Virginia’s heated transportation debate has changed dramatically since June, when the General Assembly risked a government shutdown for the third time in six years while Gov. Tim Kaine and Senate Republicans slugged it out with House Republicans over whether to raise taxes again.
What happened between then and now? The public weighed in. A Mason Dixon poll found that half of all Virginians oppose any additional broad-based taxes — even if they are dedicated to transportation. Larger majorities nixed ideas to raise the sales tax on gasoline or new cars, increase insurance premium fees or raise the cost of motor vehicle registrations. And they don’t want to be saddled with more debt, either.
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This doesn’t mean that Virginians demand transportation improvements they refuse to pay for, as some pundits have snarkily suggested. One went so far as to call House Republicans “anti-tax jihadists” — even though the House’s original budget (rejected by both Kaine and the Senate) generated more than $1 billion in transportation investments. It does mean that state residents clearly want the governor and state legislators to start spending more of Virginia’s $74 billion biennial budget on projects that will improve mobility throughout the commonwealth.
They can start by ditching the rails on the $4 billion Dulles Rail project. Instead of an elevated concrete monolith in Tysons Corner, a sleek, modern bus rapid transit system could snake through Tysons, drop passengers off at the airport and then head south along the soon-to-be-built Capital Beltway HOT lanes and take significant pressure off the Fort Belvoir area, which is expected to be inundated with new workers in just five years. The longest HOT lane system in the country could be operating well before 2012 — when just the first phase of Dulles Rail is expected to be finished — and save $2 billion in the process.
Any politician who refuses to support BRT but is willing to spend $4 billion on one 23-mile heavy rail project — a project that had to be exempted from federal cost-effectiveness standards even without the doomed tunnel — and then complains about the lack of transportation funding has a major credibility problem. Outgoing VDOT Commissioner Philip Shucet admitted recently that the state has not exhausted all its options for reducing congestion with the resources it already has. Until that happens, another tax hike is totally inappropriate.
So Kaine and the General Assembly better not offer fed-up Northern Virginia commuters another phony “More taxes or more gridlock?” choice when the special transportation session starts next week. The people have already answered that question.
