Stick a Fork in Virginia Beach Light Rail. It’s Done.

The Tide light rail in Norfolk won't be extended to Virginia Beach any time soon. Image credit: Railfan Guide

The Tide light rail in Norfolk won’t be extended to Virginia Beach any time soon. Image credit: Railfan Guide

The vote didn’t get much attention outside of Hampton Roads, but one of the big losers in state-local elections yesterday was Virginia Beach light rail. Voters decisively renounced a proposed extension of The Tide rail from Norfolk to Virginia Beach’s Town Center in an advisory referendum: 57% opposed the project, as opposed to 43% in favor.

While that vote did not bind Virginia Beach City Council, Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne announced yesterday that he was pulling the plug on $155 million to help pay for the $243 million project, reports the Virginian-Pilot.

Wrote Layne in a letter to Virginia Beach Mayor Will Sessoms:

As demonstrated by yesterday’s referendum results, and comments made by you and other City Council members, there is no political or local financial support forthcoming for the project. We respect this outcome.

These monies have been tied up for over two years while the City Council debated action on this project. There are many other pressing transportation needs in the Commonwealth that can immediately move forward with these funds. A further delay in reprogramming these monies is not justified.

Virginia Beach light rail is not dead, but it is on life support. The state had allocated the funding for the project before implementing its Smart Scale methodology which prioritizes transportation projects on the basis of safety, congestion reduction, accessibility, land use, economic development and the environment. Now the project will have to undergo the same scoring process as all other transportation proposals — if it doesn’t die a quiet death first.

Virginia Beach owes the state $20 million granted to help purchase the proposed light-rail corridor. Layne told Sessoms that he’s giving the city six months to explore mass-transit alternatives such as Bus Rapid Transit that could make use of the right-of-way before asking for the money back.

Bacon’s bottom line: Transportation policy will go down as one of the great positive legacies of the McAuliffe administration. Virginia has shifted from a politically driven approach for allocating transportation construction dollars to a metrics-based approach. When McAuliffe was elected, I feared that he would bring his wheeler-dealer style to transportation policy. But the governor has stayed out of the fray, empowering Layne, the sole Republican in his cabinet, to implement a technocratic regime for setting spending priorities.

From now on, all transportation projects must be scored. A governor advocating a low-scoring project for political reasons will find it much harder to win the approval of the Commonwealth Transportation Board, which has the final say-so.