Give Northern Virginia an extra $500 million a year to spend on transportation, and the first dime isn’t spent before people start carping that it’s not enough. “The plan as passed puts only $200 million into Northern Virginia roads,” Del. Vivian Watts, D-Annandale, told the Times-Community newspapers. “I’m certainly not going to sneeze at it. But a billion dollars over a 20-year period [from the state] is not sustained enough.” (I’m not sure if those numbers all add up; I’m just quoting what I read. The sentiment is clear enough.)
Northern Virginians are supposed to be so bloody smart. They’ve got the highest education levels of anywhere in the country. They deploy the world’s most advanced technology. They do business at Internet speed. But when it comes to transportation policy, they’re stuck in a 19th century mindset. Tax, spend, build. Tax, spend, build. And instead of thinking creatively, they mope excessively about how unfairly they’re treated.
Get over it! Apply some of that brainpower to public policy!
There are well-understood mechanisms for raising capital to underwrite transportation projects. These mechanisms engage market forces, hew to the bedrock principle of user/beneficiary pays, and avoid the shortfalls of funneling money through Richmond, where the politicians and bureaucrats take their vigorish before recycling it back to Northern Virginia. I’ve written extensively about these ideas, so I will note them only briefly:
- Community Development Authorities. CDAs can finance improvements like Metro rail stations, bus lanes, interchanges, road widenings — any transportation infrastructure you can think of. Property owners pay off the bonds through the increased value of their real estate holdings that the transportation improvements make possible. If needed, local governments can give property owners an extra density allowance, which increases property values even more, as an added inducement.
- Congestion tolls. Charge motorists tolls for entering congested corridors or zones at rates that vary by the time of day. Tolls do three things: (1) They reduce traffic to optimal levels, thus increasing effective capacity; (2) they encourage motorists to change their behavior, modifying word schedules, telecommuting, carpooling, riding vans, riding buses, whatever; and (3) they provide revenue that can be used to increase the capacity of the affected corridor/zone.
That’s not the end of the story, of course. Raising the money for transportation improvements is only a part of the solution. Other vital pieces are to plan balanced communities, and to adopt more transportation-efficient land use patterns.
Northern Virginians aren’t just the best educated people in Virginia, they’re the richest. They can invent new technologies and business models out the wazoo, but they don’t want to change the way they get around. In the public realm, they’re addicted to Business As Usual. But I’m not buying it. They’ve got all the tools they need. It’s time to start using them.
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