State Of Transportation: Rail Advances, State Funding Debate Slows

In the ongoing debate of where Loudoun and the Northern Virginia region will find the money needed to expand transportation facilities, James Bennett, president and CEO of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, delivered one piece of hope during Wednesday's State of Transportation forum hosted by the Loudoun Chamber of Commerce.

While a successful renegotiation of the construction contract for the first phase of the Dulles Rail project in Fairfax County did lead to a slightly higher price and a couple of months of delay, the project is moving forward, keeping alive hopes that rail transit will be extended to Loudoun some time in the next decade.

"We have received final approval to move into the final design stage," Bennett told business owners and local leaders. "[The cost] will remain in the range of what we have been estimating over the past few years."

Utility work in Tysons Corner has begun, Bennett added, with work soon to begin along Rt. 123 in Fairfax and the "intensity will start to pick up as we move into fall," he said. Full construction on rail to Dulles International Airport is expected to begin in March 2009.

The rest of the picture, however, remains grim, as laid out by J. Douglas Koelemay, Northern Virginia's representative on the Commonwealth Transportation Board. Koelemay said Virginia needs to take some significant steps forward in order to comprehensively deal with its transportation funding problems.

"For a state that is traditional in so many ways ... the future really has arrived very suddenly and very quickly," he said. "We have to adjust. Part of what's missing is a common vision and funding for that vision."

Koelemay did point to the Battlefield Parkway interchange, the groundbreaking for the Gilbert's Corner roundabouts, the Rt. 7 and Loudoun County Parkway interchange and the funding that is in place for Pacific Boulevard as signs that there are things being done, but added that the six-year road plan lost $1 billion in expected funding this year after the Supreme Court of Virginia ruled the core elements of the General Assembly's funding plan unconstitutional.

While Virginia was still listed as the top state for businesses to located by Forbes, he also said that a red flag was identified by the magazine.

"Virginia will suffer from lower growth than it has seen in the past five years," he said.

Some problems, Koelemay said, are more imminent. The Transportation Trust Fund, which was established in 1986 to fund capital improvements to highways, ports, airports and public transportation, is "likely to run out of money by the end of this year."

"That means projects might have to be delayed further because we don't have the federal money in our pocket," he said.

Loudoun, and Virginia as a whole, need to get out in front of the transportation issue, by taking proactive approaches and predicting where improvements might be needed in coming years. When it comes to technology, the state is far behind where it needs to be, Koelemay said.

Del. Joe May (R-33), who is chairman of the House of Delegates Transportation Committee, told the chamber Virginia would do better, but that it might take some time.

"One of the things I like best about serving in Virginia is we never rush into things," May said. "But one of the things I like least about Virginia is we never rush into things."

May said he and the General Assembly were aware of the major transportation problem in Virginia, but "it didn't happen just last week or last year."

One of the biggest issues facing the General Assembly is how to address the specific problems of Northern Virginia, which May called the "economic engine" of the state.

"We need money raised in Northern Virginia to be spent in Northern Virginia," he said. "It is becoming rapidly apparent that we're at the point where if we don't address transportation in Northern Virginia it will start to affect the rest of Virginia."

May said the biggest progress made by the General Assembly during its special session on transportation in July was that four years ago no one could agree there was a problem with transportation.

"This July, everyone agreed we needed to help Northern Virginia, we needed to help Hampton Roads and we needed to address the statewide maintenance issue," he said.

Both May and Koelemay agreed that the entire transportation funding structure needed to be adjusted, but that it would take time to make the transition. With that different structure could go the toll system, which has been touted by some as the solution to transportation funding, and other public-private partnerships.

"The private part means someone has to make money off it or it doesn't happen," May said. He admitted that some of the burden will fall to people. "They either pay it through a toll or they pay it through a gas tax or they pay it through a commercial property tax."

Many in the audience at Wednesday's chamber event agreed that there needs to be a complete restructuring of transportation funding, with some pointing out that it has been Loudoun's local government, not state or the federal leaders, that have brought the county its most recent improvements.

"The only way we've dealt with transportation in Loudoun is when we let the locals do it," Leonard S. "Hobie" Mitchel, a developers and former member of the Commonwealth Transportation Board, said. "They're putting their money where their mouth is."