Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Prince William Lashing out in Blind Frustration

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by

James A. Bacon
in

Alec MacGillis with the Washington Post ran a story two days ago on the anti-growth backlash in the Washington region, highlighting recent events in Loudoun County, Prince William County and Montgomery County, Md. Most disturbing from my perspective was a vote by the Prince William board of supervisors to approve a one-year freeze on most subdivisions “to protest the lack of transportation funding from the General Assembly.”

The Prince William action strikes me as an act of blind, inchoate frustration. It’s not helpful in any way, and it’s wrong on so many levels. Let me count the ways:

First: The vote assumes that the primary reason for traffic congestion in Prince William County is a lack of insufficient spending on roads — as opposed to really bad zoning and land use decisions made by previous boards of supervisors. As we documented in our close-ups of Prince William transportation and land use issues earlier this year, there is a massive overhang of land approved for development. It’s only been in recent years, under now-departed board chairman Sean Connaughton, that the board even began thinking about adopting more transportation-efficient patterns of development. Blaming the state absolves Prince William from the responsibility for developing transportation-efficient communities with a balanced mix of homes, jobs, stores and amenities.

Second: Freezing new housing starts will not solve anything. As long as Northern Virginia generates new jobs, people have to live somewhere. If they don’t live in Prince William, they’ll move to Stafford or Spotsylvania. But they’ll drive back through Prince William to get to the jobs closer to the urban core, only adding to congestion on Interstate 95 and other traffic corridors.

Third: Let’s say the General Assembly raises another $1 billion a year in taxes, as Gov. Kaine and the state Senate want to do. Prince William, with about 350,000 residents, accounts for about 4.7 percent of the state’s population. The county’s share of that $1 billion would be $47 million a year. That’s not enough for P.W. to pave its way out of its traffic congestion problems. But it is enough to perpetuate Business As Usual, supporting the same dysfunctional land use patterns that created the mess.

As Ed Risse was quoted in the article as saying, the moratorium could have the unwanted effect of bogging down the county’s land-use policy in court. What Prince William and the rest of Northern Virginia really need is more control over funding and building roads. “It’s nice that Prince William’s evolved to the point where it can put its foot down, but it will take some reallocation of powers for transportation planning until something happens.”

Update: Turns out that PWC doesn’t have the legal authority to put a freeze on new house rezonings. So, the board of supervisors has decided instead to defer action on rezonings as long as legally permissable, 12 months. The Gainesville Times has the story.

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16 responses to “Prince William Lashing out in Blind Frustration”

  1. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    There are a lot of houses driving down the road in Prince William County. So obviously restricting housing is going to reduce traffic.

    Oh it’s the cars, stupid!

    If we have too many cars, wouldn’t it make more sense to restrict the sale of new cars in Prince William County? Frankly, there is too much traffic everywhere. Why not have a national moratorium on the sale of any new cars in the entire country for a year? This would give us time to start catching up with our transportation infrastructure.

    Housing is already too unaffordable. Why would we want to make it even more so?

    Politicians who know nothing about economics or the laws of supply and demand are a disgrace.

    The economic dislocation to millions of working Americans from a one year car ban is obvious.

    What is less obvious is the economic damage to the little guy in Prince William from the housing moratorium. Down the road, I’m thinking about the entire home building support structure in Prince William County. They are putting a lot of people out of work at some point.

    Oh but it’s the “illegals” stupid!

    Everybody knows they do all those nasty construction jobs. So maybe this is really just backdoor immigration control. Fewer jobs means fewer immigrants from south of the border. What geniuses those Prince William Supervisors are.

    Not.

  2. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    but here’s the relevant point:

    “Let’s say the General Assembly raises another $1 billion a year in taxes, as Gov. Kaine and the state Senate want to do. Prince William, with about 350,000 residents, accounts for about 4.7 percent of the state’s population. The county’s share of that $1 billion would be $47 million a year.”

    Given Va’s Dillon Rule “by right” land can and will still be developed.

    Rezones are what are being restricted and that is only for one year and it is largely symbolic.

    But given the relvant passage above – what do you think $47 million is going to do for Prince William?

    That will buy .. maybe one major interchange or 5 miles of 4-lane, even less interstate quality roadway.

    And let’s just say that Prince William folks ARE willing to cough up the $47 million – at about $135 bucks per capita – do you think they would want to send that money to Richmond in hopes that VDOT would give it back in the following year as new infrastructure?

    The “freeze” is more smoke and mirrors … and I strongly suspect a coordinate “friendly” action to support Kaine’s drive to raise taxes.

    In other words.. get those businessment down to Richmond to lobby their DELEGATES to cave in to Kaine on taxes.

    bottom line: more politics and postering and nothing on the table beyond rank cynacism..

