Top headline from today’s Wall Street Journal: “Oil Hits $100, Jolting Markets.” Writes the Journal:
The surging price of oil, from just over $10 a barrel a decade ago to $100 yesterday, is altering the wealth and influence of nations and industries around the world. … Steep gasoline prices … threaten America’s long love affair with the automobile, while putting strains on many lower-income people outside big cities, who must spend an increasing share of their budgets just on fuel to get to work.
Top headline from today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch: “Area Transportation Authority Sought.” Del. Franklin P. Hall, D-Richmond, plans to introduce legislation to create a regional transportation authority, similar to authorities in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, that would raise $105 million annually for regional transportation projects. The money would come from an add-on 2 percent gas tax as well as increased fees for car registrations, inspections and repairs.
Hall wants to issue bonds and build the roads to “deal with the transportation issue in central Virginia before it becomes a crisis,” writes reporter Will Jones. Apparently, Hall has the backing of some regional business leaders. Jim Dunn, president of the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce, says businessmen should give Hall’s proposal “some thought,” citing extensive needs, such as widening Interstate 64 east of Richmond, extending the Powhite Parkway, and improving Hull Street Road — all of which would encourage people to settle on the metropolitan periphery and drive greater distances. Oh, and Dunn says we need to promote regional transit, too.
Bacon’s Bottom Line: Thus, while oil hits $100 per barrel and the nation’s leading business publication calls into question the viability of America’s auto-centric economy, Richmond political and business leaders propose to double down their bets on an auto-centric transportation system adapted to $10-per-barrel oil. Nowhere in the article is there any mention of addressing the dysfunctional human settlement patterns at the root of Richmond’s surging transportation needs.
As Trip Pollard with the Southern Environmental Law Center pointed out in his recent study on land use, transportation and climate change in Virginia, “New Directions,” the Richmond region is developing land at a more prodigious rate — converting 58,000 acres of land between 1992 and 1997, compared to 49,300 acres in the far more populous Northern Virginia region and 43,300 acres in Hampton Roads. (Admittedly, those numbers are a decade old, but there is little to indicate that the pattern has changed.)
Scattered, disconnected, low-density development is the root cause of transportation dysfunction. Not only would Hall do absolutely nothing to reverse this “suburban sprawl,” he would, in fact, subsidize it. Instead of advocating a “user pays” system, in which those who drive more pay more, Hall would finance the scheme largely through a sales tax. Thus, those who walk to work, bicycle to work, telecommute, carpool, ride the bus or simply live a short drive from work, would subsidize those who choose to live ever increasing distances from employment centers and put increasing strain on the transportation system.
Then there’s the issue of the transportation authority itself — an unelected and largely unaccountable body empowered to increase taxes. Hall seems blandly unconcerned by the objections raised by citizens in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, much less by the legal challenges to the constitutionality of the authorities. Says Hall, “We have been assured by the attorney general … that it meets the test and those statutes are valid.”
More money for sprawl-inducing mega-projects as oil tops $100 per barrel. Wow, that’s a real formula for regional success. NOT! This abomination — the Son of HB 3202 — must be strangled in its cradle before it locks into place a dysfunctional transportation system that does immeasurable harm to the future prosperity, liveability and sustainability of the Richmond region
