Why voters reject transportation solutions
By Brian Kirwin | Thursday, December 16th, 2010 | PolicyI’ve been hearing about our “transportation crisis” in Hampton Roads for years now, and it always struck me as funny.
Every year, I run new polls on issues and every year, they say the same thing about transportation year after year.
Polls show it’s a big problem, and polls show it’s more of a problem for Democrats than it is for Republicans. But what’s the problem? And do the solutions do anything about them?
It’s math, folks.
Ask if people want taxes raised for transportation plans proposed for Hampton Roads, and you get numbers strikingly consistent with the 2002 referendum raising sales taxes – No 62%
Over 200,000 voters said No and 125,000 voters voted Yes.
To understand this, you have to understand where congestion is and what percentage of people is impacted by it.
In Hampton Roads, highway congestion is at the tunnels (HRBT, Midtown, Downtown). What percentage of voters get stuck daily at these tunnels? According to VDOT, the HRBT peaks at 100,000 vehicles per day – since daily commuters get counted twice, we’re around 50,000 people using the HRBT on the busiest days. The Downtown Tunnel has similar numbers, and the Midtown is about a third.
That means roughly 130,000 vehicles even use these three tunnels daily. Odd how that’s so close to the number of voters who were willing to raise taxes for tunnel improvements, eh?
Just over 851,000 voters live in Hampton Roads.
Bottom Line: Most citizens don’t frequently get stuck in tunnel congestion, so raising taxes to improve it doesn’t impress these voters.
What does? Ask your neighbors where they see the most traffic. On the Peninsula, you’ll hear Jefferson Avenue, or in Virginia Beach, you’ll hear Dam Neck or Indian River.
The vaunted SIX regional projects aren’t seen as any solution to the traffic congestion a majority of voters encounter daily.
Now that the Southeastern Parkway has been deemed the biggest danger to the environment since the aerosol can, that makes the largest city in Virginia, and 25% of Hampton Roads, with not an inch of asphalt to gain from any highway solution.
So, what do we do?
Ready?
Do you really want to know the secret plan to get popular support for something that only benefits a minority of voters?
I wrote this in 2002, and I’m happy to write it again. The authors of the 2002 Sales Tax Referendum used a similar referendum from Jacksonville, Florida as their model….so they said. But they must not have read it.
Jacksonville realized that new highways just wasn’t enough to get a majority level of support in their referendum.
So they broadened it.
“The project includes transportation projects, a new courthouse, main library, arena, baseball park, sewer lines, environmental clean up, and “smart growth” land preservation purchases.”
It passed with 57%. A sports arena! Libraries, Parks, Open Space purchases.
How do you get the answer you want? Change the question. Broaden the issue beyond roads. Get the voters who never go near a tunnel to support a new sports arena. Get the voters who may not even drive much to support libraries and parks. Get the environmental loudmouths who oppose every new road to shut up with a nice share of Chesapeake Bay funding or something.
Add money for city streets rather than giant tunnels.
Craft your majority.
Either that, or keep waiting for voters to give a different answer to the same question you’ve been asking them for the better part of a decade.
It’s up to you.
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The right wants to jeer him. The left wants to censor him. Moderates usually want both. Brian Kirwin is a political consultant and public relations strategist in Virginia Beach with a lightning-rod flair. Brian also serves on the VB Arts & Humanities Commission and frequently appears on Hampton Roads theatrical stages, if only to prove that all actors aren’t liberals. Kirwin’s columns stir up debate and hit the political scene with no punches pulled.
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Comments
25 Responses to "Why voters reject transportation solutions"
Dumb, but true. You want to pass junk legislation, then you have to buy enough votes — an “earmark” for each of the majority of fools.
Why not just make the people who want the “transportation solution” pay for it? What is wrong with tolls?
With current “solutions,” we build transportation infrastructure for the benefit of politicians. How does this happen? We give politicians our money before we know what we will get for it. Naturally, once they have our money in hand, politicians spend our money with their own best interests first in mind. In other words, our current “solution” is to buy a pig in a poke.
With tolls, we don’t pay until we use the road, bridge, subway, or whatever. The only trick here is to make certain that politicians MUST pay for transportation infrastructure with the tolls they collect.
For example, if politicians borrow money to build a bridge, then the bondholders MUST know going in that their bonds will be paid off solely from tolls collected to cross that bridge. If that is the case, buyers of a bond issues will only buy bond in support of technically and economically feasible bridge.
