Posted By HR Partnership on November 2, 2009

POLITICS gets in the way…

Sitting on the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel in totally stopped traffic, while a vehicle is removed from the tunnel.

Photo Courtesy of HamptonRoadsLife.com

by Danae Jones Aicher, a former journalist-turned political communications adviser. She now is a soon-to-be-stay-at-home-mom working on a book about raising biracial children.

Bumper to bumper traffic. Clogged tunnels. Abandoned bridges. Closed rest stops. Canceled road projects. That’s transportation- rather transportation problems- here in Hampton Roads. And it’s precisely what Virginia Beach Vision, “a non-partisan issue-oriented organization of business and civic leaders”, wanted to put on the table at a panel discussion last night (Tuesday, October 27).

The panel included an engineer, a Hampton Roads representative to the Commonwealth Transportation Board and a representative from the Hampton Roads Economic Development Alliance. And what they had to report wasn’t particularly encouraging. Our rush hour commute, according to Dwight Farmer, Executive Director of the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission (HRPDC), has drivers traveling at an average speed of 15 miles per hour door-to-door. The good news is that’s about average for an urban area. The bad news is travel demand is growing at about twice the rate of our population, which we all know is on the rise in and of itself. Furthermore, revenue from the gas tax is flat and there’s been no new revenue stream or any addition to the current revenue stream for transportation in 23 years. That means there are no new state construction dollars coming to urban areas for non-interstate roadways. And even the federal dollars for interstate work require a state match that the Commonwealth of Virginia may or may not be able to afford over the coming years.

So what do we do? How do we fix the problems? Well there’s the rub. The panelists weren’t there to offer solutions. I’m guessing that’s what they hoped we citizens would push our lawmakers to do. But in order for our lawmakers to fix transportation, we’ve got to get the politics out of the way. In the midst of this governor’s race, we see Creigh Deeds, for instance, being attacked for even suggesting that there might need to be an increase in taxes somewhere. But just to fix the severe congestion problems here in Hampton Roads alone will cost about $30 billion. Clearly the state doesn’t have the money. And as much talk as there is about eliminating inefficiencies within VDOT, experts on the panel seemed to agree that it’s not a silver bullet and won’t get us close to the numbers we need.

What would? An additional dollar more per gallon in gas taxes, according to Farmer. Or a 6% increase in sales tax alone. But the panel also agreed neither of those options is politically viable. Any talk of new taxes is automatically taken off the table for discussion.

There is another option that could put a major dent in solving the problems without spending any money at all. If all of those who commute every day randomly car pooled once every two weeks, we’d eliminate the congestion. I can’t even imagine how we’d accomplish that politically, and even socially that’s a gigantic challenge. We can’t even get widespread recycling.

There was one other interesting option, although, again, probably not viable: making transportation a private venture, much like our utilities, with government regulation. But it’s difficult for me to think of transportation, as in the access to roadways, as a luxury like a cell phone or cable bill. Sure, many of us feel like we couldn’t live without our cell phones, blackberries and such. But the reality is we’d probably survive.  Access to the roadways is a little different.

So back to taxes. It might surprise many of us that the average Virginia driver pays $96.25 per year in state gas taxes. With a one-cent tax increase, the state could collect $50 million. The cost to individual drivers would be an additional $5.50 each year. A 10-cent increase in state gas taxes could raise $500 million for the state. In that case, the cost to individual drivers would be an additional $55 a year.

But no matter how great the need or dire the circumstances, we can’t talk about taxes. Politics always gets in the way. Both parties are guilty. Unfortunately, it’s us taxpayers who foot the bill while lawmakers go round and round debating what other services are so unimportant that we can cut them. Seems rather futile in a time when people are most in need of services and even those cuts won’t pay for all of the things we really need. Where is the political courage to step away from partisan politics and rhetoric, and really find a solution to the problems we face?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting we randomly throw taxpayer dollars around. But I do wonder, with all the talk about not increasing taxes, what we taxpayers ARE willing to pay for. “No taxes” is a fine approach if we also want no services. But we want safe bridges, unclogged tunnels and regular road maintenance. Don’t we? And we’re already paying a high cost for not keeping up with these things, we just aren’t paying efficiently. We pay for it in the gas we use sitting in traffic, extra repair to our cars driving over potholes, medical bills and insurance due to car accidents, and time spent away from our jobs (productivity) and families while we sit in traffic. How much more are we willing to pay? A few more dollars a year in taxes? Or with the loss of lives if- and when- a tragedy occurs on less than safe roadways?

Categories: Government & Citizens, Military Bastion, Transportation
Tags: HRPDC, Transportation, VDOT, Virginia Beach