Regionalism is broken

Regionalism

 Attempts to fix it have failed.

Movement to create a coalition among the seven major municipalities is an abysmal failure.

City leaders and politicians can fix it. They can decide to form one coalition with a set of substantial policies for the region.

But they don’t really want to. They don’t have the fortitude.

They are more concerned about their patch of earth than about anything else.

Why should the mayor and the city council of one city set policies that would coalesce with the policies of another locality?

Hampton and Newport News have more in common with Williamsburg and York County than with Norfolk and Virginia Beach.

Norfolk keeps saying it’s the center of the universe. And Virginia Beach has the ocean and the beach.
Chesapeake, on the other hand, is the new suburbia, and Suffolk is not far behind.

In five years, if not already, they will face the same issues as Virginia Beach is facing.

What is common to all the municipalities in the region is the waterfront, and how we get from one city to the next should be the region’s primary concern.

Transportation is the glue that binds the region together.

But events over the past year prove that regionalism is just a brand name, a marketing tool to entice tourists and ad dollars or the creation of regional bodies to somehow give them the imprimatur to apply for federal grants.

Never mind that traffic is getting worse.

Never mind that mass transit and light rail are feel good fetishes.

The sticker “I Love light rail” on a car traveling 65-miles per hour on I-264 is one of the worst examples. Yes, people love light rail. But they love their cars even more so.

Never mind that city leaders and politicians are more obsessed with trends and show case projects than with actually doing something substantial.

Yesterday, a Portsmouth judge ruled that future tolls on the Mid-Town Tunnel, the Martin Luther King Freeway and the Downtown Tunnel were unconstitutional.

Portsmouth Mayor Kenny Wright opposes the tolls and so does a coalition of tax payers who live in Portsmouth, Chesapeake and Suffolk who work in Norfolk.

Norfolk Mayor Paul Fraim supports the tolls, saying this is the only way we can get a second Mid-Town Tunnel.

This is regionalism at its best.

Of course, I have to wonder if the Virginia Dept. of Transportation, a state agency, is a partner of the people or of Macquarie and Skanska, the power players behind Elizabeth River Crossings, the company building the second Mid-Town Tunnel and the toll taker.

We have been played, people. And we have been betrayed.

Then we have Philip Shucet and friends pitching Virginia Beach on a quicker, cheaper way to extend light rail from Newtown Road to Rosemont Road.

Quicker, yes.

Cheaper? Initially, maybe.

But Shucet and partners won’t do the deal unless they get a maintenance contract for 27 years.

How much will that cost?

And in this corner, Hampton Roads Transit says fares for light rail have to be raised to cover some of the costs.

This announcement comes less than a year after Norfolk’s showcase project started operation.

If Shucet and friends say they can design and build a light rail extension cheaper and quicker into Virginia Beach, we should negotiate.

The mayors and politicians of Norfolk and Virginia Beach should form a coalition and tell Shucet and friends that you can design, build and maintain an extension from Newtown Road to Rosemont Road, but only after you design, build and maintain an extension from Newtown Road to Norfolk Naval base.

That’s regionalism.

But our transportation policy is broken and no one wants to fix it.

Instead we get a temporary bandage – paying a higher sales tax in return for the elimination of the gas tax.

Everyone knows that if you get rid of the gas tax, people will drive more often and they will drive further.

Here’s our chance to leverage our region. Yet we have others telling us what we should do.

And we acquiesce, thinking this is the best we can do.

We have been played again.