Tom, that’s a good point, and one I forgot to address. It’s the reason that tolls show up the highest in polls. A majority of voters know they won’t pay them except once in a while.
Of course, there is the Baliles method…promise to not raise taxes in a campaign, and raise them your first year in office.
So Brian, add port to the tunnel issue? How about EZ-pass? It works all along the eastern seaboard and only road users pay. Either we improve the roads and let the user pay for it or say byebye to more navy. If they are using their minds then they should strip more installations from the region because our roads and infrastructure don’t support what we already have.
The Florida delegation is going to have a field day at our expense if we do not get cracking on this.. We have waited long enough and now while the contractors are looking for work and interest rates are low it is prime time to take the EZPass way out.
https://www.ezpassva.com/Default.aspx
James, you’re missing the point. Advocates have been pushing the ports and the military for the entire time. It hasn’t made people want their taxes raised. It just hasn’t.
People don’t believe that the Navy will leave this magnificent strategic location because of tunnel traffic.
And I get no feeling that most people know, or for that matter want to know or care, about what port traffic is or will be.
No one’s won a campaign offering to raise taxes to help the ports yet.
VB has done that at times. In a hard vote, they go find stuff the people sterotypically like and dare you to oppose it because you will end up hurting children (rec centers, schools, & libraries), the teachers, the fire fighters (new fire station) and the make sure you vote against puppies & kittens (new animal shelter). For good measure they go promise the cyclists another bike path…….one day. Add up all that excitement and you might not even notice what they are afraid you might not approve of.
No need to raise taxes, the need is to charge a toll. Long ago this was troublesome.. in this day and age it is simple, if you are a regular user get a transponder and drive 65 past the toll booths. When the bond holdes are repaid, reduce or eliminate the toll. Anything else is inexcusable. Another issue is we need to learn from the swiss and japanese how to maintain tunnel traffice speed up a grade. Denver sent a delegation to learn how it is done then hired the best in the world. http://www.inside-lane.com/2010/02/17/cdot-measures-make-i-70-return-trip-smoother-than-expected/ We need to hire them.
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Voters understand that the current proposals have regional drivers subsidizing shipping industry. Proposals don’t make sense for them, widen 460? Taxes aren’t levied by their elected representatives, but appointed boards.
Lived in FL for years, they implemented toll roads effectively from the start. EZpass was an improvement on an accepted approach. VA past implementation is not supported by taxpayers, so EZpass is a modern implementation of a bad idea.
Instead of regional, comprehensive approach; the way to move forward is specific, toll supported, high demand projects. Positive social experience on use taxes is the only way to gain effective support for transportation spending.
Oh, that’s classic. Of course, back in the late 1980′s, the Chamber had proposed the MAPS initiative, that is Metropolitan Area Projects, to build light rail, a major league stadium, a competitive swimming facilty, highway improvements, etc. but of course the hue and cry from the anti tax crowd was deafening. Yet I am pleased to see your support for such an initiative especially if it engages debate and discussion about our collective ability to create a region that is competitive with other regions in the nation and around the world.
Mike, I’m sure if you were involved, it would have failed.
Get back on your porch and let the next generation succeed where you repeatedly have failed.
Ah, so you claim the mantle of leadership? Allow me a senior moment of surprise. Regretfully, I suspect your post is tactical, that is, to your advantage as a political consultant, rather than an indication of what you think is best for the community.
very senior…
Spot on assessment by Kirwin on why the initiative has failed repeatedly. To a lot of Hampton Roads residents, the “Tunnel” is an issue they will deal with maybe once every month or so, and not daily.
Problem with the toll solution…as a whole solution by itself ..is that the tolls will have to be so high to raise the needed revenues that it will discourage people from using the new roads. Tolls are certainly part of the solution.
Actually Bryan, I totally disagree with this assessment. Fact is, when the republicans took over the House, they engaged in a concerted and highly successful campaign to starve the CTB of the resources to maintain, sustain, and improve our transportation system. Their campaign has been highly successful, sowing such derision of the need for more resources that the public has adopted this view entirely. Of course, now that they are in charge, they cannot easily change this perception, even though the Governor himself has acknowledged the deplorable condition of our infrastructure. His solution, to borrow, is reminescent of Gilmore “solution”, has its own set of problems, but it appears he will succeed in transferring the problem to the next Governor.
@Turbo what I do not like about tolls is the high cost of collection. It costs 30%, surely there are better ways with a cost of collection under 30%.
Should taxes be raised for even this purpose? That is a debatable question right there.
Out Of State Tags On Local Cars………..
