VICTORY - HAMPTON ROADS SALES TAX REFERENDUM DEFEATED

Thanks to all our Volunteers!



WHY THE SALES TAX HIKE IS THE WRONG APPROACH FOR HAMPTON ROADS

1. Regressive Tax: This permanent 22% tax increase on top of the ½ cent already dedicated to transportation will hurt working families and the poor, without solving traffic congestion.

2. How Much Will it Really Cost?: VDOT cost overruns are legendary. These mega-projects will inevitably cost far more than predicted and will also lead to widening of all connecting roads. This will mean future tax increases.

3. It Won't Cut Traffic: L.A. shows that highway expansion does not cut traffic. Studies show up to 90% of new metro-area highway capacity will fill up in as little as 5 years. Yet, 97% percent of the sales tax package goes to major highways and only 3% to transit.

4. Environmental Harm: The hundreds of lane miles of highways added to the region will increase sprawl development, destroy numerous wetlands, increase driving and air pollution, and increase water pollution.

5. The Real Word on Air Quality: Massive highway expansion, leading to more sprawl development and more vehicle miles traveled will worsen air quality.

6. Unneeded Bypass: The Southeastern Expressway will open up thousands of acres to sprawl development, consuming farmland, forests, and wetlands. It will shift jobs and investment away from Norfolk, Portsmouth and other older communities.

7. Hurts Cities: The project list is based upon the Hampton Roads 2021 Regional Transportation Plan that assumes that the core cities will lose population and jobs. By expanding outer highways it ensures that this will happen. The plan completely ignores the traffic benefits of smarter growth, walkable communities and urban revitalization.

8. Destroys Neighborhoods: Massive highway widening will harm dozens of neighborhoods and homes and reduce property values. Unlike highways, nearby modern light rail transit increases property values.

9. Pavement Instead of Education: Legislators are telling you that $11 billion into highways (Hampton Rds+No. Virginia) is more important than funding for universities, better paid teachers, smaller class sizes, or repair and upgrades to older schools.

Real Solutions: Bring people and jobs back to the cities. Create walkable/bikable town centers. Use light rail to focus development in station areas. Turn thousands of acres of ugly, one story strip development and parking lots into walkable towns. Protect rural open space. Reduce the amount everyone has to drive.

WHAT IS THE ALTERNATIVE TO THE HIGHWAY REFERENDUM?

While the "perfect is the enemy of the good" the citizens of Hampton Roads at least deserve a good proposal. We deserve a comprehensive plan, well thought out and well debated in public that includes local land use plans and decisions, natural resource inventories, environmental impact analysis, adequate mass transit funding, and presents a range of options to the citizens of the region to debate. A "take it or leave it" choice is no choice at all.

The highway tax referendum is a road-building proposal that passively adapts to growth and sprawl projections for the region. It neither attempts to reverse the deterioration of urban centers in Norfolk and Portsmouth, nor addresses the sprawl in outer suburbs. The package has not been reviewed for its environmental impacts on air quality, wetlands, the Chesapeake Bay, or other potential impacts on natural resources availability and use. It is not even the full package of transportation needs identified in the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission 2021 Transportation Plan.

We will judge any transportation proposal by these standards:

• It must be part of an overall regional strategy that involves land-use planning, integration of municipal comprehensive plans, "smart growth" strategies (planning where future growth should be concentrated), natural resources inventories and use plans, economic/job planning, and air and water quality planning.

• It makes minimal negative environmental impacts while providing maximum environmental gains, consistent with a long-range economic plan.

• It seeks to address both the problems of outer suburban "sprawl" and urban center deterioration.

• It gives sufficient and significant weight to mass transit programs.

• The proposal must be put before the public with all supporting facts and information. The underlying plan must be fully debated in public, not "notice and comment" review by a regional agency.

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF THE HIGHWAY REFERENDUM

The proponents of the highway tax referendum proposal have made statements that claim environmental benefits, congestion reduction, sprawl mitigation, and mass transit improvements from the projects to be funded by the highway tax. These claims are partially or entirely unsupported by the facts.

AIR QUALITY

CLAIM: "If we fail to meet air quality standards, the region could lose federal funding for new transportation projects. Relieving congestion will improve air quality and help us avoid costly federal mandates."

Yes Campaign Website

FACT:
• The Environmental Protection Agency's new ozone standards will take effect in 2004 and it is expected that Hampton Roads will be a non-attainment area. None of the referendum highways will be built by then and cannot contribute to avoidance of "federal mandates."
• Federal environmental impact assessments have not yet been done on this package - regulatory agency review is in the future.
• The top official of the regional authority managing these projects, stated, "There is absolutely no guarantee that with these projects there won't be air pollution problems."

CONGESTION/SPRAWL

CLAIM: "The projects discourage sprawl in that they have been designed in existing transportation corridors specifically to reduce congestion and in most instances are expansions of existing roadways in developed areas."
Hampton Roads Partnership ad - 9/16/02 Virginian Pilot.

FACT:
• The HRPDC 2021 Regional Transportation Plan from which these projects were taken assumes sprawl will continue unabated with estimates that "91% of the population growth and 84% of the job growth for 2021 will be outside the Hampton Roads Beltway." The highway projects adapt to this sprawl.
• The 2021 Plan had extensive ($3.6 billion) funding for secondary roads since they accounted for a major portion of the congestion: the highway referendum drops all of that funding.
• A 25-year study of highways in Virginia shows that over half of the new capacity of roads is used up in two to four years as existing residents take more trips on the new highways - trips they would not have taken without more lanes. These increased trips to the mall will use up the congestion benefits and add to air pollution.

MASS TRANSIT

CLAIM: " Regional Transit improvements could include:
• Passenger rail between cities within Hampton Roads and from Hampton Roads to other regions.
• Possible light rail coordinated with the mass transit tube envisioned in the Third Crossing, or a new technology such as a magnetic levitation train, or MAGLEV.
• It is also probably (sic) that bus service would have to be improved to feed the new mass transit systems."

YES Campaign Website

FACT: The original HRPDC 2021 Plan had ALL of these projects included, with estimated mass transit funding of nearly $2.2 billion, constituting 44% of the total 2021 Transportation package. The highway tax referendum has NONE of these specific mass transit projects, cuts mass transit funding to only 16% of the package, and provides a transit package of $200 million, not adjusted for inflation (the only part of the highway referendum not allowed to inflate), that is only paid into for 20 years of the 35-year life of the sales tax increase.