    Trying to “stampede” the voters (and development lobby folks) into making VDOT “flush” with new money is to continue for VDOT to:

    spend the money on the wrong projects in the wrong places for the wrong reasons.

    it’s the reason why we are where we are right now… the idiotic belief that more tax money = more asphalt = more capacity = less congestion.

    It costs someone right now to drive 20 miles on the beltway at the height of rush hour – about 17 cents – the same exact amount he’d pay to drive at 2 a.m.

    only when that driver has to pay – the actual cost to build and maintain the roads he wants to use at rush hour – will we start to see changes in congestion and “gridlock”.

  3. NoVA Scout Avatar
    NoVA Scout

    This shows pretty clearly the dangers of demagoguing growth as a political expedient. It’s a damned complex issue which, even without the usual Virginia overlay of incompetence and political buffoonery coming from the State government (note, JB, that I dispensed with the old catch-phrase of “coming from Richmond”)has no single, simple satisfying answer. In the past six or so years, PW made significant progress in imposing some order on its own growth issues, more or less faced reality on how much Richmond (ooops, sorry) would do, started building more and more of its own roads, put significant pressure on developers to pony up a greater share of infrastructure costs (particularly roads and schools), and, while not achieving perfection, avoided some of the open warfare that has characterized these discussions in Loudoun. Connaughton was masterful in threading the County’s way through the minefields and keeping his Board in position to maneuver. When Connaughton resigned, Stewart decided to run “against Growth” and found an issue that resonated with folks sitting in traffic. Observing his electoral success in gaining a one-year stint as Chairman, but with Supervisor elections (including the Chairman spot) up for grabs next year, some of the other supervisors have decided to neutralize the issue by out-anti-growthing Stewart. The sentiments are clearly popular in a political sense, but how they translate into real policy progress is utterly baffling. It’s in no way clear what the PW supervisors expect the State to do to permit a conclusion to the moratorium nor is it at all clear that even if the General Assembly knew what to do, it would care enough to do it, given what passes for discourse on statewide developmental policy in the Capitol (or Capital, for that matter). So, as I said on the TC site, this ends up being a policy of holding-one’s-breath-until-one turns-blue approach to developmental issues. It will create disruption and lost time in true progress, and it contributes to, rather than offsets, the unfortunate shallow politicization of growth issues that Stewart unleashed in his special election campaign. To the extent there’s an intelligent design behind this, it may be just to create such chaos that by the time the re-election campaign(s) start in a few months, the board will be a complete, equallized jumble for all contenders.

  4. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    I think people are smarter than they’re getting credit for.

    Most of them realize that there needs to be homes for folks to live in.

    Most of them realize that they’re going to drive to and from work.

    Most of them realize that their local/property taxes are not going to “fix” regional roads.

    … and with the recent Mid-Atlantic AAA POLL – they KNOW that it will cost money to have more infrastructure.

    AND they clearly weighed in with their preferences. 21% favor raising the gas tax and 52% favor TOLLs instead.

    People ARE clearly saying… that they trust tolls more than taxes and that they feel that TOLLs have a much better chance to get infrastructure upgrades quicker.

    The only question in my mind is why there continues to be dogmatic insistence that raising taxes is the proper path.

    JLARC laid it out.

    Let localities take care of local roads especially subdivision roads

    Let VDOT handle roads of statewide significance

    Let the Metro MPO handle the Regional Roads.

    If the MPOs can implement electronic tolling and utilize congestion pricing – you would have a viable – and more important – a SUSTAINABLE path to better mobility and congestion management WITHOUT raising income and property taxes.

    Let VDOT partner with PPTA to implement expansions/improvements of roads of statewide importance.

    At that point .. if SOME additional money is still needed – then consider indexing the fuel tax and let the portion than accumulates from out-of-state traffic go to VDOT.

    My frustration is that there ARE paths that the public WILL accept readily and the public wants action now and a stop to the old VDOT methods and mentalities – and what is happening …is the VDOT surrogates – including Governor Kaine and Chichester basically are basically ignoring what the public wants by perpetuating what amounts to a LIE that the public wants more infrastructure but is unwilling to pay for it.

    The AAA Poll destroys completely that idea. People are MUCH smarter than they are given credit for.

    Why not … have the TOLLs… and implement indexing to satisfy BOTH the 52% and the 21%?

  5. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    IMO, there’s a big double standard here. The Prince William County BoS is “demagoguing growth as a political expedient,” but isn’t that the very same thing that Tim Kaine did to win election? Moreover, at least the PW officials, both Republicans and Democrats, had the follow-through to vote on the issue. On the other hand, Governor Kaine ran from Candidate Kaine’s bigggest issue in NoVA. Why the double standard?

    Right, wrong or indifferent, I submit that a majority of NoVA residents would support a moratorium on development if that question were placed on the ballot.

  6. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “Most of them realize that there needs to be homes for folks to live in.”

