Well, the GA is done for the year and were unsuccessful in finding any more dollars for road funding. There does appear to be a belief amongst some in the GA that VDOT is wasting so much money that the waste alone would be sufficient to pay for new roads so they want an outside audit to find it. In any agency the size of VDOT there is bound to be waste and I’m all for finding it but I don’t believe there is sufficient waste to build the roads we need. The idea, as a surrogate for concrete action, is an insult.
The other thing that I’m starting to change my mind about is the idea of regional funding plans. The more I think about it, the more this idea bothers me. Why belong to a state if we are not all going to pull together? I understand at some level it bothers people in southside to help NOVA pay for roads but the reverse is also true: I am not terribly worried about a collapse in literacy rates that requires a bunch of state money to fix down in southside. Why should I pay for that? These things go both ways. I naturally see the improvement of transport infrastructure as a priority because I live here. They see their problems as priorities because they live there. Pretty natural.
What isn’t natural is the inability of those in Richmond to bridge this divide and here’s why: it is the job of our representatives in Richmond to see the big picture. Transportation funding is a big picture item. It affects everything from our economic vitality to what future development looks like. In short, it affects our collective wallets and how we will live in the future. As energy becomes more dear, we are fooling ourselves if we don’t believe that the places people work and the way they live aren’t going to change. Virginia has to be at the forefront of understanding and capitalizing on this change if we are to remain a compelling place to live. This is now and will always be a two-stage process with concrete as an immediate priority and mass-transit and better planning as once and future mandates. The state government must lead the way for this to work, they must do it for all Virginians and they need to get started now.