N.Va. Transportation Nightmare Continues
By Eric M. Weiss And Michael Laris
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, July 12, 2008
It was bad enough for gridlocked Northern Virginia that leaders in Richmond failed this week to come up with a transportation funding plan, but there's even worse news: There's no Plan B.
The result will be more congested roads, crowded trains and possibly an exodus of jobs from the region, officials said yesterday.
In addition to failing to provide additional statewide money for transportation, legislators also failed to fix legal problems that led the Virginia Supreme Court to disallow regional boards in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads to raise local taxes and fees to fund regional projects.
Transportation officials estimate that the state will face about a $3 billion shortfall over six years in the part of the budget used to maintain roadways and bridges and that most of that money would have to be taken from new projects.
"Prospects are pretty grim; we're in a state," said Chris Zimmerman, chairman of the Metro board and the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, which had planned to raise and spend more than $300 million a year on regional transportation projects until the court ruling. The money would have gone toward alleviating some of the region's most notorious bottlenecks.
Northern Virginia leaders said there is no backup plan other than to get by with less and hope the problems get fixed later. Meanwhile, Zimmerman feared that the lack of a solution could give companies looking to relocate to the region pause.
"You constantly have companies coming in and going out," Zimmerman said, noting that some companies have avoided Atlanta because of its notorious traffic congestion.
The Washington area has the second-worst traffic congestion in the country, and conditions in Northern Virginia are among the worst in the Washington area. Many observers blamed partisan bickering and regional squabbles for lawmakers' failure to reach a consensus.
"The rest of the state just doesn't like Northern Virginia. It's what it's always been," said Craig E. Baumann, a lawyer who commutes from the Woodbridge area to his office near Fort Belvoir. "We can't get these politicians down there to understand that if the economic engine here doesn't continue to produce, it's going to hurt them down there as well. Everybody's dependent on Northern Virginia."
Baumann acknowledged that Democratic and GOP lawmakers have a tough job. Still, "that's what we voted them in there to do, to figure out the solution. . . . I think they'll both suffer."
But residents elsewhere in the state said they shouldn't have to pay higher taxes to solve Northern Virginia's problems.
"It's a little unfair for people in western Virginia, who are economically deprived, to pay for those in Hampton Roads and the Washington area, where they have better paying jobs," said Mary Dean, who works for the Danville Area Humane Society.
Virginia Transportation Secretary Pierce R. Homer said the state is "back to where we were in 2002," after a referendum raising regional taxes to pay for transportation failed. "And on the expenditure side, we've gone many, many years backward because of the increasing cost of building and maintaining roads and transit systems.
"From a consumer's point of view, the trip from the front door to a major arterial road will be the first to suffer," Homer said. "And then the very quality and integrity of road maintenance and operations will be sorely tested.''
Homer said the state's first priority will always be safety. But the lack of maintenance money means those funds will come out of the budget for new projects, further hurting congestion-relief efforts.
Some Northern Virginia projects will continue, Homer said. The Telegraph Road interchange, part of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge project, is continuing, as are interchanges on Route 28 in Loudoun. State officials also expect an agreement with the federal government on a Metrorail extension to Dulles by the end of the year. And the state and private companies have begun work on new toll lanes on the Capital Beltway and are negotiating for similar lanes on Interstate 395/95.
The General Assembly also failed to come up with a permanent funding source for Metro, jeopardizing a possible $1.5 billion in federal funds for the regional transit system. Maryland and the District have already committed their share of the money.
That could delay ordering replacements for the 30-year-old Series 1000 railcars, which make up about a third of Metro's rail fleet. The result could be more breakdowns as Metro is breaking ridership records.
"It's devastating,'' said Alexandria Mayor William D. Euille (D), who serves on the Metro board and the NVTA.
U.S. Rep. Tom Davis (R) said his bill increasing Metro funding is likely to pass Congress, even though Virginia has not met the legislation's precondition of dedicated funding. Davis blamed Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) for pushing for too much during the special session instead of just fixing the legal issues raised by the state Supreme Court.
"This is all about the blame game,'' said Davis, who is retiring. "Metro was a very easy fix. But now they end up with nothing."
Beverly Parker leaves her Dumfries home at 5 a.m. for her 45-minute commute to her job at Inova Fairfax Hospital. The trip home can take an hour and a half. "Where isn't it bad?" Parker asked. But raising taxes isn't the answer.
"People can't afford any more in taxes. So I think we're just going to have to keep what we have right now and hope for better later, because I can't see any need to stress people out more."
Staff writer Kameel Stanley contributed to this report.
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