Regional leaders hope mass transit will ease gridlock
Fuel costs and traffic congestion may mean more funds for HRT.
By Kimball Payne
Daily Press ©
July 17, 2008
CHESAPEAKE - Faced with record gasoline prices, a sagging economy and an inactive General Assembly, regional leaders are turning their eyes to Hampton Roads' woeful mass transit system as a way to relieve gridlock.
Local planners are attempting to come up with an overall view of the region's transit options with an outlook decades down the road. The Metropolitan Planning Organization, which sets the region's interstate construction agenda, met Wednesday for the first time since the General Assembly's special session came up empty on transportation. The talk of public transportation had a new sense of urgency at the meeting.
Newport News Mayor Joe Frank lamented that even as economic struggles force more drivers to consider riding the bus, which could also help relieve congestion, local cities and counties don't offer a truly functional transit network.
"We're trying to get people out of their cars and off the roads," Frank said, but "we don't have an adequate public transit system to accommodate those people."
Frank said he was not criticizing Hampton Roads Transit, but was trying to offer an accurate description of the local transportation landscape and the piecemeal way local governments fund bus routes.
HRT President and CEO Michael Townes said he was not offended by Frank's frustration. Townes said it's difficult to craft a strategy when each year local councils and boards look at their budgets and the current transit routes and then decide how much to pay.
"You're singing my song," Townes said. "I would like to add my 'Amen' to that."
For years local leaders with the Metropolitan Planning Organization have lobbied state lawmakers to invest in major interstate projects to break up gridlock in chronically clogged Hampton Roads. The projects include widening Interstate 64 on the north end of the Peninsula, expanding the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel and building a third crossing complete with a mass transit tube.
But leaders representing communities from Williamsburg to Virginia Beach have been unable to rally legislative support for the projects, which now carry a price tag that is upward of $11 billion.
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine called a special session on transportation in the hopes of raising regional taxes to fund improvements in Hampton Roads and the traffic nightmare of Northern Virginia. Lawmakers, however, couldn't find common ground on what taxes, if any, to raise — especially as drivers are paying record prices to fill up their cars.
The stalled legislature remains unlikely to pull out of neutral next year as Kaine enters his final legislative session and all 100 members of the Republican-controlled House of Delegates eye re-election campaigns.
So local leaders are spotlighting transit as a way to start making progress.
"We're not, obviously, going to build roads in Virginia any time soon," Frank said. "It is what it is, because it is what we fund."
The new executive director of the Hampton Roads Regional Planning District Commission, Dwight Farmer, said local officials can no longer cross their fingers and look to Richmond. "We need to move on with a plan B," he said.
Townes said Hampton Roads does not compare well when it's stacked against transit networks in similar sized communities.
"By all measures, we don't adequately fund transit," he said. "You get what you pay for."
Frank agreed.
"It's funded in a way that doesn't make sense," Frank said, adding that he would broach the idea of altering the funding setup next week during a meeting of mayors and chairs.
Farmer said the long-range study is a completely separate issue that is expected to be completed early next year. He said it would represent the first major high-level look at local transit options in his three decades with the planning commission.