# The Tide is Out



## The Davy Crockett (Feb 27, 2013)

According to this article in The Virginian-Pilot, while Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia gained the ability to raise regional taxes for transportation, the Hampton Roads area was specifically barred from using that money on anything other than... yep... roads in the new transportation boondoog... er bill that was recently passed the General Assembly. (Must be 'cause 'Roads' is in the name. :blink: )

From the article:



> Del. Chris Jones, a Suffolk Republican and key negotiator for the legislation, said he pushed for wording that bars Hampton Roads’ leaders from using any of the money they get from the regional taxes on public or mass transit, such as the extension of light rail to Virginia Beach. Jones said he wanted to ensure the region’s highest priority projects, such as the widening of Interstate 64 or a third harbor crossing, were first in line.“I was very firm from the very beginning,” he said. “I was determined that the new dollars for Hampton Roads were going to be for bridges, tunnels and roads.”


This despite the fact that the Hampton Roads area will gain more than an estimated $200,000,000.00 a year from the new legislation.


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## Ryan (Feb 27, 2013)

The Davy Crockett said:


> Del. Chris Jones, a Suffolk Republican


Color me shocked.


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## afigg (Feb 27, 2013)

I'm not surprised that these sort of restrictions were stuck into the over complicated transportation bill. While it was a flawed bill, I think it was better to pass it than not to, because VA needs the transportation funding, even if a lot of it goes to difficult to justify highway projects in more rural parts of the state.

My take on this specific constraint, which I think may also apply to the 0.7% regional sales tax for Northern Virginia, is that it can be fixed later. It is far more difficult to raise taxes than to change the law later guiding how the the funds are to be spent. A Democratic Governor would not have been able to get enough Republicans in the strongly Republican controlled House of Delegates to vote for an overall tax increase. McDonnell as a conservative Republican was able to give enough House and Senate Republicans political cover to vote for the bill, even if the bill ended as a rather messy compromise.

Norfolk and Virginia Beach are in the early stages of the alternative route and environmental review for extending the Tide LRT to VA Beach (and/or towards the Naval Base). It will be, taking a guess, at least 2-3 years before they need to start lining up construction funds from the state. The delegates from Norfolk, VA Beach, if there is enough support, could then as part of a deal on other bills could work to pass a revision to the transportation bill lifting the restriction on spending the new special sales tax revenue.

The other way to get around this (stupid) restriction is that this restriction only applies to the regional sales tax revenue, if I'm interpreting it correctly. Use that money for roads and tunnel projects, but allocate more of the current state transportation funding that would have gone to road projects to transit, including The Tide expansion project. On the other hand, that could be difficult to do under a Governor Cuccinelli who has shown little interest in transit projects.


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## Swadian Hardcore (Feb 28, 2013)

Well, here's another train-hater!


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## Anderson (Mar 3, 2013)

Mark down another fun moment in my future.

Interesting question: Could a mostly street-aligned/highway-aligned run be loosely interpreted as qualifying as a "road" project? [/rules lawyer]

Edit: I've mentioned my frustration with this to some folks. One offset is that IIRC, we got both $300m for the Silver Line and $50m/yr for the Mass Transit Fund.


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## Anderson (Mar 4, 2013)

Ok, just got off the phone with my delegate. The long story short is that the whole mess is freight-related; you've got a bunch of freight ships coming into Norfolk/Portsmouth and they can't get up on the Peninsula and that's what they're unclogging. Why they had to dump that in the bill is beyond me, but that seems to be the story.


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## Nathanael (Mar 5, 2013)

afigg said:


> The other way to get around this (stupid) restriction is that this restriction only applies to the regional sales tax revenue, if I'm interpreting it correctly. Use that money for roads and tunnel projects, but allocate more of the current state transportation funding that would have gone to road projects to transit, including The Tide expansion project.


