VA Transit Mess

It seems that the somewhat odd and definitely complicated compromise transit funding plan that Virginia finally adopted after a lot of legislative wrangling has been thrown out by the courts. The black hats here are really the dead-ender conservative faction of the Virginia GOP which seems to believe that the state's growing population just doesn't have any infrastructure needs whatsoever. It was their intransigence that forced more reasonable parties to adopt a byzantine approach.

That said, Virginia transportation policy debates tend to be a depressing thing to watch. Basically, you get a lot of arguments between anti-tax fanatics who think the government should have no revenue whatsoever and then people who want to build more roads. There's very, very little consideration given to smarter anti-congestion measures like congestion pricing, expansion of the state's very rudimentary commuter rail system, etc. It's a bit of a mess and with local governments all now seeing budget shortfalls thanks to the housing downturn, I don't imagine we'll see any more imaginative thinking in the near future.