Last week the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance sponsored a forum for business and government leaders to hear from Virginia Transportation Secretary Pierce Homer on the status of Virginia’s transportation programs and funding projections. Secretary Homer’s blunt assessment consisted of bad news and really bad news. Virginia’s Six Year Program, part of the master plan for improving our transportation infrastructure, declined from $11.5 billion to $7.4 billion in two years. The state Department of Transportation (VDOT) has made substantial personnel and service cuts across the state. He summarized: "We are approaching a cliff. If we don’t act quickly (to address the funding shortfalls) Virginia’s prosperity will go elsewhere".

THE PROBLEM far exceeds the congestion that slows our daily commutes. It impacts the economic vitality of the Commonwealth. We in northern Virginia suffer more as construction funds are diverted for maintenance requirements because of the way the different "pots" of money are allocated. Without a new long-term statewide funding source, northern Virginia will suffer disproportionately, and so will our businesses.

Most troubling is that within a decade, Virginia will not be able to come up with the 20% state dollars to match the 80% federal funds for road construction and transit. We will not advance projects to increase freight and rail capacity, especially at Dulles Airport and the Virginia Port – two enormous economic generators that employ hundreds of thousands of workers each and together account for about 6% of our state’s General Fund revenue. Without new transportation funding, the state will only be able to patch our existing infrastructure, both here in northern Virginia, and throughout the state. Worse yet, much of our concrete infrastructure, such as bridges, is 50 years old and failing and cannot be patched. Finally, state funding to provide the match for our transportation public-private partnerships is threatened, potential projects that can actually reduce costs to taxpayers in the long run.

THE CURRENT RECESSION offers an opportunity to think deliberately about what we can do when the economy improves. We should identify agreed-upon "indicators" of economic health that would then trigger the initiation of regional and statewide funding streams. These funding sources should capture everyone who actually uses our infrastructure – not just Virginians. There will always be those for whom the time is never right to raise revenue for any reason, but a growing number of northern Virginians are impatient with that reasoning and with the gimmicks that simply shift the financial burden from one source to another.

With the consequences of inaction so dire, Secretary Homer suggested that it is time to call the perennial naysayers to account. We have one billion dollars in unmet transportation needs annually, almost $700,000 right here in northern Virginia. Real solutions, even in a better economy, will require bipartisan collaboration and no small measure of political courage. The reality check for doing nothing will be the continual screech of brakes on our gridlocked roads and the silence of the brakes on our economic vitality.

Sixty-five years after D-Day, I marvel that the generation that gave so much came home from the war and invested unselfishly in the Interstate Highway Act to build much of the infrastructure we have today. Now that the infrastructure is aging like the generation that paid for it, I pray we will find the courage and vision to affirm their historic legacy and sacrifice.