Letter: Transit in Northern Virginia remains invisible, Fairfax Times, July 29, 2011

When I think of transportation, I think of moving people. Whether by car, train, bus, bike or other means, the bottom line in Northern Virginia is that we need choices if we are going to create capacity and save our roads. Unfortunately, the state is too interested in only building roads — even in controversial, more rural areas — and continues its well-known aversion to transit as a transportation solution.

Exhibit A: The Commonwealth Transportation Board has just approved allocating $197.4 million to a western bypass of U.S. Route 29 through Albemarle County, fully funding the project’s estimated costs. This is a project that has been controversial for more than 20 years and is nowhere near shovel-ready.

Here’s where the Route 29 bypass smacks Northern Virginia in the face. The much-discussed agreement that U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood crafted to break the impasse on the rail to Dulles project — the region’s priority transit project — included not a cent from the state but asks Fairfax County to shoulder a substantial amount of the costs. We spent $197.4 million in Albemarle County on a controversial road project, but the state can’t stomach spending $1 for Phase II of Dulles rail?

Exhibit B: Why is the state picking up the tab for 29 percent of the Interstate 495 Hot Lanes project to buy down toll rates, and ignoring the biggest transit project on the East Coast? It should use its money to buy down Dulles Toll Road rates or build the state Route 28 Metro station — the one it’s trying to hang around the neck of Fairfax County taxpayers. Rail to Dulles is critical to the continued economic growth of Northern Virginia — that would be the invisible Northern Virginia that continues to save the commonwealth’s economic bacon.

Northern Virginia, and Fairfax County as a whole, are being asked to assume an unfair share of costs because Virginia continues to make poor choices in how it allocates its transportation dollars. These are dollars that we need to spend in other priority areas of the county to deal with Base Realignment and Closure and other necessary transportation projects as the state’s neglect continues. Rail to Dulles will benefit the region and therefore the entire state. Continuing to ignore that is poor economic policy, poor public policy and just plain dumb.

If the state cares about transit, it’s time for the governor to pull up a chair and show us the money.

Jeff McKay represents the Lee District on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors.

This letter also appears in the Connection newspapers.