VDOT Comissioner Says “Yes we need revenue” …

Posted on October 11, 2012 by Chap

… was one of the highlights of yesterday’s regional transportation conference sponsored by the Northern Virginia Transportation Association.

The conference featured speakers from WMATA, VDOT, VRE and Dulles Rail.  They gave a laundry list of projects, costs involved and completion dates (e.g. the HOT lanes will be open for business on December 22nd).

The also outlined a number of current challenges.  For example, the Virginia Railway Express now carries 5 million trips per year, or twice its original goal.  It’s operating at 90% capacity.  Do we expand the service?  Or keep it as is?

The biggest challenge for VDOT is the lack of state revenue.  As a result, nearly all funds collected for “new construction” are being transferred over for highway maintenance.  This transfer in FY 2012 was $363M.  Pretty soon there will be no state money for new construction, except the bare minimum to bring in Federal matching funds.  As the VDOT Commissioner admitted, “we are now a maintenance organization.”

Speaking of Federal funds, if it wasn’t for the “stimulus” and other Federal grants, there would be no new construction to talk about.  Nearly every project in northern Virginia (Fairfax County Parkway completion, I-66 repaving, Gallows Road improvement) has been done with Federal funds, allocated by the Commonwealth Transportation Board.

I’ve written many long articles on how the current system of fuels taxes — based on a 1980′s formula written before break-through gains in fuel efficiency – woefully underfunds the needs of this community.  Again, the generosity of the Feds (financed by deficit spending) has driven new construction in our area over the past ten years.  That can’t last forever.  Nor should it.

I realize that I’m preaching to the choir here.  So much time has been wasted.  If we had switched our fuels tax to a percentage back in 2004 (an idea I actually proposed), we could have avoided the current morass.

The Governor will have one last session to step up and do something.

 

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  • Frank Muraca

    Do you know where we can read the details of the 1980′s funding formula? Or the details of how it’s determined?

  • DJRippert

    Why do you believe that a one term governor should “step up”? Virginia is the only state in America where the governor can’t run for two consecutive terms. Fifteen states have term limits for state legislators while Virginia does not. Finally, Ballotopia computes a competitiveness index by state for state legislative elections. For the 2010 – 2011 election years, Virginia had the least competitive state legislative elections.

    http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Comparing_the_competitiveness_index_for_state_legislative_elections#tab=2011

    We have the most competitive election for governor and the least competitive election for our legislature. Meanwhile, the fuels tax has been broken for 26 years. You say the governor must step up. I say the General Assembly must step up.

    You personally have tried very hard to solve this problem and I respect that. However, it’s your colleagues in the General Assembly who must bear the blame for this travesty, not a succession of one term governors.

    Finally, the Commonwealth Transportation Board is an abortion of democracy. It’s membership is basically divided by region (with a few “at large” seats). The theory was that the regional representatives would be representative of the population of the state. However, the regions have not been reset since 1935! This means that regions like Northern Virginia are greatly under-represented while other regions in the state are greatly over-represented. Last year, there was a bill proposed to rectify this disgrace. It died in committee. If you can’t fix the CTB you should abolish it.

    Please stop “passing the buck” to the one term governor. The “politicians for life” in our General Assembly need to address the multi-decade transportation disaster in Virginia. The problem is the fault of the General Assembly and the General Assembly has instituted a governance system where it holds the vast majority of the state’s political power. It’s high time that the General Assembly held itself accountable for the transportation chaos in Virginia.

  • Anonymous

    I know that Virginia added 1/2% of the sales tax dedicated to transportation at some point in the past (cannot remember the year) and I know that McDonnell proposed to the GA phasing in another 1/2% on the sales tax in future years.

    The gasoline tax brings in about 50-60 million a year whereas 1/2% of the sales tax brings in about 500 million… 10 times as much – so we’d have to increase the gas tax about a dime to bring in what 1/2% of the sales tax would generate.

    DJ is correct, if the GA won’t go for it, then the Gov is toothless… to do anything – no matter how many terms he might have.

  • Chap Petersen

    The Gov’s proposal was to “shift” the half-cent in sales from education to transportation. Notably it would only happen .10 at a time — so the annual effect is minimial. There was no substitute for the lost revenue for transportation. It’s a bad proposal for a number of reasons and was rejected pretty quickly in the House and Senate last year.

    • Chap Petersen

      Quick edit: no subsitute for the lost revenue for “education.”

      • DJRippert

        And the proposal from the General Assembly is ….

        (sound of crickets chirping)

  • logic says …

    If anyone really expects the Commissioner to claim he *doesn’t* need more money, he’s smoking the drapes. Bureaucrats are selected, rewarded, and promoted by how much money they control and how many people they command.