Dysfunctional MPO

The Hampton Roads Metropolitan Planning Organization is undergoing much needed reform, according to this article in The Virginian-Pilot.  Til now, the organization could be best described as dysfunctional.

A hallmark of the group’s work is a list of projects that totaled nearly $8 billion in 2002 that included another water crossing between South Hampton Roads and the Peninsula, a new Midtown Tunnel and the Southeastern Parkway.

None has been funded or built.

Will the changes, including a name change, have any effect on the operations? If last week’s article about high speed rail is any indication, the answer is no.

A split between South Hampton Roads and the Peninsula over high-speed rail is widening now that the heads of seven southside cities and counties have agreed to push for a route south of the James River.

Without a political consensus on a route, the region’s chances could be further delayed at a time when federal money is available for a higher-speed rail project.

It was that article which prompted Ray Taylor, who probably knows more about MPOs than anyone in the region, to pen an op-ed piece which appears in today’s paper.

The fact is that the region’s chances will be delayed — or more likely will never happen — without regional consensus, meaning an authoritative regional vote on the matter.

Taylor holds out hope that the changes in the MPO will heal the rift between the Southside and Peninsula communities. I’m not so sure. We’ve made little progress since the two MPOs were combined in 1991.

Taylor’s complete op-ed is below the fold.

Note: The Virginian-Pilot does not publish op-eds on their website. And the vendor for ePilot has changed. No longer are we able to link to a story that appears only in print, as you must be a subscriber in order to view the story. I am happy to give credit to The Pilot for stories, not happy about the new ePilot vendor (especially since none of the old links work and the search function is horrible).

Regional schism grows; let’s patch it

By RAY TAYLOR

I WISH THE word “schism” had not been used in the headline for The Pilot’s excellent article on highspeed rail (“Schism grows among leaders over route for high-speed rail,” front page, May 27). The reporters were correct but too genteel when they wrote that, without regional consensus, the region’s chances for high-speed rail funding could be delayed.

The fact is that the region’s chances will be delayed — or more likely will never happen — without regional consensus, meaning an authoritative regional vote on the matter.

What is regional consensus? It does not come from a so-called Southside Mayors and Chairs Committee (SMCC) that, on the one hand is a group of impressive, talented and skilled leaders but that, on the other, has no statutes, no bylaws, no prescribed authority whatsoever and no method of public interface. At most, it is a microphone with an intangible, will-o’-the-wisp character.

In contrast, the issue of high-speed rail is very real. It will require very real federal money, and it will need to be advanced by a very real organization that, in addressing the matter, has used objectivebased, real federal planning factors. Very properly, federal officials are consistently quick to say they do not recognize this organization or this process.

As quoted in the article, Newport News Mayor Joe Frank was right when he said, “I was hoping to get together as a region to address this regionally versus separately.”

Similarly, Virginia Beach Mayor Will Sessoms was clairvoyant when he said, “We need to talk to the Peninsula and see if something can be worked out.” That is exactly what we need to do to get the regional consensus that the reporters wrote about and that the feds will require.

That regional consensus, produced by a bylaws-established regional voting method, must come from an organization that has followed a federally prescribed and objective process. Bluster, politics, lobbyists and will-o’- the-wisp approaches are not substitutes.

What is, or where is, this very real organization? It is not the SMCC. It is the one federally mandated regional organization that is responsible for metropolitan multimodal transportation planning and programming, and that is the region’s Metropolitan Planning Organization.

Currently, the Hampton Roads MPO is involved in a major reform process designed to use MPO best practices. Having been led by Frank and a few other sharp MPO board members, this reform process has moved far forward over the past 16 months.

Clearly, the future is promising when one notes the many new faces being brought forward — mayors Sessoms, Molly Ward in Hampton, Linda Johnson in Suffolk and Alan Krasnoff in Chesapeake, for example, as well as the Port Authority and other professional voices. Thus, new rigor and vigor are moving onto the MPO board.

The board is the one real place where this multimodal, high-speed rail topic should be discussed and policy positions developed formally and objectively. Then the feds will listen, and so will our state leaders.

Our citizens accepted the merger of two MPOs in 1991, presumably to end the schism. Let us fulfill that mandate and get to work.

Ray Taylor, of Virginia Beach, was chairman of the MPO Study Group of the Future of Hampton Roads organization.