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Future state funding for new road construction projects hangs in balance
When the General Assembly went into special session this summer specifically to address transportation funding, Manassas Delegate Jackson Miller (R-50th) hoped the 140-member body and the governor would be able to get something accomplished, even though the odds were not good.“I had some faint optimism, kind of like the same amount of optimism you have when you go play the lottery; you’re still hopeful, but you’re still not expecting much to come out,” he said. “And, unfortunately, that’s what happened.”
Gridlock
Insert whatever transportation metaphor or pun you would like: gridlock, roadblock, traffic jam, and so on. After the Virginia Supreme Court ruled last year that the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority cannot raise taxes as an unelected body, the legislature tried again to come up with a funding method.
But the delegates and senators could not agree on a funding mechanism.
The House of Delegates Republican leadership would not support tax increases; the Senate Democratic leadership rejected any raids on future General Fund money for transportation.
The bottom line for commuters traveling through western Prince William County is, for another year, projects like the widening of U.S. 29 in Gainesville and Route 28 south of Manassas will be pushed back and the Virginia Railway Express will not be extended west of Manassas any time soon, either.
“I won’t live to see that,” 81-year-old state Sen. Chuck Colgan (D-29th), the Senate Finance Committee chairman, said of the widening of U.S. 29. “I think in the future, if we don’t get some more money, we’re not going to see VRE extended to Haymarket.”
He and Miller offered their views recently about what has been done regarding transportation in the GA, where they now stand and what they would support.
Taxes
“The position I took was I’ll vote for either one. Get the sales tax over here, I’ll vote for it. Or get the gas tax to the floor and I’ll vote for that, too,” said Colgan. “I’ll vote for the gas tax because it’ll [include] out-of-state drivers. The sales tax gets some, but not as much as the gas tax.”
Unlike some of his Republican colleagues in the House of Delegates, including Prince William delegates Bob Marshall and Jeff Frederick, Miller said he would consider tax hikes to fund transportation.
“What I am opposed to is a statewide tax increase where Northern Virginia just again sends money to the same funding formula,” Miller said.
Instead, he favors regional taxation plans for donor areas like Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.
That is “because 100 percent of that money would stay in Northern Virginia as opposed to a sales tax or anything else where Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads raises the vast majority of the money. It goes back into the same old transportation funding formula, and we get a lot less back than what we’re putting into it,” he said.
While neither Colgan nor Miller has said any transportation plan is off the table, Miller, a Realtor, has argued forcibly against the grantor’s and gas taxes, the latter of which he paints as regressive in that it negatively affects lower-income people more than those with more money.
Tri-County Parkway
Miller now advocates the creation of the Tri-County Parkway connecting Manassas at the intersection of Godwin Drive and Sudley Road to Dulles International Airport in Sterling to relief traffic congestion on Route 28 and directly link the high-tech industrial area of western Manassas to points northward.
A plan for such a highway has been in the comprehensive plans for Prince William, Fairfax and Loudoun counties but has not been acted upon due in part to concerns from the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority regarding potential environmental damages to lower Loudoun County.
A parkway would also cut through Bull Run Regional Park in Fairfax County, which would eliminate some of the scarce open space left in Northern Virginia.
Land transfers and overpasses may mitigate that problem, according to Miller, though those with environmental and sprawl concerns may still oppose it.
The road would have to be a toll road operated under a private-public partnership if the state does not produce a new transportation plan, he said.
“I think the most beneficial impact [to] economic development in western Prince William County would be the completion or the development of the Tri-County Parkway. And not only an incredible economic impact, it would also be a huge relief to commuters,” said Miller.
Coming up
But according to Colgan, it will be an uphill battle to get the legislature to pass any new funding for transportation packages in 2009.
“I don’t think you’re going to see any change this coming year because there’s an election coming up,” said the Senate’s most senior member. “And if they wouldn’t vote for it last (session), with the election two years away, I don’t think the Republicans are going to vote for it this (session).”
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