Henrico County has spurned one of the worst public policy ideas in Richmond history: creation of a regional transportation authority to fund regional transportation improvements. Not entirely for the right reasons, mind you. But I’ll take a victory any way I can get it: Without Henrico, a regional authority would be rump organization that could accomplish little and do little harm.
As proposed, the Central Virginia Transportation Authority would provide a way to raise more than $108 million annually for transportation road projects through the collection of new and increased taxes and fees, reports the Times-Dispatch. Melodi Martin quotes Henrico County Manager Virgil R. Hazelett as saying that Henrico’s position came down to two things — that the state should remain responsible for its transportation system and that now isn’t the time to increase taxes for residents.
Poor logic on both counts. Metropolitan regions should take a regional approach to transportation planning and funding, rather than gaming the system politically to get other regions to pay for their improvements. As for the time not being right to raise taxes, the time is never right.
Here’s the real problem with the transportation authority: To be effective, a regional transportation authority needs to synchronize transportation improvements with land use policies. If a regional authority makes transportation investment decisions in a land-use vacuum, it won’t do any better job than the state does. But there is no mechanism in the proposal — at least, not as described in the press accounts — for coordinating transportation and land use planning, much less for the more esoteric idea of creating balanced and contiguous communities inside a clear edge.
Furthermore, there appears to be no mechanism to ensure that users pay for the improvements they demand. As this proposal appears to be structured (and I confess that I have not seen a copy of it), the transportation authority would simply raise taxes on those too politically impotent to resist, perpetuate dysfunctional human settlement patterns (which are worse, believe it or not, than sprawling Northern Virginia or Hampton Roads) and further undermine Richmond’s regional competitiveness.