While the MSM cyclops focuses its monomoniacal eye on the absolute level of transportation funding — will legislators raise another $1.2 billion a year, or only $1 billion — quiet progress is being made in other areas: in particular, the prioritization of funding.
As Peter Galuszka reports for the Road to Ruin project, there is increasing support for creating performance standards for roads — comparable in ways to the Standards of Learning for schools. These standards would measure outputs, not inputs: rating transportation projects on the extent to which they contribute to key goals like safety, congestion mitigation and economic development.
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has already appointed, by executive order, a transportation accountability commission to recommend performance standards. And House Bill 3202, the GOP compromise bill, also contains language that would create a Joint Commission on Transportation Accountability to do much the same thing. Ideally, the two groups would work together, not squabble over differing definitions and standards.
The metrics have yet to be devised, although Kaine’s group has already started the process, having held its first meeting. Over and above the safety guidelines, which are well established, metrics might include traffic congestion mitigated per dollar spent, or contribution to economic development. By “economic development,” backers of this concept are not envisioning earmark projects like the $50 million interchange in Stafford County built to improve access to a little-used regional airport. That’s precisely the kind of low-return “investment” they want to prevent. Instead, economic development metrics might measure how a new road would increase the accessibility of labor to a major employment center like Tysons Corner.
Setting priorities is critical. Setting the right priorities is even more critical. This represents an excellent opportunity to align transportation with land use planning. It’s also an opportunity for the state, for once, to stimulate in-fill and re-development in Virginia’s urban core and aging suburbs instead of pushing growth ever farther into the countryside. It could even become a tool one day for building transportation systems that serve Balanced Communities.
There’s one issue that we did not have a chance to explore: the extent to which new priorities driven by new metrics actually would change current spending patterns. Virginia’s road allocation formula is fairly rigid, parceling out funds on the basis of antiquated highway districts boundaries, drawn in the 1920s, and between road classifications that haven’t been updated in almost as long. HB 3202 would require the Virginia Department of Transportation to reclassify roads, but I’m not aware of any measure that would redraw VDOT district boundaries.
Meaningful reform may require more than setting new standards: It may require tearing up the old road funding formula and starting over.
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