by James A. Bacon
A subcommittee of the Commonwealth Transportation Board is discussing new criteria for the distribution of state dollars for road and highway maintenance. At the urging of CTB member Sheppard Miller, a Norfolk businessman and urban at-large member, Virginia Department of Transportation staff will present data at the next subcommittee meeting showing how the state funding formula, which currently is based upon the number of lane miles in a transportation district, might change if it incorporates measures such as Vehicle Miles Traveled or indicators of economic activity.
The subcommittee, which met in Portsmouth this afternoon, is charged with examining how state maintenance dollars might be more efficiently or effectively spent. Subcommittee members raised a variety of issues but Sheppard focused like a heat-seeking missile on the funding formula and drove the conversation toward the adoption of criteria that would give measures of traffic congestion and economic impact equal weight with lane-miles.
The current system distributes funds to areas that can’t put all the money to good use and short-changes areas with major maintenance backlogs, Miller charged. He cited a road he is familiar with, Rt. 33, which runs through an unspecified rural county. The road had no cracks or potholes but VDOT repaved it anyway. “Government fixes things that don’t need fixing and doesn’t fix things that do,” he said. “From my vantage point, the system we have now is neither equitable or efficient.”
Miller reiterated his view that every district should receive enough funding to maintain a minimum of service — a safety net — no matter how low the traffic counts. After all, he explained, people need to get to work or drive to the hospital. But he objected to the gold-plating of little-traveled rural roads. He suggested adding a measure like Vehicle Miles Traveled, which reflects how many people are using the roads. That figure could be adjusted for the number of heavy trucks, which tend to inflict more damage on pavement than automobiles. Such an adjustment would benefit areas like Norfolk, which has heavy port-generated truck traffic, and the coalfields, where heavy-laden coal trucks pound the roads.
John Lawson, VDOT’s chief financial officer, noted that the Federal Highway Administration uses three criteria when allocating Interstate-maintenance funds to the states: 1/3 based on lane miles, 1/3 based on vehicle miles traveled, and 1/3 based on revenue generated by commercial vehicles. The third criteria captures an economic dimension of the highways that the other measures did not.
Gary Garczynski, a Woodbridge developer and urban at-large member, agreed that the economic dimension was critical, especially given Governor Bob McDonnell’s emphasis on jobs and economic development. He also suggested that Northern Virginia localities ought to get some credit for their large investments in mass transit, which takes traffic off the roads.
James Lee Keen, a rural at-large member from the coalfields of Southwest Virginia, gave Miller some gentle pushback, reminding the subcommittee how much the maintenance funds meant to a jurisdiction like Dickenson, a mountainous county of 18,000 people lacking a single four-lane road. “If we look today at what’s being spent on Dickenson County, I venture to say that we’re not spending the money we think,” he said. “I think it’s only a very small amount of money. But it’s very important to the quality of life of the people who live there.”
A related issue, which received only brief discussion, was the idea of abandoning transportation assets that could not longer be economically justified. Miller gave the example of a bridge in Suffolk that VDOT shut down, even though it added many miles to the commute of local residents. “Those people were disadvantaged,” he said. “But the cost to maintain it was more than the value of having it.” In the previous meeting, the subcommittee discussed stricter criteria for admitting new subdivision roads into the state system but did not return to the subject today.
Ideally, suggested Miller, subcommittee members would reach a consensus on the desired criteria based on their merits before looking at how the numbers shook out for individual localities. But he had no illusions. “Somebody’s ox is going to get gored,” he said. “We’re all going to get parochial. We’ll look at how the numbers work out and see how it affects us.”
Important update: A number of people, me included, have been laboring under an illusion about how Virginia’s maintenance funds are allocated. The issue didn’t surface to be resolved until Shep Miller brought up the subject at the regular CTB meeting two days following the subcommittee meeting described above. Connie Sorrell, VDOT’s chief of systems operations, set the record straight. Two points. First, “lane miles” are the criteria used to divvy up only maintenance funds between cities and towns. Second, the allocation of funds among counties whose roads are maintained by VDOT (which excludes Arlington and Henrico) is done on the basis of need. “Need” is determined by the condition of roads and bridges as tracked under VDOT’s asset management plan.
Unfortunately, it appears that a good deal of the first two subcommittee meetings was wasted as Miller pursued his line of thinking based upon a misunderstanding. Why did not someone set him straight?
This article was written thanks to a sponsorship of the Piedmont Environmental Council.
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