Local Funding for Transportation is "Difficult, if not Impossible"

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Local Funding for Transportation is "Difficult, if not Impossible"

From Leesburg Today comes an article about Virginia Secretary of Transportation Sean T. Connaughton, who told the Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce about plans to construct HOT lanes in Northern Virginia, the $493 million bond sale ... and plans Gov. Bob McDonnell has to ask for exemption from the federal government to shift the authority to build toll booths on I-81 to I-95.

"Members of the Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce and some of the county's elected leaders gathered Wednesday morning to learn more about the state government's thus-far hazy plan for funding Virginia's needed transportation improvements, but the news was not good.

"County Chairman Scott K. York (I-At Large), who was present at the Chamber event, pointed out afterward that it has not been state money that has gotten some of Loudoun's biggest road projects completed in recent years.

"Roads have been coming through the development community through rezonings," he said. "It's been a special tax district on Rt. 28 creating those interchanges, and the county is building the interchange at Loudoun County Parkway."

"Funding for transportation projects locally would be difficult, if not impossible to sustain for Loudoun, York added."