trying to figure out, 'Well, OK, how do we come up with the right transportation plan?’ ... I want to put that pressure on local governments and developers as they’re thinking about rezonings.”'

But just doing rezonings isn't going to have enough impact, and frankly a lot of localities care less about the transportation impact than they do about picking up the tax revenues that a new development can bring. That's the disconnect.