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Transportation plan includes new projects, but state still needs long-term money source Date published: 6/16/2005
By EDIE GROSS RICHMOND--The state's $7 billion transportation plan for the next six years includes more new road projects than any recent budget, officials with the Virginia Department of Transportation said yesterday. But don't pop the champagne cork just yet, they warned. While a one-time infusion of cash from state lawmakers this year allowed VDOT to add 103 needed projects to the list, the state still needs to establish a consistent, long-term source of revenue, said Transportation Commissioner Philip Shucet. "This is still a bleak and unacceptable long-term picture for mobility in the commonwealth," he told members of the Commonwealth Transportation Board. The board is scheduled to approve the six-year plan today. The document would cover projects between July 1 of this year and June 30, 2011. The budget includes $262.2 million for VDOT's 14-county Fredericksburg District, a 24 percent increase over the last plan. And the Culpeper District would get $211.6 million, a 16 percent increase. Yesterday, during a workshop, transportation officials reflected on how far VDOT's finances had come in the past three years. In July 2002, facing revenue shortfalls and project overruns, VDOT slashed its six-year plan by $2.7 billion, or 27 percent. Lean years followed, during which the agency started relatively few new projects and struggled to pay off more than $850 million in debt from already-completed roads. Since then, the agency has established a more reliable formula for estimating the costs of projects. And work is not scheduled until the state has the money set aside to pay for it. Still, a report released last year on the state of transportation funding predicted a bleak future for Virginia. Without a dedicated revenue source, by 2017, all of the state's construction money will be siphoned off by maintenance needs, the VTrans2025 report predicts. By 2018, Virginia would be unable to accept all available federal transportation grants because it wouldn't have enough state money to match them. This year, the General Assembly set aside $848 million for transportation, including $257 million to wipe out VDOT's debt. That action helps, but the state still has a long way to go, Shucet said. "The catastrophe is held off some five to seven years," he said. "[But] the endgame is the same: A transportation program that eventually becomes nothing more than a maintenance program maintaining our existing facilities."
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