The three biggest challenges facing our Commonwealth right now are the challenges of job creation, transportation and health care reform. Jeff McWaters understands that we can’t solve any of these challenges if we don’t solve all of them. And there are no easy solutions.
As a business leader in Hampton Roads whose expansion plans were curtailed due to a poor transportation infrastructure, Jeff understands first-hand that a bad transportation system will cripple efforts at job growth.
For the past several years, Virginia’s vehicle traffic has dramatically increased while transportation funding has dramatically decreased (Virginia’s Dept. of Transportation six-year works plan for 2005-2010 has been reduced by $1.1 billion). The resulting congestion has been estimated to cost Virginians more than $4 billion a year in increased fuel costs, lost time, greater incidence of accidents and higher repair bills.
With the recent shutdown of the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel (HRBT) during a major holiday weekend, the public safety aspects of this crisis were underscored. If a relatively uneventful thunder storm could knock out one pump and shut down the tunnel, what might happen in a hurricane? Jeff likens the evacuation of the Hampton Roads area to designing a major indoor stadium and filling it to capacity but only having two revolving doors for people to exit. (And once in a while, one of the doors gets stuck.) What would happen when a fire breaks out? That picture is an apt analogy for the transportation problems confronting Hampton Roads.
Jeff understands that a solution will require creative new thinking, the rejection of political blame games and a willingness to make tough choices. Nice-sounding platitudes will not get the job done. Jeff has developed a six-part plan to address our transportation failures with a special emphasis on the needs of Hampton Roads.
1. We must prioritize. The first step is for Hampton Roads leaders to clarify regional priorities. The wish list of regional projects should be narrowed down to the top two or three projects that need to be funded immediately. This must be a consensus decision among the various localities reflecting the will of the people. The HRBT, for example, is already well over capacity (designed for 60,000 cars per day and is now handling 100,000 cars per day) but there are six proposed alternatives for increasing capacity. Everybody has a pet local project but the area needs consensus and focus. Jeff’s career has been devoted to bringing diverse groups together to build consensus based on efficiency and effectiveness.
2. Demand regional fairness. For various reasons, Hampton Roads has not obtained its fair share of transportation funding. One example is interstate highway funding. Though Hampton Roads has 21% of the Commonwealth’s population, it only obtains 11% of the interstate highway funding. There are many reasons given for these types of disparities but it is clear that Hampton Roads needs legislators who are keenly aware of this challenge and willing to fight for this area’s fair share.
3. Audit VDOT. Even before the July 2, 2009 flooding in the HRBT that shut down traffic due to VDOT’s apparent failure to repair aging pumps, Jeff was suggesting that VDOT should be audited to improve its operational and functional efficiencies. The goal is not to place blame but to examine procedures and policies for the purpose of increasing effectiveness and saving money.
4. Find a bipartisan solution. Democrats and Republicans both get stuck on the same roads. Virginians have heard enough in the last few years about who is to blame for our Commonwealth’s transportation woes. Jeff’s commitment is to work toward a bipartisan solution that takes the issue out of the realm of politics and into the realm of the doable.
5. Control health care costs. This may seem out of place in a list of transportation initiatives but that is precisely the point—less and less money is available each year for transportation initiatives because health care entitlements consume more and more of the budget. As strange as it may seem, the best way for constituents to fix the transportation problem is to send somebody to Richmond who knows how to reform health care and control costs. The Commonwealth is like a very sick family spending more and more money each month on doctor visits and prescriptions, then wondering why there is no money left for gas. Jeff’s health care plan will help bring those escalating costs under control so that transportation initiatives have a fighting chance.
6. Protect the Transportation Trust Fund and dedicate increases in port revenues to our transportation needs. It is unconscionable to raid the Commonwealth’s Transportation Trust Fund to pay for other government programs at a time when the transportation infrastructure is so woefully inadequate. As a State Senator, Jeff would support efforts to constitutionally prevent any use of the Transportation Trust Fund for other purposes and would vote against any bill that attempts to spend those funds on anything other than transportation needs. In addition, increases in port revenues should be dedicated to fix our transportation needs. But these measures alone will not be enough. An unfunded transportation plan is no plan at all. But resolving to fix our transportation infrastructure does not mean we have to do by raising taxes. Instead, Jeff supports the type of creative funding proposed by former Attorney General Bob McDonnell in his transportation plan—public/private partnerships, transportation bonds and revenue from offshore drilling.