Traffic

VA-11 candidates on traffic, transit, and density

by David Alpert   •   June 9, 2008 10:20 am

Tomorrow, Democrats in most of Fairfax and northern Prince William County will vote for a nominee to run for the Congressional seat in Virgina's 11th district, currently held by Tom Davis. Since Northern Virginia has been trending Democratic and the Republicans lack a top-tier candidate, there's a good chance the Democratic nominee will win in the general.

The frontrunners for the Democratic nomination are Leslie Byrne, who held the seat for one term before being unseated by Davis, and Fairfax Council chair Gerry Connolly. Byrne is generally considered the more progressive candidate, while Connolly is called more pro-business. But where do the candidates stand on transportation? From my research, it appears Connolly is better on transit-oriented density, opposing highways that create sprawl, and transit and bicycle expansion.

They're both for the Silver Line, which isn't surprising since it means major federal dollars coming to the region. Byrne served on the Transportation Committee when in Congress and pushed for the creation of VRE. But I'm not sure what she means by this: "Recent versions of the Dulles Rail plan involved too much commercial expansion, making them seem more like a zoning project than a transit project. If we do not tie transportation to good land-use planning, we will do more harm than good." Is "good land-use planning" code for supporting the anti-development neighbors in Tysons?

Connolly is more clearly in favor of density around Metro Stations. Here's an article about it from the left-leaning (and pro-Byrne) blog Not Larry Sabato, which doesn't support Tysons density and attacks the rail plan, though many of the commenters disagree.

Connolly also discusses further Metro expansion on his environment page, supporting Metro extensions of the Orange and Yellow lines to Gainesville, Ft. Belvoir, and Potomac Mills, and building the Purple Line. (We'll put aside for now the question of whether LRT or Metro is better for Ft. Belvoir and other extensions). Byrne makes no mention of transit other than the Silver Line on her site.

On last month's gas tax debate, according to the Springfield Connection, Byrne focused on the fairly unrealistic "windfall profits tax" idea also pushed by Hillary Clinton, while Connolly is hanging his hopes for the future on our brilliant scientists building a 100-mpg car. Perhaps not surprisingly, neither talks directly about the importance of Fairfax and Prince William growing less auto-dependent, despite plummeting real estate prices in the area for that very reason.

Connolly does show a very good understanding of the relationship between transportation and sprawl in his environmental plan with these points:

• De-couple federal highway funding from increasing vehicle miles traveled (VMT), eliminating the incentive to build roads that immediately become congested by traffic from sprawl that they induce
  
• Enhance share of federal funding for mass transit relative to roads
  
• Eliminate funding for highway projects that are not projected to reduce congestion due to induced sprawl

Connolly also supports expanding the bicycle route network and adding funding for bike trails.

Byrne, on the other hand, doesn't move beyond classic environmental issues in her environmental plan or anywhere else on her site. She's for cleaner cars, but without mention of fewer highways; for protecting national parkland, but not for greater housing density that would reduce development pressure on greenfields.

Based on this research, it appears that Connolly would be the better candidate on Smart Growth and transportation issues. Anyone have other information to support or refute this?