One outcome is certain from the 41 percent increase in transportation funding recently approved by Virginia officials: The additional spending will have almost no effect on traffic congestion in Northern Virginia.
Commuting into Washington is a headache not because Virginia’s roads are inadequate, but because the District is one of the few major cities in the country that does not have an internal freeway system.
Whereas in other large cities, drivers peel off at various exit ramps — allowing traffic to maintain a near-constant pace — traffic entering Washington from Virginia backs up as soon as the first car across the bridge catches a red light.
Commuting via Memorial Bridge was fairly easy until last year, when the city planners inexplicably decided to create a traffic jam where none existed by installing two unsynchronized traffic lights in the Lincoln Memorial circle. Virginia could build 18-lane roads, and it would do no good as long as the District creates such bottlenecks.
The other inevitability is that improved transportation feeds a vicious cycle. As better highways make it easier to commute from the suburbs, more people move into those outlying areas — where they clog up the roads and then complain about traffic. Regarding roads and suburbs, the adage obtains: If you build them, they will come.
The solution, of course, would be to slash the size of the federal workforce — to get off the roads at least a few hundred thousand of those “non-essential” employees who flood the streets of Washington every day — but that is about as likely as Hillary Clinton experiencing self-doubt.
One result of the decision to increase transportation funding is not inevitable: Spending more doesn’t necessarily mean taxpayers have to pony up more cash. Writing for the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, Geoffrey F. Segal offers an ingenious suggestion:
Virginia could privatize its state liquor stores and devote the proceeds to transportation. Selling the 312 stores not only would raise hundreds of millions of dollars in one-time assets, but private establishments continually generate revenue for the state through property and income taxes.
Privatizing liquor sales would not mean that the state would relinquish all control. Laws still could prohibit such things as liquor stores near schools, all-night sales or stores open on Sunday.
About the only thing that would change with privatization is that consumers likely would benefit from better choices and prices and more convenient hours. Virginia is one of only 18 states that still has a monopoly on alcohol sales, and none of the states that has privatized has returned to state control.
Opposition to privatization comes from the usual suspects: wards of the state and those who crave being regulated by it. Virginia’s liquor-store employees lobby against the change because they could lose their jobs in a privatized system.
But private owners would need to staff the stores — and who better to fill the jobs than those with experience? Moreover, there are ways to help protect the workers’ jobs. When then-Gov. Tom Ridge proposed privatizing Pennsylvania’s liquor stores in 1997, he recommended a $2,000 tax credit to store owners who retained state employees.
Privatization also is opposed by those who trust government above all else. Among their fears is that tying sales to profits would give private owners incentive to sell alcohol to minors.
But there is no reason to believe liquor-store owners would be any more tempted to do so than owners of grocery stores, convenience shops, bars, restaurants or any other place where alcohol is sold. The possibility of losing ones license — i.e., one’s livelihood — has a properly chilling effect.
Since Mark “I Won’t Raise Your Taxes” Warner became governor, Virginia’s budget has ballooned from $48 billion to $75 billion. Neither Warner’s successor, Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine, nor the Republican legislature seem able to keep their hands out of the taxpayers’ wallets, and Northern Virginians — frustrated by traffic congestion — are easy sheep to fleece.
But spending more money on transportation will not relieve tie-ups in Northern Virginia, and raising taxes to pay for the non-solution would be an added indignity. If the politicians intoxicated by so much money could instead spend some time in sober thought, they might consider alternative revenue sources, such as selling the ABC stores.
There is no reason Virginia’s roads can’t be funded by its designated drinkers.
Examiner columnist Melanie Scarborough lives in Alexandria.
