Sen. Walter Stosch, R-Henrico, one of the grandees of the state Senate, explained his thinking about transportation issues at a monthly meeting of the Goochland Republican committee. As reported by S.E. Warwick with The Goochland Courier, he noted quite correctly that the gas tax can’t keep up with the cost of maintaining state roads.
Maintenance costs are increasing by about 10 to 12 percent annually because each year many miles of new subdivision roads are added to the state system. Maintenance involves things like asphalt, derived from oil and concrete, whose prices are rising well ahead of inflation, said the senator.
Polls have shown that the public doesn’t favor any of the funding options proposed by lawmakers this year: raising the sales tax on cars and trucks, raising the wholesale fuel tax, or diverting funds from the General Assembly. “Those are about the only three options,” said Stosch. “That means that the general public is not prepared for any type of solution in a framework we can work with.”
Those are the only three options? Egads, does the good Senator live on the same planet as the rest of us? Unless S.E. Warwick omitted parts of his speech, Stosch did not talk about congestion pricing. He did not talk about privatization or tolls. He did not talk about proffers, impact fees or Community Development Authority bonds. And that’s just on the revenue side. He didn’t talk either about managing the demand for road improvements through land use reforms, car pooling, vans or Bus Rapid Transit — although he did mention high-speed rail and noted, correctly, its high up-front cost.
Tellingly, Stosch never even mentioned the House of Delegates legislative package that would have, among other things, curtailed the admittance of subdivision roads into the state system — one of the reasons he cites for rising maintenance costs!
There is an wide array of thinking about transportation that Sen. Stosch apparently has never tapped into. Sadly, his tunnel vision seems shared by many, though fortunately not all, of his peers in the Senate.