Monday, October 19, 2009
Better Transportation: We Want It…But We Don’t Want to Pay for It
Words Hannah Serrano
Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
hamptonroadslife.com
The issue of a regional light rail has been debated for so many years in Hampton Roads that most of us are tired of it already.
Minds seem to have changed and new officials have been elected in the many years since residents expressed a uniformly negative attitude towards it. And a few brave people have led a battle to build light rail in Norfolk despite it all–Hampton Roads Transit President Michael Townes and Norfolk Councilman Randy Wright being perhaps the most visible.
And even though light rail, at least in Norfolk, is inevitable, somehow transportation is not a key issue for people living here. The economy is in the shitter, our guys are still fighting wars that we’ve long since deemed unnecessary, people with PhD’s are vying for entry-level jobs and the planet is having a literal meltdown. I can see why people don’t care.
Light rail vehicle construction. ridethetide.com
The thing is though, for as long as I’ve lived in Hampton Roads (about 20 of my 27 years), the one thing that people always complain about the most, no matter what their political point of view might be, is traffic. Everyone hates traffic. And here, everyone sits in traffic. Constantly.
This evening the Hampton Roads Public Transportation Alliance (HRPTA) reinvigorated its mission. It was founded 16 years ago to educate the public, express support to elected officials and secure a dedicated source of funding for mass transportation in the region. It did so with an election of vibrant new officers and with a visit from American Public Transportation Alliance president, Bill Millar.
“It’s morning in the First Region again,” exclaimed newly elected HRPTA president, the Honorable John Welch. “I’ve been described as a man wearing rose-colored glasses. Well, I have them on again.”
His call to action stirred a crowd that consisted mainly of the organizations Board of Directors, which I should tell you I happen to be on. (As you already probably knew, my opinion isn’t so partial.) The audience also included a plethora of locally elected officials; State Senator Yvonne Miller, Portsmouth Mayor James Holley, Virginia Beach City Manager Jim Spore, and Councilmen Randy Wright, Steve Heretick and Charles Brown, among others.
Coincidentally, Welch’s call to action comes one day after the results of a poll by Christopher Newport University were published in The Pilot, showing that “almost 60 percent of those polled said higher taxes aren’t needed and transportation improvements can be made without additional revenue.” Moreover, “almost one of every four likely voters indicated that if the state needs to make more budget cuts, they want to start with transportation spending.”
“The data suggest there’s a lot of education that needs to go with transportation,” said CNU political scientist Quentin Kidd to The Pilot.
The first light rail train to come through downtown Phoenix. Photo by John Gale for azrail.org.
Of course this is HRPTA’s very goal. “It starts with a good plan,” said Millar as to how best we can motivate a skeptical public, “and then explain it, explain it, explain it and explain it some more.”
Millar comes from Falls Church in northern Virginia, where mass transit is a fundamental part of travel. Having come to the meeting, which took place off Newtown Road, from a hotel at the Oceanfront, he joked, “Have you guys considered maybe extending light rail from the beach to here?” Millar talked about recent visits to South Africa and Brazil, investigating the transportation systems of major international cities there, and remarked, “Problems are the same everywhere; people just want to have a better quality of life.”
“These 7.5 miles of starter line are a proof of purchase,” said Millar. “It’ll be the same as in places like Denver and Phoenix [where light rail was built amidst strong opposition]. Once it’s there people will complain about why it isn’t extended to where they want to go.”
We may not be sure now exactly how to get what we want–better roads, less congestion and no new taxes–but at the very least we’ve got to keep talking about it. Tell us what you think. And make your voice heard.
This Friday there will be a town hall meeting at The Ted at ODU from 9:45 to noon to discuss the issue of high speed rail for Hampton Roads. It is free and open to the public.
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"Even though Serranos can be a good deal hotter than the average, their flesh is much thinner so you get a friendly fire rather than a mouthful of afterburn." — Alton Brown
Other posts by Hannah Serrano.
Other posts by Hannah Serrano.
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This area just plain sucks, and I’m outta here first chance I get!
Thanks for your comment. While you’re still here, you might as well stop drinking the Haterade and enjoy it.
