THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 16, 1994 TAG: 9411160016
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
By removing the tolls on the Norfolk-Virginia Beach Expressway, will Gov. George Allen's administration put $11 million a year back in Virginia Beach commuters' pockets?
Yes, indeed - if the Virginia Department of Transportation pot that will fund the expressway instead of tolls doesn't have to be sweetened to cover its costs.
The pot will not get bigger, local Republican legislators say. But the expressway will compete for funds not just within Hampton Roads but with the 28,000 miles of VDOT roads throughout the commonwealth. Last time we looked, even near neighbors are unlikely to alter their road projects to meet Virginia Beach's paramount claim.
Not to worry, Republican legislators say. They are fulfilling government's promise that Route 44, once paid for, would be toll-free.
Republicans are also initiating a promise: Transportation Secretary Rob-ert E. Martinez has pledged ``the same level of service . . . with funding provided from VDOT's maintenance pro-gram.'' Yet ordinary maintenance on 44 in 1992 cost $5,211 more per lane mile than on interstate roadways. Wow: same service, without tolls or tax hike. Does Newt know about this?
And what magic does the governor's magic wand work for proj-ects now scheduled to be completed with toll revenues? Could some disappear? If the city prioritized wrong, can it rearrange them? Drivers inching toward Witchduck, among others, will want to know. And VDOT, disburser of toll revenues, has the ultimate say-so.
Virginia Beach could find itself pushing a Democratic con-gres-sion-al delegation somehow to tap federal funds for Route 44, just as a Republican Congress moves to make good on its promise to cut federal spending, after Congress closed the interstate system, and well before the proposed national highway system can become a reality, if at all.
No question, the tolls made Route 44 a cash cow. No question, they saved the state money. No question, Del. Frank Wagner and other Beach Republicans were right to cry foul over the spilt milk of toll revenues spent inefficiently and largely to benefit interstate more than expressway commuters. VDOT never satisfactorily explained that.
But no question, either, that the governor and his fellow GOP legislators have kept one promise - to lift the tolls - and made another: to provide the cash to adequately maintain and improve Route 44. Remember that promise, a decade down the road, if the expressway gets potholed and the pockets of taxpayers - local/state/federal - get picked. by CNB