When rolling out his legislative package for transportation reform, House Speaker William J. Howell criticized the Virginia Department of Transportation’s performance in negotiating new public-private partnerships. As the Speaker said in his prepared statement:
We will never effectively and affordably address this challenge without incorporating the lessons of the private sector, harnessing the power and creativity of the free enterprise system, and enlisting [it] in this process. Our plan, therefore, includes requiring that the VDOT Commissioner provide a detailed plan to increase the role of the private sector in meeting our Commonwealth’s transportation needs.
Despite Virginia’s pioneering Public-Private Transportation Act of 1995 having been in effect for more than a decade, the Commonwealth lags behind other states in utilizing these cost- and time-saving opportunities.
I’m not sure what Howell is basing his criticism on. In his press release, he said, “VDOT has taken too passive of a role in expanding private-sector involvement in public infrastructure, simply waiting for proposals to be submitted to them instead of soliciting private sector expertise to solve identified and prioritized transportation problems.” (My italics.)
I don’t speak with any authority whatsoever, but it was my impression that Secretary of Transportation Pierce Homer, during his less-than-two-year tenure in the Warner and Kaine administrations, had acted more aggressively than any of his predecessors to solicit deals from the private sector. He has solicited private-sector bids to upgrade Interstate 95, the Washington Beltway and, most recently, U.S. 460. That’s over and above proposals for Interstate 81 and the Rail-to-Dulles project, which originated before he took the helm.
Perhaps that’s just not aggressive enough for the Speaker. Perhaps Virginia needs to move even faster. Fair enough. I’m all in favor of public-private partnerships as long as they are structured so that those who pay for the transportation improvements are the ones who benefit from them…. and as long as they support functional land use patterns.
I don’t like the structure of the Rail-to-Dulles project, which would transfer billions of dollars of wealth from toll-paying commuters on the Dulles Toll Road to landowners who own property near planned METRO stops. I do like plans for the Interstate 95 HOT lanes, which would be paid for by tolls from those who used the HOT lanes.
Action plan. Speaker Howell wants to create “a detailed Action Plan to increase the role of the private sector in the development of transportation projects in Virginia as well as the use of public-private partnerships.” As he explains, “This reform will require VDOT to become more pro-active in identifying opportunities for private sector involvement.”
Privatization has many advantages. The private sector is far more likely than even a reformed VDOT to complete road construction on budget and on time. Private sector involvement increases the odds that only economically viable projects are built — at least when investors put their own capital at risk. The private sector also is more likely to introduce technological, financial and managerial innovations.
Caveats. But simply privatizing a project doesn’t necessarily make it a good project. For instance, in the case of the U.S. 460 corridor (“The U.S. 460 Project Ain’t Peanuts“):
- Would a toll road accelerate the pace of dysfunctional human settlement patterns (scattered, disconnected, low density) out of Hampton Roads? What strains would such development place on the local secondary road network?
- What would a toll road do to the mobility of the people who live in the tiny towns — Wakefield, Zuni, Windsor, etc.) who rely upon U.S. 460 as their major thoroughfare?
- Has anyone examined a public-private partnership that would increase freight rail capacity out of Portsmouth?
Privatization is a big part of transportation reform. But only a part. More roads, even privatized roads, won’t do much good if they aren’t analyzed in the context of the transportation system as a whole and the human settlement patterns they are designed to serve.