My reaction to the Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s $1 billion-a-year transportation will surprise no one. I’ve spent years making the case that transportation funding should (a) be structured as a user-pays system and (b) be linked to reform of human settlement patterns. Kaine’s proposal does neither. It may be a political winner — I sense that it might be, given the general exhaustion on the subject and the desire to “do something” and be done with it — but it is a public policy loser.
If this plan is enacted, it is only a matter of time — four years, maybe six?? — before it is abundantly clear to everyone that $1 billion isn’t nearly enough under the Business As Usual model of allocating transportation dollars to solve anything, Virginians will be complaining as bitterly as ever about traffic congestion, and the usual suspects who make money from the tax-and-build cycle will resume their full-throated cry about the transportation “crisis.”
Here, in summary, is what is wrong with the Kaine plan:
Users don’t pay. An increase in motor vehicle registration fees and automobile sales tax will raise only a fraction of the $1 billion from automobile owners as a class. Even then, there will be no connection between how many miles someone drives (and, thus, how much wear and tear he inflicts upon the transportation system) and how much he pays. Neither will there be any connection between how much someone stresses the system by driving on the most congested roads during periods of peak demand and how much he pays. This highway funding mechanism will do nothing — repeat N-O-T-H-I-N-G — to encourage drivers to seek alternate modes of transportation or otherwise change the behavior that has created this crisis in the first place.
As for the balance of the new revenue — sales taxes and grantor’s taxes — there is not even a remote connection between those who pay the taxes and those who benefit from them. This is nothing less than a wholesale transfer of wealth from people who do not drive (or who drive only a little) to those who do drive (or drive a lot). Poor people get hosed. Bike riders get hosed. Telecommuters get hosed. Retired people get hosed. Road warriors who traded off cheaper mortgages for longer commutes will benefit.
Beneficiaries don’t pay. Investing billions of dollars in new transportation capacity will create a huge pay-off to those who own land in locations where the infrastructure improves mobility and access. Property owners will reap billions of dollars in windfall profits through the increased value in their property. But there is no mechanism for capturing any of these gains for the public benefit. Accordingly, the incentive will increase for developers and land speculators to influence election outcomes and to otherwise manipulate the political system to their advantage.
Slush fund for rail and transit. I totally believe that rail and transit are part of Virginia’s long-term transportation solution. But they won’t do ourselves any favors by raising taxes and dumping the proceeds them into a slush fund for projects that, by their nature, will require continued operating funds from state government. All we’ll do is increase our future obligations to support transportation modes that can’t support themselves. Rail and transit can be made to work if they are supported by changes to land use patterns characterized by greater density around transit stops, walkable communities and a balance of jobs, housing, shopping and amenities. But there is no provision in this proposal to ensure those things happen.
No objective methodology for setting priorities. Nothing in this bill requires the commonwealth to establish an objective methodology for prioritizing projects based on their effectiveness at mitigating traffic congestion. There is nothing to prevent the usual suspects with the most to gain from boring into the political system like beetles into tree bark, canoodling administrators, making donations to elected officials, attending obscure public hearings, and bird dogging projects through the bureaucratic maze.
I am not a religious man, but a phrase from the Book of Common Prayer comes to mind:
We have left undone those thinges whiche we ought to have done, and we have done those thinges which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us, but thou, O Lorde, have mercy upon us miserable offendours.