It will be an early Christmas for local public officials who make up the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority. The massive transportation tax increase passed by the Virginia General Assembly and signed by Gov. Bob McDonnell gives them $190 million to spend on regional projects and $85 million for local projects next year. The huge financial infusion of $1.9 billion over the next six years is supposed to be spent reducing congestion in the most traffic-choked region of the commonwealth.
But congestion-weary commuters are unlikely to see much real relief. NVTA’s Six-Year Plan, which has not even been coordinated with the Virginia Department of Transportation’s similarly named capital construction blueprint, spends too much on transit and too little on new roads. The original list had 26 transit projects compared to just 16 road projects, all selected without public input. This is the same misallocation of resources that caused Northern Virginia’s traffic problems in the first place.
