January 3, 2006

Leadership and Better Planning for Transportation

Very soon, Governor-Elect Tim Kaine is expected to announce his choice for Secretary of Transportation. We hope it will be someone who will implement the reform agenda that helped him to win election.

Kaine’s campaign tapped into Virginians’ deep concerns about poorly planned development, winning both democratic and republican votes, especially in fast growing outer suburbs. On election night, he declared that “We can’t let runaway development clog our roads and ruin our beautiful landscapes.” The call for reform is bipartisan, with a key member of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, Senator Charles Hawkins, from Pittsylvania County, declaring that we simply cannot afford to build our way out of our traffic problems and must find new approaches. As a result, many, many Virginians are hoping for real change.

The Secretary of Transportation must be prepared to tell it straight, starting with the fact that we cannot afford all of the projects on the various regional wish-lists, even with new funding. That we cannot afford the transportation infrastructure required to serve increasingly spread-out and scattered development. And that new funding won’t make a difference to traffic congestion without changes in development patterns and demand reduction strategies.

We need a Secretary of Transportation who will help plan and fund those transportation facilities that support the revitalization of our cities and towns, help to focus development near transit stations, provide schools and retail opportunities within walking distance of neighborhoods, and allow for more housing closer to jobs. By reducing the daily car trips we each need to make and the distances we have to drive we can reduce congestion more effectively than never-ending highway expansion.

The Secretary of Transportation must give the public, not the development industry, a stronger say in project priorities and more fairly analyze alternative transportation solutions. For example, in Northern Virginia, despite public opposition and evidence that the Tri-County Parkway and 234 Bypass (Battlefield Bypass) do not address terrible east-west gridlock, the current VDOT leadership is intent on making these north-south bypass highways its highest priorities. Not surprisingly, the proposed route for these highways mirrors the Western Bypass, an outer beltway which has been a developer priority for over two decades because it opens up more land for housing development.

Travel around the state and you will see a focus on controversial bypass highways that are pitched as congestion relievers but are really development magnets -- the proposed Southeastern Expressway, the Harrisonburg Bypass, and Charlottesville Bypass, or the completed Routes 288 and 895 around Richmond. The Richmond Times Dispatch recently profiled the political maneuvering to build Route 288. The highway consumed hundreds of millions in district and statewide transportation funds to support development speculation. Meanwhile, hundreds of developable acres near existing transportation infrastructure can be found abandoned and unused throughout the city and inner suburbs of the Richmond region.

It is time to break from the old pattern of land speculation and influence that drives far too much of our transportation spending. Governor-elect Kaine’s Secretary of Transportation must support the reform agenda of Kaine’s campaign. Kaine’s focus on better growth management and land use planning to reduce traffic is the core of a more effective approach to transportation, and the upcoming General Assembly session is an opportunity for delegates and senators to respond with land use planning reforms, not a blank check for a tax increase.

Stewart Schwartz is the Executive Director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth
stewart@smartergrowth.net