by James A. Bacon
Transportation has been on the back burner in the Richmond metro area for a long time, but it could resurface in a debate over the future of the Richmond Metropolitan Authority (RMA), which operates the region’s two toll roads — and things could get ugly if the debate rips the scab off the region’s slowly healing racial politics.
Transportation and race? How did the two get mixed up?
You need to know the history of the RMA. The regional authority was created in 1966 for the purpose of creating the toll-financed Downtown Expressway. The city guaranteed $20 million to cover the cost of planning, designing and acquiring right-of-way for the highway, which won it six seats on the 11-person board as compared to only two seats for Henrico and Chesterfield counties and one for the Richmond regional representative to the Commonwealth Transportation Board. As typically was the case during that time, planners tried to minimize the right-of-way acquisition costs by running the route through poorer neighborhoods with less valuable land. Roughly 900 residents and businesses were displaced by the project… most of whom (though not all) were black.
In 1973, the authority opened the Powhite Parkway, which fed commuters from the fast-growing Chesterfield County to the Expressway and the then-dominant job center in downtown Richmond. Later, the authority raised toll rates to pay for introducing electronic tolls, adding lanes to keep up with surging demand, and utilizing surface materials that would prolong the life of the underlying assets. (The RMA also handled a number of other projects of a regional scope, from the ball park to the flood wall and downtown train station.)
Fast forward to 2010. Richmond Mayor Dwight Jones cut a deal for the RMA to repay the City of Richmond its loan, which had an accumulated value of $62 million, by means of refinancing the toll roads. If Richmond got its money back, county residents argued, then Henrico and Chesterfield should be entitled to greater representation on the board. Del. G. Manoli Loupassi, R-Richmond, who also represents part of Chesterfield, introduced a bill at the end of December that would give Richmond, Henrico and Chesterfield three seats a piece on the RMA board. The issue is particularly important to Chesterfield residents who account for 60% of the toll revenues and think they ought to have a greater say in how the organization is run.
Loupassi’s bill didn’t play well, however, with former Richmond Mayor Roy A. West, who had served on the RMA board. According to Michael Martz with the Times-Dispatch, the veteran African-American politician called the proposal part of a “perpetual agenda to dispossess the city of Richmond of its rightful control of this asset, which was paid for with ‘blood, sweat and tears.’ ” West blasted Mayor Jones for striking the deal, but he saved the harshest words for Loupassi. Reported Martz:
West, in an email message, accused Loupassi of a “racist agenda” because the proposal would “take from a black-majority city for the benefit of a white-majority county.”
Hopefully, there are enough statesmen in the Richmond region to resolve the issue without it turning into another national, race relations-suck-in-Richmond story like the Arthur Ashe statue or the Lee mural on the flood wall. That would be an entirely preventable tragedy.
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