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At
Last, a Spark at START
The
Senate commission studying Virginia's
transportation future heard a grab-bag of ideas
Thursday. But no big theme, or debate, has yet
emerged.
By
Bob Burke
Leaders
of a Senate-led task force looking at ways to fix
the state’s transportation system started their
second meeting yesterday by trying to knock down
some political gossip. Some people think the
Statewide Transportation Analysis and
Recommendation Task Force (START) is just a cover
story for some secret plan to raise the state’s
17.5-cent gas tax, said Sen. Martin Williams,
R-Newport News. “Nothing could be further from
the truth.”
The
group’s chairman, Sen. Charles Hawkins, R-Pittsvlvania,
instead predicted it will produce two or three
bills for the coming General Assembly session. The
task force, created by Senate Finance Committee
Chairman John Chichester, R-Northumberland,
earlier this year, includes 10 state senators and
15 others, mostly from the business community.
“The
suggestions that we’ll be putting into play…
will be the foundation” for what kind of
legislation the group proposes, Hawkins said.
“We have to come up with an alternative way of
funding our road system that is its own source.”
The
task force heard both new and old ideas yesterday
during its two-and-a-half-hour meeting at Virginia
Commonwealth University.
Hal
Greer, division chief for the Joint Legislative
Audit and Review Commission, dusted off a 2001
study that examined the state’s method for
deciding which roads to build or improve.
Currently, the state classifies its roads in four
categories – interstate, primary, secondary and
urban. The study recommends changing to three
categories – statewide, regional and local.
Under
the current system decisions about which roads
need improvement are skewed. Braddock Road in
Northern Virginia, for example, carries more than
40,000 vehicles daily but is classified as a minor
arterial, Greer said. Meanwhile, Route 52 in Bland
County is a higher-priority primary road but
carries less than 200 vehicles daily. Changing
classifications, Greer said, would improve the
decisions about which road projects to fund, and
would let state-level transportation officials
concentrate on roads of statewide significance.
Mike
Toalson, executive vice president of the Home
Builders Association of Virginia, gave the task
force a handful of specific recommendations. In
2002 the General Assembly passed a law to allow
cluster-style residential development projects
that don’t require rezonings to be handled at
the staff level instead of going through a
political approval. But few localities have
adopted it, and Toalson urged the task force to
make it a mandate. Cluster-style developments have
lower infrastructure costs, which benefits
everybody, he said. A streamlined process also
would work better for the redevelopment of older
suburbs and inner cities, areas where there are
roads already built and paid for but underused.
Such redevelopment projects almost always involve
higher densities and mixed uses and often
encounter public opposition.
Toalson
also called for revamping the proffer system under
which localities collect money from developers to
offset the costs of infrastructure, most often
roads and schools. Some localities are charging
too much – more than $35,000 for each detached
single-family home, in one Northern Virginia
county, he said. Others are collecting money but
not spending it on needed road improvements.
Prince William County has collected $188 million
in proffers but spent only $27 million, Toalson
said.
Nancy
Glynn, director of data analysis with the Auditor
of Public Accounts, urged the group to consider
loosening the restrictions on how the state’s
Department of Rail and Public Transportation can
spend its budget. Glynn said 99 percent of the
rail department’s budget is controlled by
statutes, which limits its ability to explore
innovative transportation projects. “If you want
them to take people off the road, you need to give
them more flexibility,” she said.
Philip
Shucet, former Virginia Department of
Transportation commissioner, submitted a nine-page
letter with a package of recommendations. He urged
the construction of major new roads such as a
third crossing in Hampton Roads and the Coalfields
Expressway in southwestern Virginia, and
development of an access-management plans. Shucet
also recommended merging the state’s rail and
transit department and VDOT into a single
“surface transportation department.” Having
separate departments “is fragmenting our
transportation planning,” he wrote.
This
meeting had more task force discussion than the
first, but Hawkins said members will get a better
chance to debate proposed legislation at the
November and December meetings.
The
task force is accepting comments from state
residents as well through the end of the month.
The submissions can be sent via email to start@leg.state.va.us,
and should be no more than four pages long,
including a one-page summary. “This is a huge
issue and the time frame is pretty short, and
we’re trying to be as productive as possible,”
Hawkins said.
Bacon's
Rebellion News Service
October
20, 2005
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