At the Northen Virginia Transportation Alliance’s December 17th 2009 Speaker’s Series event, former VDOT Commissioner Philip Shucet said it’s time to stop arguing and to start doing things to improve transportation “right now.”

Mr. Shucet’s list of achievable action steps includes:
• Move $250 million from maintenance back to construction each of the next four years.
• Establish quickly a shortlist of projects that provide additional capacity in the most congested areas that can quickly move to construction.
• Determine quickly which projects may be of interest to the private sector as possible public-private partnerships.
• Use the design-build method of project delivery for all priority projects (reduces time, cost and shifts risk of preliminary engineering to contractor).
• Put members of the Virginia General Assembly on every Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) in Virginia.
• Slash the permitting time for projects that are going to move forward.
• Modernize Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) duties by allowing them to truly contribute to long-range planning.
• Perform quickly any audit of VDOT. “If any audit is to happen, do it quickly.”
• Keep local projects under local control.
• Find items in the Governor-Elect’s transportation plan to support and support them fervently.

To read Mr. Shucet’s entire remarks, visit http://nvtav2.timberlakepublishing.com//Files/Shucet%20Remarks%20NVTA%20-%20Dec%20%2017%202009.pdf

“Unfortunately, about all we’ve able to do over the years is talk about transportation.” — Phil Shucet

RICHMOND, VA. – Just minutes before the Commonwealth Board of Transportation decided to vote on V-DOT’s six year funding plan, Hampton Roads transportation leaders made a final plea for more money.

The biggest concern was for fiscal year 2011 where the draft plan showed the region wouldn’t get a cent for new interstate construction.

And the pleas worked – a little bit. The board decided to give our region $8 million in 2011. However the board says that $8 million can not go for repairs or road work – it can only be used towards pre-planning for work on the I-64/264 interchange.

“It’s not huge, but again it gets us able to keep a project,” said Dwight Farmer the Executive Direction of the Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Orgaanization. “I still do think there are some inequalities in the way the money has been distributed.”

Inequalities because even though Hampton Roads is getting $8 million in fiscal year 2011, Northern Virginia is getting hundreds of millions.

Transportation Secretary Pierce Homer puts some blame on Hampton Roads. He says the reason Northern Virginia is getting the hundreds of millions of dollars is because Hampton Roads relies too much on V-DOT funds and Northern Virginia does not.

Secretary Homer says Hampton Roads is lucky to even get this money because V-DOT’s budget crisis is affecting the entire state of Virginia, especially all of the cities in the state. They won’t be getting any state funding for construction projects for the next six years, including the cities in Hampton Roads.

With V-DOT’s funding crisis, Secretary Homer says his suggestion to leaders in Hampton Roads is cooperation with one another and also to try to find alternative money in order to pay for new road projects.