I don’t have the slightest idea of what’s going on with the transportation debate.
I can’t tell you who is right and who is wrong. I’m not entirely certain what the disagreement is over, specifically. I’m aware that the transportation fund is a special bank account where we put money for roads, and that it’s debatably bad to take money from our main bank account for roads. And I think it’s Democrats who say we should get our transportation money from the transportation bank account and not from the general bank account and Republicans who say that, in the end, it doesn’t much matter. But I’m not really sure. Should the governor sign the Republicans’ transportation bill? I don’t know. Should he amend it? I don’t have the slightest idea.
Most important, I don’t know if either the Democrats’ or the Republicans’ proposals will actually accomplish anything meaningful. I strongly suspect not. There aren’t enough members of the General Assembly with the cojones to support the tax hike that would be necessary to prevent the looming 2018 disaster, the year in which the cost of maintaining our ever-growing road network will require every single dollar that we’ll have for transportation, preventing any new construction.
It’s not clear to me whether I’ve paid more or less attention to this debate than the average Virginian, but I suspect I am, frighteningly, somewhat more informed than most people. People upstate are probably paying more attention because they have to deal with traffic. I live in rural Albemarle County. I do not commute. This calls for a 5ives.
5 Leading Sources of Traffic Tie-Ups in my Life
- neighbor’s calf got out again
- the school bus
- guy moving his tractor between fields
- damn tourists
- stopping to rescue a turtle
My philosophy on roads makes me feel a bit blasé about the whole debate. I figure adding more roads to cure traffic problems is like getting a bigger belt to cure your obesity. We’re just going about it all wrong.
So what will the voters do if Republicans’ version passes? Or if Democrats’ version passes? If Kaine vetoes the version on his desk, and the General Assembly overrides the veto? The same thing will happen no matter what: Traffic will keep getting worse and incumbents will be blamed.
Blah blah blah regional authorities blah blah vote for me for governor don’t raid the general fund blah blah blah commercial real estate taxes. I have no idea of what these people are talking about, and I get the sense that if I invested the time to figure it out I’d discover that a) these plans have nothing to do with 90% of the state and b) that everybody’s proposals suck.
So Kaine can veto or sign whatever he wants. Nobody will get credit. Everybody will be blamed. And rightly so.
I’m someone who rarely ventures any further out into VA than East Falls Church (or occasionally up the Dulles Toll Road), for hate of the absolutely ridiculous traffic. It’s Saturday morning? Traffic jam. Thursday night? Traffic jam. Sunday evening? Traffic jam.
I’ve lived here for almost 10 years, and have always been lucky enough to go to school/work on the Orange line. Which is a block from my house. So the traffic problem has generally been avoidable for me (NoVA just loses out on my consumer/entertainment dollars). But I’m part of a lucky minority, I think. Most NoVA residents waste an obscene percentage of their lives sitting in traffic in order to get to/from work. And everyone, Democrat or Republican, hates it. And we’d do just about anything to fix the problem. Including (gasp) raising taxes on ourselves. What we *won’t* do, though, is trust Richmond not to fleece us (as usual).
My (pipe-dream) traffic solution? Cede the traffic problems of NoVA to a regional multi-state commission that encompasses the DC metro area. DC would embrace it, and Maryland would probably be amenable. If Richmond would free NoVA to fund it (subject only to NoVA voter’s control), I bet we’d see a real breakthrough on the traffic log jam.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t do anything for Norfolk/VA Beach/etc. Sorry, y’all.
Once a month or so I fly a small plane from Charlottesville to my company’s offices in Raleigh, and I spend less time doing that (endpoint ground transport included) than many people spend slogging from one point in NoVa to another. (I also only burn ~10 gallons of gas getting there, which is on par with what I’d burn driving my 12-year-old Subaru.)
Man, do I ever love telecommuting!
In California it’s exactly the opposite, the Dem’s there always borrow from the transportation fund and the Republican’s always condemn them for it. The transportation fund is to CA what the Social Security fund is to the Federal government- that is it’s always getting raided for non-transportation needs, because at the end of the day it’s the only fund that has any cash left in it.
Traffic will always be bad. People will always gripe about it. At the end of the day I think this argument is more about who’s going to pay and how much, rather than actually looking for solutions to the problem.
Whew! I thought I was the only one in the blogosphere who didn’t know what was going on with transportation!
