RICHMOND, Va. — A Virginia lawmaker has grown frustrated with the number of bills aimed at changing road construction spending and banning tolls in the northern part of the state.
“I think the thing we need to be directing is who in the hell is on first,” Del. Scott Garrett, R-Lynchburg, said at a House subcommittee meeting on Thursday.
Garrett wants to know who’s responsible for moving northern Virginia’s transportation projects forward. He says the region can resolve its own problems, instead of bringing them to statewide votes in the General Assembly.
“Every year for the last seven years, I’ve come up here and I hear that there’s no unification in northern Virginia,” Garrett said. “You got NVTAs and NVTCs, and different chambers and different localities, and can’t nobody get along. Somehow, you guys are going to have to figure this out.”
Falls Church City Councilman Dave Snyder, who recently led the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission, said after the meeting, “The real ‘who’s on first’ is interference from Richmond, which crops up at virtually every legislative session driven by either particular regional interests or particular special interests. …
“So, in our view,” he continued, “the real problem isn’t a regional problem; the real problem is constant interference by the legislature to, for example, favor roads over transit when we all know, in our region, you need both roads and transit.”
This year, many of the bills related to transportation in northern Virginia are tied to the tolling plans for Interstate 66 or the spending of the money raised from the tolls.
“The real solution for I-66 is everything but single-occupancy vehicles, and yet advocates for that solution take their programs to Richmond and they’re imposed on the region,” Snyder said.
“So the question of ‘who’s on first’ ought to be directed more to Richmond and the legislature, rather than our regional bodies who are actually working together to best serve the region.”
In response, Garrett said Northern Virginia lawmakers, the McAuliffe administration, the Commonwealth Transportation Board and others need to do more to move the ball forward.
“Y’all gotta figure this stuff out, because if you’re going to rely on people that don’t directly get impacted by this, we’re not going to get it right,” Garrett said.