    There are plenty of homes for sale – no one is buying them.

    Why? The cost of living is already out of control in NOVA.

    To make most of the major roads in NOVA toll roads would add to an already high cost of living…..in other words it would tip the apple cart to the point where folks would leave the region…..some would argue it’s already tipped.

    Generating revenue in the form of toll roads is a slippery slope to be on. It looks good on paper but the price people pay to use the road is simply taken away from something else a person might spend money on.

    I would reform VDOT, increase proffers for roads and turn over secondary roads to localities before I would make toll roads a way of life for the people of NOVA.

  7. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    We already have two examples of toll roads that won’t provide enough cash flow th justify the capital needed, so tell me again how tolsa are going to solve the problem?

    We are going to need specialized tolls in some areas (congestion pricing), we are going to need a gas tax structure that isn’t stuck in 1986. We are going to need more sales tax and more income tax.

    We are going to need more public money, and it is going to affect the private money we have left.

    Get used to it.

    Do I think we need all the money for all the projects on the wish list? No.

    Do I think all the money in the world can fix transportation problems in NOVA? No.

    Do I think Metro and alternative transit should get half the budget? No.

    Do I think all the blogging in the world will solve our transport problems? No.

    It is going to take a) money and b) people who are not obstructionists towards any and every idea ever presented. Sooner or later we will have to DO something, and it is going to take a LOT of money to catch up on all the deferred spending we have incurred. Deferred spending is no different than incurring debt: it costs a lot mor money in the end.

  8. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Ray, I understand where you are heading. But just what would we build in Fairfax County, for example? I expect that we could make some changes to intersections, add a lane here or there, but what could we do that would make things noticably better for commuters? Frank Wolf obtained seed money for VDOT to time traffic lights on Route 7 from Loudoun County to Tysons, but VDOT has done nothing with it.

    IMO, those who most support increasing taxes probably want the money spent to build new roads that would open more areas to development. Maybe that has something to do with the lack of trust.

    We see most of the strongest supporters for building the Silver Line don’t ride Metro. They either want it built because they are connected to the landowners that would receive windfalls from rezoning or people who hope everyone else will ride the train so that they can drive without killer congestion. They are not interested in important questions, such as these sent me by a person who rides Metro on a regular basis.

    1. Because of four stops in Tysons Corner, the time the trip from Reston east to east Falls Church now served by bus, will double.
    2. We are told eight car trains will be needed to service the loads. As a consequence the expensive Traction power substations will need
    to be upgraded. Currently not included in the cost estimates.
    3. The platforms some of which are dangerously overcrowded during rush hour will need to be fixed. Where is that cost?
    4. Given the promise of great numbers of new riders and since the current tunnel is failing on occasion, we can be fairly certain there
    will need to be a new multibillion dollar tunnel under the Potomac at Roslyn. Currently that is not part of the cost estimates.
    5. Some of the bridges along the Dulles corridor will need to be either seriously upgraded or replaced. Any costs included in the
    estimate are not near the eventual costs.

    It seems pretty scary to me.

  9. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: “We already have two examples of toll roads that won’t provide enough cash flow th justify the capital needed”

    no.. what we have is VDOT telling us that – when at least a dozen other states have not only built TOLL roads without public money but they are generating net money for those states to use for other transportation projects.

    Isn’t it a bit curious that only Virginia/VDOT out of a dozen states has this “problem”?

    and a reality check – if things are really “that” bad but people won’t pay for less congestion directly via tolls – then what makes one think that higher taxes will result in less congestion?

    But let’s say for the sake of argument that a toll road “only” brings in 3/4 of what it costs and it needs 1/4 tax money.

    Would you PREFER instead that ALL of the money comes from taxes?

    Wouldn’t that result in leaving even less money for other projects – or require even higher taxes to compensate?

  10. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    TMT: I agree. Fairfax county is pretty much off the table as far as new road construction goes. Unless you are actually willing to teqar down a bunch of houses.

    Larry: I don’t care what you say. A toll is just another tax. By advocating tolls you are advocating more taxes. We need more money. We don’t need as much as VDOT says. We need better planning, but not the kind EMR advocates.

    If we are going to argue endlessly about who benefits the most and who should pay, then we need the input output tables to back up the arguments. If we had them, I submit they would show it makes not very much difference (overall) where the money comes from. What we have to look out for is that a few people don’t get completely ruined in the process that is supposed to benefit many.

  11. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    Ray, I don’t understand. You say we need new taxes. You say that tolls are just another kind of tax. But you seem to oppose tolls. There’s a logical disconnect there.

    Whether tolls constitute a “tax” is a semantical issue. Tolls are what they are, regardless of what we call them. By any definition, they are not general taxes, collecting from the many (taxpayers generally) and distributing to the few (those who use the toll facility). Tolls collect from the few (those who use the toll facility) and distribute to the few (those who use the toll facility — the same people).

