More
Roads
Are Not the Answer
The
unraveling of Virginia's transportation funding
plans could be a blessing if it prompts lawmakers
to wean the Commonwealth from its auto-centric,
sprawl-inducing policies.
Virtually
overnight, Virginia's transportation funding
policy has collapsed. When the state Supreme Court
ruled unconstitutional the creation of Northern
Virginia Transportation Authority as an entity
empowered to raise taxes, it kicked the props out
of the General Assembly's plan to inject $300
million a year into Northern Virginia projects. By
implication, the ruling invalidated the Hampton
Roads Transportation Authority as well. Meanwhile,
the much-abused Abuser Fees have been relegated to the trash heap of bad laws by the
General Assembly itself. Combine those
developments with the
revenue shortfall that cut into the anticipated
application of General Funds to road-building
projects, and nearly all of the work of the 2007
General Assembly has come undone.
This
is somber stuff. Few would disagree that Virginia's
epic
transportation shortcomings require immediate
and sustained attention. But even if Virginia
finds a new source of transportation revenue, will we be having these same debates in
10 years?
I’m
not optimistic. While the political dimension of
the
transportation crisis are linked to Richmond's fiscal policies,
the roots of the problem run deeper. The
transportation dilemma is inexorably bound to
energy consumption habits and land-use configurations
tailored to the automobile, both of which drive demand for more roads and all their
associated costs. To be more specific, the
economic externalities produced by cheap gas and
sprawl consign Virginia, like most of
America, to gridlock.
The challenges
of the automobile-based society have been well-documented and
oft discussed. Among other things, the requisite
infrastructure is expensive to build and
maintain, while the perception of environmental
cost – Prius or
not – is mounting. Indeed, most economists readily
acknowledge that the gasoline fueling our autos
produces substantial
externalities. The political peril
in trying to address costs not reflected in
the market price of gasoline -- from the emission
of greenhouse gases to dependence upon volatile
sources of foreign oil -- is considerable.
Equally
notorious, urban sprawl
has been the subject of much spilled ink. While
much of the criticism has taken on a
‘holier-than-thou’ tone, the
effects are undoubtedly significant. Besides
contributing to high-particulate and runoff
pollution, social fragmentation and the despoliation
of the Virginia
countryside, sprawl stresses municipalities
fiscally. It takes proportionally
more infrastructure – gas lines, sewage systems,
electrical, etc – to service low-density
environments than their high density counterparts.
And who pays to link Johnny’s exurban rancher to
the grid? More often than not, it’s the
taxpayers. Sprawl is, from a policy perspective, a
raw deal for the public.
Interestingly,
sprawl’s true costs to the public have not been
factored beyond the speculative price of land. On
the contrary, prevailing land-use policies subsidize wasteful uses of
land that produce harmful externalities and
perpetuate the
automobile-dominant culture that abets our
hand-wringing addiction to roads, roads, roads.
According
to this line of argument, the relevant question
isn't whether we have the money to build new
roads, but if we have the means to curb injurious
externalities of a growing, ever-dispersing
population. With the gas tax – an obvious, if
only partial solution – proving to be a
political albatross with uncertain externalities
of its own, Virginia should consider limiting the encroachment of sprawl
development and encouraging high-density growth
that can help mitigate vehicular use, improve
mass-transit feasibility, cut energy consumption,
better preserve Virginia’s elegant natural
environment, and finally reduce our addiction to
roads.
But
how to do it?
In
many states and municipalities – Oregon having
the most prominent examples and Virginia Beach
being the closest – policymakers have opted for
something called an "Urban Growth Boundary,"
which is exactly what it sounds like: terminal
boundaries for development. While UGBs are widely
considered to be successful, legitimate concerns abound regarding their
end-productivity. For example, although UGBs have
certainly encouraged denser development in
Portland, they also have been blamed for meteoric
spikes in real estate prices – a charge hard to
deny, as scarcity is wont to propel costs – and
for producing "skipover" effects, in
which
new development built away from UGB
restrictions produces even more alarming
kinds of sprawl. So, perhaps UGBs may not be right
for Virginia.
What
if we address sprawl’s true costs with, well,
taxes?
Because
the public cost of sprawl is not
reflected in the market price of land, it might be
worthwhile to place a graduated levy on
development that fails to meet certain density
limits – the higher the density (to a certain
point), the less the
tax.
Revenues generated by a true-cost reform could be
used to fund state transportation projects, while municipal governments could
save money in service delivery.
There would have to be certain
exceptions here and there, but a tax that rewarded
density would less fiscally draining than low-density sprawl. Instead of
physically limiting development with arbitrary
boundaries and land-use codes, a statewide,
true-cost, land-use system could, if paired with
single-use zoning reforms, encourage the kind of pedestrian-oriented
development that would reduce demand for more
roads.
Making
Virginia land-use policies sustainable won’t be
a simple task. The very idea raises a number of
practical questions about its feasibility. Is this
a tax? Who will bear the costs? What is the
optimal level of density? Who will decide?
The
levy I propose would be a tax of sorts, but a tax
on development that places unnecessary fiscal
burdens on the general population. To recapture
the hidden costs of sprawl, the levy likely would
be most effectively collected from developers as
supplemental property assessments adjusted for
density. Such a fee would be smaller, even
non-existent for relatively dense developments,
while increasing commensurately with sprawl.
The
policy would have to be implemented through a
statewide framework that could be scaled to
Virginia’s diverse metropolitan areas and
counties. After all, the ideal density level in
Hampton Roads, Richmond or Arlington is bound to
differ from the ideal in places like Lynchburg,
Front Royal or Franklin. Instead of formulating a
centralized policy, the Commonwealth should strive
to define ideal density zones and – in full
consultation with local & regional planning
authorities and smart growth allies – oversee
the matching of density zoning gradients to the
localities.
In
summary, road-building is a worthless endeavor
without land-use reform. If policymakers are
serious about lessening Virginia’s dependence
upon automobiles, petroleum and roads, it is
critical to move beyond tax-and-spend
grandstanding to change the land use patterns that
generate so much traffic demand. Otherwise, I
fear, the transportation crisis will prove the
undoing of Virginia's world-beating, competitive
business environment. It’s time the taxpayers to
stop subsidizing the root causes of our
transportation predicament, and insist that
Virginia land either be used efficiently or that
it be properly paid for.
--
March 24, 2008
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