An Open Letter to People Who Bike & Walk in DC Regarding the Atlantic Gateway Project

To those who walk and bike in Washington, DC: 

I attended a press conference today in which Virginia's Governor, Terry McAuliffe, promised to end congestion (his words) by widening I-95 near Fredericksburg and inside the Beltway with HOT lanes. From the amount of time he spent on this aspect, this was clearly the primary component of the Atlantic Gateway project. You might not immediately realize the implications of that statement. 

Virginia Governor McAuliffe addresses a small crowd in Alexandria, vows road widenings will "end congestion."

Most of you reading this are already one up on the governor's staff, as you are familiar with induced demand: more road capacity yields more traffic, which yields more congestion. As Houston's Katy Freeway shows, more HOT lane mileage will also yield more car traffic. Those additional cars have a destination: DC's streets. More drivers, many of them distracted, mean more risk to people who walk and bike in DC.

The only way to protect DC's livability from the traffic induced by the Atlantic Gateway project is to embark on an emergency program of road diet implementation throughout the downtown area. If you take away capacity at the destination, you will mitigate the threat posed by Virginia's attempt to shove more cars your way.

Any street with more than one car lane in a particular direction is a candidate. So, for a two-way street, look at those with four lanes cars are allowed to use and reduce them to two. For one-way streets, look at those with two lanes and reduce them to one. Substitute whatever works best in that area: bus lanes, bike lanes, wider sidewalks, or loading zones. Just reduce the throughput for cars.

You will also need to eliminate as much of your public parking as possible. If suburban Virginia commuters cannot park in DC, there's no point in hopping in a longer HOT lane. They simply will have nowhere to go.

As someone who lives in Virginia, I apologize for the shortsightedness of our politicians and planners. I hope the DC political and planning establishment will act quickly, preferably before this new tsunami of traffic breaks upon DC's streets.

Be sure to check out my latest article, Making a Street Safe for All, at the Virginia Bicycle Federation: http://wp.me/pafPZ-2w6

A Note to VDOT that One Alleged Transportation Advocacy Group Won't Like

Thanks to David Alpert at Greater Greater Washington, I was recently made aware of an effort by the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance (NVTA), an organization hopelessly mired in old-school transportation thinking,  to mount an email (or letter-writing, as they're VERY old-school) campaign to push the state of Virginia to cut spending on transit and nonmotorized modes, such as bikes and pedestrians. NVTA wants this money re-tasked to highway widenings.

So, I set out to write Virginia's Department of Transportation a note of my own. But as I did so, I realized that what I was writing was applicable throughout much of the U.S. Too much, really.

Most regions have organizations stuffed with wealthy, generally older, business owners and CEOs frustrated by congestion created largely via previous plans that they, themselves, advocated. Rather than read up on the field of transportation, or even notice what's going on around them, they advocate the same failed solutions they tried before.

So please read the note below and, if you like, cut and paste to suit your own needs. The only way "Dumbgrowth" organizations like NVTA will be thwarted is if those who favor "Smartgrowth" speak up. If you'd like to submit a comment to VDOT, click here.

Here's my note:

"I understand that the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance is asking its allies to push VDOT for more emphasis on reducing road congestion via widenings. As a realtor and a northern Virginia resident, I strongly DISAGREE with this approach.

One need only look at the congestion on newly-widened roads in northern Virginia to realize that our state's reliance on road widenings has utterly failed. I see the result firsthand in the staggering residential price premiums near transit stations. Nobody pays a premium to live within easy reach of a highway these days.

While that's good for me, as a realtor focused on areas close to DC- and therefore close to transit- it's bad for Virginia. Those areas without good, rail-based transit and high levels of walking and biking infrastructure are doomed. Their prices have already stagnated as Millennials stay away; soon they will drop as their neighborhoods age.

The ONLY way to stop this is via a full embrace of transit and Complete Streets by VDOT. Anything else will merely add to Virginia's legacy of transportation failure."

Wider roads worked great in Atlanta! Here's downtown at 4 PM on a Monday.
They might as well get out and start walking.

How to Pay for Roads: Part 2

I recently summarized the various ideas on funding transportation being batted about by legislatures and Congress. Some of these were unremarkable, such as raising the gas tax. Some made so much sense that it was hard to understand why they haven’t already been embraced, as with indexing the gas tax to inflation. Some could be viewed as intrusive, as in the case of assessing taxes based on how many miles you drive. However, one option appears to have been overlooked: taxing all vehicles according to their weight.