There are dangerous drop-offs that need guard rails, unpaved rural roads that generate tons of business for windshield repairmen, an underfunded snow removal process that means that students miss a day of school for every inch (or centimeter) of snow that falls, and the “other” metro areas (Richmond, Charlottesville, Roanoke, etc.) that need some fixes in their road network. I believe that this issue of transportation is a statewide issue and should be treated as such. I think it probably is a good idea to give Hampton Roads and NOVA the ability to raise their own funds but we cannot forget about the remaining 50-60% of the state. The bonding sounds like a great way to put some much needed funds into the system at once but after it’s all gone what will we do then for the rest of the state? I just want to see a sustained cash flow into transportation that will last into the future so 2-5 years from now we arent talking about the same thing again.
There has been a lot of talk of not raising taxes while having a surplus well I just keep asking myself a couple of things: 1.) What happens when the economy isn’t so great? 2.) Is it really a surplus when we have several school systems that could probably benefit from a few extra dollars for school supplies or increasing teacher salaries. Can anyone go to inner city Richmond, Norfolk, Hampton, Newport News, or rural Southside and Southwest Virginia and honestly say that those systems are just as well funded as places in NOVA or the West End in Richmond? Along the same lines of education, has anyone ever calculated the cost of after school? It is VERY expensive and most in the middle dont make enough to comfortably pay it but make too much to get any help. You ever look up what time most kids get in legal trouble? The answer: right after school while parents are still at work. Again, is it really a surplus when we have underfunded services out there?
I personally dont get why there wasnt just a simple statewide plan that added a little to the gas tax or bringing the car sales tax up to the same rate as everything else (Dealers lobby perhaps?). I personally wouldn’t care if I had to pay any extra 3 or 4 dollars everytime I filled up if it were going to roads.
Since I love the “5ives” thing on this site so much here are the 5 major reasons for back-ups where I live. My home is off Rio Road East in the Northeastern Urban Ring of Charottesville and during the summer I commute about 7 miles to work at UVA.
1. East to North/ North to East commuters trying to avoid 29 and taking Rio as a “short cut.”
2. That stop light at Pen Park
3. 250/Park Street interchange
4. Someone turning left into my subdivision or Village Square
5. The thousands of commuters from all over the area going to the exact same area as I am.
Transportation is a hideously expensive state expenditure that benefits greatly from careful long range planning and a stable funding source. Trying to fund it with a handful of surplus cash at the end of the year is like when Uncle Earl got his tax return, and thinking himself flush, went down to the Ford dealership for a new pickup truck. By the end of August, Aunt Mae was making the payments, there was no money for that new barn roof, Earl was complaining about how the tax man took all his money, and shopping for a trade on a 10 year-old truck in “good shape”.
The Assembly Republicans are like Earl. They harbor a notion that some things can be made real just by wishing, and a wagon-load of happy talk.
“I figure adding more roads to cure traffic problems is like getting a bigger belt to cure your obesity.”
That’s pretty much right, Waldo. We talked about this in my Econ class (not your metaphor, the transportation issue, although if you had written this pre-Econ class, I think I would have had to have stolen it). If you make more roads, then people who don’t live in Northern Virginia because the traffic is bad will come up- or the people who telecommute will stop a little, or people will drive more because they think traffic will go down. And it will go down, for a while, but then we’ll see a transitional gains gap, people will adjust to these new roads, and BOOM. Transportation crisis.
The problem is there are too many people living in Northern Virginia. There are too many people living and working here because of government jobs in DC and Arlington, and then, when you pile all the other industry that has moved to Northern Virginia because of the government work up here (defense contractors, for example), you just have too much up here.
The only solution that would actually work in the long term is to encourage those people who don’t have government jobs to live outside Northern Virginia (or to telecommute, or take Metro, I guess). You do that by encouraging industry to take root and stay in parts of Virginia that aren’t Northern. However, you know Northern Virginia ain’t going to have that, and industry already in Northern Virginia isn’t going to move, so you’d have to encourage new industry to take root in Southern Virginia. And then Northern Virginia would get upset about being neglected or losing jobs or people, or not being the strongest part of Virginia, economically speaking, and we wouldn’t get anywhere.
Long story short, Waldo, you are one lucky guy in terms of commute.
Actually, it’s not even my metaphor — it’s either from Duany Plater-Zyberk or Kunsler, but I can’t remember who.
Well, I guess luck plays a role in everything (I’m fortunate to have a skill set that allows me to work from home), but I’ve also chosen not to commute. I could be making thousands of dollars more annually if I commuted and worked for a different organization, but I don’t want to commute (or work elsewhere).
The focus on roads, versus transportation, is just one aspect of what is wrong with our current system. The transportation budget has been structured to maintain roads without adequate provision for rail and other modes of public transit.
Amen, Duane, amen.