Norm Leahy responded to the Conservative Transportation Alternative this week. Like Jim Bowden, I found Leahy’s criticism to be utterly baffling.
Like Norm, I have no aversion to “sprawl;” the free market is the free market. This is why Norm’s reaction so confuses me. To follow his logic, the limited-government solution is to keep all Virginians subsidizing secondary and subdivision roads. In fact, the very notion that someone other than governments should fund subdivision roads seems to give Norm the vapors.
Pat McSweeney responded to Leahy, and I think this excerpt is the most telling (via JAB):
The Commonwealth should be moving toward a system in which state taxpayers in Lee County will not be taxed to pay for roads in Fairfax County, and vice versa. Most of the thousands of miles of secondary roads added to the state highway system since 1986 are internal subdivision roads and new roads to serve those subdivisions. It’s time to examine alternative ways to fund the maintenance of all secondary roads, as well as the construction and maintenance of new secondary roads outside of subdivisions.
Decentralization of governmental decisions regarding transportation serves the interest of political accountability. It would also reflect the reality that transportation problems are quite different from one locality to another. If the method of funding secondary roads were to approximate the operation of the free market, we would be more apt to achieve economic optimization of our transportation system.
Or, as I have put it repeatedly - the rest of Virginia should no longer have to pay for my street.