I know of cars with out of state tags that have not been “home” for over 7 years. They do not want to register the cars in Virginia because they do not want to pay the personal property taxes.
Safety Inspections. No safety inspections for 7 years.
Should be someway to work it all out.
Mass Rapid Transit. Would a 5 mile or less mass rapid transit system between the Norfolk Base and Hampton and Newport News be useful??
So how about the toll road that was on what was 44? Wasn’t that a success? Didn’t we demand it be taken down because it was paid for already?
Granted, I was pretty young at the time and not really paying much attention to tax or transportation policy.
While Mike Barrett wanted the toll on 44/264 to remain.
James, Safety inspections should go from annually to twice per year after the car is about 5 years old since it is older cars that are more prone to breakdown and create a greater hazard for others.. that is another discussion. Back to the op.
ETC’s aka electronic toll collection systems such as EZ-Pass save drivers time as do highway rest stops, and the economic impact of ETC’s is huge. They are in use all along the east coast because it is the lowest inconvenience and most practical means of paying for roads. It only requires a small device stuck on the upper edge of the windshield using velcro. There is a trial in Japan to replace the inspection sticker altogether on cars equipped with this device i.e., the decal is the device.. think of your va state inspection decal then integrate the antitheft device that bookstores use.
ETC’s are convenient and reward drivers while others stop at a toll booth.. all that etc users need to do is drive by the tolls on the left lanes going 65 and the etc is read automatically without slowing down and the toll is deducted on a credit card or a debit account. Those who run the toll without paying get a behavior award from a state trooper and enhance the revenue stream. If we get EZPass, local drivers will part with their money in ways that their ancestors never even dreamt of.. they will have the feeling that the future has reached Hampton Roads and people who have traveled a lot will feel like we are catching up with the rest of the modern post 90′s USA. Yes we are that far behind on XTransX (engineering speak of point A to point B) issues i.e., if traffic keeps moving the cost of the toll is less than the cost of sitting in traffic or lost time off the interstate. What nobody wants to say but I will is that it may make it easier to raise revenue to repave the road or extend the road because people are not inconvenienced and are less aware of how much they’re paying in tolls.. Paying cash is inconvenient and simply pisses people off. There aint no free lunch and road use is not welfare.. their use is a privilege someone pays for. When the road is paid for then maybe redesignate it a Freeway but until then it is a toll road. As the road is close to being paid off, freeze toll amounts and let inflation erode the real cost of the toll until it becomes an election promise for some unborn future office seeker.
Now find someone running for office who says pony up drivers and especially you ports whose trucks weigh so much. The answer lies in upgrading 460, better tunnel traffic management ala CDOT and a third crossing all paid for by $2-10 car tolls, $20 for heavy vehicles and no special deals for HOV. Also consider toll reduction on weekends so as to not discourage weekend tourism.
Forgot to add these to the prior
This is an in vehicle RFID mfg. They make an electronic vehicle registration aka EVR and electronic vehicle id aka EVI. The RFID reader can communicate with vehicles traveling up to 100 miles per hour and using in vehicle blue tooth it can eliminate the need to visit dmv in many cases.. it can also help track uninsured motorists. This would be applied by state inspectors in tha same fashion as they apply state indpection decals. http://www.sirit.com/
This is not going away.
http://www.morerfid.com/details.php?subdetail=Report&action=details&report_id=2980&display=RFID
Yes Brian, you have a good memory; I did support retention of the tolls so that widening and interchange improvements to handle the increased traffic could be made in a timely manner. Of course, when Leo and Frank got elected, they had different ideas, and they contended that we would be better off with the Interstate designation. Of course, had we proceeded with the users paying tolls for a portion of the cost of improvments, most would have been completed a decade ago. Instead, the system regularly backs up so the motorist exiting at Lynnhaven gets to stop at Rosemont and creep for 15-10 minutes before getting to the light. Thanks republicans for improving the system; with improvements like that, I’d prefer castor oil.
Funny, unless there was an accident, I never had that problem passing Rosemont and getting to Lynnhaven. I do stay left until I pass Rosemont, but 7 in the morning or 7 at night, that particular feat is usually not an issue.
The people don’t like being scammed. It was paid for, so take it off. If politicians had sterling reputations and didn’t earn skepticism, the public may have been accepting of a sunsetted tax extension if the purpose and scope was fully explained and transparent.
Problem with the toll solution…as a whole solution by itself ..is that the tolls will have to be so high to raise the needed revenues that it will discourage people from using the new roads. Tolls are certainly part of the solution.
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