The Virginia senate has
passed a repeal of last year's unpopular abusive drive fee law. The repeal even includes a provision allowing those hit with the fees to seek a refund.
The abusive driver fees were an interesting lesson in how our transportation infrastructure is funded, and what kind of trouble that funding is in. From the beginning, there were a number of problems with these fees. Saddling dangerous drivers with additional costs for their trangressions is not immediately distasteful, though it quickly became apparent that trying to fund massive infrastructure needs on the backs of a relatively small proportion of Virginia drivers resulted in wildly ridiculous penalties. It did make some sense to tie transportation funding to transportation users, even if the law targeted only a small number of users and irresponsible ones at that, but the law even failed at this by exempting non-Virginia drivers from the fees. In an area like Northern Virginia, where massive employment and shopping centers must be drawing drivers from West Virginia, DC, and Maryland, this exempts a significant portion of users from having to pay for the roads they're driving on. The law also suffered from something of a split personality - if the fees expected to serve as a revenue source for transportation needs, then clearly they required significant numbers of bad drivers to keep driving badly in order to keep the money flowing, so they couldn't possibly be effective deterents for unsafe drivers. And if they did become effective deterents, then suddenly the state would find itself back at square one having created a very successful safety program but still with huge transportation shortfalls.
If the state wants to tie transportation funding directly into transportation use, they are going to have to do so across all users of the system, not just a tiny segment of lawbreakers, and neither can they exempt out-of-state drivers who are using Virginia roads. The only way to do this, it seems to me, is an increase in the gas tax or tolls on the most highly congested/highly used corridors. If politicians and the public find this distasteful, then the revenue will have to come from a broad, though smaller, general tax increase. Abusive driver fees may still have a role to play - albeit on a more reasonable level - but it was a mistake from the beginning to think they this would be a successful way to fund our transportation needs.
This year's
Bike Virginia tour, scheduled from June 20 through 25, will ride the section of the Crooked Road heritage music trail in the Bristol/Abingdon area. It's unfortunate that it won't include those sections in Floyd and Franklin counties, though I understand that Abingdon and Bristol see a lot of cyclists come through and should be well-prepared for the additional influx that Bike Virginia will bring in.
On a related note, it turns out (and no doubt avid cyclists already know this) that the NewVa region hosts a section of the cross-country Bikecennential trail, now called U.S. Bike Route 76. It has been added to our
Interactive Bike Map, though there are some gaps in the route. The section running north of Roanoke through Botetourt and into Catawba is fairly well mapped, but once it enters the New River Valley it gets trickier. I was able to find some rough directions indicating where the trail entered Christiansburg, but beyond that it was guesswork. I contacted the NRV bicycle club, and it sounds like maintenance of the route in terms of signage has largely been neglected. It would be excellent resource for the region if we were to promote this historic route with updated signage and more accurate maps.