Creative Investment in transportation could ease I-95 congestion
Traffic on Interstate 95 — the subject of an Aug. 23 editorial — is all-too-familiar to me as a U.S. senator, a former governor, and as an I–95 commuter who lives in Richmond and works in D.C.
Northern Virginia’s rapid growth is good because it means the corridor has jobs and economic development, but it also means populations are growing faster than infrastructure can handle them.
Last month, a U.S. Department of Transportation report found that traffic costs the U.S. economy $160 billion and the average driver in the D.C. metropolitan area 82 hours (more than two work weeks) each year, nearly twice the national average.
I see three broad solutions.
First, quite simply, we must invest in transportation. It is penny-wise and pound-foolish to starve transportation funding, pat ourselves on the back for being frugal, and then complain about traffic.
We will need to think creatively about how to make these investments because current funding sources are diminishing in productivity as vehicles get more fuel-efficient each year. Whichever method we choose, that investment will generate returns for the economy and commuters by saving gasoline not burned, work productivity not lost, and family time not missed.
When it comes to transportation, there is no free lunch. Projects cost money, and whether it comes via taxes, tolls or precious hours lost to traffic, we pay for it one way or another.
Second, we need to be smart about how we spend limited transportation dollars, since there will always be more needs than there are funds.
Though not a cure-all, public–private partnerships (P3s) can help ambitious projects get built when public funds are short and can transfer risk from the taxpayer to the private partner. I have been a strong supporter of the federal TIGER grant program that drives states to compete for funding of their top-tier projects, which in Virginia have included the public part of the I–95 Express Lanes P3 and Richmond’s first bus-rapid transit corridor.
At the state level, the General Assembly last year enacted a framework to score transportation projects according to congestion mitigation and other measurable factors, a welcome step toward removing politics from transportation decision-making.
Third, a great way to absorb traffic is to promote transit. Think of how crowded I–95 would be if every person riding Amtrak, VRE or PRTC commuter buses were instead commuting in his or her own car.
Strategic upgrades like the new Spotsylvania VRE station opening this fall are a great start, and while it won’t happen overnight, we need to make steady progress on the D.C.–Richmond stretch of the Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor. We also need to make our current transit infrastructure safer and more reliable.
As a Virginian who lives on the I–95 corridor, I have a personal stake in making this region home to a strong economy and a high quality of life. By investing in this common good, we can all find a better use for two weeks a year than sitting in traffic.