    If you cannot distinguish between the two, you are one of the few who cannot make the distinction.

  12. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    If there’s general consensus that no major roads could reasonably be built in Fairfax County, that seems to me to be a strong case for building toll roads. Otherwise, doesn’t Fairfax County simply send one more subsidy around the state?

  13. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: “I don’t care what you say. A toll is just another tax. By advocating tolls you are advocating more taxes.”

    okay.. Ray .. so if 52% want to pay TOLLs and 15% favor raising taxes (from the AAA Poll) …. why would you insist that raising taxes is preferable to having TOLLs when taxpayers themselves don’t agree with you?

    The AAA poll showed that 70% believe that more money is needed but only 15% want to raise it with general revenue taxes and only 21% with the fuel tax.

    What exactly would one deduce from this? Taxpayers want to pay more money for transportation but not with taxes.

  14. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    I am not opposed to tolls themselves, I’m only opposed to the idea that ONLY tolls can work, and that gas or fuel taxes are off the table.

    I do think tolls are cumbersome and expensive to collect, and therefore they are a waste of time and money. The Lonodn congestion toll requires 60% of the take just to administer the tax. However, in some places and times they may be logical, economical and acceptable: they should be considered as one tentacle on the transportation octopus.

    TMT’s view is a new one to me: I simply hadn’t thought about it that way.

    As for tolls supporting the toll facility, tell that to the people on the dulles Toll Road who are paying for the yet to be built Metro Extension.

    IF, and only of tolls truly support only the toll facility, then what you say is true. But if the toll facility then frees up cash for other uses, then what TMT says is correct.

    I think all of this is posturing, and most of it is selfish posturing. We think we can dream up some way for the other guy to pay. The fact that gas taxes are so unpopular suggests the reason why: no one can figure out how to avoid them.

    What I really think is that by the time you figure out the exact right way for everybody to pay the exact right amount, based on the degree of their environmental perfidy or whatever other measure, is that it all comes out in the wash.

  15. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    The concept of the toll paying ONLY for the tolled facility is traditional but is no longer a reality and we ought to be dealing with likely realities not wishful thinking….

    In the other states that negotiated PPTA agreements those states negotiated agreements that result in them receiving money – and most have decided to dedicate those monies for other transportation projects vice general revenues.

    This is excess – over and above what the Private entity needs to both maintain the road and make a profit.

    It’s money that exists – and has to go somewhere and if not spoken for will likely end up as a slush fund of some kind.

    But TMT is right. Any such agreement in NoVa, HR or other places that allows VDOT to scoop up the excess revenues will be very bad karma in my view ( though congestion pricing on interstates that go through Regions – like I-95 will likely go to VDOT or be negotiated on a shared basis).

    But to outlaw it period even within an area such as NoVa or HR would seem to be bad policy – because the excess money is going to exist and someone will claim it if NoVa does not.

    Congestion Pricing IS going to generate net money. If NoVa does not lay a firm claim to it – early on – then VDOT will get it – and two bad things happen:

    1. – VDOT then “owns” it and will decide how it will be spent and without reform – at the LEAST the process will be convoluted and NOT timely – the money will be sequestered for years… and the only thing NoVa will see is IOU paperwork.

    2. – The money could very likely leave NoVa for transportation projects outside of NoVa – while congestion in NoVa worsens if NoVa is not assertive.

    There is a 3rd outcome which some would view as bad.

    and that would be for NoVa to manage to keep the money and to use it to fund non-road transportation projects including Metro.

    The danger is – that if there is opposition to this AND building more roads in NoVa is simply not in the cards – political gridlock will ultimately result in that money being lost to NoVa for any purpose.

    The moral is: Plan for the money … or step aside and stay out of the way of the ensuing stampede.

  16. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: “If there’s general consensus that no major roads could reasonably be built in Fairfax County, that seems to me to be a strong case for building toll roads. Otherwise, doesn’t Fairfax County simply send one more subsidy around the state?”

    The interesting thing about congestion pricing is that the generated money is a side benefit to the primary goal.

    In other words – the concept is to manage and shape rush hour congestion such that there is actually less congestion.

    The way this is accomplished is by instituting a market approach where value is priced and purchased.

    So – if you asked USDOT and other transportation experts what the MOST EFFECTIVE way is to reduce congestion in urban areas – they will NOW likely say “value pricing” – rather than attempting to build one’s way out of congestion with tax dollars.

    So .. there are lots of estimates “out there” but seem to exceed $500 million a year for region-wide NoVa congestion pricing.

    Not only does this amount of money far exceed revenues from higher taxes but each person – will have the opportunity to decide how much to pay or not whereas with a tax increase – there is no option – you pay it no matter what you do so there is absolutely no benefit to NOT driving solo at rush hour.

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