Issue Position: Transportation

Issue Position

COMMITMENT

No solution can be off the table in tackling this major problem; including enhanced transit, increased road capacity, Department of Transportation accountability and management, coordinated land use, private/public financing, user fees that track inflation, increased state and federal funding to Northern Virginia, intersection improvements, telecommuting, etc.

We desperatly need adequate, sustained funding to expand and upgrade transit, improve traffic flow, and construct critical highway projects. "Easy fixes" have left us with deplorable maintenance and un-precedented debt that it will take a generation to pay back.

Virginia has a one billion dollar annual shortfall projected well into the future. The borrowing package passed by the 2011 General Assembly to increase transportation spending for the next 3 years was no answer. It has put us in quicksand at the bottom of the well by tying up over 80% of Virginia's transportation debt capacity for the next 25 years. (Read more)

I oppose shifting money from the General Fund programs to transportation. The General Fund comes from only Virginia taxpayers...over 43% from Northern Virginians because of the income tax. We only pay about 30% of the transportation fund.

There is no alternative without new revenue. I believe the over 20% of drivers who aren't Virginia residents should be contributing through the gas tax, which hasn't been raised in 25 years and is well below all of our neighboring states. In addition, I will continue to work with bi-partisan efforts to establish dedicated transportation revenue raised in Northern Virginia and kept in Northern Virginia.

In this interview, I speak to 2012 General Assembly action -- or lack thereof! For more detail, the links below take you to charts, commentaries, and testimony I've prepared* over the years. Unfortunately, they are as relevant today as when I first developed them. I've put them in order of relevance to your understanding the problem rather than by date. (*Unless otherwise credited)

Source