Money's fungible; I would expect the localities to do something similar. Use the regional sales tax revenue to do projects which were previously funded by unrestricted sources, and move the unrestricted sources over to the public transportation.

Mind you, if the bill is supposed to be about freight, the regional tax could also be used to buy and build freight rail.  A RAIL crossing from Newport News to Norfolk would be worth a lot for freight, while another ROAD crossing would be worthless.


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## George Harris (Mar 5, 2013)

Nathanael said:


> A RAIL crossing from Newport News to Norfolk would be worth a lot for freight, while another ROAD crossing would be worthless.


I really doubt both of these statements. From a traffic congestion perspective, a road crossing would help. As to a rairoad crossing for freight: Nope. Given that the main freight into and out of the Hampton Raods region is going to/from ships, a railroad crossing of the harbor in meainingless. All that is needed is for the ship to dock on the side of the harbor served by the railroad that will serve that particular ship.


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## The Davy Crockett (Mar 5, 2013)

It is worth noting that the biggest political contributers to Delegate Jones, who put this into the transportation bill, were a beer disributer and then a wine distributer. Time is money, and more roads make for quicker deliveries, at least in the short run. Ever see a wholesaler use public transit to make deliveries? The irony is that better public transit would help to get the folks who consume those deliveries from getting behind the wheel after doing so.


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## Anderson (Mar 6, 2013)

A freight line across the water would probably help CSX a bit. The Newport News terminals are almost exclusively coal terminals, not container ones, and CSX's main line into the area is on the Peninsula. They've got a line into Southside, but it goes via NC.

My understanding is that NS and CSX are more or less happy with how things are right now. The problem is that:
(1) There's a lot of pressure here to get better access to the Norfolk terminals for Peninusla-based businesses; and
(2) Then the trucking folks seem to want to send stuff out of Norfolk via I-64.

As to "using public transportation for freight deliveries", in a sense that's how on-line industries work. The thing is, I'm not sure how well CSX and NS are at promising "Your car will be delivered to X spot by Y time" with any precision. If they could manage that, you could drop off freight cars in various places and have cargo offloaded onto trucks for the "last mile" of a shipment (really the last 5-20 miles, but who's counting?). Unfortunately, that's really not a "thing" these days because of how intermodal stuff is structured.


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## afigg (Apr 3, 2013)

An interesting development in the prospects for extending The Tide to Virginia Beach in the Virginian-Pilot paper: Va. Beach receives private proposal to extend Tide. Excerpt:



> A private development group wants to extend light rail into the city and says it can have The Tide running past Town Center by the end of 2016 - at least four years earlier than current projections.
> The city received the proposal Tuesday but released few details other than who was behind the offer and the group's assertion that it could have the five-mile extension operational in November 2016.


I'm sure there is a catch or two with the private-public proposal, but if they can build it w/o federal funding, it would speed the project up substantially.


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## afigg (Nov 13, 2013)

Gov. Elect McAuliffe is already speaking out about extending The Tide LRT line in both directions. He won't be Governor for several more months, but it looks like he is getting an early start on supporting transit projects. Railway Age article: Momentum grows to expand The Tide.




> Virginia Gov.-elect Terry McAuliffe is urging Virginia Beach officials to move ahead with extending The Tide light rail transit from neighboring Norfolk to the municipality, as the Virginia Beach City Council begins evaluating three proposals to aid in doing just that.
> "One important issue that I did campaign on: It is time we took light rail all the way from our [Norfolk] naval base all the way to Virginia Beach," McAuliffe told local media.


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## CHamilton (Mar 14, 2014)

Mayor: Governor will help fund Va. Beach light rail


> Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne have committed to help pay to bring light rail to Virginia Beach, Mayor Will Sessoms announced Thursday during his annual State of the City address.
> 
> City officials have been eager to move forward with the transportation system. Hampton Roads Transit has estimated it would cost $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion to extend The Tide from Newtown Road to the Oceanfront, depending on the route.
> 
> ...


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