As the transportation crisis on Northern Virginia’s roads grows worse by the hour, six influential Republicans in the House of Delegates are finally coming up with transportation plans before the crisis forces their political careers to hit the brakes.
The Republican delegates, including David Albo, Springfield; Vince Callahan, McLean; and L. Scott Lingamfelter, Woodbridge, unveiled three transportation proposals that would generate at least $400 million a year for Northern Virginia.
Two plans reclaim money Northern Virginia has already sent to Richmond. The third calls for raising special taxes, such as vehicle registration fees, to pay for regional road construction.
“They have been reading the election returns in Northern Virginia and Northern Virginia is producing the vast majority of the Democratic seat gains in the General Assembly. This is a very prudent on their part, very prudent before the 2007 elections,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
Sabato said all three plans have little hope of passing and will need “quite a selling plan” to convince the House’s Republican caucus.
“I think it is a good political move, but it also makes sense from an economical standpoint, a financing standpoint and a commuter standpoint,” Callahan said.
“[The public is] going to demand not just plans, but execution which will need to be done in connection with the Senate, which had been working hard against the House leadership — and some of these very same delegates — to solve the problems,” said David Snyder, Northern Virginia Transportation Authority chair.
The bills that withhold money from Richmond “are the ones we want, but those will be the hardest to pass,” Albo said.
“The problem I’ve got, is the rest of Virginia, they obviously don’t want to send me any money because I’ve asked for 13 years. If they don’t let me keep my money, then I only have one solution, which is to raise it.”
Lingamfelter said his working with the group “shouldn’t be read as an endorsement of the plans.” He maintained his earlier positions that Northern Virginia is “sending a huge amount of money to Richmond already.”
Reform is needed in the funding formulas and within the Virginia Department of Transportation, he said.
“He is trying to have it both ways by lending his ideas and expertise to the development of the proposal and then turning around and saying he is not supportive of it, so he can stay true to his caucus,” said Nancy Reid, director of government affairs and the Greater Washington Board of Trade.