Many trucking companies pay registration fees that can vary by weight, but these tend to be rather nominal amounts. Missouri’s annual fees for single unit trucks range from $15.75 to $100.75.  Alabama’s fees vary from $23 to $845. Virginia charges a flat fee of $13, then adds a range of $2.50 to $12 per 1000 lbs. Basically, no two states are alike.

For personal cars, Alabama, Missouri, and Virginia assess registration not just at different rates, but also with different standards. Missouri uses horsepower, apparently in an effort to punish Corvette owners. Alabama charges a flat rate of $24.25. Virginia uses vehicle weight for a range from $26.50 to $31.50. Virginia’s paltry amount probably just covers repaving the Governor’s driveway.

However, Missouri and Virginia go further by charging a personal property tax assessed according to the market value of the vehicle. Missouri uses 1/3 of the market value with the actual amount varying according to locality. Virginia uses the National Automotive Dealers Association Official Used Car Guide to establish the market value, then divides that number by 100, multiplies that by the tax rate ($4.57 in Fairfax County, a prosperous suburb of Washington, DC), then reduces the amount via a personal property tax relief measure enacted by a Republican governor in 1998. Clearly, simplicity in the tax code is not a high priority in Virginia.

Rather than these complicated maneuvers, what if we just used the weight of each and every vehicle to determine the tax to be paid? In fact, what if we dispensed with fuel taxes altogether and relied on weight alone? Let’s look at the positives first:

1.       Heavier vehicles, which inflict the most punishment on road surfaces, would be liable for the most tax. Essentially, it makes this into a use tax. Use up the road; pay to replace it.

2.       Lighter vehicles are more fuel efficient. It’s hard for a heavy Range Rover to get more than 20 miles per gallon, unless it’s rolling downhill with a hurricane pushing it along. A small Toyota Yaris can get twice that mileage, unless you drive angry. So, by taxing according to weight, we encourage the use of light vehicles that happen to be fuel efficient. 

3.       Encouraging more fuel efficiency decreases the necessity to either import oil or extract it from shale formations (via the infamous “fracking” process). The former reduces the strategic importance of the Middle East, where much of our defense budget disappears. The latter could protect shale-rich Appalachia from, believe it or not, earthquakes (the National Research Council found that pumping water into the ground can cause minor seismic events---fun!). 

4.       Growth in the economy and population will automatically yield growth in revenue. Both increase traffic, so more vehicles will be hitting the road. That means more revenue, though it could be slightly offset by declining vehicle weights as car buyers opt for lighter vehicles. A side benefit could be that revenues will increase fastest in those states experiencing rapid growth. These states typically find that they can’t keep up with rising transportation demand, as in the case of Virginia, Georgia, and several other Sunbelt states. But, with basing taxes on weight, that very demand growth generates an ever-growing revenue stream.

5.       It’s fairer this way. Does it really make sense to tax the driver of a Lexus CT hybrid (curb weight 3146 lbs) more than the driver of a Toyota Tacoma pickup (curb weight 3250 lbs)? The hybrid weighs less, so the road damage will be less. Plus, the hybrid uses less gas, thus making it more environmentally and geopolitically friendly. However, Missouri and Virginia will hit the hybrid owner with a higher tax bill because the car’s value is $10,000 higher than the pickup’s. 

Alas, every list of positives must be followed by a list of negatives:

1.       The trucking industry will cry foul. Trucks weigh more than cars, so guess who the greatest burden will fall upon? However, their business is also highly dependent on the good health of the crumbling interstate highway system. 

2.       Owners of large SUVs and pickups will be rather unhappy. They already are pretty unhappy with the fuel bills.  It’s always a bit of a shock to pull up at a gas pump and see that the previous customer racked up over $100. Tell that same person their tax may go up, and they vent their anger at the polls. Eliminating the fuel tax in return might take some of the sting out, though.

3.       Many states don’t charge a personal property tax. Any politician who attempted to introduce one without an offset like fuel tax elimination will feel considerable voter anger. This happened in Virginia, which is why officials introduced the partial rollback I mentioned earlier.

4.       The federal government and state governments would have to work together to apply this approach across all states. Otherwise, chaos will reign as individual states opt for extremely high tax rates on vehicle weights while others opt out entirely. 

So, is taxing by weight and removing all other fees the way forward? Or, is it a political dead-end like all of the other revenue proposals currently circulating? It’s something to think about the next time you drive across a long, rusty highway bridge.