“Stop drinking the Haterade”? People still say that? Anyway, it’s rather difficult to enjoy a place that has nothing going for it…and besides, who the hell are you to try and tell me what to do, anyway?
wow you can insult someone for actually trying to make the place that they live more enjoyable. You are just as stupid as your comments seem to be. If you want out of this area then get the fuck out. No one is forcing you to live here. Some people actually enjoy this area and are trying to make it a better place to live and a more cultured place too. Your comments seem to be based on the fact that you don’t do anything with your life or the community that you live in. Community and the stuff that happens in it are based on YOU, you are just a ignorant and pathetic person who thinks that everyone and everything around you are supposed to make your life less boring, when in actuality YOU control how boring everything around you is. GET UP AND GET ACTIVE in your community, maybe then it wont “suck” as bad.
Don’t feed the troll.
You’re missing the point – it’s not that we don’t want to pay for it, it’s that we feel we’re paying enough right now. If the money collected were used more wisely, we wouldn’t NEED to pay more to get what we need. People get rather miffed when they hear we don’t have money for transportation projects, but that big bucks are thrown to developers for yet another office building/hotel/mall/whatever.
It’s a whole lot like when I get pissed about having to buy all the supplies for my kid’s teacher when something like 3/4 of the city budget goes to schools (I don’t recall exact figures, but 3/4 is close, IIRC).
Immy, I definitely hear you. I feel a little bit differently, though, because I don’t mind paying more taxes as long as they go towards–as you said–things that we need. I too do not agree with how money has been used to develop hotels and expensive condos; and the very last thing we need is another mall. There are a lot more things in fact that we’ve misused billions of dollars on that I won’t even begin to list.
But I think you’re missing my point. My point is that people (maybe not you, but 60 percent of them) don’t even understand where the funding for what they want and need is coming from. Transportation, in particular, is a tricky issue because it can be funded locally, statewide or federally. I’m sure we think that our opinions on these things don’t matter; that these decisions are made behind closed doors. But my ultimate feeling is that elected officials don’t know any better than the rest of us, in fact they’re waiting for us to tell them what we want. They just want to keep their seats and they want us to vote for them again.
There’s a reason why light rail wasn’t already planned with an extension to Virginia Beach. It’s because citizens voted against it. Now, with traffic even worse, and with light rail’s potential to completely change the city of Norfolk for the better, those nay-sayers are having a little change of heart. They just don’t seem to know enough about the matter to decide.
My point is we need to go to town hall meetings like this one coming up. We need to vote in our local elections. We need to be having conversations with our leaders and with each other. Otherwise all of the things that you and I are complaining about are just going to continue on and on until we move away or die.
Well said, ma’am, however, our elected knuckleheads won’t get the message, I bet – we could attend every meeting, and the message recieved would likely be “see, they want transportation – now let’s raise taxes and get it done” not “let’s evaluate where our transportation funds are really going and reallocate them to the important projects”. Sad, really.
On the bottom line, I think we agree – people don’t mind some taxes as long as there is return on investment.
Another note: this rail model will work better if we incorporate some of the ideas I posted in one of Jesse’s early posts.
Rail is a long slog – rail within the region, high speed rail out of the region. I lived in NOVA for decades – took Arlington twenty years to make itself a county with subway/rail. It will take us a long time as well. Just get going on it now and keep at it.
The trick is to get the asphalt crowd who run the region at the regional transportation operation – what is it now HRTPO? – to get it with transit and rail.
It is and always has been very difficult to convince folks, who cannot see and possibly will not realize any personal benefit from light rail or other transportation projects, that they should pay more taxes to support them…reality is Norfolk’s tax base is hugely made up of folks who cannot see such benefit, who see light rail in particular as one more fat cat amenity…additionally, very many of Norfolk’s taxpayers avoid downtown Norfolk (one square mile of the city as someone said) like the swine flu vaccine…they feel that so much of the city’s tax resources have already been invested in downtown without even a commensurate return and to the detriment of the rest of the city…Norfolk also has a large population on fixed incomes, a population that will only increase…these folks live according to the “you can’t get blood from a turnip” philosophy…Clearly, much of the attitudes regarding resources badly and unevenly spent is due to really poor communication skills on the part of politicians…but some part of that is intentional as some politicians wish the rest of Norfolk did not exist…drive down the main roads in town…Tidewater Dr., Little Creek Rd., Military Hywy, Campostella Rd., and Virginia Beach Blvd…where very little of the blight has changed in in more than 30 years…Little Creek Rd. for example, vies easily for one of the most unsightly stretches of blight in the country…in the very modest neighborhoods just off of these arteries is where 90 percent of the folks live, pay taxes, and vote…just sayin’…